Re: Qualia Question

"1Z" <peterdjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Curt Welch wrote:
> > "1Z" <peterdjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Curt Welch wrote:
> > > > "1Z" <peterdjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > Curt Welch wrote:
> >
> > > > > OK. "I have tonight's supper in mind" -> "I have tonight's supper
> > > > > in brain".
> > > > >
> > > > > Hmmm.
> > > >
> > > > Yeah, it would take a lot of getting used to.
> > >
> > > Or it's jsut wrong.
> >
> > It's wrong only by convention. That is, the convention of correct word
> > usage in English.
>
> OK. but you still can't substitute 'brain' for 'mind' and change
> nothing else.

Yes, as I've said, you have to adjust the meaning of thousands of words
when you fix the "brain/mind" split. The point however is that you can do
this, and when you are done, you are left with a language, and a view of
reality which has no explanatory gap.

By removing the gap between mind and brain - in all the words that are
based on that idea, you also eliminate the explanatory gap.

> > The problem is that this "correct word usage" in English
> > makes people think they know something about the nature of the universe
> > which they don't - they believe the mind is not the brain, because
> > English defines it that way (and of course because it's it's consistent
> > with the mind-brain illusion the brain creates for us).
>
> Most people think it creates a problem, not "makes people think they
> know something"

Yes, most people are confused.

> > However, when I run into people who can't accept the "everything is
> > physical" belief system, I feel it's always because they had the other
> > belief firmly woven into them first. Before you can see how the other
> > one fits just as well, you have tear out all your old beliefs - and few
> > people seem to have enough power over their beliefs to do that.
>
> Well, I am not appealing to a theory, I am appealling to an experience.

I don't think that's possible. We only understand our experience in terms
of the language we have created to describe it. The langauge you use to
talk about experience is your theory of experience.

> > > > > > Qualia are nothing more than the internal signals generated by
> > > > > > your brain.
> > > > >
> > > > > So why the Mary problem ? Why doesn't a description of the signal
> > > > > describe the quale ?
> > > >
> > > > What makes you think a description of the signal doesn't describe
> > > > the quale?
> > >
> > > I have never seen one that does. DO you have an example ?
> >
> > I was playing a word game with you that went over your head.
> >
> > A description of a signal describes the signal by mere definition of
> > the words.
> >
> > Qualia is a signal in my belief system. A description of quale does by
> > definition have to describe quale (how can a description not
> > describe?). What you are still confused about is that a description of
> > quale is not the same thing as the quale itself in my belief system. A
> > description of a pulse signal comming from the eye going to the brain
> > is not the same thing as the actual nerve changing state in your head.
>
> No, but I didn't ask for the thing itself, did I ? I asked for a
> description.
>
> You are making this mistake again:-
> "And I have explained the confusion behind th eobjection at least as
> many times. To assume that you need to actualise or implement a
> quale in order to fully know it is to assume that qualia are
> intrinsitically
> subjective and private, and that it is exactly where qualia challenge
> physicalism".

But by saying that, you too are making a huge assumption. You are making
the assumption that it's possible to "know" somthing witout having to
actualise or implement it.

That's the mind-brain illusion. It's the belief that our consciousness
exists as a spirt disconnected from our physical body. Your entire point
of view starts with the belief that this is a true fact, then you use lots
of words to "prove" that physicalism (the belief that the the mind-brain is
one thing and not two things), "has a problem".

All your arguments come done to one thing. You started with the assumption
that the mind was not physical. Everything you built on that assumption
you keep holding up as "proof" that the assumption is valid.

My point is that you have no proof. We can create a belief system on
either belief (axiom) and still end up with a consistent set of ideas.
They just happen (for obvious reasons) to be in conflict with each other.

You seem unable to shake yourself free of your belief system long enough to
undersgtand any other point of view. I on the other hand have no problem
understanding both points of view. Personal preference just makes me pick
a different one as the one most likely to be right.

> > That is no challenge to physicalism. How is the neuron in your head
> > not private?
>
> It is causally private, but that isn't the same as descriptive privacy.
> The fact that only I am plumbed into my pancreas does not stop me
> commuicating about pancreases.

You can't feel your pancreases. Your "mind" is not plumbed into it.

> > Are you trying to argue that the neurons in your head, which
> > fires when you see something red, is the SAME neuron which is in my
> > head?
>
> No, I am talking about description and communication.

[snip]

> No, it is a challenge to phsysicalism if you realise that the
> ontological
> thesis "everything is physical" depends on the explanatory success of
> physics.

Interesting perspective.

To me, "physics", and "the physical universe" exist independently of our
ability to describe it, communicate about it, or understand it.

Just because I can't explain some aspect of the universe doesn't mean the
universe can't be explained, or that it doesn't exist.

> > But if you CORRECTLY assume, that everything is physical, then there is
> > no challenge. All the data we have fits both assumptions. What we
> > don't know, is which assumption is correct.
>
> The existence of things (or properteis, or events, or whatever) that
> can't be described physically challnges the assumption that everything
> is
> physical, and believing that everything is physical does not solve
> that problem -- it does not close the E.G.

As I said above. You are starting with the assumption you are trying to
prove.

You start with the assumption that "things exist that can't be described
physically". - a.k.a, the "mind". Then you make all these arguments to try
and "prove" your starting assumption is correct. All your beliefs are
consistent with your starting assumption not because they are all correct,
but only because they were created from your starting assumption - so of
course they support it.

The explanatory gap is the mind-body gap. If you believe the mind is not
the brain, then you choose to believe there is a gap and you should not be
surprised with you play with these ideas, that the gap keeps showing up.

If you instead, build an entire new belief system based on the idea that
the the mind and brain/body are one and the same and build a belief system
around that concept, then you find there is now gap. And the belief system
works just fine to explain eveyrthing we know about our existence and the
universe.

The only "problems" that show up, are the ones presented by people that
live under the different belief system.

> > You can't know what shape the car will take after it slams into a wall
> > at 90 MPH. (interaction between car and wall).
>
> Of course I can. If I have enough information, I could run a computer
> simulation.

Interesting that you think that way.

It's impossible to "have enough information". This is because the behavior
of atoms in the universe are under the influence of the gravity forces of
every atom in the universe within the light cone. The way a car will bend
in a crash is a function of the position of the moon a few minutes before
the crash. And a function of what happaned to every atom in a near by star
many years ago.

To predict the total behavior of anything requires you know the history of
every atom in the universe. Nothing man could every build could every
"know that".

> All these things can be discovered from a *sufficiently detailed*
> description.

No. They can never be discovered. All we can do is create a sufficently
detailed description, from "suficently detailed" information with
sufficently complex computing resources.

Using the laws of graviy, we can approximate where a rock will land when
tossed - but we can never know "exactly" where it will land. It's
impossible for us to know these things.

> You are just assuming that some information is missing.

Assuming? Bull. I know for a fact that information is ALWAYS missing.

> Remember the
> Mary
> argument ? Mary is supposed to know *everything* about perception as a
> physical process.

Which is yet another problem. The Mary problem talks about "knowing" as if
we all know what knwoing is. But if we knew that (and could agree on an
answer), we wouldn't be having this discussion would we?

It's impossible for anyone, or anything (that we know about so far), to
know "everything" about any physical process. As I said above. gravity has
no limits of reach, so all physical processes are tied together in this
universe. Our power to understand is no match for the complexity of the
universe we exist in. Not to mention that we are part of the very system
we are trying to understand so our very act of trying to understand it
causes it to change.

Our understand of anything about the physical universe is always just
scratching the surface of something too complex for us to ever fully
understand.

> > Maybe that the correct defintion of "physicalism", but that's not the
> > view of reality I'm talking about.
>
> If you can't justify "everything is physical" by explaining everything
> in
> physical terms, how do you justify it ?

By explaining as much of it as I can.

> > The brain works by using reductionism.
>
> That's one item in the toolbox.

Well, that's only one of many words we use to talk about our mental powers,
but I think the power of reducing data to a prediction about future data is
the core power our brain hardware uses to create all those "toolbox"
skills.

> Well, you haven't justified that reductionism is the only way to
> explain things,
> and that doen't tell me that everything *is* physical, only that it
> will
> seem physical to reductionists.

But that's been my point all along - that we can't prove that everything is
physical. The point is that you can start with either belief and build a
self consistent set of ideas. The ideas you build in these two systems
however are at odds with each other - for obvious reasons. We don't have
enough data however to show which idea is a more accurate description of
our existence.

But like everything physical, we can never understand "everyting" about it.
All we can do is talk about trends. We can understand everything about our
predicdtions, but that only tells us the obvious - that we can understand
what we can understand.

> Of course if we really had no connection with reality other than
> physical reductionism
> we would have no MBP. The problem comes from the disparity between
> physical reductionism and
> subjectivity/introspection.

But don't you see? When you talk about your "connection with reality", you
are talking from a belief that you are somehow separate from reality - if
you were one and the same, then the issue of how we are "connected" is
meaningless.

This just gets back to the point that deep in your understanding of
EVERYTHING, is hidden a fundimental belief that your mind is separate from
the stuff it is observing. That's the most common view people have, but
it's not the only possible view.

The MBP is that fundimental belief you have.

All it adds up to, is the fact that if the mind is not the stuff we are
observing, then we will never be able to explain the mind. We will never
be able to cross the gap.

> In what sense of 'subjective' ? If you don't think they have features
> incommunicable in
> physicalese , what is subjective about them?

In the everything is physical sense of subjective. Like I said, you have
redefine everything to be consistenet with this other view of reality.

The only meaningful sense of "subjective" from this perspective is
"private" - i.e., something happening in my brain, and not yours.

> Then why can't mathematical descriptions convey qualia ?

Because you are are stuck in a belief system that is incompatiable with my
belief system. And no matter how many times I try to explain it to you,
you can't seem to grasp that your belief system is not the only valid
belief system possible.

> And
> why is it possible for people to learn maths -- the same maths--
> as everyone else -- through different sensory modalities ?

Because neurons have more than one input - they all have the power to learn
through different sensory modalities.

> Why isn't blind maths different from deaf maths ?

> And shoudn't you inform the SETI people that maths is not a
> univesal language as the thought ?

Where did I say math is not a type of universal langauge?

> > That OR gate is creating a new signal which is grounded to, and defined
> > in terms of, the 3 sensory inputs to that gate. The "meaning" of the
> > output langauge of that OR gate is defined in terms of the 3 senory
> > inputs.
>
> But there is nothing uncommunicable (and, AFAICS subjective) about
> this alleged "grounding".

Right, because once again, you are looking at this from your view of
reality.

> > All 100 billion signals here are subjective - they all belong to us
> > because they exist only in our head.
>
> That's only private in the sense that my pancreas is private.
> It doesn't entail a communication problem.

Exactly. In my view, there are no communation problems. There is no EG.

> > They are our private signals which no one
> > outside of our head has access to (unless you use some type of mind
> > probe technology to allow others to "see" the signals).
>
> Why would they need to ? What would be incomplete about a
> complete physical description, like Mary has.

Timing. Mary can't have a complete physical description. A physical
description is just a prediction about future events and the exact timing
of future events can never be accurately predicted. Mary lacks the
knowledge needed to completely and accurately predict the future - as we
all do. We can only create descriptions of trends - of approximations
which can make useful estimatations about future events.

"knowledge" is just our ability to make a good guess at a future event.
There is no other type of knowledge. If you think you "know" my name is
"Curt" what does that really mean? It means that you expect my name to
always be "Curt" - that at any time in the future, you expect my name to be
Curt.

> Trying to communicate by what means ? I am talking about complete
> physical descriptions.

Then you are talking about a fantasy - something that can't exist.

I can give you a complete blueprint of a car, but it will never be a
complete descritption of the real car. No matter how much data I put into
the blue prints, it will never be a complete descritpion of the real car.

If I try to weight the car and tell you how much it weighs, the number will
always be an approximation of the true weight of the car. There will
always be missing information.

> > Math however is an invented language with the unique property that it's
> > absolute and not fuzzy. one plus one is always equal to two by
> > definition of the language. It's non fuzzy by design.
>
> That should be anything but a problem. If you had a precise system,
> and a fuzzy langauge, you would have difficulty conveying the nature
> of the system in the language. But you should have no trouble conveying
>
> an imprecise system is precise langauge; whatever information has been
> lost, already been
> lost. Think of taking a fuzzy picture with a crap camera, and then
> taking
> another picture of the first picture with an excellent camera.
> The final picture will be fuzzy, but no fuzzier than the
> original--that;s
> where the information was lost.

You have got to be kidding. Is you understanding of machines really that
off base?

According to your logic, I could take a picture with a good camara, and
then take a picture of that picture, and repeat that processes 1 million
times, and the last picture will be just as good as the first?

In case you are not aware of how the world works, that will not happen.
Every picture will be slightly different. There is "data lost" every time.

You can't even make digital copies without error. Digital hardware simply
reduces the probablity of an error. But in the end, if you keep making
copies, one copy will turn out to be different from the one before it.
With good hardware, that copy count will be huge (10^20 times or something
large). But the error rate is never 0. The MTBF is never inifinte.

> But will a machine with equivalent functioning have equivalent
> consciousness ?
> Or will it be a Zombie.

Well I think the idea of a zombie an oxymoron. Either it's equivalent or
not.

If it's equivalent as far as we can sense, then it's as much a "non-zombie"
as any human is.

I think the real issue from these two possible view points is whether we
will ever be able to create equivalent behavior.

>From my "brain/mind is one" view-point, the odds of us being able to build
a conscious machine is good. From the "brain/mind are not the same" view -
the odds are poor.

> > Yeah, but the brute force dogmatism produces constant answers.
>
> Did produce answers unitl it ran into consciousness.

No, it only fails to produce answers for YOU and for anyone stuck in your
belief system. It's never failed me because I live under a different
belief system.

> Yes, it abstract. And I need that abstract idea to recognise novel NAND
> gates that
> I have not encountered before.

Yes, but all you are doing when you "recognize novel NAND gates" is to
compare some future sensory inputs to a partial description of the inputs
and checking for match. You are smiply doing a clasification job by
clasifying the set of all sensory inputs which match the partial sensory
description you call a "NAND" gate as being "the same".

The fact that it's a partial physical description and not a complete
physical description is what allows you to clasify different inputs as "the
same".

If I have 8 bit binary number as input, and I say that all inputs with a 1
in the low position, and and 0 in the second position is a "zart", then I
can "recognize" that 0110101 is a "zart" even though I've never seen a zart
like that in the past. This is all your brain is doing when it recognizes
things as "being the same type of thing".

> > The "word-square" is now "grounded" to two things, instead of only one.
>
> That doesn't make sense. If something is "grounded" in an indefinite
> number of things,
> it isn't grounded at all.

How is grounded to two precise things indefinite?

> > But both those things are still part of the sensory input. All that
> > happened was that the constraints of the association were lessened.
> > That's how abstraction works - by removing constraints.
> >
> > If you remove all the constraints however, then there is no
> > association, and the "thing" fails to exist at all.
> >
> > So in that sense, it is "forever grounded to something".
>
> But abstractions can be ungrounded because they only need to deal
> with relative associations between things.

Yeah, it seems that way. But I don't think in fact it happens. I think
all our understanding is grounded. I see no way to prove that however.

Howwever, how would be be possible to learn the meaning of a word or an
idea, without assocating it with previously learned words or some physical
sensation?

And the first word we learn must be assocated with physical sensations
because we have no other words to assocate them with.

> > The grounding, or the association, is the "meaning" of all these things
> > to us. The "meaning" of the output signal from any single neuron is
> > defined in terms of how it's "grounded" (connected to) (linked in a
> > causal way) to other signals in the brain.
>
> Sigh...that is yet anothe sense of grounding.

Yeah, but I think it's actually one and the same.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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