Programming the Human Mind:

[bennyboy]

As for recognizing and measuring it: that's the mating call of the physicalist monist.  I wake up, experience ideas and sensations, and the word for the subjective sense of experience of things is qualia.  I don't have to be able to hold it up to a tape measure for the word to have meaning.

But you do for it to be useful. I am only interested in terms that are useful. If it's not useful then it's irrelevant.

If so, then mind is irrelevant to you, because anyone with a mind knows that it is defined by subjective experience.

It's you that's saying that there is a difference. There is no reason to suggest that there is and plenty of evidence to tell us that there isn't. Neurodegenerative diseases and anesthetic will compromise your mind as they inhibit or destroy your brain.

It may be that mind is of the brain, and only of the brain. And that, after all, is what the OP is about. If you want to prove that there is no mind separate from the brain, then welcome to the end of this thread.

Not a problem at all. It just means that I just end up ignoring the whole issue of qualia and not missing out in the slightest. You're the one who brought it up. Not me.

If you want to define that which is subjective purely in terms of that which is objective, then you are welcome to. You are also welcome to define black as white.

Which all means that I can safely ignore whatever you say about qualia. If it's something that only you experience and which cannot be measured then I do not have to worry about it. It's irrelevant. Your reason is circular. You feel like you have qualia because you have qualia?

Yep. That's what qualia are, after all: the feelings of what it is like to experience things.

Whatever explanation anyone could give you, you could just turn around and accuse someone of being a physicalist monist or some such term. You're creating something undefinable and then demanding that people explain it. For example, what does it even mean to see redness when you see red?

What does it mean to taste pineapple? It must be experienced to be known. And even if you know, perfectly, the physical and chemical structure of an object, you cannot say what it's like for something, human or otherwise, to experience it.

Now if by qualia above you mean the conscious awareness of seeing red, then I can easily come up with some plausible hypotheses as to how this could be implemented in a robot. It would be useful to have a robot that was conscious of seeing red.

If you think this is true, then you don't what seeing means, since you must conflate all perceived qualities with the objects with which they are associated.

But if you want to program a human mind, you will need to be able to address this question.  You cannot, and therefore clearly cannot, at least with full knowledge that it is working, reproduce a human mind.

Actually I don't want to program a human mind. I don't think that's possible because then it wouldn't be human.

Then as far as the OP goes, you and I have hit the end of the road in agreement.

I don't need to measure Qualia.  I just need to have a word which differentiates the difference between red light hitting the eye, and the subjective experience of redness.

Why do you need a word which differentiates the difference between red light hitting the eye, and the subjective experience of redness? What use is it? How does it help you? Why is it relevant?

Those are the words we use to talk about the mind, and this thread is about programming the human mind. That's the relevance.

You have not given any reason why I should be concerned with qualia when creating an Artificial Intelligence. I'll leave qualia up to the philosophers to worry over.

Nobody's talking about AI. We are talking about programming the human mind.