On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 11:36:51PM +1100, Philip Sutton wrote: > Let's tackle qualia from a practical point of view.
Excellent! Let's be very practical about it: let's not discuss it. > Let's start (for argument's sake) with the view that the notion of qualia is > a > meaningless philosophical curiosity. Precisely. Many people have written about it, ad nauseam. Here: http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html (thanks, Ruediger) plenty of words, very little meaning. Not a single equation. > Is there any reason why we should not put discussion of qualia in the Yucatan > storage facility, in drums that read "WARNING: UNRESOLVABLE > PHILOSOPHY Do Not Discuss for at least 30,000 years"? Along with phlogiston, vis vitalis, Easter Bunny, the great feathered serpent, the little engine that could, the three types of nonexisting dragons, the Buddha nature of Pentium IV (III, II, I, ...), and about 10^56 other nonexisting, finite and enumerable entities. Whoops, that's a lot of drums. Do you think a singularity the size of Yucatan could contain them all? I doubt it. > Some issues might be..... > > - if a lot of people think they are experiencing stuff that cannot be > demonstrated out there in the physical world but that they normally > think of as being out there (redness, etc.) will that affect the > effectiveness of AGI/human commmications or will it seriously > affect AGI understanding of humans or vice versa? I'm suggesting a practical demonstration. Best, from a first-person POV. Because nothing else will do for these people. If you pull away the sky with a great flourish, and ask them "do you think it's air you're breathing?". I understand some people will still be not convinced, and suspect some trick. > - is it possible that the qualia artifact phenomenon is related to > important issues of creating competent intellectually advanced > engagement, by any general intelligence, with the physical world > where there are computational limitations and where there are social > beings (biological or otherwise)? No. Did I already mention that I can make urea, without requiring a kidney, whether a dog's, or a human? > Is there any other practical reason to engage with the issue? > > Regardless of how many practical reasons there might be, if there is even 1, > then there is a need to have a conversation about the practical issues. The Net is littered with archives full of pulverized, dessicated equine carcasses, flogged into oblivion. Qualia, qualia, qualia. Why do you insist to make this list a yet another toxic qualia waste containment facility? > So before dropping qualia from the discussion it would be valuable to see if > there is a practical agenda related to this issue and, if there is, we could > concentrate discussion on that. Let's rather not. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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