From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Fri Nov 26 1999 - 23:20:50 MST
Ken Clements wrote:
> Just say "no" to qualia.
And say "yes" to what? Surely you don't mean to suggest
that "subjective experience" is a quantitative state. Do
you experience your color "red" as an extensive magnitude?
How "large" would you say "red" is? Compared to the size
of, say, "yellow"? Or as an intensive magnitude? Which is
heavier: blue or green?
While you're at it, work out your definition of the sensation
red (i.e. the COLOR red -- not the wavelength of the light
associated with it--we already know that). We will need this
definition to program our AI mechanism so it will know when
it is experiencing "red". Otherwise it will fail to stop for the
light! [No spectrometric devices permitted here -- we are
concerned with the process of color-perception, not color
discrimination or the frequency analysis of radiation.
Spectrometers don't know about "red" because they don't
know about anything)].
To say a spectrometer sees red is exactly the same as
asserting that a submarine swims.
In case you missed it Ken, I defined "qualia" for Robert in
an earlier post:[1] "> What in the blazes is a "qualia"?"
qualia
The intrinsic phenomenal features of subjective consciousness,
or sense data. Thus, qualia include what it is like to see green
grass, to taste salt, to hear birds sing, to have a headache, to
feel pain, etc. Providing an adequate account of qualia is some-
times held to be a difficult problem for functionalist explanations
of mental states.
Also see , Daniel Dennett, David J. Chalmers, and Eric Lormand.
I believe it is in order to assert with some emphasis that
those who cannot distinguish the experiential reality denoted
by the metaphor "Mind" from a manufactured assemblage of
material components designed to perform predetermined
operations called a "Machine" should confine themselves to
discussing mechanics. I don't mean to be rude -- but 18th-
century science should be discussed using 18th-century
concepts - don't you agree?
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[1] Re: Transhumanist Dictionary [was Re: Is vs. Ought]
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 18:17:11 -0500
From: Robert Owen <rowen@technologist.com>
To: extropians@extropy.com
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
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