Hi John,
I’m glad you at least mentioned the name, “red” of a physical quality. But are the physical properties of oxytocin, or the physical properties of anything in the retina anything like either of the physical qualities of these two things?
1. The physical properties that are the target of our observation. These properties initiate the perception process, such as a strawberry reflecting red light.
2. The physical properties within the brain that are the final results of the perception process. These properties comprise our conscious knowledge of a red strawberry. We experience this directly, as redness.
Other than the fact that we may be able to abstractly interpret some of these physical qualities, like we can interpret the word “red” as representing a redness physical quality? You can’t know what the word red (or anything in the eye representing anything) means, unless you provide a mechanical interpretation mechanism that get’s you back to the real physical quality they represent.
All abstract representations (including all computer knowledge) are abstracted away from physical qualities. Any set of physical qualities, like that of a particular physical cone in a retina, can represent a 1 (or anything else), but only if you have an interpretation mechanism to get the one, from that particular set of physics. Consciousness, on the other hand, represents knowledge directly on physical qualities, like redness and greenness. This is more efficient, since it requires less abstracting hardware.
############################Brent and TOKers, I am hypothesizing that consciousness is the net product of our physiology, which is vertically integrated from the unicellular state to what we think of as complex traits. In that vein, in the paper attached I proferred as an example the role of oxytocin in endothermy/homeothermy/warm-bloodedness. The pleiotropic effect of oxytocin on retinal cones and retinal epithelial cells would hypothetically account for seeing 'red' when looking at a strawberry, for example. It's the 'permutations and combinations' that form our physiology that cause such interrelationships due to our 'history', both short-term developmental and long-term phylogenetic. Hope that's helpful.########################################################Tim Henriques asked:
“What is your operational definition of consciousness?”
John Torday replied with his definition / model of consciousness.
Also, if you google for solutions to the “hard problem” of consciousness, you will find as many solutions as you care to take time to look into.
I’m sure all these models have some utility, when it comes to understanding various things about our consciousness, and our place in the world. But what I don’t understand is, why not a one of them include anything about the qualitative nature of consciousness? None of them give us anything that might enable us to bridge Joseph Levine’s “Explanatory Gap”. In other words, to me, they are all completely blind to physical qualities or qualia. In fact, as far as I know, all of “peer reviewed” scientific literature, to date, is obliviously qualia blind. Is not the qualitative nature of consciousness it’s most important attribute?
One important thing regarding conscious knowledge is the following necessary truth:
“If you know something, there must be something physical that is that knowledge.”
This implies there are two sets of physical qualities we must consider when trying to objectively perceive physical qualities:
1. The physical properties that are the target of our observation. These properties initiate the perception process, such as a strawberry reflecting red light.
2. The physical properties within the brain that are the final results of the perception process. These properties comprise our conscious knowledge of a red strawberry. We experience this directly, as redness.
If we seek to find what it is in our brain which has a redness quality, we must associate and identify the necessary and sufficient set of physics for a redness experience. For example, it is a hypothetical possibility that it is glutamate, reacting in synapses, that has the redness quality. If experimentalists could verify this, we would know that it is glutamate that has a redness quality. We would then finally know that it is glutamate we should interpret “red” as describing.
So, given all that, and given that consciousness is composed of a boat load of diverse qualia or physical qualities all computationally bound together, and if experimentalists can verify these predictions about the qualitative nature of various physical things. Would that not imply the following definitions?
“Intentionality, free will, intersubjectivity, self-awareness, desire, love, spirits… indeed consciousness itself, are all computational bound composite qualitative knowledge.”
As always, for more information, see the emerging expert consensus camp over at canonizer.com being called: “Representational Qualia Theory”.
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