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There are two distinct meanings of consciousness being used here: my own experience of consciousness in me (it's always first person), and the conclusions peopl

There are two distinct meanings of consciousness being used here: my own experience of consciousness in me (it's always first person), and the conclusions people make about consciousness in other people or animals - that they're conscious because they're like them in important ways. The Chinese Room argument is confusing because it conflates intelligence (understanding Chinese) with consciousness (knowing what it's like to understand Chinese). So I simplified the problem, by replacing the ability to understand Chinese with the ability to see in colour: http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/blog/ChineseRoom.html http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/blog/ChineseRoom.html While the simplified system is able to distinguish colours, how does it have the first person experience of seeing in colour?

mannykannot 7y ago
That is a good argument, though you may not agree with my reason for saying so. Clearly, the system as a whole can discriminate a wide range of colors, despite the fact that no single component, including the person who is executing the process, can do so. This is the essence of the system reply, and I think this thought experiment illustrates it well. There is a sense in which the system has an experience (necessarily first-'person'), but it is nothing like what we experience on seeing color. It is no more or less an experience than an ordinary color meter would have, and it lacks any awareness or concept of having an experience, no memory of it, no recognition of a similarity to previous experiences or of it being unlike any previous experience, no ability to imagine such experiences, no expectation of future experiences, and no emotional reaction to it ('my favorite color!') It is an experience only in the weakest sense possible.
Faark 7y ago
I'm not sure I understand what your link has to do with consciousness. Yes, people experience the world differently. Someone with Tetrachromacy will see the world different than us, but that hardly invalidates our much less capable experience. Perception organs differ somewhat between individuals. I'd see little reason to make a distinction between those organic we are born with and those humans managed to invent. So yes, the guy in your room can experience colors by using the sheets (though in a different and much less capable way than most of us, thus him not wanting to equate this with our common understanding of experiencing color), and is color blind without. And I kind of get deaf when plugging my ears, though that experience is vastly different from someone who never had hearing to begin with. That doesn't answer what it is like "seeing red" and "feeling blue". I don't know what it's like for you. I can only look at your behavior, see it being similar to mine under the same circumstances and thus assume your internal state to be similar. Until your behavior tells me it being different... like someone blind running into a wall or someone approaching a chasm with no signs of fear. ps: had to google "feel blue", as it meaning "depressed" isn't really a thing in my native language. Translating (color based) idioms is actually kind of telling... it seems only possible directly if both cultures had shared aspects / experiences. So yeah, while conflating consciousness with intelligence doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But I'm not sure equating it with perception is getting us anywhere better (hope idiom didn't get lost in translation).
- DonaldFisk 7y ago
  With the exception of our thoughts, pretty much all of our consciousness experience, i.e. involving qualia, is due to perception. The person in my room (an achromat) can't experience colours at all, and they're able to tell you that. Their eyes have no functioning cones. They see everything in monochrome, so to them, watching a colour movie is how watching a black and white one is to us. Under low light conditions our cones are inactive and we see only in monochrome using our rods, just like achromats do. So people with normal colour vision can experience what it's like to be achromatic, but achromats can't even imagine what colours are like. In the room, the person can only tell what colours the papers are by observing how dark they look when overlaid with the coloured filters (whose colours they know). The metaphorical use of colours in the language isn't really important, and as you point out is dependent on culture.

mannykannot 7y ago

That is a good argument, though you may not agree with my reason for saying so. Clearly, the system as a whole can discriminate a wide range of colors, despite the fact that no single component, including the person who is executing the process, can do so. This is the essence of the system reply, and I think this thought experiment illustrates it well. There is a sense in which the system has an experience (necessarily first-'person'), but it is nothing like what we experience on seeing color. It is no more or less an experience than an ordinary color meter would have, and it lacks any awareness or concept of having an experience, no memory of it, no recognition of a similarity to previous experiences or of it being unlike any previous experience, no ability to imagine such experiences, no expectation of future experiences, and no emotional reaction to it ('my favorite color!') It is an experience only in the weakest sense possible.

Faark 7y ago

I'm not sure I understand what your link has to do with consciousness. Yes, people experience the world differently. Someone with Tetrachromacy will see the world different than us, but that hardly invalidates our much less capable experience. Perception organs differ somewhat between individuals. I'd see little reason to make a distinction between those organic we are born with and those humans managed to invent. So yes, the guy in your room can experience colors by using the sheets (though in a different and much less capable way than most of us, thus him not wanting to equate this with our common understanding of experiencing color), and is color blind without. And I kind of get deaf when plugging my ears, though that experience is vastly different from someone who never had hearing to begin with. That doesn't answer what it is like "seeing red" and "feeling blue". I don't know what it's like for you. I can only look at your behavior, see it being similar to mine under the same circumstances and thus assume your internal state to be similar. Until your behavior tells me it being different... like someone blind running into a wall or someone approaching a chasm with no signs of fear. ps: had to google "feel blue", as it meaning "depressed" isn't really a thing in my native language. Translating (color based) idioms is actually kind of telling... it seems only possible directly if both cultures had shared aspects / experiences. So yeah, while conflating consciousness with intelligence doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But I'm not sure equating it with perception is getting us anywhere better (hope idiom didn't get lost in translation).

DonaldFisk 7y ago
With the exception of our thoughts, pretty much all of our consciousness experience, i.e. involving qualia, is due to perception. The person in my room (an achromat) can't experience colours at all, and they're able to tell you that. Their eyes have no functioning cones. They see everything in monochrome, so to them, watching a colour movie is how watching a black and white one is to us. Under low light conditions our cones are inactive and we see only in monochrome using our rods, just like achromats do. So people with normal colour vision can experience what it's like to be achromatic, but achromats can't even imagine what colours are like. In the room, the person can only tell what colours the papers are by observing how dark they look when overlaid with the coloured filters (whose colours they know). The metaphorical use of colours in the language isn't really important, and as you point out is dependent on culture.