On 4/28/2021 4:40 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:


On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 7:25 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everything-list@googlegroups.com <mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:



    On 4/28/2021 3:17 PM, Terren Suydam wrote:


    On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 5:51 PM John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
    <mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote:

        On Wed, Apr 28, 2021 at 4:48 PM Terren Suydam
        <terren.suy...@gmail.com <mailto:terren.suy...@gmail.com>> wrote:

                    />>> testimony of experience constitutes facts
                    about consciousness./


                >> Sure I agree, provided you firstaccept that
                consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of
                intelligence


            /> I hope the irony is not lost on anyone that you're
            insisting on your theory of consciousness to make your
            case that theories of consciousness are a waste of time./


        If you believe in Darwinian evolution and if you believe you
        are consciousthen given that evolution can't select for what
        it can't see and natural selection can see intelligent
        behavior but it can't see consciousness, can you give me an
        explanation of how evolution managed to produce a conscious
        being such as yourself if intelligence is not the inevitable
        byproduct of intelligence?


    It's not an inevitable byproduct of intelligence if consciousness
    is an epiphenomenon. As you like to say, consciousness may just
    be how data feels as it's being processed. If so, that doesn't
    imply anything about intelligence per se, beyond the minimum
    intelligence required to process data at all... the simplest
    example being a thermostat.

    That said, do you agree that testimony of experience constitutes
    facts about consciousness?

    It wouldn't if it were just random, like plucking passages out of
    novels.  We only take it as evidence of consciousness because
    there are consistent patterns of correlation with what each of us
    experiences.  If every time you pointed to a flower you said
    "red", regardless of the flower's color, a child would learn that
    "red" meant a flower and his reporting when he saw red wouldn't be
    testimony to the experience of  red.  So the usefulness of reports
    already depends on physical patterns in the world.  Something I've
    been telling Bruno...physics is necessary to consciousness.

    Brent


I agree with everything you said there, but all you're saying is that intersubjective reality must be consistent to make sense of other peoples' utterances. OK, but if it weren't, we wouldn't be here talking about anything. None of this would be possible.

Which is why it's a fool's errand to say we need to explain qualia. If we can make an AI that responds to world the way we to, that's all there is to saying it has the same qualia.

Brent

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