On Friday, April 19, 2013 9:30:16 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 9:56 PM, Craig Weinberg > <[email protected]<javascript:>> > wrote: > > > Qualia are generated, but only by other qualia. By pointing out that > qualia > > can have no possible function, I am clarifying that in a universe > defined > > purely by function, that qualia cannot be possible. What this means is > that > > the universe cannot be defined purely by function. It cannot be a motor, > > machine, computer, zombie, or set of all arithmetic truths. > > Qualia are not possible in a world defined purely by function unless > qualia supervene on function.
It can only seem plausible for qualia to supervene on function because you are smuggling in qualia from your own experience and attaching it to function-without-qualia which is a hypothesis within your experience. If you try to justify qualia in a universe which already functions without qualia, then you can only get circular arguments since there is no possible function for qualia which does not take functional properties qualia itself for granted. > A motor, machine or computer could have > qualia, I disagree. Motors, machines, or computers are anesthetic executors of sense, but they have no sense themselves. This is part of their ontological definition. > since humans qualia and humans are made of the same stuff as > motors, machines and computers. That's your mistake. We are made of both cells and feelings, both of which express motives. Cells express motives publicly, which means spatially, which means 'motor'. Feelings inspire motives privately, which means experience. What a machine does is to impose the public motor non-sense conditions on private sense, reversing the natural direction where outer behaviors reflect inner nature. What a computer does is to multiply and miniaturize the machine to attain a higher resolution imposition of public non-sense on private sense. What we are looks like a machine only if we are using the machine-like extremities of our awareness to see it. When we look for consciousness from its own extremity, we can only find the minimal residue of it - which is public forms and functions. > If humans are not defined purely by > function (whatever that means) then motors, machines and computers may > also not be defined purely by function. REAL machines, REAL motors, and REAL computers are not defined that way, no. They are actual devices made of matter and all matter is a representation of some experience. I have no problem with inanimate (to us) matter having experience. My problem is getting you to see that not all experiences are created equal. No amount of silicon crystal experiences can contain the *aesthetic* bandwidth of an animal's experience. Why? Because there I think there is a second, perpendicular axis to anesthetic-unintentional form-function in space-time, and that is aesthetic-intentional sensory-motive in significance-entropy. Silicon never levels up to living cells because biological experiences can't reach down to that sterile of a vehicle. It is an inappropriate container, just as four letter Anglo-Saxon curses are not an appropriate language with which to express theoretical physics. Maybe you could make a silicon biology, just as maybe you could make a physics theory out of only profanity, but it's by no means certain. Even in that case, since experience I am saying is based on time rather than space, it could take millions or billions of years of maturation to achieve anything like the aesthetic tones we get out of a primate brain. I'm saying that may not be condensable, because the qualia *is* the condensed experience. It cannot be imported into a lower inertial frame, or leapfrogged, only passed around among peers. > If humans contain an > undetectable ingredient that confers on them the possibility of qualia > Never said they do. There is no ingredient, and undetectable by definition has nothing to do with qualia. What humans have that nothing else can ever have is the particular qualia which is specific to human lives. Animals share some of that qualia; plants, minerals share some too, and they presumably have qualia which we will never directly experience (unless we merge our nervous system with them). All that I say is that a stone shaped like a person's body is not a person, even if it is shaped like every fiber and molecule of a person's body. > then motors, machines and computers may also have this undetectable > ingredient. > The real substrate of mmc's do indeed have qualia, it's just not human qualia, it is the qualia common to all matter only. The intellectual definition of motors, machines, and computers, however are abstract concepts - substrate independent designs which supervene on matter for execution, but not on any particular set of material objects. MMC's exploit the lowest common denominator Lingua Franca of public spatial interaction, which is what affords them, appropriately, freedom from local restrictions. This lack of local identification is what Bruno believes is identical to consciousness, but I see it as actually the tail end of consciousness as it fades into entropy. I am more interested in the head end of consciousness as it radiates significance from eternity. > > This answers the Hard problem. The answer is that aesthetic qualia exist > > because existence itself is synonymous with qualia. Functions are > explained > > by qualia, but qualia are not explainable by functions. > > It doesn't seem to me to answer anything. I could equally well say > that aesthetic qualia exist because they necessarily occur when > certain functions are implemented, and assert that this is just a > brute a brute fact as you assert ad hoc that "existence is synonymous > with qualia". > I only assert that existence is synonymous with qualia because I understand that there can be no other possibility. The assertion that some function causes qualia to appear as a metaphysical magic from nowhere for no reason has an obvious alternative - that you have got it upside down. Function is easy to explain as qualia but qualia is impossible to explain as function unless you do the brute fact conjecture which you mention. If you are going to do that, why explain anything? > >> The Hard Problem pertains to why qualia should exist at > >> all given that it is possible to conceive of a universe just the same, > >> except lacking qualia. > > > > > > It's not that it is possible to conceive of a universe lacking qualia, > it is > > that it is impossible to conceive of a function for qualia, and it is > > impossible to conceive of a non-circular justification for the > possibility > > of qualia in a universe driven purely by function. If we define pain as > that > > which motivates a certain set of behaviors, we must ask why that set of > > behaviors needs some magical aesthetic decoration to be initiated, > rather > > than the way that every other function in the universe would work - by > > simple Laws of Physics. > > It is possible to conceive that qualia necessarily supervene on > certain functions. How, other than through the brute fiat? > It is even possible that qualia supervene on every > function, or panpsychism. Why this should be so is the Hard Problem. > Right, but I am showing that the Hard Problem is solved when you turn it upside down. Function supervenes on qualia. Not panpsychism, but psyche-pan-ism. Ontology is experiential. > > >> "Information lacks aesthetic presence by definition". So you say. I > >> could also say that matter lacks aesthetic presence by definition, or > >> anything in the universe lacks aesthetic presence by definition, and > >> consciousness must therefore come from the spiritual realm. > > > > > > Matter does not lack aesthetic presence. Matter always has a physical > form - > > solid, liquid, gas, or plasma. Information has no physical form as it is > > conceived. Whatever acts as a sign that can be controlled and read is > > "information". > > So? Information is more like mind in that it is intangible, > supervenient on the physical but not identical to the physical. > Except that unlike the mind, information doesn't think. It doesn't do anything or have any intentions. If you put a pattern in silicon, it will stay that way as long as the substrate is intact. Mind can't do that. Only objects in space can do that - which is why we count on fingers and abacus beads and hashmarks on a clay tablet. They don't go anywhere except where you put them. The mind is the opposite of that, always ephemeral, shifting, forgetting, fictionalizing, morphing into something new. > > > The 'spiritual realm' jab has nothing to do with anything except the > need to > > make my points seem associated with irrationality. I am talking about > > physics and ontology, not spirituality. > > But you claim that it is impossible to conceive of consciousness > supervening on function. A religious person would claim that it > impossible to conceive of consciousness as residing anywhere other > than in the spiritual realm. Both your positions seem to essentially > be based on the argument from incredulity: see, this lump of coal is > inert and dead, how could anything derived from it possibly have > feelings? > I'm not reasoning from incredulity, but rather from an understanding of the inescapable, ubiquitous, and absolute nature of awareness and its role in defining forms and functions and their interaction. You are projecting a 'gee whiz, we should bow down to this amazeballs magicks of consciousness!' approach onto me, but I am not seeing it that way at all. My model craps on everything - God, matter, mathematics, humanity, life, etc. It values nothing, it only put it in the proper order. Significance goes here, entropy goes here, awareness goes here, etc. I am putting together a very simplistic puzzle in a ruthlessly scientific way which, if properly understood, yields a finality - a universal GAME OVER which cannot be transcended except by plummeting headlong into the unknown. Craig > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. 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