Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[genkaus]

WITHOUT TAKING AS GIVEN its correctness.

You are taking as given that certain behaviors necessarily imply qualia. It's not logical to take this position, as behaviors are mechanical by definition.

Once again - that is not taken as a given. That is concluded based on my own qualia and behavior.

That's a philosophical position, not a scientific or logical one. Until you can show anyone both qualia and its resultant behavior, you've got nothing. You say you have qualia-- fine, prove it.

Sure - once we agree on the meaning of qualia.

Stop. Forget about proving a behavior can't be reproduced without qualia. You haven't yet proven that there's a case where qualia exists, with or without any particular behavior to let you "know" about it.

That is something you proposed as brute fact. You are the one who keeps insisting on accepting one's own qualia as a a brute fact. So, you should know of a case where qualia exists - your own.

You're still running in circles:

-Only qualia can be responsible for particular mechanics (i.e. behaviors)
-I know qualia exist because I see those particular mechanics

A circle is a circle is a circle.

There is no circle here.

You've done nothing else. Your "evidence" shows that brains cause bodily motions, not that those brains are subjectively experiencing qualia.

Except not all aspects of behavior are limited to bodily motions - which is where subjective experience comes in.

Don't believe me? Take me up on my offer-- we'll both make accounts on a science thread, and you can go explain how your knowledge of your own qualia stands as evidence that anything which behaves in certain ways must have qualia.

The gauntlet has been thrown.

Sorry - not picking it up. You can ask someone over there to come here if you like, but I limit myself to the Community, Humor and The Pit.

---

First, there is a problem with concluding that intelligent behavior is always a sign of actual intelligence. Not long ago, the ability to play chess was considered intelligent behavior. Today, very few people would consider any chess program intelligent, particularly one based on brute force. Then we have the Turing test. Some early testers were fooled by simple programs like EllaZ, made with only 200 lines of BASIC. Determining if something is actually intelligent or merely simulating intelligence is a judgment call based on very vague criteria. If you maintain that a clever brute force program can be conscious, then we are at a standstill. Your speculation counterbalances my incredulity.

Actually, I would regard intelligent behavior as a sign of actual intelligence (as opposed to what? fake intelligence?). Your problem would be the criteria by which intelligent behavior is determined. For example, the ability to play chess was regarded as a criteria for intelligence because the assumption was made that without a capacity for abstract thought and reasoning, playing chess would be impossible.

Now, I don't know the algorithm used to design the chess program, so I'll go with a simpler example - Tic-tac-toe. A game in which only a limited moves are possible and every move and its counter can be pre-programed. The the chess program has be designed similarly, then the reason why playing chess was regarded as a sign of intelligence has been negated. However, if what it has been designed on are not the moves but the abstract principles behind chess, then the program is capable of reasoning and thinking at an abstract level and therefore is intelligent. It no longer fits your definition of a "brute force program".

But even if you decide that a machine is actually intelligent, concluding that its intelligence is accompanied by qualia is even more speculative. A system whose function it is to perform symbolic operations to produces other symbols does not require qualia, no matter how beautifully it dances and spins. You have no reason to suppose that it would. While it is true that humans, calculators, and abacuses can all perform symbolic operations, they clearly do so in a vastly different ways. Those differences are sufficient for doubting whether the mere ability to manipulate data qualifies as the criteria for whether a physical system experiences qualia.
You seem unwilling to distinguish between signs (the outward form of a text or image) and their significance (the meaning, or content, of a text or image). For example, the English word ‘dog’ has the same meaning as ‘le chien’ does in French.
A machine code, like EllaZ, is capable of manipulating symbols according to English syntax and spelling without any understanding of what those symbols signify. Without readers to interpret the results, symbols have no meaningful content.

Your error here is the assumption that qualia is some form of basic, indivisible unit of experience that is either inherent to the system or isn't. Which is why, no matter what level of data-manipulation a machine is capable of, you'd always be skeptical of its capacity for subjective experience.