Hi, Check out
http://eksl-www.cs.umass.edu/~atkin/791T/chalmers.html for a brief summary of what I mean by "the hard problem", which IMO you are still not addressing. Also check out http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2004/HardProblem.htm for my own thoughts on the qualia/consciousness problem... -- Ben > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Philip Sutton > Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 9:39 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: [agi] What are qualia... > > > Hi Ben, > > > how the subjective experience of qualia is connected to the neural > > correlates of qualia. ........but the tricky question is how a physical > > system (the brain) can "generate" subjective, phenomenal experiences. > > Oh dear....having jumped in I feel like I'm in over my head already! :) > > What follows is just intuition, with no research or deep reading > foundation at > all....... > > Let's say I look at something and I see/feel "red" colour. First > my brain lumps > lots of different frequencies under a limited pallete of colours > that have a > network in the brain. So pure frequencies and mixtures of light > frequencies > are all routed to the same colour network. Also my brain > corrects for light > intensity and context etc. So many different external light > stimuli trigger a > certain 'redness' network in the brain. This colour network has > evolved since > colour vision exisited and also has a particular evolutionary > history leading to > humans - so chances are most humans know they are seeing the 'same' red > because the recognition system has, through evolution, created much the > same response structure in most human brains (exceptions for colour > blindness phenomena, also cultural and training experience will > modify the > response). My guess is that the pallete of colours (smells, > tastes, tactile, all > other sense feelings) we see is a bit like a hard-wired language > - especially > important in social beings that need to intuitively understand > each other (ie. > the system evolved a long time before word-based language) and relates to > the value of social animals being able to 'mind read' ie. it is > valuable for > coordination to have a set of similar qualia experiences going in > on in many > brains so that the animals are working to the same 'story'. Also > my guess is > that qualia are linked fairly closely to the neural 'attention > system' - are qualia > apparent to anyone if they are not paying attention to a phenomenon? My > intuition is to say they are not. > > My guess is that when we pay attention to sensory, or other data that our > brains connects with a quasi-sensory response, the data is tagged > with labels > that are used to trigger a suite of qualia responses - deep > hard-wired patterns > and associations built up through life - linking to memories, > emotions etc. My > guess is that it is the richness of associations that makes the > qualia feel rich. > But this would be very demanding of brain processing capacity so > I imagine > that is why 'qualia triggering' would only be done in relation to > things we are > paying attention to. > > Am I right in feeling that many people associate the experience > of qualia with > the inuitive/folk notion of 'consciousness'? If so, the > connection might be the > 'attention system' linkage? > > I don't know whether any of what I've said deals with the 'hard > problem' that > you felt I had not addresses in my last message. Let me know! :) > > Cheers, Philip > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate > your subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
