Thanks, Brent.
The challenge here is that it seems to me you assume “redness” has a neurophysiological anchor that is consistent and independent of the rest of the context. But there are lots of reasons to suppose that redness does not have a direct one-to-one linkage with neurophysiological properties per se. That is, there may be lots of different kinds of neurological arrangements and histories that produce redness. Consider how the checkerboard illusion demonstrates the same external wavelength results in massively different interior experiences depending on context…

[cid:image001.png@01D68CC6.342DD340]

Consider also that my brain’s pathway to generate greyness might not be your brain’s pathway. To see what I mean, consider how some individuals have remarkable brain pathology (i.e., huge parts of the brain are missing) but develop in relatively normal ways (e.g., see here<https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20141216-can-you-live-with-half-a-brain>.)

My point here is that “greyness” is not necessarily tied to one thing the brain in all species is doing. Or at least, there is very good reason to believe that is not the case. And given where things are, if I interpreted you correctly, I disagree with your conclusion that the hard problem is either not hard or solved. (And this is just one of the reasons…there are many).

Best,
Gregg




From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Brent Allsop
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2020 1:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: sorting out the way to talk about behavior, mind and consciousness


Hi Gregg,

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 6:09 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Does anyone have control over the Wiki Tree of Knowledge Entry? We need an update on that and I am not sure who put it up.

Are you talking wikipedia.org<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__wikipedia.org&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=zocMGsB2F2PKbV6zNlyupZnafSU_GuMwulvnrd_Na90&s=yT0CfPPss3DuYy2sjTHqQK9kqIOBSlMwLVpbqAap7YA&e=>?  Anyone can edit that, even anonymously, right?

Second, as we discussed during the 2019 TOK Conference at JMU, the hard problem surely remains, at least to some degree. Let me put it this way. Which animals are conscious and what kind of qualia do they experience and how do you know? If the hard problem was solved, “neurophenomenologists” could tell me exactly the kind of Mind2 a praying mantis, a bumble bee, a sardine, a squid, a cardinal, a rat, a baboon and a killer whale have. I have been reading up on the science of animal consciousness and they can’t. And the reason is clear: We don’t really understanding the explanatory ontological mechanism that enables perspectival experience to emerge.

RQT is not only predicting what is and isn't conscious, but what it is phenomenally like.  Once we discover what it is that has a redness quality, and what it is tha has a greenness quality, and the mechanism used to computationally bind them into one composite consciousness gestalt, we will be able to observe the same thing (or not) in other animals.  Once we know what it is that has a redness quality, if we objectively observe that in a bat, bumble bee, a sardine, rat, a computer, a thermostat...  we will not only know that it is conscious, we will know that it is like the elemental redness experienced by a certain percentage of the human population.  For example, if we observed the same redness and greenness qualitative stuff being rendered into similar gestalts in a bat using echolocation, we would know that it is like our visual redness and greenness to be that bat.  We use particular elemental qualities to represent our visual conscious knowledge.  Any other animal or machine that uses these colorness qualities to represent any types of knowledge, we'll be able to create objectiver detectors/observer, like Jack Galant is doing<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__youtu.be_6FsH7RK1S2E&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=zocMGsB2F2PKbV6zNlyupZnafSU_GuMwulvnrd_Na90&s=pkXUXYvfSx7ZsF_8RqU9TWsKT09Atdzf2ehWcm2inI0&e=> (using much more advanced detectors than just fMRIs), and project this data on screens to produce the same visual qualities in our brain - effing the ineffable.  And this is just the 1. weakest form of effing the ineffable.  There will also be the 2. stronger, and 3. strongest forms of effing the ineffable for all of this.

 For example, John’s in cognitive science and the metaphysics of Mind2 makes it quite clear (to me at least) that we should distinguish adjectival qualia (redness, greenesss) from adverbial qualia (the witnessing function that brings aspects together in a hereness, nowness, and togetherness). That folks can meditate and achieve a “pure consciousness event” that is essentially devoid of adjectival qualia is good phenomenological evidence that there is logic to separating the two functions. Relating this to RQT, it suggests there is both representational/modeling and aspectualizing.

Yes, the redness we experience when we look at something red should be distinguished between the best we can 'recall' or remember of redness when our eyes are closed.  But the same general objective/subjective, perceived from afar vs directly apprehended principles apply to it all.  There must be something physically different in our brain, which is both of these elemental phenomenal constituents of knowledge, and they both must be able to be computationally bound to make some kind of composite gestalt of these elemental intrinsic physics we directly apprehend, for which when we perceive from afar we will only have abstract descriptions of the physical behavior, still requiring a dictionary.

All conscious experiences, including anything experienced by talented meditators, are all composed of computationally bound elemental intrinsic qualities of some kind, like redness and greenness.  The intrinsic qualities of all that can both be directly apprehended, or the behavior of such can be objectively observed and abstractly described.  And it is true for all of it, that the qualitative nature can only be known by directly apprehending, even though we can objectively observe the behavior of all of it. right?

Brent



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