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From: departed@netcom.com (just passing through)
Subject: Re: Searle vs. "Strong" AI
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Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 22:59:09 GMT
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In article <3k5857$b90@tadpole.fc.hp.com>,
Brent Allsop <allsop@fc.hp.com> wrote:
[...deletia...]
>
>	The primary problem with most "computationalist" views is they
>don't recognize the significance of the phenomenal qualia we use for
>representations.  In fact many such as Dennett, take an
>"eliminativeist" position and deny that we have qualia altogether.  A
>register of transistors in a particular state can represent a binary
>number which in turn may represent red but this just isn't the same as
>the red quale we use to represent 750 nm light.  Anything capable of
>representation can do intelligent computation of differing degrees but
>today's computer representations are much less capable than the
>diverse and phenomenal qualia we experience and use to represent.  I
>believe this is what Searl is trying to say with his arguments but he
>misses the mark completely.  I pointed this out to Eric Dietrich in an
>e-mail message and he agreed with me.
>
>	Brent Allsop

In what way would you like to make a computer's representations more
capable (more qualia-like)?  Any ideas on how one would do that?

There's a niggling mystery at the bottom of qualia -- what makes 'red'
be our "RED"?  It's pretty clear (from neurology) that the perception of
color is a _construct_ (i.e. our eyes maintain a pretty constant perception
of something 'red' as red, even in rather differently balanced light, and
color neurons are fairly well up there in the visual hierarchy, so that
they synthesize from widely-ranging input) but does this advance us towards
understanding the quality of 'redness' that seems so immediate to us?

Perhaps there's no way to dig under phenomena; phenomena just speak an
irreducible language.

Or perhaps the language of a phenomenon is just that-which-it-relates-to,
and there is no interior to phenomena.  "Red" is the context of being
red.

Or perhaps qualia do not really describe an object, but always a process.
A yellow pencil is _not_ is-yellow, but is always becoming yellow.  Maybe
this is a way out, since we can talk about the "how" of a process more
easily than the "how" of a thing.  (In fact, I feel that it may be
meaningless to talk about the quality of an object, but I have no idea
how to justify that.)

Other posts have seemed to indicate that the human world of information
may have as its medium _dynamics_ rather than direct throughput -- thus
a certain sensation of smell is a particular kind of wobble (an attractor)
in the space of possible modes of activity of your olfactory bulb.

The inside view is a mindless process (neurons chitchatting) but the outside
view is a process which has become an entity of the mind, a particular
sensation.

-- Richard Wesson
(departed@netcom.com)

