Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,comp.ai,comp.robotics
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uunet!hobbes!earth.armory.com!rstevew
From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Qualia (was Re: Minsky's new article)
X-Original-Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,comp.ai,comp.robotics
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 13:18:12 GMT
Message-ID: <CzMCyH.1Ky@armory.com>
References: <19941116.150347.522@almaden.ibm.com> <3aj0om$1kf@tadpole.fc.hp.com>
Sender: news@armory.com (Usenet News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: deepthought.armory.com
Lines: 134
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.philosophy:22402 comp.ai:25368 comp.robotics:15529

In article <3aj0om$1kf@tadpole.fc.hp.com>,
Brent Allsop <allsop@fc.hp.com> wrote:
>
>
>Michael,
>
>	You bring up some very good points about "yellow".  I'm very
>interested in this kind of stuff.  This is a bit long so I hope anyone
>interested will indulge me.  If you have any comments or know of any
>other readings about this kind of stuff I'd greatly appreciate knowing
>about it.
>
>	Light reflecting off of the "yellow pear" is a phenomenon.
>This phenomenon can be described or reduced to the description of
>electromagnetic radiation reflecting off of the atoms that form the
>exterior of the pear.  The lowest level description to which this
>reflection phenomenon can be reduced or described is the fundamental
>phenomenon.  Even though we know much about this fundamental
>phenomenon and all it's properties do we understand what or why this
>lowest level phenomenon occurs?  I don't think so.  Such fundamental
>cause and effect phenomenon has computational properties.  Things like
>the surface of the pear can assume a state and this causes the light
>to reflect in a particular pattern.  Such physical computational cause
>and effect phenomenon can be organized into computational machinery.
>This is what Computers are which also can be reduced to the
>fundamental physics of cause and effect matter that is the transistors
>and wires.  Our great knowledge about the properties and behavior of
>this enable us to make computers but we don't really know what or why
>these fundamentals physics are that everything else reduces to.
>
>	Now, say we create a simulation on this computer that
>duplicates the computational behavior of the reflection of light off
>of the yellow pear.  Are these two phenomenon the same?  One is real
>light reflecting off of real atoms and the other is a bunch of
>silicone chips organized in such a way that its fundamental
>operations, when viewed at a higher abstract level, model the same
>cause and effect results of the reflecting light.  These two
>phenomenon are fundamentally different in my mind.  At the higher
>abstract level the behavior is the same but when you look at what is
>really fundamentally causing the behavior one is very different than
>the other.  You can create a simulation of a simulation... add
>infinitum, but when asking what this higher abstract level is truly,
>fundamentally, like you still must reduce the highest abstract level
>to the fundamental phenomenon of the transistors and wires.  At the
>higher abstract level it is like the reflecting light but
>fundamentally it isn't like the light at all.
>
>	Because all we are aware of is communicated to us or reduced
>computationally to the data in our nerves traveling from our sensors
>to our awareness, like the Turing Test itself, a simulation of reality
>could theoretically be fed to these neurons such that we could not
>know the difference between the real light reflecting off of the pear
>or a computational simulation of it.  Both reality and a simulation
>can be set up to identically stimulate a particular nerve.  This is
>what causes all the problems and confusion on this topic.  People are
>looking at it in the wrong way and trying to find the wrong things.
>Because of the veil of perception or the fact that all we are aware of
>is models of reality doesn't mean that we are not directly aware of
>the substance of the models themselves or the qualia.  We are directly
>aware of the things or phenomenon in our virtual reality spirit world
>in our brain.  But this is never for the purpose of being aware of the
>qualia themselves, it is usually for the purpose that these qualia
>computationally represent something outside of us i.e. the real yellow
>pear and the way it reflects light.
>
>	What is yellow like?  It is like a bunch of things.  It is
>like electromagnetic radiation reflecting of the surface of something
>yellow.  Very differently, fundamentally, but at a higher abstract
>level behaviorally or computationally similar it can also be like the
>fundamental physics of a bunch of properly configured computational
>transistors.  But this isn't real yellow.  It is a differest set of
>fundamental physical phenomenon configured to behaviorally "model" at
>a higher level of abstraction the physics of real light.  But is
>"light reflecting off of the yellow pear" real yellow?  No.  Real
>yellow is the sensation in our brain that represents either of these
>fundamental physical phenomenon depending on which one is stimulating
>our neurons.  But even though, like the Turing test, we can't know
>what reality beyond our senses fundamentally is like, we most
>definitely directly know what the yellow in our mind is fundamentally
>like.
>
>	Should we expect to see something in our brain that can
>fundamentally reflect light like the pear?  Absolutely not.  There
>isn't even much light in our brain.  Should we expect something in our
>brain that can simulate, model, or represent, reflection of light off
>of the yellow pear.  Absolutely!  What is it like, fundamentally, for
>a set of transistors to model this?  It is like the fundamental
>physics that make up the transistors at the fundamental level.  What
>is it like for us to model this reflection process, it is
>fundamentally like true yellow or the qualia yellow.  Qualia, like
>other fundamental physical phenomenon, can assume different states and
>can cause things.  If we have a red and green qualia in our virtual
>spirit world that represent a red and a green strawberry, it will
>cause us to want to eat the red one and not the green one.  All this
>conscious stuff is computation bassed on fundamental qualia.  These
>qualia can be configured to represent or model other things and this
>fundamental stuff is what it is like to be conscious.
>
>	Just as we don't know what exactly or why the fundamental
>light reflects the way it does off of a yellow pear, just as we don't
>know what or why transistors fundamentally behave the way they do and
>can be configured to model this reflection process, maybe we similarly
>can't know fundamentally what or why qualia are.  But just as we know
>much about external fundamental phenomenon without knowing the why or
>what it really is we should be able to know much about the phenomenon
>of qualia.  We most definitely know what they are like and that they
>are somehow eventually produced by a "neural correlate".  I think
>qualia, though produced or abstractly represented at a higher level by
>the behavioral computations of the "neural corollate", aren't some
>mere abstract meta level thing that can be produced by any arbitrary
>computational phenomenon but are themselves some kind of fundamental
>process of nature that is different or not like electromagnetic
>radiation reflecting off of a yellow pear.
>
>	Brent Allsop
------------------------------
Then I take it that you don't buy artificial beings? You have also over-
analyzed the whole situation and forgotten one important thing! The world
is not made of atoms, it is made of stories, ideas; that the world is made
of atoms is just ONE of those stories! There is no fundamental REAL world,
only perceptions. It all exists in idea space. No thinker and no thought,
as these too are only ideas. Simply ideas. And us being naught but ideas,
and they being such flexible things, I would not assert that another idea
that can appear to be a being which thinks is impossible to create! In fact
that is all that we do when we have children! It is just that they are such
a very old idea that we have forgotten exactly how we do it! I am sure that
once upon a time, rotifers argued over the best way to beat their hearts,
as they may do it "consciously" in idea space!:) But that's buried under
many many layers like a well used desk, and we have forgotten that we are
doing that idea unconsciously by now. That we can figure an idea that can
do figuring like we do is not so unbelievable!! It's just an idea, and they
are very flexible things!!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

