From: Menno Rubingh (rubingh@delftnet.nl)
Date: Mon Dec 20 1999 - 15:41:57 MST
On Mon, 20 Dec 1999, Damien Broderick wrote:
> Another way of putting that is to speak of `qualia', a kind of
> reification or chunking or lexical compactification of the experiencing
> process. `Heat' (my example) is just such a reification of the motion of
> molecules. Ditto `wetness', given the appropriate atoms. There is nothing
> weird or ineffable about heat or wetness. In a complexly programmed toy
> world, heat and dampness would also be emulated, and its sim inhabitants
> would presumably feel their qualia.
OK. So you mean that `qualia' are just simply the crude chunkings that my
brain creates out of the sensor inputs it receives. (Is that correct?) In
other words: the crude working models which my brain makes, in which my brain
stores information about the models and concepts that I happen to have come to
believe (through my interpretations of my experiences) are useful and/or valid
'models' about the world external to my brain.
But that would imply that these `qualia' have *nothing necessary* about them.
I mean, that they are not static, basic, God-given, Plato-type, immutable
concepts somehow immediately inherent in Nature and with an existence
independent of human or zombie brains. These `qualia', as you mean them here,
are just some random combinations in my brain which have survived a kind of
survival-of-the-fittest filtering process occurring inside my brain while I
'learn' things about the external world (= a process such as the one you
indicate in your words "these machines have evolved via a fairly brutal
selection sieve").
One human could, for example, have a quite diffent set of `qualia' in his
brain than another human. One of the consequences of that would be, for
example, that two people could each ''experience'' a `qualium' they both use
the same word (label) "Heat" for when they want to talk to others about the
thing they ''feel'' when they ''experience'' that `qualium', but could at the
same time each attach quite different contents to the `qualium' they are
talking about.
So what you mean when you are using the term `qualia' is really precisely the
*functional*, Commander-Data type of "qualia"; and *not* the spooky type of
Qualia as defined in the following mail:
> From: "Zeb Haradon" <zharadon@inconnect.com>
> To: <extropians@extropy.com>
> Subject: Re: question:qualia
> Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 18:09:35 -0800
>
> Qualia is basically experience, or sensation. But the term 'qualia' is used
> to differentiate it from functional aspects. For example, a computer which
> can analyze wavelengths of light and returns the value of the color of the
> light has the functional "sensation" of experiencing colors, but presumably,
> does not have the same visual sensation we have when we experience red
> (assuming the computer is a normal old 20th century computer).
> The term "zombie" means an individual exactly the same as a human, composed
> of the same molecules, and exactly the same functionally, but which does not
> experience qualia.
Regards, Menno (rubingh@delftnet.nl)
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