A Conscious Universe

[The Grand Nudger]

You've made a lot of factual-sounding statements about the nature of experience.

Factual sounding...or factual? If you think there's a difference (gee you're huge on asserting these little dividing lines, lol) with regards to my statement, I'm all ears, truly.

I'm intrigued-- tell me by what criteria you establish whether a given physical system is capable of qualia, and if so, what the nature of that qualia is?

Well firstly I've simply assumed your explanation. It's your experience. I then form a functional description of what that means or could mean when I do not know, and then check whatever system we'd like to consider against that functional description. Often enough, in our conversations, using those initial criteria it seems to me that things which you do not think have -experience- show both the capability and effects of having -experience-.....as measured against yourself, or myself.

I think that your criteria is a description of computation, personally. So that, to me, would be the nature of qualia as you've described it (except you keep telling me that it's not.....)

Tell me by what physical apparatus, measurements, or observations have you determined that even people experience qualia?

I'm sure I've made it clear in all of our discussions that I haven't...I;m just running with what you tell me, until the things you tell me start to run at cross purposes to each other. You and I obviously have different ideas about qualia, so the measurements I would use to determine qualia would not be - and have not been- satisfying to you...even though they identify you as possessing qualia by accepting your description -of it- as well as determining that you at least possess a system capable of it...even if that's not where your qualia is or derives from (in the language you prefer).

And, once you've achieved this incredible feat, how do you tell what said systems or people are experiencing?

I can tell you what they -could be- experiencing, by reference to what is possible for them to experience. I often have. Explaining, just as one example, that those born blind do not report any qualia regarding color - unsurprising, while those with sight...even if they are now blind...do, also unsurprising. Functional descriptions of these mechanisms often entirely describe this qualia business....as you describe it. Whether or not you;re describing it accurately is irrelevant to me, whether or not you have it is irrelevant to me. The claim is credible. I accept it, from you, because I can see how it might be arrived at. Course, I don't speak plant....but they exhibit some behaviors that would be difficult to explain if we didn't also allow them qualia, and they have a system capable of it...and if we say that they don;t possess it...then I start to think that those grounds we offered to remove it from them would also remove it from us.

I can see where this is going-- for another trip around the same old merry-go-round. You are going to conflate the mechanism of experience with experience,

I'm not conflating, you're saying oh, this is -x-...and then I give its functional description, rather than it's folk description.

I'm going to produce about a half-dozen examples showing that the mechanism of a phenomenon and the phenomenon are not identical.

Produce a single one.

Then what?

I don;t know, we'll cross that bridge when we get there I guess?

What new ground are we going to try to cover in this thread? What new angle will we find that will make the next 50 pages worthwhile?

I'm always trying to make that happen. Tried to make that happen with the mario bit you just "disagreed". I mean....I'm putting in the work man, I'm explaining shit, in functional terms that you can check for yourself that don;t depend upon any assertion, that accept what we see for what it is but allow -if you wished to go that route- for us to be mistaken. There is plenty of room for you to manouver here - and plenty of common ground between us, the door is wide open.

I've mentioned this before, but I think that one small misstep (as with mario) is the source of the entirety of our difference. You think that the information or the experience - divorced for the sake of argument from the mechanism is "the thing"" (not in the material sense, in the sense of being the object) - whereas I see the experience or the information as a description of "the thing". I actually agree with most of what you say....I just don't think it means what you think it means...because of that one little tick - that has huge ripples and waves the further from it we extrapolate - the more meaning we try to squeeze from it.

(I am, btw, getting frustrated with the one-sidedness of your expectations in our conversations....you expect quite a bit of explanation from me...you offer none in return - I'd love to see some functional description from you, as to how this qualia business might be accomplished..after all this time explaining how it could be accomplished by material objects - with the constant allowance that this may not be how we do it, simply that it could be done..at some point...I would have expected you to return the courtesy)