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Well, qualia is exactly one of the things I would try to avoid. That can be useful depending on what you want to achieve in the discussion, but ignoring the qu

Well, qualia is exactly one of the things I would try to avoid. That can be useful depending on what you want to achieve in the discussion, but ignoring the qualia question altogether won't make it go away :) what are objective properties of qualia? If we could answer that, we would have solved most of the problem. The closest thing to an objective property is that we indeed talk about them i.e. they do objectively affect the external world. This is true whether they're illusory by nature or not. I've tried to understand the illusory explanation, but I really can't get over the sheer undeniability of actually having a subjective experience, that being (as Descartes put it) the only thing whose existence I can be really truly certain of. The illusory explanation feels too much like saying "if it doesn't fit our current scientific worldview, it's not real". How did you get over this hurdle?

danbruc 7y ago
How did you get over this hurdle? I didn't. Not too long ago I was just thinking about what a sophisticated artificial intelligence based on essentially run of the mill algorithms would be missing compared to a conscious human and I tried to formulate it without using any words with fuzzy meaning. And then I just failed. Every aspect I considered could be more or less easily replicated with normal algorithms. It seems that only my brain is telling me that there is something more going on in humans but there is no evidence for that, at least none that I am aware of. And then I just tried to do the rational thing - if you are convinced of something but without having any evidence for it, then at least consider the possibility, that this conviction might be wrong. And last but not least I realized how incredible easy it would be to add just a few lines of code to an artificial intelligence so that it always argues with great conviction that it is of course self-evident, obvious, and undeniable that there is more going on inside of an artificial intelligence than inside a human. In some sense this would be a very simple and elegant solution for a very hard problem, wouldn't it?
- mpartel 7y ago
  I agree, we can (vaguely) imagine an AI that simulates human behaviour faithfully and lies about having qualia without actually having them, just like a really accurate physics simulator can in principle simulate physics as accurately as we can hope to measure. But the implementation of a simulated physical machine is very different from the implementation of an actual physical machine. Similarly, if the AI implementation of qualia is based on lies, it does not follow that the human implementation is too. If we only care about externally observable behaviour, then yes, they can be equivalent, but I don't think that's all we should care about. In other words, knowing how to simulate a phenomenon is not for me a sufficient explanation of the phenomenon, nor even necessarily a very strong indication of what the phenomenon's actual implementation is like. It seems that only my brain is telling me that there is something more going on in humans but there is no evidence for that, at least none that I am aware of. Why such distrust in your own brain? :) I think (the existence of) your own immediate subjective experience is evidence, and compelling evidence at that. It's just not the kind of evidence that's currently easily accessible by science. Over the course of history, many things have been inaccessible to science, and then science has progressed. Science has at least one plausible angle of attack too. Qualia seem to be associated with only some processes in the brain (others are entirely subconscious), some of the time (attention can be redirected). This gives some hope of finding correlations between qualia and brain activity, which AIUI is a major topic in neuroscience currently.
  - danbruc 7y ago
    Similarly, if the AI implementation of qualia is based on lies, it does not follow that the human implementation is too. I totally agree, that would be an invalid conclusion. But that is not my point, my point is that we might not actually experience qualia, that our believe in us experiencing qualia is a confusion caused by our brain. If that were the case, there would be nothing an artificial would or even could be lacking, its experience of qualia - or rather the lack of it - would be identical to ours. The only difference would be that humans would claim to experience qualia - while they actually don't - while an artificial intelligence would not experience qualia either but also not claim to do so, at least unless the artificial intelligence also replicates the false human claim and claimed to experience qualia, which would be trivial to do. If we only care about externally observable behaviour, then yes, they can be equivalent, but I don't think that's all we should care about. I can only repeat my challenge, not sure if I wrote it to you before or whether it was in another thread. Try to make precise what this non-external thing is or provide evidence for its existence. Just come up with one sentence that says something about it that is neither trivial nor so fuzzy that it could mean anything and nothing. If you can do that, I will immediately switch to your side of the argument. If you do not want to reply to all my points, reply to this one, it's the central one. But be warned, you will have to pass quite a high bar with respect to non-triviality and non-fuzziness to convince me. Why such distrust in your own brain? :) Because my brain is telling itself and every other brain asking about it, that it is conscious and experiences qualia while the very same brain is unable to explain what those words even mean. I think (the existence of) your own immediate subjective experience is evidence, and compelling evidence at that. I totally disagree here, my brain telling my brain that my brain has some special thing going on is kind of the worst evidence possible. On an intuitive level I am as convinced as you are that I am conscious and experience qualia but once I start looking at it rationally this conviction starts fading. Over the course of history, many things have been inaccessible to science, and then science has progressed. Can you think of an example where we were not only unable to understand something but were even unable to describe the thing we could not understand? I have the feeling that there might have been a few such things but ad hoc I can not name any. Qualia seem to be associated with only some processes in the brain (others are entirely subconscious), some of the time (attention can be redirected). This gives some hope of finding correlations between qualia and brain activity, which AIUI is a major topic in neuroscience currently. Does that mean that you would be willing to attribute full consciousness to a CPU with some RAM if it ran some software creating the same patterns in memory as they occur in our brains?

danbruc 7y ago

How did you get over this hurdle? I didn't. Not too long ago I was just thinking about what a sophisticated artificial intelligence based on essentially run of the mill algorithms would be missing compared to a conscious human and I tried to formulate it without using any words with fuzzy meaning. And then I just failed. Every aspect I considered could be more or less easily replicated with normal algorithms. It seems that only my brain is telling me that there is something more going on in humans but there is no evidence for that, at least none that I am aware of. And then I just tried to do the rational thing - if you are convinced of something but without having any evidence for it, then at least consider the possibility, that this conviction might be wrong. And last but not least I realized how incredible easy it would be to add just a few lines of code to an artificial intelligence so that it always argues with great conviction that it is of course self-evident, obvious, and undeniable that there is more going on inside of an artificial intelligence than inside a human. In some sense this would be a very simple and elegant solution for a very hard problem, wouldn't it?

mpartel 7y ago
I agree, we can (vaguely) imagine an AI that simulates human behaviour faithfully and lies about having qualia without actually having them, just like a really accurate physics simulator can in principle simulate physics as accurately as we can hope to measure. But the implementation of a simulated physical machine is very different from the implementation of an actual physical machine. Similarly, if the AI implementation of qualia is based on lies, it does not follow that the human implementation is too. If we only care about externally observable behaviour, then yes, they can be equivalent, but I don't think that's all we should care about. In other words, knowing how to simulate a phenomenon is not for me a sufficient explanation of the phenomenon, nor even necessarily a very strong indication of what the phenomenon's actual implementation is like. It seems that only my brain is telling me that there is something more going on in humans but there is no evidence for that, at least none that I am aware of. Why such distrust in your own brain? :) I think (the existence of) your own immediate subjective experience is evidence, and compelling evidence at that. It's just not the kind of evidence that's currently easily accessible by science. Over the course of history, many things have been inaccessible to science, and then science has progressed. Science has at least one plausible angle of attack too. Qualia seem to be associated with only some processes in the brain (others are entirely subconscious), some of the time (attention can be redirected). This gives some hope of finding correlations between qualia and brain activity, which AIUI is a major topic in neuroscience currently.
- danbruc 7y ago
  Similarly, if the AI implementation of qualia is based on lies, it does not follow that the human implementation is too. I totally agree, that would be an invalid conclusion. But that is not my point, my point is that we might not actually experience qualia, that our believe in us experiencing qualia is a confusion caused by our brain. If that were the case, there would be nothing an artificial would or even could be lacking, its experience of qualia - or rather the lack of it - would be identical to ours. The only difference would be that humans would claim to experience qualia - while they actually don't - while an artificial intelligence would not experience qualia either but also not claim to do so, at least unless the artificial intelligence also replicates the false human claim and claimed to experience qualia, which would be trivial to do. If we only care about externally observable behaviour, then yes, they can be equivalent, but I don't think that's all we should care about. I can only repeat my challenge, not sure if I wrote it to you before or whether it was in another thread. Try to make precise what this non-external thing is or provide evidence for its existence. Just come up with one sentence that says something about it that is neither trivial nor so fuzzy that it could mean anything and nothing. If you can do that, I will immediately switch to your side of the argument. If you do not want to reply to all my points, reply to this one, it's the central one. But be warned, you will have to pass quite a high bar with respect to non-triviality and non-fuzziness to convince me. Why such distrust in your own brain? :) Because my brain is telling itself and every other brain asking about it, that it is conscious and experiences qualia while the very same brain is unable to explain what those words even mean. I think (the existence of) your own immediate subjective experience is evidence, and compelling evidence at that. I totally disagree here, my brain telling my brain that my brain has some special thing going on is kind of the worst evidence possible. On an intuitive level I am as convinced as you are that I am conscious and experience qualia but once I start looking at it rationally this conviction starts fading. Over the course of history, many things have been inaccessible to science, and then science has progressed. Can you think of an example where we were not only unable to understand something but were even unable to describe the thing we could not understand? I have the feeling that there might have been a few such things but ad hoc I can not name any. Qualia seem to be associated with only some processes in the brain (others are entirely subconscious), some of the time (attention can be redirected). This gives some hope of finding correlations between qualia and brain activity, which AIUI is a major topic in neuroscience currently. Does that mean that you would be willing to attribute full consciousness to a CPU with some RAM if it ran some software creating the same patterns in memory as they occur in our brains?