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It rather seems to me talking about "qualia" is pushing the question one step away, or creating a circular argument. If I attach a light sensor to my Arduino a
by Tichy 13y ago
It rather seems to me talking about "qualia" is pushing the question one step away, or creating a circular argument.
If I attach a light sensor to my Arduino and then upload code to the arduino that says "if sensor active, flash light", I'd say the arduino has a "qualia" of light. Perceiving light flips some bit in the arduino. That's all there is to it.
- mistercow 13y agoExcept that non-sensory experiences also produce qualia, and some drugs produce qualia that are never triggered in ordinary experience. The question of whether qualia are real is still very much the subject of debate, and not something you can easily just wave away like that.
- Tichy 13y agoI don't see the difficulty with that? If I read Wikipedia right qualia basically just means "subjective impressions"? Alright then, compute around for a while on your Arduino, and you get some subjective impressions. For example you could run some simulation that is known to exhibit randomness (like some cellular automatons) and then just pick some state of that. I think this just boils down to the old and tired argument that "computers can only do what humans told them to do, therefore they can't be conscious", which is just misinformed. If I tell the computer car to turn left every time it sees a duck, I will have no idea where it will end up. Also building a "drug me" button into an Arduino seems trivial. You could XOR all your data if the button is pressed, or do whatever else you fancy (even trigger a completely different program). I don't find drug experiences puzzling at all. If you want, overclock the Arduino so that it produces some computing errors. Hey presto, your Arduino has a drug experience.
- mistercow 13y agoThe question is not whether computers can have qualia, the question is whether qualia are real. The argument goes that if your Arduino is doing the kind of "computing around" necessary to have subjective impressions, then it is experiencing qualia, and it is in some sense conscious (although not, of course, if philosophical zombies are possible).