From: Brent Allsop (allsop@extropy.org)
Date: Sun Feb 09 2003 - 12:34:10 MST
Jeff Allbright jef@jefallbright.net
replied
>>>I've read through your essay on
qualia but I'm going to have to read it
again and think about it some more to
understand how it fits. To me, the
idea of qualia implies a recursively
nested "Cartesian theater" scenario,
requiring at each level a homunculus to
observe the play.<<<
Thank you for reading my paper! I do
cover this in the paper. This view is
not the "Cartesian theater" since there
is no observer in a theater. The
representation of the information is
simply what the person consciously
knows.
>>>If take a look at the behavior of a
complex system with multiple feedback
loops, you might feel that it is
amazingly responsive to it's
environment,
but you won't necessarily find any
one-to-one mapping or representation of
the outside world within the system
begin examined. You could try to build
it that way, but it wouldn't be
efficient, and at the lowest level the
mapping wouldn't hold true.<<<
Yes, this is one point of view. There
are many intelligent people that would
agree with this. But it is my opinion
that this view is wrong and not
applicable to us. We have very rich
conscious representations that map very
closely to the reality we are aware of.
Everything we know is not the object
itself, but our conscious representation
of it. It is my opinion that accurate
representations are the most efficient
at being intelligent in versatile and
creative ways. If an intelligent being
knows something, there is something that
is part of him that is that knowledge.
The more this knowledge deviates from
accurate representations, the more
problems this intelligence will
experience when it comes to dealing with
the world in creative ways...
I pretty much agree with the rest of
what you said.
Brent Allsop
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