Steve, I've heard you talk about transparent qualia like this before, and I've been pondering and studying this theory more since you've posted this info here. Do you have a more comprehensive description of this online somewhere? This is a compelling theory that I completely agree with, and I think we should get this canonized. I bet there is a good chance we could get this canonized at the well supported [http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 representational and real] level. Would you be interested in writing up a concise statement, perhaps with references to where this is more comprehensively described, that we could use as a proposed addition to the representational camp? Worst case, I know everyone in the nature has phenomenal properties (now including transparent ones) would support it at that level. I hope you'll join us, Steve, in that camp soon so I can show others, definitively, that there is more than just us that think this way. Also, my understanding is that Steve is the only one in this arises from anything camp that agrees with the 'corollary' paragraph he added. So would anyone here object if I removed that corollary paragraph from the camp statement? Brent Allsop

>>http://sharp.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/book2/Boundaries.html<< I'll try to read it in the next week or so.

On the subject of qualia, there is one quale which nobody ever talks about, and yet it is the most important and essential quale, one which we probably share with almost all mobile animals, and that is the invisible spatial quale. When you feel your way around in pitch darkness, or with eyes closed, you get a sense of where the walls and the voids between them are located, without "seeing" anything visual or even tactile (except at local contact points). The spatial world is "painted" in an invisible spatial quale that distinguishes empty voids from solid matter. Imagine a square cube hanging in space invisibly before you. Polish its imaginary faces with your palms. You can "know" the exact boundaries of this imaginary cube, wherever you choose to locate it, so your "knowledge" of the cube takes the form of a cube-shaped region of your phenomenal space, in which the "solid" interior is experienced in a distinctly different state than the empty void that surrounds it. This is the raw material of the basic spatial quale, and this one underlies all other sensory experience. When you see a cube visually, your mind automatically "paints in" the spatial quale corresponding to that cube, filling in not only its visible surfaces, but also its hidden volume and rear faces. The reason why nobody talks about this quale is that naive realists assume it to be the world itself, rather than an experience in your mind, ignoring of course that the spatial quale appears in dreams and hallucinations too. Philosophers explicitly exclude such experiences from their definition of experience, even though they are experienced nonetheless. How can something that is vividly experienced not be an experience? The spatial quale is the giant missing link in contemporary philosophy, nobody seems to notice that a zombie that lacks this spatial quale would of course be constantly bumping into walls. The spatial quale is the most basic and primal quale, and all the other sensory modalities use the spatial quale to provide the framework on which to "paint" the qualia of surface color, or tactile texture, or heat or cold, or whatever.

Steve, <<<< Can you get a black-and-white TV to display color? Maybe, but only by changing its essential wiring and structure to become what it is like? >>>> Yes, this is exactly what I am talking about. We have a fixed set of qualia or 'paints' we use to represent our knowledge with. Certainly there are more 'paints' out there than the small set our brains use. And certainly whatever neural correlate has the 'paint' that a bat's brain uses could also be implemented in our brain and used to change or augment our wiring and structure to become what it is like at the same time we are aware of a rainbow as we always have been able to do? This would be 'effing' the ineffable right? And it is what V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein talk about in their seminal [http://www.imprint.co.uk/rama/qualia.pdf Three laws of qualia] paper: "But if you skip the translation and use a cable of neurons, so that the nerve impulses themselves go directly to the area, then perhaps you'll say, 'Oh my God, I see what you mean.'" I've always assumed zombies to be as I defined them above, and argued that such is possible. But the way you are talking about them makes a lot of sense, and you are, for the first time educating me about the value of thinking about them this way. I've definitely got to read through and think about this information much more to get up to speed on all this. Thanks for helping me to see the error of my ways. <<< In my personal view, the very fact that we experience the world is by way of qualia, itself necessarily dictates that qualia pre-existed human minds, being a primal property of matter of which minds are constructed. >>> Wow, that is exactly and concisely what I'm attempting to state in the [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/7 Nature has Ineffable Properties camp]. I think it would sure be great if you could help us improve the current camp statement. Thanks Brent Allsop

>>>> Do you not believe that we will be able to connect human brains with bat brains with something that can do what the corpus calosum does? Or that we will be able to discover what neural correlate bat's use to represent their knowledge, and duplicate that in our minds, upon which we'll say something like: "Oh THAT is what it is like to be a bat?" and we will reliably and consistently really know what it is like? <<<< Can you get a black-and-white TV to display color? Maybe, but only by changing its essential wiring and structure to become a color TV. >>>> Also, as far as 'zombies' go. Our current computer systems are designed to use 'abstract' representations, for which what the representations are represented by, doesn't matter. Whether you represent red with a 0 or a zero, doesn't matter. <<<< Well in one sense it doesn't matter to the computations that need to be performed. Anything computed by digital computers could also be done with hydraulic systems using water pipes with valves. But in another sense it DOES matter, because you cannot do those computations with NO mechanism. You have to make a choice as to which mechanism you want to use to perform those computations, because information cannot exist without some kind of carrier to represent that information, and the same is true in experience, you cannot experience anything except as a modulation of some kind of carrier of which you are somehow already aware. >>>> So, would everyone agree that an 'abstract' machine, for which what it's knowledge is represented with by design doesn't matter, would be a zombie, compared to a phenomenal machine like us for which what we represent things with does matter? <<<< No, because even the "abstract" machine must be built with a specific technology, whether it be water pipes and valves, electricity in electronic circuits, or electrochemical activity in brains. The relationship of information content to the medium or "carrier" that carries it, is exactly the same as the relationship of experience to the qualia that carry that experience. In my personal view, the very fact that we experience the world is by way of qualia, itself necessarily dictates that qualia pre-existed human minds, being a primal property of matter of which minds are constructed. Steve

>>>> to show that zombies are impossible in principle you would have to show that consciousness is a necessary corollary of any sort of information processing. <<<< The zombie issue provides an excellent marker or litmus test on the correct ordering of one's epistemology. To even consider the theoretical possibility of the existence of zombies makes a clear statement about one's epistemology. In the "standard" epistemology, conscious experience is carefully sliced exactly at the level of qualia. Qualia are a part of consciousness, but the solid volumes whose bounding surfaces the color qualia are experienced to "paint", are not! When I experience a red sphere, the redness is part of my experience, but the spherical surface on which I see that red color is (supposedly) the sphere itself, not part of your experience. The fallacy of this view is exposed in the case of dreams and hallucinations, where colored surfaces are observed to "clothe" volumetric objects which clearly have no objective existence. But there is a significant difference between an experience of pure color, in the abstract, and the experience of color draping the surface of a volumetric object like a sphere, where that color is experienced to be extended throughout the volumetric surface of the experienced object. In the correct epistemology, it is not only the color of the sphere that is experienced, but also its spherical volume, bounded by the volumetric surface extending across some specific region of phenomenal space. The solid volumes are an essential part of the experience of a scene. In fact, those solid volumes are more important for safe navigation through the world, than the colored surfaces by which their surfaces are experienced. It does not really matter whether the bat "sees" those surfaces as red, or green, or blue, or in some ineffable quale that we cannot experience. The significant aspect of the bat's experience, as for our own, which is most meaningful for its survival, is the perception of the volumetric objects that are delimited by the surfaces that it perceives. The primary, most essential function of perception is to compute those volumetric objects based on the configuration of their experienced surfaces. To count the volumetric products of those perceptual computations as parts of the objective world, rather than of our own experience, is to discount the most essential and complex portion of the perceptual computation, figuring out the spatial configuration of the world based on sensory input. THAT is the part of the "vision problem" that continues to elude vision scientists, but THAT is the part which is most essential for a real solution to the problem. To redefine THAT part of the problem as somehow outside of experience, outside of the realm of the problems to be computed by the brain, is most obviously denied and contradicted by the experience of dreams and hallucinations. The theoretical zombie proposed by philosophers is impossible in principle because it would bump into walls that it does not see, when moving in response to urges that it does not feel. The whole thing is an absurd concoction erected in a futile attempt to bolster the untenable posits of naive epistemology, that the world that we experience is the world itself, viewed directly, not a replica of that world constructed in our brain. If you have never even HEARD of this challenge to the orthodox view, (and if you are really interested in the true nature of experience, and its computation in the brain) you owe it to yourself to at least learn about this alternative formulation of reality, even if only to ultimately reject it on logical grounds. Its all explained in this book, freely available on-line. All you have to do is read it. If there is something wrong with THAT philosophy then tell me about it, I want to hear it, because I AM truly interested in the true nature of experience, and if there is something fundamentally wrong with MY view, I would indeed be ready to abandon it. http://sharp.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/book2/Boundaries.html Steve Lehar

Steve, Why do you say: "As for bats, it is true we will never know how the qualia of echolocation feel like."? Do you not believe that we will be able to connect human brains with bat brains with something that can do what the corpus calosum does? Or that we will be able to discover what neural correlate bat's use to represent their knowledge, and duplicate that in our minds, upon which we'll say something like: "Oh THAT is what it is like to be a bat?" and we will reliably and consistently really know what it is like? Also, as far as 'zombies' go. Our current computer systems are designed to use 'abstract' representations, for which what the representations are represented by, doesn't matter. Whether you represent red with a 0 or a zero, doesn't matter. While for us, on the other hand, what we represent 700 nm light with most definitely does matter, and what that representation is 'like' is all important to what our consciousness is. So, would everyone agree that an 'abstract' machine, for which what it's knowledge is represented with by design doesn't matter, would be a zombie, compared to a phenomenal machine like us for which what we represent things with does matter? Brent Allsop P.S., the current wiki text parser used by canonizer.com treats text with leading white space as something not to format. (i.e. don't break it into smaller lines.) One of Steve's paragraphs in his last post had a paragraph with a leading space, which is what made the page formatting so wide (it put the entire paragraph on one line with no breaks.) So try not to put leading spaces on any lines, unless you want to format a poem with short lines or something.

I agree with everything you have written in the last post, except the idea that zombies are impossible in principle. I think they may be physically impossible, since if consciousness were an optional extra there would have been no reason for it to have evolved. However, to show that zombies are impossible in principle you would have to show that consciousness is a necessary corollary of any sort of information processing.

>>>> A full elucidation of the neural correlates of consciousness won't explain why there is consciousness at all, rather than zombiehood, and it won't explain what that consciousness is like. We can know everything about bats but we can't know that they are conscious, and we can't know what their experience is like without being a bat ourselves. <<<< So goes the standard argument that we hear again and again. But this is again based on an inverted epistemology. The existence and nature of conscious experience is ALL we can ever really know with any certainty. All else, including the whole world known to science, is merely informed speculation based on that experience. It is not consciousness that we will never fully comprehend, it is that world, viewed only indirectly through the veil of experience, which we can never fully comprehend. Consciousness is something we know very well, as long as we don't confuse it with what we are conscious *of*. As for bats, it is true we will never know how the qualia of echolocation feel like. But we DO know that whaver they may be like, one thing we know for sure is that they are disposed in a three-dimensional arrangement, like a theatre set, or diorama, and that theater set is a relatively accurate model of the world surrounding the bat, just as our qualia of color are disposed on the surfaces of a three-dimensional experience of the world. In other words, we can know the information content of the bat's experience, which is pretty close to that of our own, all we can't see is the qualia with which the bat's world of experience is "painted". But that's not so important, its the information that it carries that is important. The concept of the philosophical "zombie" exemplifies most clearly the error of the inverted epistemology. Epistemologically speaking, we know for a fact that consciousness exists in our brain, and by extension, likely in the brains of other people and animals. But if the only tiny corner of the universe that we experience in first-person form, just happens to exhibit this most elaborate and compelling phenomenon of consciousness, what are the odds that consciousness only exists in these places? Ultimately, a scientific understanding of consciousness will require that we endow physical matter or processes with some kind of primal consciousness, otherwise there would be no raw material out of which evolution could have developed human consciousness. If mind is a physical process taking place in the physical mechanism of the brain, that is already PROOF by example that a physical process taking place in a physical mechanism can under certain conditions be conscious. What makes the brain special is not its constituent matter, which is the ordinary matter of atoms and electrons, but it is its complex organization that makes it special. So a simpler organism, in an animal brain, is most likely conscious but in a simpler way, and thus by extension, every particle of matter must carry a tiny spark of self-consciousness. That is why when you collect matter together in just the right way, it exhibits consciousness. If you invert your epistemology from the standard naive view, you have to invert everything else along with it (which is why so few people are ready to entertain this possibility). But having done so, you will find a world that still contains some basic paradoxes, such as why would bare matter have a primal form of consciousness, but in return, you abolish the whole notion of zombies as impossible in principle, and the notion of zombies contains the far more paradoxical property of supposedly walking around without bumping into walls while being totally unconscious! What they mean is an experience that carries all the information content of a normal experience, but in the absence of any qualia as carriers of the experience. But information cannot exist without a carrier to carry it, its like trying to paint a picture without paint. All of the standard paradoxes of consciousness simply disappear when viewed from the right epistemological perspective. As incredible as it may seem that the whole world of experience is inside your head, it is nowhere near as paradoxical as the idea of having experience out in the world beyond your brain, suggested by the naive view, where we somehow project conscious experience out of our head onto the world.

>>I would be happy to continue this debate only if you begin by agreeing that WE DON'T KNOW whether mind and brain are one and the same, or whether mind is something OTHER than the mere activity of the brain. Both theories are logical possibilities, the choice between them should be made based on reason and available evidence, not on the perceived incredibility of one or the other view. But you have to SERIOUSLY ENTERTAIN THE POSSIBILITY THAT YOU MAY BE MISTAKEN before we can usefully continue...<< I agree that the mind is generated by the brain; there isn't any magical extra-brain thing involved. Still, there are some intractable peculiarities in the mind-brain problem which distinguish it from other scientific problems. A full elucidation of the neural correlates of consciousness won't explain why there is consciousness at all, rather than zombiehood, and it won't explain what that consciousness is like. We can know everything about bats but we can't know that they are conscious, and we can't know what their experience is like without being a bat ourselves. We can perhaps guess by analogy with our own consciousness and visual or auditory perception, but a super-intelligent alien who has access to all the same scientific information won't be able to do this, whereas it would have no problem with non-conscious objects. These are old arguments, but they show that there is at least an issue here, even if we agree to say that the mind and brain are the same. >>And yes, I have done the same. Like you, and most everyone else, I also began as a naive realist, so I know where you are coming from, and I understand deeply why you are so convinced of the truth of your paradigm. And it was only by temporary suspension of my own belief (which was not easy to do) that I ever came to consider the alternative, which allowed me to discover the overall coherence and self-consistency of the world view that it implicates in total.<< I agree with your representationalism. I would almost say that it seems trivially obvious. But I see from some of the references you have given that you have had disagreements with people who start off saying that it's obvious. I'll have to read more about this.