Godhood - A dilemma

[Simon_Jester]

There is no qualitative experience of the simulation ending

There is no qualitative experience of sitting on a nuclear weapon when it goes off either, events happen too fast for any kind of neural processing to take place.

Yes, but there's more to it than that. Being disintegrated may happen too fast for me to notice, but it's not a reversible process- I can't possibly pick up where I left off because "where I left off" has been scattered all over the landscape.

If someone just happens to halt simon_jester.exe and spawn assorted save files, I can pick up right where I left off, seamlessly.

If we are inhabitants of a simulated universe, we can't really hope to tell whether our simulation runs continuously or occasionally spends a millenium or two in limbo sitting on the Thumb Drive of God, so to speak.

Obviously. Human consciousness is kind of like that anyway considering the sheer amount of physical events that happen between each neuron firing, never mind actual thought.

Well, the physical constraints impose some kind of continuity requirement- you know you haven't been ripped to pieces and put back together again between one thought and the next because you'd be dead. Digital sim-life doesn't have that constraint- you really can halt the simulation and restore from save without hurting anything in terms meaningful outside the simulation.

The internal actor genocide issue would seem to become really significant only when we're talking about creating especially bad simulated worlds.

Well, this depends on whether you think that people once created should have a right to continue existing, regardless of whether their death is instantaneous and painless or not. Personally I would say that freedom is the right of all sentient beings all sapient intelligences should have the choice of whether to continue existing.

The ability to put people 'on ice' indefinitely without hurting them really does change the dynamic- forgive me, but I'm going to have to think that bit over.

[Starglider]

Being disintegrated may happen too fast for me to notice, but it's not a reversible process- I can't possibly pick up where I left off because "where I left off" has been scattered all over the landscape. If someone just happens to halt simon_jester.exe and spawn assorted save files, I can pick up right where I left off, seamlessly.

Yes. What I am saying is that the philosophical implications of that are nothing more than the obvious, i.e. your state is recoverable. If we had a flawless scan of your physical form with arbitrarily good accuracy, at the point when you were diassembled, and the ability to recreate your physical form from the scan, the situations would be equivalent. The omniscience postulated here probably covers that and direct reversal of the relevant physical process.

Well, the physical constraints impose some kind of continuity requirement- you know you haven't been ripped to pieces and put back together again between one thought and the next because you'd be dead.

There is no such assurance. Given sufficiently powerful technology, you could be frozen, atomised, reassembled and unfrozen without noticing.

Digital sim-life doesn't have that constraint- you really can halt the simulation and restore from save without hurting anything in terms meaningful outside the simulation.

It is easier to do it for digital life, but that's only relevant for human experimenters, not this postulated omniscient being.

]The ability to put people 'on ice' indefinitely without hurting them really does change the dynamic- forgive me, but I'm going to have to think that bit over.

It changes the dynamic in that not ever restoring someone, either through negligence or active destruction of the relevant information, is equivalent to murder, whereas suspending people without consent but with the reasonable expectation of them being resumed is just rude.

[SpaceMarine93]

Wow, this argument is going so complex I can't even follow up what the others are talking about. Can anyone please try to simplify the latest points?

[SpaceMarine93]

No new contributions?

[Modax]

Wow, this argument is going so complex I can't even follow up what the others are talking about. Can anyone please try to simplify the latest points?

http://xkcd.com/505/

It changes the dynamic in that not ever restoring someone, either through negligence or active destruction of the relevant information, is equivalent to murder, whereas suspending people without consent but with the reasonable expectation of them being resumed is just rude.

Suspending a person also effects anyone who continues to live who would have been interacting with that person.

Suspending an entire universe is another thing altogether, obviously.

Maybe we are living in a platonic-mathematical multiverse. I am interested in knowing whether people smarter than me think it is likely to be true because if it is I think it means we truly are infinitely smaller and less significant than even modern science would have us think. An omnipotent being doesnt fit in this reality at all, no agent can effect anything in any final sense because everything is just math doing what math does. Even a god is made powerless and tiny in a cosmic lovecraftian way.

[Eagle1Division]

My brain is mostly fried right now, and it's taken me - I think - at least an hour if not 2 to read, but this is a topic I have a particularly great interest in, so sorry about quoting some stuff that's really old, but I just read the entire thread and want to make some responses...

Part I:

[snip snip]

What makes you think that the minimal unit of "mature enough to have a right to see all their wishes granted" is, say, twelve or fifteen or eighteen years old?

I'm concerned about the logical path of development for people in such a scenario- it seems too likely to collapse into the aforesaid petulant masturbating man-children, because it's too easy to retreat from anyone whose behavior displeases you, even when it's your own damn fault.

Which results in loss of social interactions which you earlier claimed is such a critical and desired aspect of human existence.

My argument is that you are committing a philosophical error.

See, a philosophical argument takes the form "Belief X is incorrect, or at least of limited validity, because [argument]." You are taking this and saying "Well, it's just your opinion that Belief X is incorrect, so how about I redesign the universe according to Belief X? No one will make you act as if X is correct, after all..."

That is about equivalent to saying "You think two plus two is [number], and I think two plus two is [number], so how about I write all the math textbooks except the one I'll hand to you so you can teach your kids your way."
__________

If I'm wrong and you're right, this is a very odd way to go about it- you're totally abandoning the question of why your ideal universe is a good place, in favor of just saying "well, this is how I'd do it and if you don't like it you'll be free to pretend it never happened."

If you're wrong and I'm right, then you're saying "well, I'll just do this horrible disservice to humanity because my opinion is that it's a good idea, and I will ignore all your arguments about what I should do because I am a hardcore libertarian and everyone should follow their own opinions!"

In neither case does this kind of thinking make any sense.

You have yet to raise any valid objection. So far your only point has been claiming people need some kind external reward/punishment system in order to grow and develope as human beings. That's quite obviously covered under the social interaction rule, since social interactions is very critical to human existence by your own admission. The only rule in existence I proposed also acts as the motivator for positive and cooperative behavior amongst all individuals.

In summary, you've found no flaw in my asserted perfect universe, you've simply further defined it's attributes and how it would work.

Actually, I'm not sure how, but you've critically managed to look the problems in the eye and say they don't exist. Let me repeat them to be a little more clear:

Ability to share the bubbles doesn't mean you're not living in a bubble. Because this entire... I'm going to call it a 'society' for lack of a better term... consists of people who have every incentive to become a pack of petulant masturbating man-children.

Only if you disregard the social rewards/penalties of such behavior, which you admitted is one of the core aspects of being human.

Any kind of psychological growth or discipline they might display will be blind luck; the norm would probably be for interactions to be short before they lose the ability to agree to disagree, take their respective toys, and part ways... because it's so much easier living in a fantasy world where you don't have to interact with those pesky other sentients, as long as you can have good enough VR to drown out whatever residual social-animal instincts in your head are screaming at you.

So your objection is that people will become reclusive while also admitting people are social creatures that very much need to interact and socialize with other humans. Which is it?

That is no answer- where, and how, do you draw that line? Is a six month old infant capable of making their own decisions? A three year old? A six year old? A twelve year old? An eighteen year old?

When in the development of human thought do we grant people this supreme power to gratify their wishes and reject any interaction with other people that does not gratify their wishes? Giving that power to an infant means the infant never grows up- the same for a toddler, or even an adolescent.

Who gets to judge "maturity" here? The question of who is mature enough to be trusted with power over their own lives is not an easy or self-evident one, even when the amount of power being given to them is relatively limited.

And what if there are layers above "adult" maturity? It's not hard to find physically grown men and women who are most emphatically not full-grown psychologically. Giving many adults all their wishes would be a disaster, for their own self-actualization's sake, even if you can suppress any physical consequences of doing so?

There will be social consquences, that human condition you earlier professed as such a innate aspect of being human.

What makes you think that the minimal unit of "mature enough to have a right to see all their wishes granted" is, say, twelve or fifteen or eighteen years old?

I'm concerned about the logical path of development for people in such a scenario- it seems too likely to collapse into the aforesaid petulant masturbating man-children, because it's too easy to retreat from anyone whose behavior displeases you, even when it's your own damn fault.

Which results in loss of social interactions which you earlier claimed is such a critical and desired aspect of human existence.

Those are the problems with your model! Yet somehow you've managed to entirely avoid them. Let me pull an analogy, that more or less applies to all these points, and your entire post:

What makes you think that the minimal unit of "mature enough to have a right to see all their wishes granted" is, say, twelve or fifteen or eighteen years old?

I'm concerned about the logical path of development for people in such a scenario- it seems too likely to collapse into the aforesaid petulant masturbating man-children, because it's too easy to retreat from anyone whose behavior displeases you, even when it's your own damn fault.

Which results in loss of social interactions which you earlier claimed is such a critical and desired aspect of human existence.

Now, my own analogic rendition:

The problem with your rocket design is that it doesn't have a large enough mass ratio to make orbit. The vehicle is designed to reach orbital velocity, but it doesn't have enough propellant to do so.

Which results in loss of [the ability to go into orbit] you earlier claimed is [critical to my design].

[...]

You have failed to show any error in my design, it is perfect.

That's what I saw. Am I alone or did anyone else notice this?


Part II:

[...] Maybe I should adjust the things I want to want, so I can start picking from the palette of options labeled in kanji characters instead of the Roman alphabet..."

After some more thought, it occurs to me that after a while language may no longer be necessary for this process. After a while you may stop using internal monologue to help think at all, let alone make your will manifest itself. As an aside, that always was one of the coolest ideas I've ever heard-- the notion that you can think without using language. I know it can be done, but its... its hard to imagine how, if you know what I mean. LOL.

No, actually. I could think without knowing language as a baby (I actually have a very strange memory of thinking without knowing a language, and hearing people talk. It's much like when you hear someone talk but they're too quiet too understand, except in my memory they're loud enough, it's just I didn't know english, and my memory apparently hasn't stored enough data to understand what they said with my present mind. As for thinking without a language, you just imagine doing something, then you do it. In this case climbing on some boxes...) , and from my own experience being capable of putting thoughts into words has made things much for the better. For one, it helped me stop being a baby.


Part III (My Own Thoughts on Godhood):

To begin, I'm of the opinion that there is such thing as Qualia, and that Philosophical zombies are possible as per the Chinese Room Argument.
I'm not sure if I'm exactly right: but I think Qualia is like this:
Imagine yourself, blind, deaf, without smell taste or feel. Good? Okay.
Now imagine you're incapable of feeling emotion.
Now imagine you're infinitely stupid; unable to reason or use logic.

I've just eliminated everything the brain is responsible for. What you are imagining is absolutely nothing. But, the fact remains you are imagining nothing, and perceiving it. Even after removing everything in the human brain, you still have a raw perception of some kind, even though that perception is perceiving nothing. And the reason it's not part of the brain that can be explained away in neurons is that it is not a computational function, it is simply a type of existence.
A rock is a not a computational subroutine, it simply is.
(I can expand this, my own thoughts/model further to the point where Qualia are particles of a sort, but it's irrelevant so you'll have to ask )

So that's my basis for Qualia. So in this view, you could run a perfect simulation without actually causing pain, because your Sims would be philosophical zombies.

Another point I agree with -

[snip]
I swear, if I was omnipotent but could never ever change my personality, I'd just use my omnipotence to kill myself. Growth and learning are what make life worthwhile.

And now, on the topic of changing yourself: You already can. It's just it takes some effort. It's called self-realization. They only thing that stops you is your emotions and instincts, which you have to learn to overcome. I would never want to lose them though. They give meaning and direction to life. The more intense the better, IIRC Aristotle noticed that people want to feel more than they want to be happy, and that wanting to feel is the #1 thing people want. It's like existing v.s. non existing, not having emotions would be a type of non-existence, and no being should ever want to cease to exist.

I also think that there's such thing as free will. Whatever arguments you may use - the fact remains I can actively overcome my own desires, and follow my super-ego, and that I choose whether to follow my Super-ego, ego, or Id, and that following my Super-Ego is a skill which anyone can acquire and improve in. Anything beyond that is irrelevant to my model of Godhood, my point, and this discussion.

Being a God, you would have unlimited power. This could go very badly... Has anyone seen Bruce Almighty? (I don't shy off from making references to fiction, I think that's what fiction should be there for, to point out a point ).

I think a God without perfect self-control would screw things up badly. Someone might know what do to when they're calm, but they had might as well be an idiot if they're capable of being overpowered - drunk - on rage, or love, or any other emotion that will distort decision-making.

So what would you do?:
The number 1 thing people want is to feel. People would rather see a sad movie than do nothing, would rather see a horror than be bored. So being happy is only a secondary objective to feeling something, rather than nothing. And in order to feel something, things have to have significance of some sort. And for things to have significance, there must be an objective of some sort that is a challenge to obtain.

People need 3 things to be happy:
1. Something to love
2. Something to hope for
3. Something to do

So, as a God, you would need to Love, and an objective to work towards. An objective offers something to do, something to hope for, and a basis for significance to exist. So what should your divine objective, or purpose, be? Unending self-pleasure? But how different would that be from miserable, anti-social narcissism?

In life, you'll find the most important thing there is, is relationships with other people.
Also, any parent will say raising a child is the best experience life has to offer. I know of a man who cried themselves dry at the very thought of missing that opportunity.

Combine these two things, and you'll find the objective of any intelligent God will be to mature other beings, while respecting their free will.


Why do you have to respect their free will? Because if you didn't it would be no different than building an army of robots. You wouldn't be maturing an individual, you'd be building a machine and giving it commands. They must have free will in order to mature.



But, if the God themself is not mature enough, how can you teach an illiterate to write if you are also illiterate? It takes puberty to be a parent, but it takes maturity to be a good, happy parent, and you'll never succeed as a parent if you lack self-control or empathy.

Empathy would also give you the added advantage of being able to feel what other beings are feeling; in other words, you could not only witness reality from your own divine perspective, but you could also live the emotional lives of every single being in existence through empathy, and continue to experience growth even if you're perfect and cannot grow; you would experience their growth.



Yes, btw, I am make the daring, bold, and what most people will probably call idiotic claim that this reality is the reality of Godhood, and that all the misery and suffering people claim that they would fix - is essential because it either exists in order to allow us to grow or comes because people have free will.

[Formless]

To begin, I'm of the opinion that there is such thing as Qualia, and that Philosophical zombies are possible as per the Chinese Room Argument.
I'm not sure if I'm exactly right: but I think Qualia is like this:
Imagine yourself, blind, deaf, without smell taste or feel. Good? Okay.
Now imagine you're incapable of feeling emotion.
Now imagine you're infinitely stupid; unable to reason or use logic.

I've just eliminated everything the brain is responsible for. What you are imagining is absolutely nothing. But, the fact remains you are imagining nothing, and perceiving it. Even after removing everything in the human brain, you still have a raw perception of some kind, even though that perception is perceiving nothing. And the reason it's not part of the brain that can be explained away in neurons is that it is not a computational function, it is simply a type of existence.
A rock is a not a computational subroutine, it simply is.
(I can expand this, my own thoughts/model further to the point where Qualia are particles of a sort, but it's irrelevant so you'll have to ask )

So that's my basis for Qualia. So in this view, you could run a perfect simulation without actually causing pain, because your Sims would be philosophical zombies.

Logic error 101: reification of "nothing". Your claim that a rock can perceive "nothing" is a non-sequitor because the term "nothing" is literally the antithesis of "something": it would be more accurate to say that a rock cannot perceive anything, whereas a human obviously can. The ball is in your court to explain why this is.

Furthermore, the idea of Qualia breaks parsimony. We know that the brain is a dynamic entity which constantly undergoes changes associated with what we call mind and perception. Further, for perception to exist there needs to be a mechanism hereby known as an observer which initiates the process; why not assign the status of observer to the brain and save on the number of necessary terms in your argument? When you remove the functions of the brain, you remove the basic mechanism that allows perception to exist. Brain death IS death: this observable fact makes sense only in light of this model.

This is the critical failure of the "Chinese Room" experiment: a failure to accept the observable fact that the mind has mechanisms that explain its functioning. It simply assumes that minds are black-boxes, because the person(s) who came up with it had a philosophic agenda to fulfill as opposed to an interest in the facts. As someone who is actually interested in science and psychology, I cannot help but consider anyone who thinks the Chinese Room experiment is valid to be either an idiot, close minded, or deceitful.

[Eagle1Division]

To begin, I'm of the opinion that there is such thing as Qualia, and that Philosophical zombies are possible as per the Chinese Room Argument.
I'm not sure if I'm exactly right: but I think Qualia is like this:
Imagine yourself, blind, deaf, without smell taste or feel. Good? Okay.
Now imagine you're incapable of feeling emotion.
Now imagine you're infinitely stupid; unable to reason or use logic.

I've just eliminated everything the brain is responsible for. What you are imagining is absolutely nothing. But, the fact remains you are imagining nothing, and perceiving it. Even after removing everything in the human brain, you still have a raw perception of some kind, even though that perception is perceiving nothing. And the reason it's not part of the brain that can be explained away in neurons is that it is not a computational function, it is simply a type of existence.
A rock is a not a computational subroutine, it simply is.
(I can expand this, my own thoughts/model further to the point where Qualia are particles of a sort, but it's irrelevant so you'll have to ask )

So that's my basis for Qualia. So in this view, you could run a perfect simulation without actually causing pain, because your Sims would be philosophical zombies.

Logic error 101: reification of "nothing". Your claim that a rock can perceive "nothing" is a non-sequitor because the term "nothing" is literally the antithesis of "something": it would be more accurate to say that a rock cannot perceive anything, whereas a human obviously can. The ball is in your court to explain why this is.

You misunderstood me. I didn't say rocks perceive anything, I said that the perception we have exists. It's not a computational process, it simply exists. Fact. "1". "True". However you want to say it it's just there. It's not a process or some kind of neurochemical subroutine any more than a rock is a mathematical equation. A rock isn't a mathematical equation, it just is, in the same way that Qualia just is, that was my point.

But the analogy wasn't the best, because you can define some properties and interactions of a rock via mathematics; a better analogy would simply be matter at the most fundamental level. It simply "is". In that same way Qualia simply "is".


And, if Qualia exists as an entity separate from the brain; then there's no logical reason there aren't perceptions that lack any sensory input or computational power.

Furthermore, the idea of Qualia breaks parsimony. We know that the brain is a dynamic entity which constantly undergoes changes associated with what we call mind and perception. Further, for perception to exist there needs to be a mechanism hereby known as an observer which initiates the process; why not assign the status of observer to the brain and save on the number of necessary terms in your argument? When you remove the functions of the brain, you remove the basic mechanism that allows perception to exist. Brain death IS death: this observable fact makes sense only in light of this model.

Yes, the brain does dynamically undergo change in perception. But we're using different definitions of perception; what I'm referring to is more accurately what you called the "observer": our perception minus sensory input and computational ability.

Sensory input changes, yes, that is what we measure in experiments in psychology and brain physiology. But it is impossible in any way to show that any Qualia exists, any "observers", and by any logical reasoning I should assume every entity in the universe is a Philosopohical Zombie other than me, but here I hold the "Irrational" view that others have Qualia as well. And I only know my own Qualia exists because I perceive it.

Because it cannot be identified except through raw perception because of philosophical zombies, there really is no empirical way to discover it. There is no evidence it's in the brain. You're simply replacing the idea of it being a single entity with the idea of it being a mechanical process.

Like I said, however, it isn't a process, it's simply a state of existing from what little observation it's possible to make with my own Qualia. Perhaps you're a philosophical zombie, it's impossible to tell, but my own perception says it's an entity that exists and not a mechanical process any more than matter, at it's most fundamental level, is a mechanical process.

You can't run a computer and create mass by simulating it any more than you can create a brain and run perception.

There's absolutely no evidence that Qualia exists via mechanical process in the brain, and there never will be by it's very nature, other than the fact that there are other mechanical processes in the brain.

Meanwhile, I intuitively believe that Qualia is an entity from my very own perception of it's existence.

You may ignore your own perception and refute the second hypothesis; but there's little, if any, empirical evidence for either side in this case. And while refuting it in the name of Occum's razor and implying that perception is a process within the brain may appeal to logic; it does not conform to observation. Observation says it is an entity. You may wish to override that observation with reasoning, i.e., a hypothesis, but I choose to alter my hypothesis according to observation.

This is the critical failure of the "Chinese Room" experiment: a failure to accept the observable fact that the mind has mechanisms that explain its functioning. It simply assumes that minds are black-boxes, because the person(s) who came up with it had a philosophic agenda to fulfill as opposed to an interest in the facts. As someone who is actually interested in science and psychology, I cannot help but consider anyone who thinks the Chinese Room experiment is valid to be either an idiot, close minded, or deceitful.

It's funny, first you simultaneously imply that I am not "actually interested in science and psychology" and then you do little more than call names and throw insults. It's very important to respect opposing ideas in science, and look at their merit. At first sight many great theories, even relativity itself, looked nuts. If an idea actually is nuts, it will fail by logic or solid empirical experimentation; not by name-calling. I am not an idiot, I am certainly not deceitful, and it is certainly more close-minded to disrespect opposing ideas than to believe one side over another. And anyways debate is about ideas, not people.

I never implied the brain is a black-box. It is certainly an extremely elegant computer. But I am not a computer. I am distinctly aware of my own perception of the universe as me. That is my observation.

[Formless]

You misunderstood me. I didn't say rocks perceive anything, I said that the perception we have exists. It's not a computational process, it simply exists. Fact. "1". "True". However you want to say it it's just there. It's not a process or some kind of neurochemical subroutine any more than a rock is a mathematical equation. A rock isn't a mathematical equation, it just is, in the same way that Qualia just is, that was my point.

But the analogy wasn't the best, because you can define some properties and interactions of a rock via mathematics; a better analogy would simply be matter at the most fundamental level. It simply "is". In that same way Qualia simply "is".


And, if Qualia exists as an entity separate from the brain; then there's no logical reason there aren't perceptions that lack any sensory input or computational power.

Oh, I see now; you're a dime a dozen armchair philosopher. I'm going to have to take this slowly...

A rock is NOT one of those things that just "is". A rock can undergo transformations; it can melt into lava. It can be shaped into a brick or a tool; I can refine that further into, say, a knife if the rock is in fact composed of flint. It can be crushed and used as a resource provided it contains the right elements and minerals, and from there I can add many more transformations into just about anything. And you can even expose it to hard radiation and you get a whole new isotope which can scarcely be called a rock anymore-- at ground zero of the Trinity explosion silicon was transformed into a unique green crystalline form not found in nature. You disparage the mathematical, materialistic descriptions because you're too narrow minded to understand that a rock is in fact a generic label that we humans give to any solid chemical mixture that is predominately made of silicates, but also other minerals (otherwise we would simply call it silicate). You want to see a rock, so you see a rock. I see a dumbass whose been smoking too much pot.

The same applies to humans. I am on one level Formless, the poster on SDN, on another an amalgamation of living cells organized into a complex hominid structure, and on another level I am a stew of chemicals organized at an unimaginable level of complexity. You actually disparage what I am when you state that my mind is the result of some undefinable Qualia.

Yes, the brain does dynamically undergo change in perception. But we're using different definitions of perception; what I'm referring to is more accurately what you called the "observer": our perception minus sensory input and computational ability.

Except that you need computational ability to have perception, you nitwit. This part I completely understood, and you didn't.

Sensory input changes, yes, that is what we measure in experiments in psychology and brain physiology. But it is impossible in any way to show that any Qualia exists, any "observers", and by any logical reasoning I should assume every entity in the universe is a Philosopohical Zombie other than me, but here I hold the "Irrational" view that others have Qualia as well. And I only know my own Qualia exists because I perceive it.

Oh, this is rich. I know I am a philosophic zombie by your definition because I can see, on a level that others do not, the mechanisms working inside my own head. In fact, more than once I've found that understanding psychology of others helps me understand my own better. What an odd concept, don't you think? I'm not omniscient in the realm of my own mind by any definition, but the fact is my perceptions of myself lead me to the exact opposite conclusion than you; no one can be any more of a philosophic zombie than I am! Hence, your definition of a philosophic zombie is completely and utterly useless, and if you admit that Qualia is unfalsifiable then its less than useless. Its religious.

There's absolutely no evidence that Qualia exists via mechanical process in the brain, and there never will be by it's very nature, other than the fact that there are other mechanical processes in the brain.

I'm not arguing that Qualia exist in the brain, dumbass. I'm arguing that Qualia do not exist at all.

It's funny, first you simultaneously imply that I am not "actually interested in science and psychology" and then you do little more than call names and throw insults.It's very important to respect opposing ideas in science, and look at their merit. At first sight many great theories, even relativity itself, looked nuts. If an idea actually is nuts, it will fail by logic or solid empirical experimentation; not by name-calling. I am not an idiot, I am certainly not deceitful, and it is certainly more close-minded to disrespect opposing ideas than to believe one side over another. And anyways debate is about ideas, not people.

No, the insults are a side benefit for me. But the fact is that you are an idiot, and you are dodging the point by trying to resort to personal conviction ("I intuitively believe that Qualia" exists). Science isn't about what you believe, fuckbrains, and it has no room for opinions when those opinions are based on dishonesty or idiocy. Smarter scientists than I have said far more scathing things to idiots like you. Fuck off and grow a pair.

[Formless]

Ghetto edit: by the way, I challenged you to show that Qualia exist, not to simply state that they do. What specific observations do you have to bring to the table? Other than the stupid rock example, you have done a lot of blustering and little proving in either a scientific sense or a philosophic one.

[Eagle1Division]

You misunderstood me. I didn't say rocks perceive anything, I said that the perception we have exists. It's not a computational process, it simply exists. Fact. "1". "True". However you want to say it it's just there. It's not a process or some kind of neurochemical subroutine any more than a rock is a mathematical equation. A rock isn't a mathematical equation, it just is, in the same way that Qualia just is, that was my point.

But the analogy wasn't the best, because you can define some properties and interactions of a rock via mathematics; a better analogy would simply be matter at the most fundamental level. It simply "is". In that same way Qualia simply "is".

And, if Qualia exists as an entity separate from the brain; then there's no logical reason there aren't perceptions that lack any sensory input or computational power.

Oh, I see now; you're a dime a dozen armchair philosopher. I'm going to have to take this slowly...

A rock is NOT one of those things that just "is". A rock can undergo transformations; it can melt into lava. It can be shaped into a brick or a tool; I can refine that further into, say, a knife if the rock is in fact composed of flint. It can be crushed and used as a resource provided it contains the right elements and minerals, and from there I can add many more transformations into just about anything. And you can even expose it to hard radiation and you get a whole new isotope which can scarcely be called a rock anymore-- at ground zero of the Trinity explosion silicon was transformed into a unique green crystalline form not found in nature. You disparage the mathematical, materialistic descriptions because you're too narrow minded to understand that a rock is in fact a generic label that we humans give to any solid chemical mixture that is predominately made of silicates, but also other minerals (otherwise we would simply call it silicate). You want to see a rock, so you see a rock. I see a dumbass whose been smoking too much pot.

The same applies to humans. I am on one level Formless, the poster on SDN, on another an amalgamation of living cells organized into a complex hominid structure, and on another level I am a stew of chemicals organized at an unimaginable level of complexity. You actually disparage what I am when you state that my mind is the result of some undefinable Qualia.

"a dime a dozen armchair philosopher"? Well, unless you're debating and getting paid for doing so at a university, then you're one, too. And I find it hard to believe that someone that uses this kind of tone could hardly hold a position like that for very long, assuming mankind has any decency left.

I clearly stated that a rock was a bad analogy because of the very reasons you stated. Mass at it's most fundamental level would be a far better analogy. Whatever you do with melting down the rock, radiating it, etc, you are not changing the protons into neutrons, or the neutrons into electrons. And most importantly; matter can't be created or destroyed. At the most fundamental level, a quark is a quark and that's all there is to it.

I think someday they'll understand what gives quarks their properties, but as they continually do so, the logical end of always finding what makes one thing different from another, is you'll uncover things to the level where they're the same.

What makes hydrogen different from helium? Their atoms.
What makes a hydrogen atom different from a helium atom? arrangements of neutrons, electrons, and protons.
What makes electrons, neutrons, and protons different from eachother? arrangements of quarks.
etc.
Logical conclusion: Arrangements of mass. What is mass? Mass is mass. At some point you simply have to accept the fact that it just is, and that's all there is to it. A boolean value. A binary "1". A boolean "True". Whatever you call it, it just Is.

Disparaging what you are? Now, don't get so personally attached to different theories and such. Could result in a religious-type argument.

Yes, the brain does dynamically undergo change in perception. But we're using different definitions of perception; what I'm referring to is more accurately what you called the "observer": our perception minus sensory input and computational ability.

Except that you need computational ability to have perception, you nitwit. This part I completely understood, and you didn't.

That's the center of the debate. You more or less said: "You're wrong" without providing a counter-point.

My point was that I am capable of perceiving nothing; if your perception was nothing but a mechanical process that responds to input, then lack of any input would mean the perception would cease to exist.
If, however, perception could still occur without any input of any kind, then perception is a different entity than the mechanical processes associated with neurons within the brain.

I argue that lack of input does not mean that your perception would cease to exist, so Qualia must exist, because nothing is a lack of input, and you are capable of perceiving nothing. Any mechanical process must have input to create output, this is basic math. You need an X to get a Y, or a Y to get an X in a two-variable system. Input and output. No X, no Y.
(Here I've clumped together all input as X, and all output as Y. In case you were about to argue the brain is far more complicated.)

You failed to reply in any way other than just calling me wrong. "A nitwit that doesn't understand", actually, to paraphrase. To be frank I wasn't aware that insults could be used as valid arguments. Thanks for informing me.

Sensory input changes, yes, that is what we measure in experiments in psychology and brain physiology. But it is impossible in any way to show that any Qualia exists, any "observers", and by any logical reasoning I should assume every entity in the universe is a Philosopohical Zombie other than me, but here I hold the "Irrational" view that others have Qualia as well. And I only know my own Qualia exists because I perceive it.

Oh, this is rich. I know I am a philosophic zombie by your definition because I can see, on a level that others do not, the mechanisms working inside my own head. In fact, more than once I've found that understanding psychology of others helps me understand my own better. What an odd concept, don't you think? I'm not omniscient in the realm of my own mind by any definition, but the fact is my perceptions of myself lead me to the exact opposite conclusion than you; no one can be any more of a philosophic zombie than I am! Hence, your definition of a philosophic zombie is completely and utterly useless, and if you admit that Qualia is unfalsifiable then its less than useless. Its religious.

I don't think you even know what philosophical zombie is. It's not about not understanding the processes in my head, it's about the difference in-between a mechanical process and sentience.

I do know some amount of psychology, and I realize my brain is an extremely vastly complicated computer of neurons, and many of my thoughts and actions and decisions are determined by it, I also realize. But just because I understand my own psychology doesn't in any way make me a philosophical zombie, nor would any level of understanding your own mind. You missed the point of the "philosophical zombie" argument entirely.

There's absolutely no evidence that Qualia exists via mechanical process in the brain, and there never will be by it's very nature, other than the fact that there are other mechanical processes in the brain.

I'm not arguing that Qualia exist in the brain, dumbass. I'm arguing that Qualia do not exist at all.

Ah, so I am talking to a philosophical zombie. This means any amount of feelings you have aren't real because no being actually feels it. Like a mechanical toy, you merely respond to the pain of hunger as if you actually felt pain, but you don't. This means you don't perceive reality any more than a Furby. When you act as though you're hungry, you don't actually feel hunger any more than a Furby actually feels hunger when it asks for feeding.

It's funny, first you simultaneously imply that I am not "actually interested in science and psychology" and then you do little more than call names and throw insults.It's very important to respect opposing ideas in science, and look at their merit. At first sight many great theories, even relativity itself, looked nuts. If an idea actually is nuts, it will fail by logic or solid empirical experimentation; not by name-calling. I am not an idiot, I am certainly not deceitful, and it is certainly more close-minded to disrespect opposing ideas than to believe one side over another. And anyways debate is about ideas, not people.

No, the insults are a side benefit for me. But the fact is that you are an idiot, and you are dodging the point by trying to resort to personal conviction ("I intuitively believe that Qualia" exists). Science isn't about what you believe, fuckbrains, and it has no room for opinions when those opinions are based on dishonesty or idiocy. Smarter scientists than I have said far more scathing things to idiots like you. Fuck off and grow a pair.

There's no room for opinions and beliefs? Do you even know what the scientific community is like? Because, of course, there are no disagreements within the scientific community, right?

Re-read the article on "Qualia". It seems to me you looked at the first paragraph, than spat at it screaming: "Religion, Noooooooh!". It's not about religion, it has to do with the question of human perception and the descerepency of actual data from tangible experience. To understand better, take a look at Mary's Room thought experiment.

Anyways, do not expect any further replies if you keep this tone. If you can't control yourself then I see no purpose in spending my time listening to you rant off insults more than debate ideas. I'm here to share ideas, not listen to some childish screaming, insulting and calling of names. I've got much better things do to with my time than listen to someone with the emotional intelligence of a kindergartener use their full grown-up vocabulary to insult someone in a not grown-up way.

Speaking of growth, I'm interested to see what other forumites' thoughts are on my idea of Godhood, anyways.

EDIT: There's an edit button for editing. Please use that instead of double-posting.

[Formless]

I'm going to trim away the quote spaghetti in this one since I hate how that method of communicating makes a wall of text even more of an eyesore.

I will not, however, stop pointing out how stupid you are no matter how indignant you get. I suggest you stop asking right now. Barring hate speech or the rare request from a moderator I am not under any obligation to be polite on this board so long as my posts have substance in addition to vitriol. My first post was positively tame compared to some of the shit you will get called if you hang around here for any significant length of time. Trust me, I've been there and I'm no worse for the wear. You, on the other hand, will be in violation of the forum's debate rules if you refuse to address or concede points simply because of my tone. No, really, go into the Announcements forum and read them, because this is not going to get any easier for you if you keep the Miss Manners attitude.

By the way, I find it funny that you think you can deduce emotional intelligence based on posts on an internet forum. Armchair philosophy AND armchair psychoanalysis of a stranger you met online *? You're on a roll today.

Lets take this in reverse order, because why save the best part for last when I can emphasize what a complete ignorant (or dishonest) fool you are?

For those who do not care to click on the wikipedia link provided, "Mary's room" is a thought experiment wherein a neuroscientist named Mary is raised in a room that somehow has no colored light in it. Basically Plato's cave-- the only non-magical way to do this is to keep the lighting dark enough that only the rods in your eyes would be stimulated. The depression this woman must suffer... anyway. Mary knows what color is in an academic sense including knowledge of what objects should look like what and how the brain reacts to light. Presumably Mary's education has at least a cursory introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum and the physics of light and color-- we'll see the significance of this shortly. According to the metaphysics of the guys who wrote this thought experiment, until she has seen color with her own eyes Mary does not have "true" knowledge of color. The obvious corollary for epistemology is that she cannot say color exists until she has experienced it personally. This means that a complete description of the universe must incorporate platonic forms-- er, I mean Qualia. Gotta keep up with the philosophy buzzwords of the day, kids!

The conclusions you draw from this experiment are complete horseshit because you assume that our neruoscientist Mary will see anything at all when taken out of the magic sensory deprivation room. Experimental data on animals (specifically cats raised in rooms with repeating patterns on all the walls-- its a more practical setup than the one imagined for Mary) directly falsify this assumption. A brain not exposed to a certain stimuli during the critical time of its development will have difficulty in the best of times identifying that stimulus when confronted with it later in life, because-- and I know this might shock you-- the parts of the optic cortex that are supposed to compute that data were not properly developed thanks to their disuse. In other words, Mary will be colorblind due to her upbringing, and as a neuroscientist this won't be outside her expectations.

Mary will still be able to identify different spectra of light provided she has the right equipment, however, and more-- this is where the part about the electromagnetic spectrum comes in. How does your theory of Qualia address the unimaginably vast spectra of light humans cannot see with their eyes such as infrared, radio, ultraviolet, and X-rays? How does it account for those colors which are not found on the electromagnetic spectrum, such as magenta and brown (which is a product of low luminance or saturation rather than a specific wavelength)? Are x-rays as unreal as my sentience to you, since you can perceive neither directly? Is the color magenta more real to you than the emotions of my pets since you can see it directly?

Mary's room is not a thought experiment-- it is in fact a very old, repeatable scientific experiment that I learned about in basic psychology class. Facts are superior to ignorance. Deal with it, Mr. "emotional intelligence".

Since we are going in reverse order, you will now define "sentience", and explain why it cannot have a mechanistic explanation. You will explain why your concept of a philosophic zombie has any knowledge-value or ethical usefulness to scientists and philosophers alike. I would get on that, because your posts have some rather embarrassing parallels to historic apologetics concerning cruel treatment towards animals. I for one would not want to be associated with live vivisection and other such nastiness the "philosophic zombie" argument has enabled in the past.

Still going in reverse order. Your arguments implicitly assume that perception continues to exist after you stop looking at something. That this seems to imply that you think objects need to be perceived to keep existing is lol-worthy by itself for the solipsistic implications it has, though by implications I am of course referring to your blatant solipsism in arguing that everyone but yourself is a "philosophic zombie". The problems with this position go way beyond mere metaphysics of Qualia and into the realm of basic epistemology, an long argument in itself and one which can adequately be resolved by literally admonishing you for talking to yourself.

Lastly, the "mass is Qualia" argument. Mass is mass, gravity is gravity. But you cannot equivocate the two, which is what an ontology of "Qualia" would appear to do according to your argument.

P.S. the edit button has a time limit that helps keep it from being abused mid-debate. Consequently double posting is not against the rules here, and "ghetto edits" are the solution more than a few people use when they had something to add after their ten minutes were up. Have you lurked here at all before deciding to waltz in all high and mighty, declaring who does and does not have high emotional intelligence?

P.P.S. * behind this monitor, I was practically laughing at you. Thing about the internet psychoanalysis act? Forum debates are not in real time, so I have all the time I need to put exactly as much mockery into my words as I think you deserve.

[Eagle1Division]

I'm going to trim away the quote spaghetti in this one since I hate how that method of communicating makes a wall of text even more of an eyesore.

I will not, however, stop pointing out how stupid you are no matter how indignant you get. I suggest you stop asking right now. Barring hate speech or the rare request from a moderator I am not under any obligation to be polite on this board so long as my posts have substance in addition to vitriol. My first post was positively tame compared to some of the shit you will get called if you hang around here for any significant length of time. Trust me, I've been there and I'm no worse for the wear. You, on the other hand, will be in violation of the forum's debate rules if you refuse to address or concede points simply because of my tone. No, really, go into the Announcements forum and read them, because this is not going to get any easier for you if you keep the Miss Manners attitude.

By the way, I find it funny that you think you can deduce emotional intelligence based on posts on an internet forum. Armchair philosophy AND armchair psychoanalysis of a stranger you met online *? You're on a roll today.

So, you can call me stupid, but I can't say you lack emotional intelligence, despite the fact that I remain civil, and you haven't known me except a few posts, while you've been railing insults like an angry child?
Honestly, if the forums are really how you say they are, then I will not be sad to leave. I have a life, you know, and the forum is one website on the internet, among millions. There are plenty of others where human beings can discuss ideas, rather than trolls verbally assaulting eachother while providing arguments.

It's called human civility. If you act in real life how you act on these forums, then you'll only be making life harder on yourself and be a huge detriment to society and the happiness of society in general.

Lets take this in reverse order, because why save the best part for last when I can emphasize what a complete ignorant (or dishonest) fool you are?

For those who do not care to click on the wikipedia link provided, "Mary's room" is a thought experiment wherein a neuroscientist named Mary is raised in a room that somehow has no colored light in it. Basically Plato's cave-- the only non-magical way to do this is to keep the lighting dark enough that only the rods in your eyes would be stimulated. The depression this woman must suffer... anyway. Mary knows what color is in an academic sense including knowledge of what objects should look like what and how the brain reacts to light. Presumably Mary's education has at least a cursory introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum and the physics of light and color-- we'll see the significance of this shortly. According to the metaphysics of the guys who wrote this thought experiment, until she has seen color with her own eyes Mary does not have "true" knowledge of color. The obvious corollary for epistemology is that she cannot say color exists until she has experienced it personally. This means that a complete description of the universe must incorporate platonic forms-- er, I mean Qualia. Gotta keep up with the philosophy buzzwords of the day, kids!

[placed out of order for more streamlined response to Qualia argument]

Mary will still be able to identify different spectra of light provided she has the right equipment, however, and more-- this is where the part about the electromagnetic spectrum comes in. How does your theory of Qualia address the unimaginably vast spectra of light humans cannot see with their eyes such as infrared, radio, ultraviolet, and X-rays? How does it account for those colors which are not found on the electromagnetic spectrum, such as magenta and brown (which is a product of low luminance or saturation rather than a specific wavelength)? Are x-rays as unreal as my sentience to you, since you can perceive neither directly? Is the color magenta more real to you than the emotions of my pets since you can see it directly?

You still don't understand the idea of Qualia at all. It's not that the brain is a black box and neurons are just for show, it's that behind the neurons, computational ability, and sensory input, there's a raw perception of the universe, unrelated to the sensory input presented. It's just a raw perception; a bat's Qualia would be the same as a human's, despite radically different neruological systems and sensory capabilities and system's. It's as though all the sensory input and computational ability feed into the Qualia, like a sort of interface that is used, in the same way that I use a computer monitor to interface into a stream if trillions of electrons encoded into data.

So, in a sense, in this model, to provide an analogy;
Qualia would be a computer user, and the human brain would be the graphics software on the computer, while the universe as we know it would be all the data inside the computer.

I perceive the universe of data in which these forums exist through my computer's graphics processing.
While, I, myself, am not in the computer world, and I, as an entity, would not be detectable by means of hacking software.
You could detect my computer, and my software, but you could not detect my flesh-and-blood body.

I perceive the physical universe in which my computer exists through my brain's sensory and computational abilities.
While, I, myself, my Qualia, would not be detectable by means of physical study.
You could detect my brain and it's sensory and computational abilities, but you could not detect my Qualia.


IMO, this model is far more elegant than believing that because we haven't discovered something we won't, and that some sort of conduluted string of logic can turn mathematical equations into my perception of the world. I truly fail to see how a large number of computational chemical reactions can cause my sentience, this model with Qualia makes far more sense.
i.e. (important scientific principle) Lack of evidence is not evidence in and of itself.

The only evidence against this model is the lack of evidence; therefore there is no evidence against it, and I find it highly appealing to my reasoning, intuition, logic and most of all, to my observation.

And now, I quote professor Einstein:
"I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

Even he understood the very way in which we perceive the universe is very distant from all the mathematical equations we use to describe it, however accurately.

But, If you're truly attached to the idea that there's nothing more to my perception than known mechanical processes, you're fully welcome to start an organization for the ethical treatment of Furbys. From a physicalist viewpoint, where philosophical zombies are impossible, their hunger is just as real as ours, so why should we let a Furby go hungry?
What about our enslavement of computers? Or inanimate matter? If our brains are just fellow computers, isn't this a type of slavery?

Or is it okay because computers aren't as smart as us? So can the smart enslave the dumb?

The conclusions you draw from this experiment are complete horseshit because you assume that our neruoscientist Mary will see anything at all when taken out of the magic sensory deprivation room. Experimental data on animals (specifically cats raised in rooms with repeating patterns on all the walls-- its a more practical setup than the one imagined for Mary) directly falsify this assumption. A brain not exposed to a certain stimuli during the critical time of its development will have difficulty in the best of times identifying that stimulus when confronted with it later in life, because-- and I know this might shock you-- the parts of the optic cortex that are supposed to compute that data were not properly developed thanks to their disuse. In other words, Mary will be colorblind due to her upbringing, and as a neuroscientist this won't be outside her expectations.

[*snip* (placed above for more streamlined conversation)]

Mary's inability to see color due to her lack of exposure is beside the point.
If you could stagnate the neurons responsible for perceiving color and prevent them from dying due to lack of input, then she would perceive something new when she walked out of that room, despite having learned everything there is to know about color.

The fact that you bring in something so totally besides the point indicates that you clearly don't understand what the point of a thought experiment is at all. A thought experiment is to identify a single aspect of something and bring it to light, through an analogy we can all understand.

What you've suggested, however, is that a thought experiment is a hypothesis on the way to becoming a theory. The fact that you state experiments refute Mary's Room based on unimportant facets of the thought experiment show that you think Mary's Room is a hypothesis, in which case it would have been proven incorrect. But it's not a hypothesis, it's a thought experiment, it brings to light a specific facet of an idea in a way we can all understand, ignoring actual inability to perform it in reality.

This doesn't disprove Mary's Room any more than the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics can be disproven by an experiment involving an actual Schrödinger's cat.

Take for instance the Chinese Room Argument; while it would be impossible for someone to flip through so many massive books and scribble notes on paper as described; that fact is clearly beside the point.

Just as Mary's inability to see color due to lack of exposure is beyond the point. The point is that no matter how much I tell you about the experience of being inside a shuttle launch; you will never really know what it's like to ride the shuttle until you do it. Just replace the "shuttle launch" with anything.

(You can refer to similar experiences, such as lying on your back and acceleration in your car, but this only strengthens my argument because you only know what those are like from tangible experience, which is the whole point of Qualia, the gap in-between tangible experience and a description of any kind.)

Mary's room is not a thought experiment-- it is in fact a very old, repeatable scientific experiment that I learned about in basic psychology class. Facts are superior to ignorance. Deal with it, Mr. "emotional intelligence".

Since we are going in reverse order, you will now define "sentience", and explain why it cannot have a mechanistic explanation. You will explain why your concept of a philosophic zombie has any knowledge-value or ethical usefulness to scientists and philosophers alike. I would get on that, because your posts have some rather embarrassing parallels to historic apologetics concerning cruel treatment towards animals. I for one would not want to be associated with live vivisection and other such nastiness the "philosophic zombie" argument has enabled in the past.

So would you call starving a furby a form of cruelty, then?

To be safe, I would treat any being with an organic brain that displays some significant level of intelligence as though it is not a philosophical zombie. By definition, you cannot demonstrate what is or isn't a philosophical zombie. However, there is a staggering amount of evidence that it's directly linked to the organic brain, which is fundamentally identical in humans and other large animals, particularly mammals.

May I note that earlier you implied my argument is religious, with a smirk, implying that you meant a religious argument is unreasonable because it is not objective to finding the truth, a common view among atheists. But now you're using an argument against me that isn't in the interest of finding the truth: that my viewpoint has lead to animal cruelty in the past.

So, is truth the only thing that matters? If so, you cannot use the animal cruelty argument. If not, then your earlier sacrilegious statement must be taken back.

Still going in reverse order. Your arguments implicitly assume that perception continues to exist after you stop looking at something. That this seems to imply that you think objects need to be perceived to keep existing is lol-worthy by itself for the solipsistic implications it has, though by implications I am of course referring to your blatant solipsism in arguing that everyone but yourself is a "philosophic zombie". The problems with this position go way beyond mere metaphysics of Qualia and into the realm of basic epistemology, an long argument in itself and one which can adequately be resolved by literally admonishing you for talking to yourself.

It seems to imply, but I never said that, and I never implied it. I have no idea where you got the idea that I think things stop existing when you look away. All I said is that perception continues to exist despite a lack of input.

Lastly, the "mass is Qualia" argument. Mass is mass, gravity is gravity. But you cannot equivocate the two, which is what an ontology of "Qualia" would appear to do according to your argument.

P.S. the edit button has a time limit that helps keep it from being abused mid-debate. Consequently double posting is not against the rules here, and "ghetto edits" are the solution more than a few people use when they had something to add after their ten minutes were up. Have you lurked here at all before deciding to waltz in all high and mighty, declaring who does and does not have high emotional intelligence?

P.P.S. * behind this monitor, I was practically laughing at you. Thing about the internet psychoanalysis act? Forum debates are not in real time, so I have all the time I need to put exactly as much mockery into my words as I think you deserve.

Equivocation isn't what this is at all. I'm not sure what definition you're using, but equivocation is misunderstanding a term.
Unless you mean to say they aren't equivalent, in the sense that mass and energy are equivalent. I'd honestly like to see you back up your claim.

Also, you seem to be saying that because mass isn't equivalent to gravity, that Qualia cannot be equivalent to mass. Well, that doesn't make any sense, to be flat and honest. I have no idea how that logic flows. But for the sake of argument, mass is equivalent to energy, in case you didn't know.

And, for a given distance to the center of mass, you can mathematically show that gravity is equivalent to mass.

The strength of the force of gravity can be found with only the distance and the mass of an object. For a 2-body problem where one body is significantly more massive than another, such as a planet and an orbital vehicle.
F = Gm/r^2
It's high school math. The force of gravity is that "F", and the force of gravity is the only way we can measure it at the moment, so pretty much as far as we can tell that is gravity. Gravity is a force.

Mass-Energy equivalence:
E = mc^2

When you examine these two equations, you'll realize that mass actually is equivalent to gravity, assuming that E=mc^2 means it's equivalent to energy.
G is a constant, c^2 is a constant. Let's call all our constants "K". As I said earlier, this is for a set distance from the center of the mass, or "r":
F = Km
E = Km

Though the units are now different, I would call that equivalence.

Anyways, that was overkill. In order to invalidate your claim I merely had to give an example where mass is equivalent to something else. And it is, to energy.

P.S;
"Barring hate speech".
I honestly find that bit disgusting. It is a blatant disrespect to my constitutional freedoms, which many millions of soldiers, and I would happily, gave their life to defend.
Perhaps you're from Europe, where hate speech is a law where those in power can shoot down opponents they don't like for being too provocative (even if it is the truth).

I also don't see how that rule is enforcable. How can you tell why I decide to stop posting? Maybe you won the argument. Maybe I'm simply not going to reply. Or maybe it's because of your tone. It's impossible to show.
I'm sorry if anyone finds that honesty is provocative, but that's the truth.

P.P.S/Edit:
I have my own observation of Qualia. If you confess to feeling emotion or sensation of any kind, then you do, too, assuming you're not a philosophical zombie.

[Formless]

So, you can call me stupid, but I can't say you lack emotional intelligence, despite the fact that I remain civil, and you haven't known me except a few posts, while you've been railing insults like an angry child?

Oh you can, it just makes you more of an idiot, as I explained. Didn't catch that part? I'm not surprised. For one thing, I'm not angry. For another thing anger has nothing to do with emotional intelligence. Want to know what emotional intelligence is?

Taken from wikipedia: "an ability, skill or, in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups."

It does NOT mean suppression of emotions, you fucking straw-Vulcan armchair poseur. It means knowing what sets you and other people off whether its anger or angst, and how to properly respond to emotions. "Properly respond" does not mean "do not express your emotions" and no sane psychologist takes the Mrs Manners interpretation that its never appropriate to express anger. It means "express your emotions in a socially appropriate or communicably effective manner". And guess what? Even if I were angry with you, around here mockery is considered socially appropriate, and its communicably effective because I have no faith in your ability to change your mind. It also changes my mood from irritation to humor; oh, yeah, did it ever occur to you that there are other ways of controlling your emotions than to suppress them like a fucking anal retentive tool?

Further, it does NOT mean letting your emotions cloud OTHER forms of intelligence, which is what you Mrs Manners shitheads seem to think it means. Believe it or not an angry guy can in fact be quite logical, and logic can reveal reasons to be angry. This should be obvious, but only if you actually used your brain.

And hey, while we're at it there is a certain activity that takes significant emotional intelligence to pull off properly. Can you guess what it is? I'm sure this one will shock you. Intentional trolling. After all, if you really want to get people riled up and control for their responses you have to have a certain understanding of emotion and group dynamics, correct? Now, I'm not condoning trolling, but I hope that demonstrates why I hold your belief that civility reflects emotional intelligence as stupid.

Oh, while we're on the subject the "religious" bit was a joke. I don't particularly care if you found it funny, by the way.

Honestly, if the forums are really how you say they are, then I will not be sad to leave. I have a life, you know, and the forum is one website on the internet, among millions. There are plenty of others where human beings can discuss ideas, rather than trolls verbally assaulting eachother while providing arguments.

It's called human civility. If you act in real life how you act on these forums, then you'll only be making life harder on yourself and be a huge detriment to society and the happiness of society in general.

Blah blah herpa derpa fucking blah. Blow it out your ass and get the fuck out, you pretentious prick. That is an option, to answer a question you had at the end of your post: you are only obliged not to ignore me if you intend on staying in this thread. Furthermore, going back to that whole "emotional intelligence" thing you keep harping on, isn't that the more effective communication strategy if you think this atmosphere will only stress you out? Oh, but of course only you get the option of implying your opponents have low EQ, if past experience with trolling posers is anything to go by. If anything, too much civility is a problem when dealing with bullshitters and imbeciles because they know how easy it is to use it as a smokescreen or scapegoat for their own behavior. Sound like anyone you know? For the record, I was being fairly nice before you decided to hyperventilate at the possibility that I find some arguments idiotic or dishonest.

Told you this wasn't going to get any easier for you. Now, to change the subject from style to substance...

You keep stating point of fact that I do not understand your arguments for Qualia. This is a lie. I compared your arguments to Plato's Forms precisely because I anticipated you would try and make this strawman argument again: though the two are not quite the same in that Forms are derived through reason and Qualia through observation, they both share the qualities of existing "out there" and "non-physicality". They are also derived from very similar and very shoddy logic: the only difference between Mary's Room and Plato's cave is that the former removes the metaphorical element from Plato's arguments. Have you ever taken a philosophy class? Specifically, in Plato's Allegory the prisoners have knowledge of the shadows on the wall and how those shadows behave, which mimic "real" objects: Mary has academic knowledge of light and neuroscience and how the brain behaves. In Plato's allegory, the revelation of the sun is symbolic of discovering Truth for the first time: in Mary's Room, Mary does not have True knowledge of color until she has observed the Qualia of color for the first time.

Are we seeing the similarities yet? Or did you bother reading your own thought experiment before linking to it in support of your arguments?

Ah, but of course if reading comprehension were your strong suit you would have noticed that I also already falsified your pathetic conclusion that Mary will perceive something new when she leaves the room regardless of whether she experiences color. All you've done is restate your beliefs as if I wouldn't notice, then try and lecture me on what a thought experiment is and is not supposed to prove. Give you a hint: when a thought experiment assumes something counterfactual, the experiment should be revised just like a lab experiment would be. For example, the variation of Mary's Room wherein the room is fully lit but color is somehow drained by magic requires revision because it is guilty of circular logic-- if magic of this type existed that by itself would demonstrate that Qualia exists! On the other hand, a revision was immediately available-- regardless of whether it is because of Qualia or neuroscientific reasons a dark room will appear to humans to lack color. The limitations on the Chinese Room experiment are not comparable here; for one thing, you could easily just say the room contains an advanced computer that handles the more tedious aspects of the process while the human still plays the same (supposedly) critical role in the whole thing. Philosophers are not the only ones who use thought experiments, they just tend to use them badly.

Furthermore, the whole thought experiment hinges on what Mary will perceive the first time she is exposed to colored light, so unless you have a strawman version of the experiment in your head the facts I use are directly relevant here. If she does not perceive colored light, then it validates the neuroscience and physics Mary was educated in and by extension falsifies the Qualia hypothesis. Her mind clearly can be "hacked", to use your own analogy against you, by forces inside the "computer", i.e. the universe, i.e. the sensory deprivation chamber located inside the universe. Your conclusions are simply wrong.

But lets see how far down the rabbit hole your foot went before you broke your bones. I can (in theory) know what a shuttle launch is like without actually being in a shuttle: making a shuttle launch simulator is an issue of engineering, not philosophy. Hell, a classic thought experiment in physics is one in which a person is placed in a room with no windows and asked whether he is standing on a planet or in a rocket accelerating at 9.807 meters per second squared. The answer is that he cannot tell the difference based on that data alone.

In fact, we simulate experiences all the time to a good degree of accuracy; whatever was missed by the simulation device or method can be filled in by referring to other experiences we've had. I once got into a drunk driving simulator at a museum: I didn't feel dizzy or intoxicated, but afterwards I could refer to experiences where I was and put two and two together. Voila! I know roughly what its like to drive while drunk. Another example would be certain training methods used in the martial arts that let you experience things that would ordinarily hurt you: for instance you can get an electrified training knife that hurts to get "cut" with but doesn't actually cut. The experience is similar enough you can refer back to times you actually have been cut and figure out what it must be like to be attacked with a knife.

How many counterfactuals do I have to point out before you get the point? Apparently quite a few. You try to pass off a bat's experience of the world as the same as a human's, ergo they experience the same Qualia: this is both utterly hilarious and utterly false. Humans have better vision due to being daytime animals: bats have better echo-location abilities due to being nocturnal animals. I hesitate to ask, but are you on drugs? Or are you really just this ignorant? The sensory abilities of bats isn't exactly eldritch knowledge that can only be found in chapter twelve of the Necronomicon.

It appears we are at an impasse. I don't give a flying fuck about your analogy or model unless it has the support of demonstrable facts. You can keep repeating the same non-sense until carpel tunnel syndrome sets in, but that is where you keep failing.

But you know what, since I want to know how far down the rabbit hole you went lets look at your analogy because its just plain insane. You deny that the Chinese Room experiment equivocates the mind to a black box and calls that an explanation, but then you go on to claim the relationship between the mind and the universe is like a human being using a computer: the computer cannot know what is going on inside the human user's head. Do you not fucking see how that is effectively the same goddamn thing? Your argument is nothing more than a pitiful evasion tactic so you don't have to answer my challenge:

Why can't the mind have a mechanistic explanation? What gives your definition of a philosophic zombie have any knowledge value? what exactly is your definition of sentience, and why should I give a shit?

(and no, asking me if Furbies have sentience for the purpose of ethics is nothing more than an argument from ignorance/appeal to personal incredulity)

It does not matter how you ontologically classify the mind, though your classification also qualifies as special pleading with regards to things having to exist in the universe to interact with the universe. That's just plain wannabe Matrix bullshit. If the mind and sentience have a mechanistic explanation, then your definition of a philosophic zombie is useless and your argument that simulated lifeforms cannot experience pain or cruelty falls flat on its face.

Again I find I have little hope you will rise to my challenge because you fail to understand basic epistemology and scientific principles. I have not pointed to lack of evidence: I have consistently pointed to evidence that falsifies your hypotheses. You cannot supplant facts with ignorance and call that proof. I'm beginning to wonder whether or not your real problem is that you desperately cling to mind-brain duality for emotional or religious reasons.

Equivocation isn't what this is at all. I'm not sure what definition you're using, but equivocation is misunderstanding a term.
Unless you mean to say they aren't equivalent, in the sense that mass and energy are equivalent. I'd honestly like to see you back up your claim.

Also, you seem to be saying that because mass isn't equivalent to gravity, that Qualia cannot be equivalent to mass. Well, that doesn't make any sense, to be flat and honest. I have no idea how that logic flows. But for the sake of argument, mass is equivalent to energy, in case you didn't know.

You misunderstand. According to your arguments, Mass and Gravity "just are", i.e. they are irreducible and apparently non-physical. Unfortunately, gravity is a fundamental force while mass is a value-- something else entirely. Hence, if we were to make an ontological scheme of the universe (though I personally find such metaphysics to be an exercise in time wasting) they would have to be put into different categories to account for their differences in function.

P.S;
"Barring hate speech".
I honestly find that bit disgusting. It is a blatant disrespect to my constitutional freedoms, which many millions of soldiers, and I would happily, gave their life to defend.
Perhaps you're from Europe, where hate speech is a law where those in power can shoot down opponents they don't like for being too provocative (even if it is the truth).

The board is hosted on a private server in Canada owned by Mike Wong. Ergo, you're "rights" here are not defined by the laws of the United States, they are defined by Canadian law and whatever Mike Wong is willing to tolerate. Mostly hate speech means no racial slurs like the N-word; unless you happen to like hanging around racists and homophobes you probably won't run into any problems with that.

P.P.S/Edit:
I have my own observation of Qualia. If you confess to feeling emotion or sensation of any kind, then you do, too, assuming you're not a philosophical zombie.

So lets say we were to preform a variation of the Turing Test. You have a computer like the one you are typing on, and three shut doors. Behind one door is a human like me: behind another door is a computer running a simulation of a human like me: behind the third door is a computer with a human operator who speaks chinese preforming the Chinese Room gig. All three communicate with you through your internet connection: all three confess to feeling emotion and sensation. Which ones are in possession of the Qualia "sentience" and which ones are a philosophic zombie, and how can you tell?

[Eagle1Division]

So, you can call me stupid, but I can't say you lack emotional intelligence, despite the fact that I remain civil, and you haven't known me except a few posts, while you've been railing insults like an angry child?

Oh you can, it just makes you more of an idiot, as I explained. Didn't catch that part? I'm not surprised. For one thing, I'm not angry. For another thing anger has nothing to do with emotional intelligence. Want to know what emotional intelligence is?

Taken from wikipedia: "an ability, skill or, in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups."

It does NOT mean suppression of emotions, you fucking straw-Vulcan armchair poseur. It means knowing what sets you and other people off whether its anger or angst, and how to properly respond to emotions. "Properly respond" does not mean "do not express your emotions" and no sane psychologist takes the Mrs Manners interpretation that its never appropriate to express anger. It means "express your emotions in a socially appropriate or communicably effective manner". And guess what? Even if I were angry with you, around here mockery is considered socially appropriate, and its communicably effective because I have no faith in your ability to change your mind. It also changes my mood from irritation to humor; oh, yeah, did it ever occur to you that there are other ways of controlling your emotions than to suppress them like a fucking anal retentive tool?

You seem to mistaken "self control" for "suppression of emotions". No, if I get angry at a shooting range, and I'm holding a rifle, not shooting the person that's making me angry isn't suppression of emotion; that's self control. Of course that's a strawman argument, I'm not using it as an argument I'm using it to highlight my point, self control. The reason is that obviously shooting someone is a bad thing to do.

If I'm cursing anyone off who disagrees with me, and generally emotionally attacking society, then I'm doing a bad thing. So I call not dropping the "F" bomb at every opportunity self-control, which is a key aspect of EI. I spent a year studying it and I read the book, I'm familiar with it, at least.


Anyways, people make a society. Laws are only guidelines that should be followed and people will be punished for not following; but if you make a law that the people don't agree with, such as the alcohol ban in the early 20th century, then people will openly break that law. People will also do things that aren't law: such as being courteous and nice, aren't required by law, but people do them anyways. This shapes a society. We shape our society. And so whether or not it's against the rules, I'll continue to try to be as courteous and nice as I can. Mostly because I care for others, and as such I don't sit around worrying about me own feelings and whether or not I'm suppressing them. Making a better world and making someone's day better matter more to me, so regardless if some stranger cuts me off on the road, I'll still be courteous and open the door for her at the gas station. That's how you build a better world; not by indulging in anger like a primitive animal. That's what gives us civilization and keeps the animals in anarchy. Self-control.

Honestly, if I were talking to someone like this in person; I would not trust their self control to not physically attack me, and I would probably be preparing to defend myself. In the book, Emotional Intelligence, Goleman clearly stated that "venting" was a misconception; that it actually causes you to become more angry by dwelling on it. Someone who rants of insults is obviously holding on to their anger and letting it grow; I cannot trust such a person to not physically attack me, if they allow anger to control them like that. I choose to be master of my emotions, not allow them to master me.

"Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee."
- Hamlet
Quoted by Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence, in the chapter "slaves to passion".




To make things easier, I'll respond to this as a whole. Post is getting too long.

I say you don't understand what I mean by Qualia, because you don't. Qualia is the raw perception of something. I don't think it's linked to my eyes, I think it's linked to my brain which is linked to my eyes. So my brain is the computer through which my Qualia perceives the world. It's attached, but something different than the brain, it's perception barring all computational logic and sensory input, which the brain is responsible for, so, as I clearly said earlier, despite sensory differences, however major, and cognitive abilities, my most fundamental ability to perceive the universe would be the same as a Bat's.

It's also funny that you should argue that I'm speaking of something metaphysical, and insubstantial. I kindly ask, how so?
How is this idea of Qualia any more insubstantial than the idea that my perception of the universe, barring any computational logic and sensory input, is some sort of "ghost in the machine", a strange sort of thing that just sort of happens when all the neurochemical reactions in the brain are just like so?
How is this any less substantial than the fact that all of reality follows mathematics - mathematics, by the way, being a set of rules which numbers follow - 23/4, I can write it a certain way, and solve it with additions and subtractions, and "how many times will 4 go into 23?", then "how many times will 4 go into 30?", and by following those certain rules to an extreme extent, I can predict where a satellite will be in 20 minutes. Mathematics, is nothing but an insubstantial, intangible, imaginary idea. Yet reality follows it perfectly, reality involve math. So it doesn't matter if you think Qualia is an insubstantial idea, what matters is does reality actually involve Qualia?

What of the tangibilty and metaphysical (in the supernatural sense) nature of string theory? Or Brane cosmology, or M-theory? The negative spin you put on "metaphysical" is that it amounts to supernatural. But string theory, Brane cosmology, and M-theory all are not supernatural because we have detailed mathematical explanations leading up to them, based off of observations and experimentation related to particle physics, correct?

Now, what if something about us made is directly able to perceive these "strings", or these "branes" as described by Brane cosmology and string theory? Before we ever reached this scientific level we're at today, anyone who makes mention of these "strings" and "branes" would be branded as insane, but only because they hadn't been discovered yet.

Qualia is a unique interest, because we are keenly aware of our own perception of the universe, but the functions underlying it aren't fully understood. To take the mechanistic approach is to make the assumption that there is nothing left to be discovered except specific details of how the brain functions. You're dropping some key observations in order to boost your own arrogance and say that you more fully understand the universe, because you're too darn proud to say you don't understand something. But the mechanistic approach, or for this purpose I'll call it a theory, is missing the key aspect of our very base ability to perceive anything at all. There's no explanation in any mechanistic approach for our perception. You can say any computational system has this function; and it may be true; but where does it come from? You only disregard the idea of Qualia, but you still do not describe any mechanical system in terms of perception, to take it's place.



Mass and gravity "just are", they're "not physical" just as much as the physical universe isn't physical. I have no idea why you think that something being irreducible means it's not physical. Gravity is a vector force. Period. Nothing else to it, other than it's properties. Matter is mass. Period. Nothing else to it, other than the number of mass, or to be more grammerically correct, the amount of mass. Qualia is perception. Period. Nothing else to it, other than it's properties.

If I must put forth why it can't have a mechanistic explanation which you propose, you must put forth why it can't have a non-mechanistic explanation which I propose. If you say anything along the lines of intuition or logic, than I can easily argue that Qualia is logical and intuitive. (To be noted, by non-mechanistic I don't mean to say non-physical. An electron has a property of a field strength 1000x larger for it's mass than a proton. Another property is that it has field strength. Another property is that that field strength is opposite a proton's. In the same sense, some particle, some thing directly related to my brain has a property of perception.)


And anyways, Qualia is extremely difficult to describe: It is everything. It is our perception of the universe, for goodness' sake! Our language and communication and thoughts are only related to objects within our universe, so of course in relation it's insubstantial. You had might as well ask a talking fish (that has never seen the surface) what water looks like. It would tell you it doesn't know, the only thing it's ever lived in or seen is water. Our minds and language work based off of similarity and dissimilarity, because we have never not had Qualia, we have no dissimilarity, and because observation of the universe, and our own identity at the root level, is a unique thing, we can't use similarity.

The observation for Qualia is that I'm keenly aware of perception; and that that perception isn't nothing more than a mechanistic response to the natural world, but that there's more to my sentience than emotion, logic, and sensory ability. I can't show the maths or experimentation to lead up to this, any more than someone who can sense superstrings can provide string theory in the 17th century. But I can sense my own mind and perception of the universe, and that I stand by and is irrefutable as direct observation.

Finally, any mechanistic system you develop will only be a philosophical zombie, so you can't mechanistically show sentience to exist.

You make a computer, and run turing test, and it passes.
-> It's impossible to imitate sentience without having it, so it has sentience because it imitates it.
-> It's possible to imitate sentience without having it according to Chinese room, so it's impossible to tell.

To reach either conclusion, you must first make the assumption: Is sentience possible to imitate without it existing, by Chinese Room process? There's no way to tell, no way to show. Either conclusion you arrive at is a raw assumption. You simply say: "No, you can't imitate it without having it." I can, with equal validity, say "Yes, you can imitate it without having it." because it's impossible to show perception without actually being the perceiver. The only argument for either side is which is more intuitive. Perhaps you can bring Occum's Razor into the argument, but remember, it's a Razor, not an axe.

Before detailed observations were ever made of the path of planets across the sky, the most reasonable conclusion was simple: Everything spun around the Earth (the egocentric model, I call it ).
However, a single small dissimilarity in-between that model and reality was that the planets didn't move smoothly across the sky, so a new model was proposed, the heliocentric model, and it's the correct one, of course. However, the new model which described all these insane orbits inside of eachother, following wild mathematics, etc, was far more complex than the heliocentric model. But the observation of how planets moved was more important than staying away from the added complexity of the heliocentric model.

In this same sense, the single observation of my own existence of perception apart from knowledge, emotion, sensory input and logic, should be enough observation to warrant a more complex model, rather than dogmatically sticking to an old, non-observer model because it's simpler and better understood.


Finally, on this note, I can argue you are clinging to the idea of physicalism in a religious way just as you claim I do. Atheism is a religion just as much as any other, and as such you're probably very emotionally attached to the idea.

I agree with Einstein on this topic; I'll quote his whole statement here instead of the last part of it:

"You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.
I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."
- Albert Einstein

[Formless]

And you are back in record time! Lets see if you have anything new to bring to the table.

*rant about society, EQ, self control, with a gratuitous Shakespeare quote for added pretension and toughguy statements about how you would be preparing for a fight if this were a face to face conversation*

Nope.

"Get Your Fill of Science, Sci-Fi, and MOCKERY OF STUPID PEOPLE."

Thanks to you, this thread qualifies for three out of three and then some. This is not a face to face conversation, and this is not your personal soapbox where you can talk down to people. I will not tell you this again: from here on out, its up to you to either grow up and deal with it, or shut up and leave. Crybaby.

*rant about how I still don't understand what you mean by Qualia despite all the effort I put into explaining and examining your arguments and thought experiments*

My god, you really do have a strawman version of those thought experiments in your head, don't you? I went over not one but two thought experiments with a fine tooth comb that you brought up for discussion: what specifically do you think I missed? The part where I must accept your assertion that Qualia must be explained, when I dispute the most basic logical necessity of them on the grounds of parsimony? Are you for real?

Repeating the same statements over and over like a broken record is not a valid method of argumentation. You claim you aren't talking about the intangible and the metaphysical, yet you also claim that there is some kind of ghost in the machine that works the controls to the human mind and compare Qualia to math-- despite the fact that Plato used the same appeal to math when arguing for intangible Forms. Which is it? Tangible quantities like mass, or intangible properties like color and sentience? You can have it both ways, but only if you accept that some kind of causative process leads to things like sentience and perception. This is the same sense as we would say that burning oil in an engine leads to motion. Are we just not using the same meaning of the word "mechanism" here? In science, a mechanism is an explanation of how the various parts of the universe interact to cause a given phenomenon. This concept would hold true in a non-physical universe that operated more like, say, a computer.

We can keep going back and forth challenging the other that the universe is physical or non-physical, but I will just point out that once again you are breaking with parsimony by adding in a meaningless term to absolutely everything-- perception. Perception is only ever self reported which means that it is impossible to verify that one person's experiences are necessarily the "same" as another person's. You might as well ask whether you are sane or delusional-- only an outside observer can verify, and that's assuming the outside observer is himself sane. You even state that you cannot adequately define Qualia! Actually, put that way this is more basic than a problem of parsimony-- its a problem of you not knowing what you are arguing for one way or another, whereas I simply drop terms when it becomes obvious they are meaningless.

Its the same reason I don't believe in God. I can never get a consistent answer from people about what constitutes divinity-- as this thread evidenced before you and I started arguing.

[Eagle1Division]

My god, you really do have a strawman version of those thought experiments in your head, don't you? I went over not one but two thought experiments with a fine tooth comb that you brought up for discussion: what specifically do you think I missed? The part where I must accept your assertion that Qualia must be explained, when I dispute the most basic logical necessity of them on the grounds of parsimony? Are you for real?

I covered this with my example of the geocentric and heliocentric models. Parsimony only takes effect when both hypothesis are equal in their ability to accurately predict and describe the specific thing they claim to describe. In this case, that's everything. And in this case, they aren't equal. Saying sentience is nothing more than some sort of ghost in the machine that comes about when so many neurons are arranged just so, simply opposes the single direct observation we can make of subjective experience, that only single direct observation being our own minds. It's a nice idea in the sense that it means we've already uncovered the mystery, but it doesn't explain sentience nearly so well as does the idea of Qualia as a raw property of something, just as electromagnetic field strength is a raw property of something.

At the simplest level; that's my argument: Sentience arises as a raw property of matter that's amplified by direct contact with the computational system known as the human brain. It's a raw property just as magnetic field strength is a raw property (even nonmagnetic substances are electrostatically charged at the atomic level), and gravity is a raw property, all associated with mass.

That provides a much better fit to observation other than just saying that I'm imagining my ability to perceive the universe apart from sensory input, data storage, and computational ability. To say that perception, by that definition I've just mentioned, doesn't exist, is to change observation to match your hypothesis; which is that Qualia does not exist. That's bad science. You're supposed to change your hypothesis (your thoughts) to match observation.
I'm not eagerly trying to explain my idea despite evidence against it; I'm trying to understand something that's been observed.

If we were to delve into the specifics and structure of your model, it would seem more complex, but we haven't, but I've delved into the specific structure of mine. So just above I've given my point in the most simplistic, understandable way, and despite my eagerness and excitement to share my ideas, obviously that's a very bad idea here under such hostility.

Repeating the same statements over and over like a broken record is not a valid method of argumentation. You claim you aren't talking about the intangible and the metaphysical, yet you also claim that there is some kind of ghost in the machine that works the controls to the human mind and compare Qualia to math-- despite the fact that Plato used the same appeal to math when arguing for intangible Forms. Which is it? Tangible quantities like mass, or intangible properties like color and sentience? You can have it both ways, but only if you accept that some kind of causative process leads to things like sentience and perception. This is the same sense as we would say that burning oil in an engine leads to motion. Are we just not using the same meaning of the word "mechanism" here? In science, a mechanism is an explanation of how the various parts of the universe interact to cause a given phenomenon. This concept would hold true in a non-physical universe that operated more like, say, a computer.

1. Knowledge (data)
2. Memory (different type of data)
3. Sensory Input
4. Computational Ability

I think we may have different definitions of Qualia altogether; if this is the case, it is my error: By Qualia I mean to say perception, minus knowledge, memory, sensory input and computational ability. The brain is clearly and definitely responsible for knowledge, memory, sensory input and computational processing.
I am at odds as to how those 4 things can produce raw "perception". Unless I misunderstood (as glazing over constant insults and vulgar profanity made it somewhat difficult to focus on the discussion at hand), that is what the discussion is about.

And the reason I'm at odds with this is because those 4 things are things we perceive, so perception can't be one of them, any more than I can look at my own eye without a mirror. We can perceive the fact that we perceive, and understand that we must have a perception, we can do this because of logic and reasoning, #4.

If that's a bit too confusing, let me simply say that we perceive those 4 things: knowledge, memory, sensory input and computational ability. We perceive them, and so the perception is not one of them, but is it's own entity. A computer can create knowledge, memory, sensory input and computational ability, but #5, perception, is something entirely different, which exists separate from the other 4. Whether or not computer, in reality, has #5 is beside the point; what matters is that #5 is a separate thing from #1-4.

Interestingly enough, we've already verified that it is, by stating it has a property different from #1-4. #1-4 you can tangibly verify. #5, you cannot. They can't be the same thing if they have different properties, so perception is definitely something separate from #1-4.

Your argument for parsimony is to drop the existence of #5 altogether. It's not a useless term for something that's just something else, it's something separate from the other things, #1-4.



Ah, as I see here, we are using different definitions of mechanistic or mechanism. I was under the impression you meant to say that that raw perception I mentioned earlier comes as a result of known neurochemical processes in the brain. To be more clear, my argument was that something other than neurochemical interactions causes this raw "perception" as I described earlier.

In other words, my argument is that #1-4 are separate from #5, that #5, Qualia, or perception, actually does exist.

We can keep going back and forth challenging the other that the universe is physical or non-physical, but I will just point out that once again you are breaking with parsimony by adding in a meaningless term to absolutely everything-- perception. Perception is only ever self reported which means that it is impossible to verify that one person's experiences are necessarily the "same" as another person's. You might as well ask whether you are sane or delusional-- only an outside observer can verify, and that's assuming the outside observer is himself sane. You even state that you cannot adequately define Qualia! Actually, put that way this is more basic than a problem of parsimony-- its a problem of you not knowing what you are arguing for one way or another, whereas I simply drop terms when it becomes obvious they are meaningless.

- Which is the equivalent of denying a fact when investigating it is too difficult. You could easily argue that there's no way to empirically study perception, and you're right, what you just mentioned essentially amounts to the inverted spectrum argument. I can't tangibly verify that you and I have the "same" experience. This applies to everything, actually, from strawberries and color to emotions.

It's not parsimony to cut out something because you call it useless and it's difficult to understand or even discuss. Parsimony would be a tree is found fallen over in the woods:
A) Either it was blown over by wind, or
B) the wind blew a truck into it, and the truck drove off.
Parsimony, Occom's Razor, says A.

But, if the tree has traces of glass and metal, and if the cut is more characteristic of a blunt impact - then the correct choice would be "B", because it better matches the situation and observations. What you seem to be doing is outright ignoring the evidence contradicting "A" and calling it parsimony when you choose A over B in spite of the evidence, because it's so hard and "useless" to study the broken glass and tree scars, you decide to ignore them, despite the fact that they're key evidence.

I refer this back to the perception as #5 argument earlier (pun not intended, #5 not alive). While it would be simpler and less complex to say #5 doesn't exist, you would be working against the evidence to do that. #5 clearly has different properties than #1-4; you can quantify #1-4 but not #5. Perception perceives #1-4. Is our interest here to investigate and find the truth, or investigate as little as possible and make the model as simple as possible even if it means ignoring key facts?

No, but investigating as little as possible and ignoring key facts would help you in your religious crusade for atheism saying that there is no human soul, afterlife, or anything we can't measure. It's a religious argument .
(Which is funny, because you've already admitted that we can't measure or quantify raw perception; yet it exists. You've merely chosen to ignore it's existence altogether, rather than deny it. You turned around and said it does exist.
You've openly admitted that it does exist. The fact that you said we can perceive things differently and not know (where I linked the inverted spectrum argument), means that there is an unmeasurable perception, which is the exact definition of Qualia. :

We can keep going back and forth challenging the other that the universe is physical or non-physical, but I will just point out that once again you are breaking with parsimony by adding in a meaningless term to absolutely everything-- perception. Perception is only ever self reported which means that it is impossible to verify that one person's experiences are necessarily the "same" as another person's. You might as well ask whether you are sane or delusional-- only an outside observer can verify, and that's assuming the outside observer is himself sane. [...]

Let's point out the key part here:

...Perception is only ever self reported which means that it is impossible to verify that one person's experiences are necessarily the "same" as another person's....

There it is, you noting that there's such thing as experience that cannot be cross-verified, which is what Qualia is. You complain it's a meaningless term, then you admit it does exist. Our purpose is to find the truth, isn't it?

As you said, it cannot be cross-verified, everything else known about the human brain and it's computational nature by neurochemical process can be cross-verified because they're physical and measurable. Yet this thing, this "perception", you just stated cannot be cross-verified. If it were physical in some way, it could be cross-verified, but because it can't be you just admitted it's not. So this perception can not be a computational nature of the brain by neurochemical process, because it's not physical. It has to be something else, otherwise it would be cross-verifiable along with everything else in the brain.
QED.

It's input and it's output (#1-4) are physical and measurable, but it, itself, is not.

Its the same reason I don't believe in God. I can never get a consistent answer from people about what constitutes divinity-- as this thread evidenced before you and I started arguing.

Referring back to my old Parsimony/Occum's Razor/Tree in the Woods analogy,
If two people start arguing over the type of truck it was, or if it was a car instead of a truck, that makes it more complex, and you won't get a consistent answer from people about what vehicle it was, but it doesn't make "B" incorrect. It just means that "A" has more depth than "B", and once again, you're ignoring the broken glass and tree scar, saying that ignoring them altogether as coincidence and choosing option "A" would somehow make more sense.

If people can't agree on the type of God there is, that makes it more complex, and you won't "get a consistent answer from people about what constitutes divinity", but that doesn't automatically make all religion incorrect, it only means that one of them is correct, making it more difficult and complicated to find the truth. But because it's so complicated, you're choosing to ignore the broken glass and tree scarring as coincidence or some other process you aren't entirely sure of.

What's really amusing is when atheists argue that the mindset for religion comes from human psychology and not vice-versa. It's the equivalent of arguing that the glass and tree scars are naturally occurring - your evidence that they naturally occur is that they exist.

And the best part is when the argument comes up that religion matches the world so well - then you say that religion has formed and adapted to fit the world - which is essentially the same as arguing that the theory has formed to match the evidence.

To avoid an incorrect perception of me; I don't believe in the magical mystics of creationism. I just had to get that out of the way. But if we go into religion we had might as well start a new thread, this discussion on Qualia has already taken up space that was supposed to be for Godhood.

[Formless]

[I covered this with my example of the geocentric and heliocentric models. Parsimony only takes effect when both hypothesis are equal in their ability to accurately predict and describe the specific thing they claim to describe. In this case, that's everything. And in this case, they aren't equal. Saying sentience is nothing more than some sort of ghost in the machine that comes about when so many neurons are arranged just so, simply opposes the single direct observation we can make of subjective experience, that only single direct observation being our own minds. It's a nice idea in the sense that it means we've already uncovered the mystery, but it doesn't explain sentience nearly so well as does the idea of Qualia as a raw property of something, just as electromagnetic field strength is a raw property of something.

And how does it not, fucknuts? You won't even define your goddamn terms WHEN DIRECTLY ASKED TO DO SO! You never answered my challenge to define Sentience, and your answer to "what is Qualia" was a concession that you couldn't articulate what it was leaving me to go by how you use the term in practice. Hell, for that matter, I don't think you even know what the word "perception" means. Perception, as I already explained, is a subjective phenomenon that is only ever self-reported, and indeed the word itself refers to how you understand the world. It does NOT refer to raw sensory data or the objects that would be perceived. When you take away all the other things the brain does like compute the data sent to it from the eye, perception stops being reported: ergo, it stops existing. This is unlike mass and energy which obey conservation laws. What part of this is so hard for you to understand?

And that is what makes your arguments insane to me. Based on your language you appear to assume the universe needs to be observed in order to exist, whereas I think this is inconsistent with the history of the universe we have observed. I don't know if this is intentional on your part considering your odd (when existent) definitions, but its certainly a WTF moment every time I read it.

It's not parsimony to cut out something because you call it useless and it's difficult to understand or even discuss.

Exactly why I now think your mistake is even more fundamental. In order to talk about an idea or thing, you need a coherent understanding of what it is. Otherwise, you run into the problem of creating answers in search of questions.

To show you what I mean, lets take a look at a variation on the inverted spectrum argument. Take a hypothetical machine that allows you to see through another person's eyes and perceive things the way they do. At first you report that all the colors are wrong! Then the technician working the machine makes a few adjustments and asks you how things look now. You report seeing light as sound. He makes more adjustments until you report that things appear normal to you. Are you starting to get what this means? "Perception" can be verified to exist, but it can also be verified to be subjective, intrinsically tied to the person it belongs to. At best, you can achieve linguistic consensus that certain things appear "red" or that a given song is played in the key of C: likewise that certain people cannot distinguish certain colors from each other (red-green colorblindness) or hear certain high frequency sounds based on their behavior. But the idea that red and C sharp are metaphysical "Qualia" that exist extrinsic to human experience or the functioning of the brain is incoherent.

And the best part is, your answer looking for a question isn't even a good answer! Sometimes you use Qualia as referring to the object to be sensed/perceived (as with your mass example), other times you refer to the subjective experience as if it were an object unto itself (implicit in the thought experiments you've linked to). You still haven't denied this point, for all the bloody walls of text you've managed to erect.

If people can't agree on the type of God there is, that makes it more complex, and you won't "get a consistent answer from people about what constitutes divinity", but that doesn't automatically make all religion incorrect, it only means that one of them is correct, making it more difficult and complicated to find the truth. But because it's so complicated, you're choosing to ignore the broken glass and tree scarring as coincidence or some other process you aren't entirely sure of.

Why does it make only one religion correct? Monotheistic religions are the exception, not the norm. I can only count five of them off the top of my head: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Jainism. Polytheistic religions? Remembering that a dead religion is no less valid in the counting than living religions: Hinduism, Shinto, Wicca, Greek mythology, Nordic mythology, Egyptian mythology, Mesopotamian mythology, Aztec mythology, Incan mythology, certain branches of Bhuddism (though most are agnostic), and Catholicism (if you ask Muslims, the Holy Trinity should be considered a de facto pantheon of three gods). And that is just off the top of my head! This by itself makes defining divinity a headache, because you have two mutually exclusive concepts going on here.

Imagine if tomorrow Zeus came down from his throne on Olympus carrying a lightning bolt and starts up this debate with a burning bush that talks, smites sinners to hell and claims to be Yahweh. Its obvious that both "gods" exist despite their different natures, but would this invalidate Yahweh's claim that he is the One True God? Or is Zeus now something else?

I should note that of the god concepts I have found that were coherent, none of them has yet to satisfy the other conditions for me believing in them. Some are ridiculous on their face (the ever poopular Great Bearded Man in the Sky), others are unfalsifiable to the point of being pointless (Brahma, the god who dreams the universe into existence, and who therefore is the universe), and then there is the Einstein god which is really just the laws of nature by another name (apologies to Einstein, but that's just lame).

[Eagle1Division]

And how does it not, fucknuts? You won't even define your goddamn terms WHEN DIRECTLY ASKED TO DO SO! You never answered my challenge to define Sentience, and your answer to "what is Qualia" was a concession that you couldn't articulate what it was leaving me to go by how you use the term in practice. Hell, for that matter, I don't think you even know what the word "perception" means. Perception, as I already explained, is a subjective phenomenon that is only ever self-reported, and indeed the word itself refers to how you understand the world. It does NOT refer to raw sensory data or the objects that would be perceived. When you take away all the other things the brain does like compute the data sent to it from the eye, perception stops being reported: ergo, it stops existing. This is unlike mass and energy which obey conservation laws. What part of this is so hard for you to understand?

I'm not sure you're even reading my entire posts anymore.

Sentience, Qualia, the "Observer", or whatever different names we've been using for it, is raw observation, independent of what is being observed. You observe everything in your mind, Sensory Input, Computational Ability, and Knowledge. But the key point is that you observe them, which means your observation is not one of them: sensory input, computational ability, or knowledge, it is something else. Another reason it seems that observation is something else is that it has one key, defining, different property:
sensory input, computational ability, and knowledge are all physically measurable and verifiable. This "thing", observation, Qualia, sentience, whatever you call it, is not verifiable. Therefore it is something different from sensory input, computational ability and knowledge.

There you go, I just defined it. For perhaps the fifth time, or so. I said it was hard to define, not impossible, but I have found a way to articulate it and I just did.

It is, in fact, intangible. Because I hate to break it to you, but something exists that - gasp - is intangible. The Visual Spectrum argument is key proof of this. Our very perception is intangible, but this shouldn't come as a shock - since we already know some things in nature aren't tangible (Like math, or whatever the heck causes gravity, or higher dimensional branes).

And finally, I can see a pattern beginning to emerge in your arguments. Like the earlier debate you had in this thread, where you flat-out lost but continued to blind yourself to your errors and declared your idea of Godhood was perfect, you are once again flat-out ignoring my answers to your questions, and screaming that I can't answer them, when in fact, I am, and I have many times. That's why I sound like a "broken record", because you somehow glaze over my text and don't even read what I type, and ask the same questions that I've already answered again and again.

By the way, my entire argument is that perception does follow a sort of conservation law, that it is an intrinsic quantum property to matter as is energy or magnetic field strength. Although your responses have been less than pleasant, I am glad I've decided to continue as it's allowed me to flesh out my own ideas and strengthen them.

Flat-out saying that I'm wrong, by saying that there is no conservation of perception without any argument to back it up, is not a good argument, and if that's you're argument then I've defeated you long ago. I need you to stand up to my argument and say what the matter is with it, instead of ignoring it's key underlying structures.

I know in school and college they teach you to argue and win against opponents; but IMO arguments should be more centered around finding truth, not winning. If I found your argument compelling, I would gladly accept a new model. But there are fundamental flaws in your model, which says that nothing intangible exists, yet something very intangible most definitely exists, according to, using something we can both agree is correct; the inverted spectrum argument.

Now, Let me recap on my QED, since apparently you missed it, it was one of the dozen times I defined Qualia:

We can keep going back and forth challenging the other that the universe is physical or non-physical, but I will just point out that once again you are breaking with parsimony by adding in a meaningless term to absolutely everything-- perception. Perception is only ever self reported which means that it is impossible to verify that one person's experiences are necessarily the "same" as another person's. You might as well ask whether you are sane or delusional-- only an outside observer can verify, and that's assuming the outside observer is himself sane. [...]

Let's point out the key part here:

...Perception is only ever self reported which means that it is impossible to verify that one person's experiences are necessarily the "same" as another person's....

There it is, you noting that there's such thing as experience that cannot be cross-verified, which is what Qualia is. You complain it's a meaningless term, then you admit it does exist. Our purpose is to find the truth, isn't it?

As you said, it cannot be cross-verified, everything else known about the human brain and it's computational nature by neurochemical process can be cross-verified because they're physical and measurable. Yet this thing, this "perception", you just stated cannot be cross-verified. If it were physical in some way, it could be cross-verified, but because it can't be you just admitted it's not. So this perception can not be a computational nature of the brain by neurochemical process, because it's not physical. It has to be something else, otherwise it would be cross-verifiable along with everything else in the brain.
QED.

It's input and it's output (#1-4) [memory, knowledge, sensory input and computational ability] are physical and measurable, but it [perception], itself, is not.

And that is what makes your arguments insane to me. Based on your language you appear to assume the universe needs to be observed in order to exist, whereas I think this is inconsistent with the history of the universe we have observed. I don't know if this is intentional on your part considering your odd (when existent) definitions, but its certainly a WTF moment every time I read it.

Tell me, where in the world, did I ever say or imply this? The universe does NOT need to be observed to exist. I'm very interested to see how you go from: "Perception is a quantum property of matter" to "Universe must be observed to exist". You seem to be arguing against Plato, not me!

Exactly why I now think your mistake is even more fundamental. In order to talk about an idea or thing, you need a coherent understanding of what it is. Otherwise, you run into the problem of creating answers in search of questions.

Do I need to define it for the twentieth time? I've lost count.

To show you what I mean, lets take a look at a variation on the inverted spectrum argument. Take a hypothetical machine that allows you to see through another person's eyes and perceive things the way they do. At first you report that all the colors are wrong! Then the technician working the machine makes a few adjustments and asks you how things look now. You report seeing light as sound. He makes more adjustments until you report that things appear normal to you. Are you starting to get what this means? "Perception" can be verified to exist, but it can also be verified to be subjective, intrinsically tied to the person it belongs to. At best, you can achieve linguistic consensus that certain things appear "red" or that a given song is played in the key of C: likewise that certain people cannot distinguish certain colors from each other (red-green colorblindness) or hear certain high frequency sounds based on their behavior. But the idea that red and C sharp are metaphysical "Qualia" that exist extrinsic to human experience or the functioning of the brain is incoherent.

Woah, woah, woah! Hold on buddy! You just gave a thought experiment where an imaginary machine could physically verify the existence of perception and cross-reference it to another perception. Then you went on to say that that proves that my idea of perception is wrong.

So, to simplify things, you said:

[Say, a machine existed which could physically verify and cross reference perception ... And see! It's possible to physically verify and cross reference perception!]

In other words, it's more like:

[Say, there's a machine that proves you're wrong ... And see! There's proof you're wrong!]

Thought experiments don't work like that.

And the best part is, your answer looking for a question isn't even a good answer! Sometimes you use Qualia as referring to the object to be sensed/perceived (as with your mass example), other times you refer to the subjective experience as if it were an object unto itself (implicit in the thought experiments you've linked to). You still haven't denied this point, for all the bloody walls of text you've managed to erect.

I will admit I haven't solved the mystery of exactly what Qualia is. Indeed, at times I've referred to it as an object and at others as a property of matter. To be more clear, I can refer to a magnetic field as an object. I can also refer to magnetic field strength as a property of matter. It is in this same sense that I am referring to Qualia.

If people can't agree on the type of God there is, that makes it more complex, and you won't "get a consistent answer from people about what constitutes divinity", but that doesn't automatically make all religion incorrect, it only means that one of them is correct, making it more difficult and complicated to find the truth. But because it's so complicated, you're choosing to ignore the broken glass and tree scarring as coincidence or some other process you aren't entirely sure of.

Why does it make only one religion correct? Monotheistic religions are the exception, not the norm. I can only count five of them off the top of my head: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Jainism. Polytheistic religions? Remembering that a dead religion is no less valid in the counting than living religions: Hinduism, Shinto, Wicca, Greek mythology, Nordic mythology, Egyptian mythology, Mesopotamian mythology, Aztec mythology, Incan mythology, certain branches of Bhuddism (though most are agnostic), and Catholicism (if you ask Muslims, the Holy Trinity should be considered a de facto pantheon of three gods). And that is just off the top of my head! This by itself makes defining divinity a headache, because you have two mutually exclusive concepts going on here.

Imagine if tomorrow Zeus came down from his throne on Olympus carrying a lightning bolt and starts up this debate with a burning bush that talks, smites sinners to hell and claims to be Yahweh. Its obvious that both "gods" exist despite their different natures, but would this invalidate Yahweh's claim that he is the One True God? Or is Zeus now something else?

I should note that of the god concepts I have found that were coherent, none of them has yet to satisfy the other conditions for me believing in them. Some are ridiculous on their face (the ever poopular Great Bearded Man in the Sky), others are unfalsifiable to the point of being pointless (Brahma, the god who dreams the universe into existence, and who therefore is the universe), and then there is the Einstein god which is really just the laws of nature by another name (apologies to Einstein, but that's just lame).

Goodness gracious! You even hold no respect to Albert Einstein!
Of course you won't believe in a God, such a being would dethrone you in your own mind!
I have a hunch professor Einstein's view on God was more of a unity of all the universe in a single object, word, or concept. Just as I am a compilation of all the matter and property that makes up my body, God according to Einstein in the 40's would be a compilation of all matter and the properties of it in the universe.
Those only conveys a most basic understanding of the way he saw things. I wish I could see things half as amazingly as he did! He intuitively uncovered relativity during his spare time as a patent clerk, for goodness sake! I believe the only reason you could ever call his concept of God rediculous is because you can't comprehend it. I don't think I can comprehend it, because obviously it held great significance to him at the time. I think he did have some feeling of the Universe having a personality and an identity, and that's what he called God. Like most geniuses, he wasn't great at conveying his thoughts.
Give or take, though, that's my personal thoughts, I've got no proof or anything of that sort; it just makes sense to me (In reference to Eintsein's view on God).

Anyways, all you've done is support my argument. You haven't challenged it in any way. I said that you're disregarding religion because it's too complicated, and then you talk about how complicated it all is. You supported me, there.

I would like to ask what your conditions are for believing in them, as you said, but my guess is, like most people, you're looking for magic, not religion. To find it in today's society where the world is far better understood, you have to realize that religion does not mean magic.

Unless, of course, you mean magic as in something of the natural world that isn't well understood. In which case religion very much is magic. But, using this definition, the observable mysteries of the universe would be magic; such as it's expansion, and the fact that ~90% of it's mass seems to be missing.



Returning to the discussion at hand; don't be surprised if I stop responding. Your method of argument seems to be more along the lines of throwing insults and ignoring my text. You said earlier you could argue while angry and still remain level-headed and logical. Now I argue that no, you can't, you aren't, and that's fundamentally impossible. If you just ask the same questions I've already answered before, then from here I will, or I should, ignore your post because I don't want to be a broken record and repeat myself again. Your failure to understand me, then call me wrong because you don't, is not my fault. You should take into consideration that maybe you need to read my entire post, and that possibly you've misunderstood me if I seem to be doing something strange. I should accept some responsibility if I'm being unclear, but if you don't ask and try to understand me, then it's your fault. I'm trying as hard as I can to be understood, however you seem to be making little effort to understand me in a way that makes sense.

If you feel you don't understand me, then state what you believe I think. This is how we've made the most progress, through mutual attempts at mutual understanding. So far the only way you can continue arguing is if there's a misunderstanding, because as far as I can see, I proved my point in the last post, and it has yet to be undermined.

[SpaceMarine93]

Gentlemen, please calm down. This isn't a battlefield to carry out a massive flame war on, this is a thread dedicated to the rational discussion of the dilemmas and consequences of Godhood in all sense and other ideas related to it. Do try to avoid insulting each other or avoid being too emotional and passionate, it is a staple of lack of intelligence (I tried it before on several threads and everybody called me an idiot). Let's just continue this discussion in a rational manner, please?

Anyways. Surely you two are intelligent people, but I believe the way you two present your points in this argument had progressed to the point that I doubt even some of the smartest people on this site understands your points. Its confusing in organization and mixed with insults. Would you two mind if you could summarize your points a bit, into a nutshell?

[Eagle1Division]

Thank you, and sure.

First, I want to define a term and stick to it. I'll use the word "perception", from here on out.

Perception is your ability to perceive... What I mean by that, is this:
Everything the human brain is capable of is well understood to be a direct result of the arrangement of neurons and neurochemical reactions in the brain. We can identify different types of brain damage responsible for effects on blindness, loss of hearing, or anything related to the senses. Along these same lines we've varified that the brain's neurons are responsible for our thinking, our reasoning, all the knowledge we have and our 5 senses.

Now, to sum up, the neurological systems in the brain are clearly responsible for 3 things:
(I'll use 3 now, before I used 4, but I had 2 types of data - memory and knowledge - I'll compact those into just "data")
#1: Reasoning and logic / Computational ability. Think of this as RAM on a computer.
#2: Sensory Input. Anything related to interpreting or receiving our 5 senses is in this category.
#3: Knowledge or memory. / Data. Both of those are types of data, like you would find on a hard drive.
(From here on out I'll refer to these by their numbers, usually by saying: "#1-3")

What remains, though, is our perception, which is separate from those 3 things. I may be mistaken, but I believe this is the cause of the debate, that Formless disagrees and believes that perception is somehow within those 3 things.

Perception is what would be called Qualia. It's your raw perception of the universe: It's all feeling, sensation, emotion, as you perceive them. It's impossible in any way to communicate information directly from your perception. For example, I may call a strawberry red, and you may call it red, too. But wherever you see red, I may see green instead, and wherever you see green I could see red. But we would never know, because I would spend my entire life calling green red, and red green. There would be no way to ever communicate this difference. It would be physically impossible to ever detect it in any way.

Which leads me to the first key of my argument, which is that you can't prove that anyone has perception of any kind. You can prove that they have #1, #2, and #3, but perception you cannot prove unless you actually are the perceiver. I may not see red at all, in fact, I may not see anything at all. I may merely act like I see something but not actually see it, or I may merely act like I feel something while I don't actually feel it, in the same way that a Furby will act like it feels hungry when it doesn't actually feel hungry.

The second key of my argument is that perception can't be #1, 2, or 3, because perception perceives all of them. In order to perceive them, it cannot be one of them. It must be higher up on a hierarchy in order to perceive them. If it were one of those things, one of two things would happen:
A) It would perceive itself, and because perception would perceives itself, it would create an infinite loop, much like a camera that's pointed at a monitor displaying whatever the camera shows. An infinity shot. Much like how a camera will see nothing but the monitor an infinite number of times because of this, perception would be unable to perceive anything other than itself an infinite number of times if it could perceive itself, and you would be incapable of perceiving anything other than your perception, an infinite number of times.
(Think of it like a function. P is for perception, P(x) means that perception perceives X. If perception perceives itself, then P(P). But you've got to include P(P(P)), but then you've got to include P(P(P(P))), and eventually you get: P(P(P(P(P(P(P(P(P add infinitum.)
B) If it wouldn't perceive itself, then whatever causes it wouldn't be perceived. In other words, if it wouldn't be perceived, it wouldn't be perceived. That's pretty darn simple. But what this means is that one of, or all three of those things would be missing. Because I perceive #1-3, and perception cannot perceive itself, perception cannot be #1-3.

However, it does not perceive itself. We know it exists because we are perceiving at all, and our logical center, #1, tells us that it must exist in order for us to perceive. So the model of it being separate avoids this paradox.

Both of these keys to my argument show that perception exists, and that perception is not anything that we can physically show to exist. Therefore, perception cannot come as a result of any known neurochemical systems within the brain. That's my argument. Anything past this point is just a neat Idea that I cannot claim to back up, but it seems intuitive to me.

(I'm sorry, that's a REALLY BIG nutshell )



Now, because I've said perception as a neurochemical system is impossible, what I propose is a replacement for the idea (It's rude to try to get rid of an old idea without a replacement of any kind).

This replacement simply states that perception is a property of matter, at some level or other. I don't profess to understand it fully, but perception must be some quantum property of matter, just as magnetism is a property of matter. We can measure magnetism because it interacts with other particles, and exerts a force on mass. But perception we can only measure from the very fact that we perceive at all, which, IMO, is good enough proof that it exists, except because it exerts no force on mass, we cannot measure any perception other than our own.

To expound on the new model a little further; a non-magnetized material is non-magnetic because the particles' magnetic field lines aren't lined up, and they cancel eachother out. But a magnet works when all the particles are lined up, and the tiny magnetic fields add to eachother and create an enormous magnetic field the size of trillions of atoms, a bar magnet, or the magnets in the computer you're reading this on.

In this same sort of sense that organization of quantum particles can lead to large-world effects in magnetism, I hypothesize that organization of quantum particles can lead to a large-world perception, that allows our perception to interact with our brains, so that we perceive #1-3.


My challenge is to see if Formless can come up with a better model, since if you say perception comes from neurochemical process other than #1-3, then you must then explain exactly how perception can come about as a result of chemical reactions. To be frank, I think that idea is rather silly, and makes the huge, bold, unlikely assumption that perception can come about as a result of chemical reactions.

[Eagle1Division]

Edit:

We've concluded that perception both exists, and that it is not measurable or detectable except by itself.
(Except, then I showed through logical paradox, that perception could not detect or measure itself. Which makes a very curious thing! Cannot be detected by anything other than itself, but cannot detect itself! Rather, it can only detect what it detects other than itself! Extraordinary! )


So why not assign this property to matter, rather than make the bold, enormous assumption that if I can set up enough levers correctly (chemical reactions are physical interactions on the atomic level, nothing more than a lever), then I can create a perceiving being, and that the brain has these levers, and we get our perception from there?

That makes two, no three huge assumptions (Levers can create perception, brain has levers, our perception is brain with levers).

Meanwhile, assigning perception to matter streamlines the model: Perception is a property of matter.

Parsimony.

And more importantly, it un-necessitates that absurd notion that if I set up enough levers correctly I can create a perceiving being!

[SpaceMarine93]

Thanks, I think i could now understand it better... I think.

[GeneralERA]

That was an interesting summing up Eagle, and while I may tend to agree with you that perhaps 'perception' is disassociated with rationality, knowledge, etc., I do not quite understand your assertion that 'perception' is a property of matter. What does this mean?

Perhaps one cannot disprove the idea that any arrangement of matter possesses this perception, but the inability to disprove an assertion is not proof of the assertion. Surely the very idea that discrete arrangements of matter exist as 'objects' is a simple consequence of the human tendency to categorize patterns in nature. The perception you experience is the basis for your ideas, but in a physical sense, you exist as a discrete entity solely to the extent that you exist as a human body. If I understand Formless correctly, he asserts that your biological existence leads to your perception, which seems to me a much more reasoned position than your idea that for some reason, while matter has the inherent property of perception, only specific forms and patterns of matter manifest that perception.

Am I understanding the argument correctly?

[Formless]

Perception is your ability to perceive... What I mean by that, is this:
Everything the human brain is capable of is well understood to be a direct result of the arrangement of neurons and neurochemical reactions in the brain. We can identify different types of brain damage responsible for effects on blindness, loss of hearing, or anything related to the senses. Along these same lines we've varified that the brain's neurons are responsible for our thinking, our reasoning, all the knowledge we have and our 5 senses.

Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information.

You don't get to redefine terms to suit your agenda. English makes a distinction between sensation and perception. Eg: I see words on my screen =! I perceive Eagle1Division to be a dishonest fuckwit. The very definition of the word indicates that cognition and judgement is involved. Go about this however you will, but please do not abuse the English language. This is like having a discussion with a six day Creationist who insists on using his own warped definition of evolution even when told directly by biologists that it is simply not evolution as they understand it. Even when he is right, he's still wrong.

What remains, though, is our perception, which is separate from those 3 things. I may be mistaken, but I believe this is the cause of the debate, that Formless disagrees and believes that perception is somehow within those 3 things.

Yes, that and the absolutely retched ethical solipsism that logically flows from this pointless metaphysics.

Perception is what would be called Qualia. It's your raw perception of the universe: It's all feeling, sensation, emotion, as you perceive them. It's impossible in any way to communicate information directly from your perception. For example, I may call a strawberry red, and you may call it red, too. But wherever you see red, I may see green instead, and wherever you see green I could see red. But we would never know, because I would spend my entire life calling green red, and red green. There would be no way to ever communicate this difference...

Ergo, there is no difference. Why must I spell out for you what should be an obvious deduction? Language reflects cognition in the brain, if imperfectly: it is unnecessary from an epistemological point of view to posit that one entity reporting perception is any more or less capable of perception than another regardless of material differences between their brains. You might want to reflect on the implications of the computational concept Turing Completeness, and the fact that as the inventors of computers we humans should also be Turing Complete.

That is what the inverted spectrum machine thought experiment was supposed to demonstrate: you didn't actually bother to understand it and instead went for the dishonesty of openly putting words into my mouth. You claim it requires a specific mechanism of the mind's function, when in fact the machine makes sense regardless of how the mind manipulates or utilizes sensory data. It could be a neuro-chemical brain made of living cells, silicon and lead circuit board, clockwork, or metaphysical Qualia, and the experiment would still work. Language allows the user to communicate with the operator that there is a discrepancy between what he now sees and what he usually sees: the operator, having common sense, then puts two and two together and translates the spectrum back to what the user thinks of as "normal". The process of translation is what is important here. If Qualia, which are self reported entities, can be translated into language just as easily as computational processes, the proposal that Qualia exist is not even wrong.

And that is the problem. All of your arguments and challenges to me simply assume that "Qualia" must be explained when the very necessity of their existence is in question. It is not the philosopher's job to create self serving questions nor to give answers in search of questions. By contrast, magnetism and gravity serve the purpose of explaining real, observed features of the universe and behaviors of matter whose existence is not in question by any but the insane.

But what is sad is that you actually think you can handwave away a perfectly fine holistic explanation for things like sentience and consciousness without so much as a hint of irony:

The second key of my argument is that perception can't be #1, 2, or 3, because perception perceives all of them. In order to perceive them, it cannot be one of them. It must be higher up on a hierarchy in order to perceive them. If it were one of those things, one of two things would happen:
A) It would perceive itself, and because perception would perceives itself, it would create an infinite loop, much like a camera that's pointed at a monitor displaying whatever the camera shows. An infinity shot. Much like how a camera will see nothing but the monitor an infinite number of times because of this, perception would be unable to perceive anything other than itself an infinite number of times if it could perceive itself, and you would be incapable of perceiving anything other than your perception, an infinite number of times.

If you had read the rest of the thread you would know that recursive processes like self awareness can actually change future behavior of a system in staggeringly complex ways, owing to the fact that a process has to, you know, actually be carried out in a finite number of steps and in a finite amount of time. Self awareness isn't just a sci-fi buzzword, you know, its an actual concept well developed by philosophers such as John Locke and Douglas Hofstadter. On the other hand, Qualia are a static unchaining "thing" and exist in all matter and yet only in humans (...somehow). What exactly makes you think that of that as the superior model of human consciousness?