Re: q*****
Skye Howard (skyezacharia@yahoo.com)
Sat, 11 Dec 1999 20:25:05 -0800 (PST)
- Zeb Haradon <zharadon@inconnect.com> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ken Clements <Ken@InnovationOnDmnd.com>
> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
> Date: Friday, December 10, 1999 11:21 PM
> Subject: Re: q*****
>
> > My turn to quote from Chalmers on page 215 of _The
> Conscious Mind_:
> > -- All this metaphysical grandeur is well and
> good, one might reply, but how
> > -- does it cash out in practice? In particular,
> how can we discover the psycho-
> > -- physical laws that will constitute a theory of
> consciousness? After all, there
> > -- is an enormous problem for a theory of
> consciousness that does not confront
> > -- a theory of physics: the lack of data. Because
> consciousness is not directly
> > -- observable in experimental contexts, we cannot
> simply run experiments mea-
> > -- suring the experiences that are associated with
> various physical processes,
> > -- thereby confirming and disconfirming various
> psychophysical hypotheses.
> > -- Indeed, it might seem that the untestability
> of any theory of consciousness
> > -- that we might put forward would relegate such
> theories to the status of
> > -- pseudoscience.
> >
> > I did not argue *for* physicalism (another failure
> of reason is that an argument against something
> > must, necessarily be an argument for something
> else), I am pointing out that any theory that has no
>
> > data, and is untestable, shares the same status as
> superstition. Some superstitions turn out to be
> > true. However, given all the non-testable things
> out there to believe in, and that I cannot find a
> way to
> > break the symmetry, I choose to wait for data to
> believe in any.
> >
> > -Ken
>
> But don't you experience it yourself, and isn't that
> data?
> The problem with this type of data is that you
> cannot experience other people's consciousness. You
> can rely on reports from them, but you have no idea
> if they are lying, or making it up after the fact.
> And even assuming they are always correct and always
> telling the truth, you have no idea if the qualia
> associated with an experience they report is the
> same as the qualia you are experiencing, or if there
> is ANY qualia associated with their experiences. I
> believe that ultimately there is no way around this.
> This makes it an extremely difficult experiment to
> broach scientifically. An individual could do
> certain things to his brain and study the effects on
> qualia, and, I suppose, make his own science which
> has validity to him, but if his experiments are not
> reporoducable in others, they may very well see it
> as "superstition". But, should the scientist who did
> the experiments and experienced the effects consider
> it superstition? Should anyone except those who do
> not directly experience qualia (if any exist)
> consider their existence to be hypothetical and
> superstitious?
>
>
>
> Zeb Haradon
> My personal website:
> http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~haradon
> A movie I'm directing:
> http://www.elevatormovie.com
>
My thoughts being: how would the existence of qualia
effect things? If there were something like them, then
the question arises: would it matter?
Sometimes I get the feeling that it may be due to
certain frustrations that have sprung up in the field
of artificial intelligence that we have ideas like
this... also possible degrees of technical misticism
(*very much hoping extropianism doesn't become a
religion of some kind in the far future:*) you know,
the machines can do all these amazing things but they
can't think. So we get this idea that consciousness
just sort of arises somehow- due to some mechanism of
qualia or what have you. But remember:
If you can't prove it, then it isn't creating a
noticeable effect (or we don't have the proper
equipment to measure it), and if it isn't creating a
noticeable effect... then it strikes me that it's like
the whole concept of a god in some religions...
interesting on a philosophical level, but in terms of
science, useless so far.
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