Qualia Blindness

[Brent.Allsop]

Hi Sculptor,
I didn't mean to dodge any questions. Could you ask them again, and I'll try not to miss them this time?

Is red one quale and green another quale?
Or are they both different qualia of colour?

Have I, or anyone here, said anything that means anything other than red and green are different components of colour?

[Atla]

Hi everyone,

Wow, all this eastern religious stuff is remarkably interesting. I’ve been studying all this in more detail online and on YouTube, trying to catch up with you all on this. However, most of this is a bit off topic with what we’re trying to accomplish with the “Theories of Consciousness” topic on Canonizer and more specifically with the “Representational Qualia Theory” emerging consensus camp we are trying to build and track as much scientific consensus as possible with (including tracking how much consensus there is against the ideas).

The general idea is that we are very sloppy with our epistemology of color (i.e. everyone, including most of the discussions here are qualia blind, as defined in RQT: only use one word for all things ‘red’)

There are currently about 40 of the 50 or so participating experts in the “Approachable Via Science” camp supporting RQT. A very significant amount of consensus that nobody has been able to achieve, anywhere. These 40 people have basically joined this camp, in support of the idea of the importance of improving our epistemology of color. Today, pretty much all of the peer reviewed articles in the world on the neuroscience of perception are completely ‘qualia blind’. In our opinion, this is a terrible problem that needs to be fixed, if we are to ever understand anything about the qualitative nature of consciousness, perception of color, and so on.

According to the supporters of RQT there are a set of ‘correct’ answers to all of the questions in this “Are you Qualia Blind” questioner. How many of you agree that these are the ‘correct’ answers, and that it is important for experimentalists studying perception to understand this (not be qualia blind)

If you agree that these are the ‘correct’ answers, could you help us amplify the wisdom of everyone by supporting at east RQT , if not one of (or create a new one) the supporting sub camps. And if the terminology in RQT can be improved, to better accommodate eastern philosophy, please help us with this, so we can build a better and more accurate scientific consensus about a good epistemology of color. I will do anything in my power to help ‘canonize’ all of you great ideas and integrate it all into this consensus building and tracking topic. The more people that participate, the more it amplifies the wisdom of everyone.

Please help push this field forward, so everyone can know and track, concisely and quantitatively, what all the experts think on this problematic topic. Instead of just nit picking and swearing at each other about what we disagree on, forever, let's find and focus on what we agree on, and change the world.
Hopefully,
Brent Allsop

Yeah you should ignore nondualism then, which solves the problem of consciousness and also refutes the RQT. The West isn't ready for it anyway for like another 50 years. And it has nothing to do with religion.

[Brent.Allsop]

any more than you can know that my green is your red.

You seem to have missed the part where I pointed out you can know this, simply by having different words for red and redness, and providing definitions, as is done in effing statements like: "My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red." And also me pointing out there are 1. week, 2. stronger, and 3. strongest forms of effing the ineffable, (see the accordingly named sections in this paper.) or methods of objectively discovering and verifying the connections between the abstract objective and qualitative subjective.

You missed the point is that when you say "redefine X", you expect a new English sentence and I expect an algorithm.

Algorithms work better in my model.

I guess I did miss this. Could you help me out by providing a simple "happy path" example of using an algorithm, instead of just a sentence, and the advantages of such?

[Skepdick]

You seem to have missed the part where I pointed out you can know this, simply by having different words for red and redness, and providing definitions, as is done in effing statements like: "My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red."

You are missing my point.

Your "definition" is not like mine. What is it like?

I guess I did miss this. Could you help me out by providing a simple "happy path" example of using an algorithm, instead of just a sentence, and the advantages of such?

Sure. Invent consciousness.

A machine that would convince you that it's conscious, much like you've convinced me that you are conscious.

Then the debate won't be over semantics (the meaning of words), but it would be over ostensive things that can be studied empirically.

[Brent.Allsop]

Yeah you should ignore nondualism then, which solves the problem of consciousness and also refutes the RQT. The West isn't ready for it anyway for like another 50 years. And it has nothing to do with religion.

You are probably right, the supporters of “RQT” may not yet be ready for what you are talking about. So in that case, you start a better, competing camp to “RQT”, and start to build consensus arround that. First you find one person to understand and join the camp. Then the 2 of you 4, 8, 16... And I bet it won't take 50 years, if there is indeed utility for everyone with such models. That's what we're doing with “RQT”

My current working hypothesis is that there is just a color problem, in that nobody knows the intrinsic color of anything. Or we don't know which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of redness. “RQT” is predicting that we can resolve this so called 'hard problem' by simply not being qualia blind. You seem to be talking about a different solution which may resolve a different 'hard problem' And I don't see how what you are talking about can help anyone bridge the explanatory gap, or discover the intrinsic color of anything?

[Brent.Allsop]

I guess I did miss this. Could you help me out by providing a simple "happy path" example of using an algorithm, instead of just a sentence, and the advantages of such?

Sure. Invent consciousness.

It sounds to me like you are asking me to "invent" a new color, or something? Maybe call it grue, or something? Maybe something like that would be possible, if functionalism can be experimentally verified, and someone comes up with a new 'function' that results in a new grueness experience? But I'm in the camp that predicts intrinsic colors are simply properties of particular molecules, and that you don't 'Invent' grue, you discover it.

Then the debate won't be over semantics (the meaning of words), but it would be over ostensive things that can be studied empirically.

Yes, I think we are in violent agreement. It is all about ostensive things that can be objectively verified. It isn't about semantics or abstract words, it is about the physical definition of those words. And the definition must be a falsifiable pointer to something, whether that be glutamate, or some program. If someone experiences grueness, while no glutamate is present, glutamate = grueness theory falsified. You seem to be predicting grueness can result from some new function or 'program'? Could you provide a falsifiable simple example of such a program that has a new intrinsic grueness quality, so experimentalists could test that? Then it's all up to the experimentalists. If experimentalists discover that glutamate has a gruenness quality, and nobody can falsify that. And nobody can find any function that results in grueness - we then verifiably know which theory is THE ONE, and which theory must be abandoned or considered falsified, right?

[Skepdick]

It sounds to me like you are asking me to "invent" a new color, or something? Maybe call it grue, or something?

After you invent it you can call it what you want - the name is immaterial.

What's important is whether you can recognize it.

Maybe something like that would be possible, if functionalism can be experimentally verified, and someone comes up with a new 'function' that results in a new grueness experience?

But we already performed this experiment with AlexW (look further back in the thread)?

I asked him whether THIS COLOR produces the same experience as THIS COLOR.

He informed me that it does,
And I informed him that they are, in fact, different colors. By design (they have different digital representation).

So I have, in fact invented a new color. It LOOKS like "red" to AlexW, but it isn't.

Yes, I think we are in violent agreement. It is all about ostensive things that can be objectively verified. It isn't about semantics or abstract words, it is about the physical definition of those words.

It goes deeper than that.

You are missing the concept of continuity. And the distinction between continuous and discrete functions.
The light spectrum is continuous, not discrete.

So your approach already fails at the mathematical level of empiricism. How many colors are there?
If you can see N colors, I can see M colors and M < N you can never explain any of your extra experiences to me in any language that I will understand.

This is empirically easier than "my red is your green". If we can't even agree on the NUMBER of colors, then we are already doing something wrong.

And the definition must be a falsifiable pointer to something, whether that be glutamate, or some program.

The "something" is continuous - the light spectrum. Colors are discrete.

If someone experiences grueness, while no glutamate is present, glutamate = grueness theory falsified. You seem to be predicting grueness can result from some new function or 'program'? Could you provide a falsifiable simple example of such a program that has a new intrinsic grueness quality, so experimentalists could test that? Then it's all up to the experimentalists. If experimentalists discover that glutamate has a gruenness quality, and nobody can falsify that. And nobody can find any function that results in grueness - we then verifiably know which theory is THE ONE, and which theory must be abandoned or considered falsified, right?

It's difficult for me to respond to this - your thinking is grounded in words, not in quantities.

You are not considering the example I just provided you.

Somebody is NOT experiencing <whatever name you choose to give to the color I invented>.

[Skepdick]

It sounds to me like you are asking me to "invent" a new color, or something? Maybe call it grue, or something?

My point is trivial.

How many colors do you see here?
Which one is "red" ?

color selector - Google Search 2020-05-25 22-48-55.png (3 KiB) Viewed 3105 times

[Brent.Allsop]

I asked [AlexW] whether THIS COLOR produces the same experience as THIS COLOR.

He informed me that it does,
And I informed him that they are, in fact, different colors. By design (they have different digital representation).

So I have, in fact invented a new color. It LOOKS like "red" to AlexW, but it isn't.

You are proving you are qualia blind, by conflating abstract representations of color, most often physically represented by different voltages on sets of wires, with the intrinsic qualities of AlexW’s conscious knowledge that results from such.

My point is trivial.

And your point is qualia blind. Again, all you are doing is adding more abstract bits of resolution to the number of words or representations of colors you are using. Nowhere, do you give any intrinsic definitions any of those additional bit patterns can be labels for.

You even brag about a definition for a word like ‘redness’ or ‘xRR1111’ as being ‘irrelevant’, proudly self-proclaiming your colorblindness.

How many colors do you see here?
Which one is "red" ?

color selector - Google Search 2020-05-25 22-48-55.png

AlexW could be red/green color blind. This would be the case if he represented both the red wavelengths of light and the green wavelengths of light with your redness. You can’t communicate to such a person what your greenness is like, by just telling him there is a new color he has never experienced, and saying it is greenness. He has never experienced greenness.

You need to use the #2, stronger form of effing the ineffable, and take glycine (working hypothesis of what is intrinsically green) and computationally bind it into his consciousness. Then when you throw the switch, he will finally say: “oh THAT is what greenness is like”. Only then, will you have effed the ineffable quality of your greenness, bridged the explanatory gap by defining the word greenness for him, and finally become more than qualia blind.

[Skepdick]

You are proving you are qualia blind, by conflating abstract representations of color, most often physically represented by different voltages on sets of wires, with the intrinsic qualities of AlexW’s conscious knowledge that results from such.

I am not conflating anything I am just counting.

There were 2 colors on the screen.
AlexW only experienced 1.

And your point is qualia blind. Again, all you are doing is adding more abstract bits of resolution to the number of words or representations of colors you are using.

You have this exactly backwards. The number of colors you can recognize determines the number of words you need to speak about qualia.

Your eye can recognise about 10 million colors, but there are less than 1 million words in the entire English language! I have more numbers than I have English words. 23 bit resolution allows me speak about 8 million things.

There is no difference whether I call this RED or if I call it COLOR 16711680.
There is no difference whether I call this GREEN or if I call it COLOR 65280.

You are the one trying to map 10 million experiences into 1000 words. That's qualia blindness!

Nowhere, do you give any intrinsic definitions any of those additional bit patterns can be labels for.

I don't need to give definitions/labels - I SHOWED IT to you. Ostensively.

Give it a name.

You even brag about a definition for a word like ‘redness’ or ‘xRR1111’ as being ‘irrelevant’, proudly self-proclaiming your colorblindness.

You keep confusing your color-blindness for mine. I can see 10 million colors. I only TALK about 100.

AlexW could be red/green color blind. This would be the case if he represented both the red wavelengths of light and the green wavelengths of light with your redness. You can’t communicate to such a person what your greenness is like, by just telling him there is a new color he has never experienced, and saying it is greenness. He has never experienced greenness.

You are suffering from a terrible case of logocentrism!

I experience the colors that I experience. I don't need to give them names to know that where I see TWO you see ONE.

No labels - only counting.

You need to use the #2, stronger form of effing the ineffable, and take glycine (working hypothesis of what is intrinsically green)

What is "intrinsically green" is a wavelength of 495–570 nm

It's not exactly clear how you'd figure out that 495–570 nm light on my retina results in glycine, which results in "green".

and computationally bind it into his consciousness.

How? "Computation" and "consciousness" are abstract concepts, not physical ones.

What does "binding to them" look like in practice? Injecting glycine into AlexW's brain? It's a complex organ - where do you propose we stick the needle?

[Brent.Allsop]

It's not exactly clear how you'd figure out that 495–570 nm light on my retina results in glycine, which results in "green".

You simply watch the knowledge that is produced by the brain of someone, while you are showing that person different wavelengths of light.
You keep changing the light till you see glutamate. If you see glutamate (what most people use to represent red with), when you shine green light into this person's eyes, you will be able to tell them that they are special, and that their greenness is like most people's redness. They use the intrinsic quality of glutamate to represent redness with, while most everyone else uses the intrinsic quality of glutamate to represent red with. Comonly, the intrinsic quality of glutamate is called redness, and glycine grenness. But he is special, and has in inverted dictionary, which is intrinsic quality inverted.

What is "intrinsically green" is a wavelength with wavelength of 495–570 nm

I completely agree and nobody has said anything different than this. But this is ALL you are talking about, which is fine if that is all you are interested in. In your simplistic world, all you need is one word for all things green. Classic qualia blindness. You should own up to being qualia blind (using one word for all things green) and be proud that your model is more efficient for many tasks.

Now watch this Perception Inverted chapter in our video. Then tell me which is the correct qualitative definition of the term 'green'. Your greenness, or your invert's, who has been engineered to have a red/green inverter in his optic nerve, and the inverted person has also has been given a red green inverted dictionary for which physical qualities he defines to be redness and greenness.

If you don't want to model those kinds of intrinsic qualities, the qualia blind model you are using is better. But to most people, what something is qualitatively like is important to understanding phenomenal consciousness. In other words, we want to know what it is like to be a bat, not just to know how the bat behaves. We are interested in knowing and modeling if your redness is like my grenness, both of which we call red. Your qualia blind model is not up to the task of answering question such as: "What is redness like for you?"

[Skepdick]

You simply watch the knowledge that is produced by the brain of someone, while you are showing that person different wavelengths of light.

Simply? How?

What does "knowledge" look like in the brain? Where are you looking for it?

If "greenness" is glutamate, what is "knowledge"?

You keep changing the light till you see glutamate.

How do you even know that you are looking for glutamate? Why aren't you looking for plutamate, or nutamate, or any one of a 10 million possible molecules?

If you see glutamate (what most people use to represent red with),

How do you know that most people use glutamate to represent red with?

I completely agree and nobody has said anything different than this. But this is ALL you are talking about, which is fine if that is all you are interested in. In your simplistic world, all you need is one word for all things green.

But I am NOT talking about all things "green" - YOU are doing it and projecting it onto me.

What I am talking about is the experience caused by wavelength of 495–570 nm, which we happen to call "green".

So if your experience of 495–570 nm light is not the same my experience of 495–570 nm light, then what is it like?

Then tell me which is the correct qualitative definition of the term 'green'.

But I am NOT talking about the term "green". YOU ARE!!!

I am talking about

QUALE 1
QUALE 2
QUALE 3
QUALE 4

Your greenness

I don't have a "greenness". I have an experience caused by 495–570 nm light, which I happen to call "green".

I could have called it red, or blue. The term doesn't matter!

, or your invert's, who has been engineered to have a red/green inverter in his optic nerve, and the inverted person has also has been given a red green inverted dictionary for which physical qualities he defines to be redness and greenness.

But you said that redness is a property of conscious knowledge. Now it's a property of the inverter?

If you don't want to model those kinds of intrinsic qualities, the qualia blind model you are using is better. But to most people, what something is qualitatively like is important to understanding phenomenal consciousness.

But I already know what mu experiences are qualitative like - I am experiencing them. I don't need a linguistic description?

Your qualia blind model is not up to the task of answering question such as: "What is redness like for you?"

Well, lets play that game. Can your model map your own "redness" to a wavelength?

[AlexW]

It sounds like you think of the word ‘consciousness’ as a label for something different than this?

Yes, I do.

To sum it up in one sentence:
People (and really anything else) don't have consciousness, they are consciousness.

While this doesn't sound like a massive problem, it does essentially turn our whole world upside down (meaning the ideas we have about it).
While so far we have seen ourselves as separate, individual subjects perceiving and moving through an objective universe, now there is suddenly only consciousness (basically perceiving and moving through itself).

While this doesn't immediately change the way we interact (in a physical way) with our environment, it can open up new ways of thinking - thought (and especially the identification with conceptual parts of reality/consciousness) is gradually freed from acquired/learned/accepted limitations which might lead – maybe in another 50 years as Atla proposed – to a complete new way of looking at the world (and, as such, also at science and technology).

How far do I have to travel if, in reality, there is no distance?
I am not sure if it is possible to translate this "new way" (its actually not new at all - its actually much much older than the way we see reality today) of thinking into technological progress, but if so, then its applications will make the invention of electricity look like something out of the stone age

Anyway, thats all speculation, but as long as a theory is based on defining consciousness as a property of an individual (which RQT, as well as pretty much all other theories do) there can, ultimately, be no common ground between this theory and "non-dualism".

See, non duality solves pretty much all so called "hard problems", but nobody wants this solution because it is "too simple" - we (our minds) want to work within a relativistic/objective universe and anybody who threatens to take this playground away from us is pronounced the enemy (or just: insane)
So lets keep on playing, build sand castles, knock them over and build better ones until... who knows...

[Brent.Allsop]

What does "knowledge" look like in the brain? Where are you looking for it?

Oh, OK. Good Question. You’re asking about a section of the video we are still working on, which will soon fully answers this question. You can already see most of it, if you know what to look for. And, this informaiton is contained in Steven Lehar’s work. (notice he is currently the top peer ranked expert in this field). In particular his “The world in your head.”

Let me summarize.

Basically, the simplest not yet falsified version of the model is as follows.

Take the 3D space you can see, and divide it up into a set of cubic pixels or voxels. Each of these voxels has a unique set of X,Y, and Z values as it’s spatial location in this 3D volume. Now, take a 3D volume of neurons, each neuron in the volume also having an x, y, and z address, of where that particular neuron exists in that volume of neurons. Now the eyes maps what it detects in each of the spots in this 3D volume it is looking at, into this volume of neurons. If the eye detects red light being reflected off of an x,y,z location on the surface of the strawberry, it flags the corresponding x,y,z, neuron to fire with the neurotransmitter glutamate (has an intrinsic redness quality). If the eye detects green light being reflected off of a leaf, at a different x,y,z location, it flags the neuron in that x,y,z, location to fire with glycine (greenness quality). So, you end up with 3D diorama of phenomenal knowledge, with 3D voxel models of the strawberry and leaves, representing what your eyes are seeing. In other words, there is what steve calls a "diorama" of knowledge in your brain, which our brain represents as if it was reality, itself.

You also need some kind of computational binding system, so all these pixels aren’t just stand alone (like in a TV or Camera) where they have no awareness of any of the other pixels. In other words, there is a set of computationally bound neurons, in the shape of the strawberry, all firing with glutamate, all computationally bound together, with the name ‘red’ and the name ‘strawberry’. There is a different set of pixels, in the shape of the leaf, all computationally bound with the word ‘green’ and ‘leaf’.

It is this volume of pixels, laid out in the primary visual cortex, Jack Galant is detecting, to produce his colored pixels of knowledge, in the brain, to display on the TV screen.

Does that help understand what we mean by the intrinsic qualities of conscious knowledge we are directly aware of?

[Brent.Allsop]

It sounds like you think of the word ‘consciousness’ as a label for something different than this?

Yes, I do.

To sum it up in one sentence:
People (and really anything else) don't have consciousness, they are consciousness.

OK, great, that is what I thought, we are talking about different things.

To me, the only “so called” hard problem is the explanatory gap, or discovering the intrinsic qualities of stuff in our brain. So, it seems to me you are incorrect in claiming your model “solves pretty much all so called ‘hard problem’”? As your model sheds no light, whatsoever, on the qualitative nature of consciousness or bridging the explanatory gap.

And in the agreement statement of the “Theories of Consciousness” topic, where we describe what we are trying to build consensus around, it explicitly states its goal is only about experimentally bridging the explanatory gap.

It sounds like what we need to do, is create another topic, and also add it to the “Consciousness Consensus Project.” It’s agreement statement could be something like: “The goal of this topic is to build consensus around solutions to “pretty much all so called “hard problems”’ except bridging the explanatory gap, and the qualitative nature of consciousness, which is covered in this different topic.

Thoughts?