Re: Does Searle's "Chinese Room" argument imply that consciousness is non-scientific?

On Sep 30, 2:13 am, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

You have to see past the illusion that blueness,
and redness, and loudness, and painless, and
sweetness, are all nothing but different neural
activities and not something created by neural
activity. It's an identity and not a cause and
effect relationship.

Indeed it is an identity. But an identity means
they have the same cause, viewed differently.
The *viewing* (a process) is not identical and
that is why they seem different.


One point to consider, is that everything we can
sense and be aware of, is this same stuff. We have
no way to compare our neural activity, to some other
sort of stuff, because we know nothing else.


Exactly and that same stuff is our subjective experiences.

However we can infer the existence of a physical world
to explain the constraints of our subjective experiences.
It is reasonable to say there is a physical reality out
there even though all we have are subjective experiences.


So when you say to yourself, it doesn't "seem" to be
neural activity, what is your basis for being able to
say that?

When you view a circle from one angle it is an ellipse.
It doesn't seem to be a circle. When you view "blueness"
from a brain scanner you don't see any blueness because
the brain cannot compute blueness from a brain scanner.

When we "view" something it means we are in some way
processing information. If a computer is processing say
an image into say circles and squares its "view" is
different than if it was processing the processing.


What are you comparing all your phenomenal properties
to in order to make the determination it's not neural
activity?

But I am NOT determining it's not neural activity, that
is your strawman, your false statements about what I am
doing. I am comparing one neural activity (blueness) to
another neural activity (viewing the brain scanner display).


Where is your meta-phenomenal properties and your
metaconsciousness which you can use to evaluate the
true nature of your normal consciousness? You don't
have meta-phenomenal properties to work with, so you
are left with no way to ground your understanding of
your own blueness. It's the primitive stuff all your
understanding and experience is made from, and that's
all we can know through direct examination of our own
mind.

Indeed.


So when you have the thought that blueness doesn't
seem to be neural activity, how valid of a thought
can that be?

Well blueness *doesn't* seem to be a neural activity!

However the evidence is that is a neural activity and
I have never claimed otherwise. It is a different view
of the neural activity (blueness) by another neural
activity (seeing or imagining firing neurons).


From inside the mind, we can't tell what it is, for
the same reason a robot can't tell his mind is made
up of transistors. Nothing about the blue ball the
robot is looking at gives him an understanding that
the blueness he senses in the ball, is just electrical
signals in his computer brain. No matter how much he
talks to himself about the issue of why he sees the
ball as being blue will help him understand that it
all happens because he's got a lot of transistors in
his brain which is translating that blue light into
all his talk about blueness.

You see saying it is nothing but electrical signals
although true is not an explanation of the differences.
If someone wanted to know the difference between say
amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, phase
modulation and you simply replied it is nothing but
radio waves would that be an explanation?

From within the human mind, you can not tell that
blueness is nothing but neurons firing. That's
because the human mind exists in the same sort of
virtual reality the video game exists in.

That is the homunculus illusion, that the mind exists
in something be it a virtual reality running in brain
hardware or anywhere else. But I say the mind IS the
virtual reality running ON the brain's hardware. It
is not IN the game the way a player is in the game.
It IS the game.


You find that all the weirdness of consciousness, already
exists in our video games, and in all our current robots.

I don't see any reason for consciousness, weird or otherwise,
to exist in our video games or our current robots. It is
a superfluous addition made by you using this logic I suspect.

We are nothing but machines
We have consciousness
Robots are nothing but machines
thus
Robots have consciousness.

This logic doesn't explain consciousness.

We are nothing but machines
We can do arithmetic
Robots are nothing but machines
thus,
Robots can do arithmetic.

Now maybe robots can do arithmetic, maybe they haven't
been programmed to do arithmetic. We need to test for
their arithmetic doing abilities. Until you understand
the mechanics of doing arithmetic, or being conscious
you have proved nothing by the above logic.

We are nothing but machines
We have blood
Robots are nothing but machines
thus
robots have blood.

Get it?


There is no extra work needed to solve the mystery of
consciousness because that mystery is already solved.
It's just brain activity. The only extra work here is
to get all the people who still think it's a mystery, to
understand there is no mystery. What it feels like to
be a conscious human is exactly what it should feel like,
to be a robot with a computer brain.

Statements of belief without any reason why it should
feel like anything at all.

--
JC

.

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