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> Perhaps I'm wrong, but I do feel like I understand it: what defines or distinguishes, say, my qualia of red, is how it primes my brain into thinking about red

> Perhaps I'm wrong, but I do feel like I understand it: what defines or distinguishes, say, my qualia of red, is how it primes my brain into thinking about red things, how it changes my mood, how it behaves relative to every other concept, which makes it about as complex as my entire brain would be. Over here it seems like you're defining consciousness by its relation to other objects. In other words, you're reducing consciousness to its visible outputs, such as behaviour, mood, etc. If that's all consciousness is, I fully agree with you that we have sufficient knowledge of physics to explain it. But that's not what I'm referring to. When I talk about consciousness, I'm referring to something that is completely independent of its outputs. Is it not conceivable that a man who is missing both his arms and legs, mute, blind, and deaf, can still have a conscious ego? So what is that experience? This is the question which has no parallel in our knowledge of how atoms move.

breuleux 10y ago
> I'm referring to something that is completely independent of its outputs. Is it not conceivable that a man who is missing both his arms and legs, mute, blind, and deaf, can still have a conscious ego? The brain has many internal inputs and outputs, even more of them than external ones. Even if you imagine a completely isolated brain that can't see, hear or move, it's still exchanging signals internally. For instance, such a brain could fabricate a dream world, create (possibly nonsensical) images to feed to its visual cortex directly, and so on. Its conscious experience would be whatever it builds for itself, operating through these internal input and output channels, shaped by random noise and whatever memories it may have of real things. It's what dreaming is, basically. That is consistent with my view. If, on the other hand, you ask me to imagine a mute, blind, deaf, paralyzed man who also has his brain cut up in such a way that it can't talk to itself, then no, I do not think that it is conceivable that the man has a conscious ego.
- myflash13 10y ago
  It seems once again that you're defining the qualia in terms of some input/output formula. But that's missing my point; I used "external" inputs/outputs merely as an example. At what point do those inputs and outputs, whether they be internal or external, become qualia? In other words, from where does the "ability to experience" the inputs and outputs come from? Does the mere fact that the brain receives input make it able to experience the inputs?
  - breuleux 10y ago
    I never brought up inputs and outputs, though, you did, and ultimately I feel it's kind of a strawman of my position. A brain is made out of billions of neurons, each of which has its own inputs and outputs, and so does each part of each neuron, down to the atomic level. Every physical entity is a kind of IO machine, so in a sense, any physical definition I may give of qualia will reduce to IO patterns. That is, however, missing the bigger picture, which is the structure of the system: how the information flows within it, and how certain conditions modify that flow. That's where the meat is. In my mind, consciousness and qualia are structural properties. When experiencing a qualia, the information flows in a particular way in your brain, like a mode of operation, and that's what the qualia is. I think of it this way: you experience "anger" when your brain is put in an "anger mode", which taints everything it sees or does -- anger is not an "input" or an "output", it is a "mode" that your whole brain is in. It makes you "different", although not in a way that makes you lose your sense of self (well, usually). And in a lesser way, when you see red, your brain enters a "red mode", when you eat nougat it is put in a "nougat mode", and when you think about red or nougat your brain also enters a "recall" version of red or nougat mode that has similar properties. So what happens is that your brain can enter billions of subtly different "modes" that correspond to different stimuli (real or not). Each of these "modes" makes you think a bit differently, in a way that's adapted to the stimuli you received. These are the "experiences" it can have: they are not inputs or outputs, they are ways of thinking, triggered by stimuli or memories or sometimes random noise. I guess I would say a qualia is a bit like a protein fold, it's a functional reconfiguration.
    - myflash13 10y ago
      I understand that you view qualia as structural properties, and can map trillions of physical brain-configurations to trillions of subjective brain-states. However there is still a massive discrepancy between our subjective experience of such states, and the physical configurations that are claimed to represent it - which is why it is not a satisfactory answer to the hard problem of consciousness for many people. The 2 big discrepancies I see are this: 1. We have the subjective perception of free will: I can choose to write these sentences or not. Where does that intention originate? If our consciousness is just neuronal computation, then it is completely deterministic or probabilistic. That is entirely contradictory of most people's experience, because we can choose what we want to do, and do things that strongly contradict our "mood". Some people can even go further to consciously modify their brain states. If you claim that is also just a product of complex structural properties, you get into an infinitely regressing claim. 2. Despite being able to create incredibly complex connected structures, arguably even more complicated than a single person's brain, such as the Internet, we have no evidence of such an entity having a subjective feeling of consciousness. There is simply no parallel in our current knowledge for how subjective experience can arise from system configurations. You seem to be simply assuming that an experience is such a configuration, but we have no evidence of that. If such a configuration could be consciousness itself, then we have examples of other entities which are connected in similarly complex ways, yet we don't believe they are concious. This argument is explained here: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious-140130a.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconsci...

breuleux 10y ago

> I'm referring to something that is completely independent of its outputs. Is it not conceivable that a man who is missing both his arms and legs, mute, blind, and deaf, can still have a conscious ego? The brain has many internal inputs and outputs, even more of them than external ones. Even if you imagine a completely isolated brain that can't see, hear or move, it's still exchanging signals internally. For instance, such a brain could fabricate a dream world, create (possibly nonsensical) images to feed to its visual cortex directly, and so on. Its conscious experience would be whatever it builds for itself, operating through these internal input and output channels, shaped by random noise and whatever memories it may have of real things. It's what dreaming is, basically. That is consistent with my view. If, on the other hand, you ask me to imagine a mute, blind, deaf, paralyzed man who also has his brain cut up in such a way that it can't talk to itself, then no, I do not think that it is conceivable that the man has a conscious ego.

myflash13 10y ago
It seems once again that you're defining the qualia in terms of some input/output formula. But that's missing my point; I used "external" inputs/outputs merely as an example. At what point do those inputs and outputs, whether they be internal or external, become qualia? In other words, from where does the "ability to experience" the inputs and outputs come from? Does the mere fact that the brain receives input make it able to experience the inputs?
- breuleux 10y ago
  I never brought up inputs and outputs, though, you did, and ultimately I feel it's kind of a strawman of my position. A brain is made out of billions of neurons, each of which has its own inputs and outputs, and so does each part of each neuron, down to the atomic level. Every physical entity is a kind of IO machine, so in a sense, any physical definition I may give of qualia will reduce to IO patterns. That is, however, missing the bigger picture, which is the structure of the system: how the information flows within it, and how certain conditions modify that flow. That's where the meat is. In my mind, consciousness and qualia are structural properties. When experiencing a qualia, the information flows in a particular way in your brain, like a mode of operation, and that's what the qualia is. I think of it this way: you experience "anger" when your brain is put in an "anger mode", which taints everything it sees or does -- anger is not an "input" or an "output", it is a "mode" that your whole brain is in. It makes you "different", although not in a way that makes you lose your sense of self (well, usually). And in a lesser way, when you see red, your brain enters a "red mode", when you eat nougat it is put in a "nougat mode", and when you think about red or nougat your brain also enters a "recall" version of red or nougat mode that has similar properties. So what happens is that your brain can enter billions of subtly different "modes" that correspond to different stimuli (real or not). Each of these "modes" makes you think a bit differently, in a way that's adapted to the stimuli you received. These are the "experiences" it can have: they are not inputs or outputs, they are ways of thinking, triggered by stimuli or memories or sometimes random noise. I guess I would say a qualia is a bit like a protein fold, it's a functional reconfiguration.
  - myflash13 10y ago
    I understand that you view qualia as structural properties, and can map trillions of physical brain-configurations to trillions of subjective brain-states. However there is still a massive discrepancy between our subjective experience of such states, and the physical configurations that are claimed to represent it - which is why it is not a satisfactory answer to the hard problem of consciousness for many people. The 2 big discrepancies I see are this: 1. We have the subjective perception of free will: I can choose to write these sentences or not. Where does that intention originate? If our consciousness is just neuronal computation, then it is completely deterministic or probabilistic. That is entirely contradictory of most people's experience, because we can choose what we want to do, and do things that strongly contradict our "mood". Some people can even go further to consciously modify their brain states. If you claim that is also just a product of complex structural properties, you get into an infinitely regressing claim. 2. Despite being able to create incredibly complex connected structures, arguably even more complicated than a single person's brain, such as the Internet, we have no evidence of such an entity having a subjective feeling of consciousness. There is simply no parallel in our current knowledge for how subjective experience can arise from system configurations. You seem to be simply assuming that an experience is such a configuration, but we have no evidence of that. If such a configuration could be consciousness itself, then we have examples of other entities which are connected in similarly complex ways, yet we don't believe they are concious. This argument is explained here: http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious-140130a.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconsci...