Consciousness Theoreticians, At TSC in Tucson next month, I want to carry around a hard copy petition, and try to get as many hard signatures as I can while there - for the qualia is important camp - and to promote participation in this survey project. I would like to simplify the current camp statement, and also make it something agreeable to richwil, and all, so it can be a parent camp to all other YES camps. So I hope you'll all help with this effort in creating a parent yes consciousness is important camp to use for this purpose. John, I made an effort to remain compatible with your theory. I plan on moving all current camps into a supporting position of this camp, so if you'll object to such, please help improve it till it is agreeable to everyone. Upward, Brent Allsop =============================== * New Title: '''Qualia are the most important part of neural research''' * New name: '''Qualia Most Important''' We believe neural research to be by far the most important of all scientific endeavors of today. We believe that such has a good probability of leading to the greatest scientific discovery of all time - what and how consciousness is. We believe more scientific funding should be applied to this field of study than any other field of science. We also believe qualia should be a critically important part of this scientific research. It is important that nuts and bolts neural researchers be much more educated about leading theories that make powerful prediction of what, where, and how qualia might be. First and foremost of importance is that neural researchers, even if they don't have a qualophile camp as their current favorite or 'working hypothesis' they should at least be aware of how much expert consensus there is on how important qualia are to the study of consciousness, and consider ways to test for, falsify, or whatever such leading theories. Second, we need to know where to look for qualia. In other words, a red qualia is not a property of whatever is the initial cause of the perception process. A red qualia is a property of our knowledge of such - the final result of the perception process. It is also important to distinguish between what a red qualia is like, and the information it represents. Thirdly, it is important to know what the leading theories predict are ways to look for qualia. Obviously, ineffable phenomenal properties cannot be observed through traditional cause and effect based observation. Whatever it is that is our knowledge, or that is a neural correlate of a red phenomenal property, we certainly should not expect it to reflect 700nm (red) light. We need to find neural correlates that reliably predict when someone is experiencing something like red. Ultimately, As V.S. Ramachandran first described in their seminal 3 laws of qualia paper, we need to do something like use a bundle of neurons, working like the Corpus callosum must work, so connected brains can have an experience after which the subject might say something like: "oh THAT is what salt tastes like for you."

Hi John, Ah, I missed that one. Sorry about that. I am getting better, thanks to your continued help. You should have seen the first version I wrote, you wouldn't have liked it at all. How about if I change it from: "until they know where to look for it (in the brain, not on the surface of the strawberry)," to "until they know where to look for it (at the end of the perception process)," Also, that sounds like a good point about distinguishing between the information carried by the qualia and the qualia themselves that I hadn't thought of. I'm not sure if I fully understand what you are talking about yet. Are you talking about how a phenomenal red property is only arbitrarily related to the behavioral red property (as in our brain just happened to select that phenomenal property to represent it, and it could have been an inverted qualia...) And that the phenomenal quale of phenomenal red can represent something like 700nm light, but such a meaning is different than the quale itself? As an attempt to better relate this, how about I add something like the following to the end of the second paragraph?: "The final phenomenal property only represents the initial cause. Again, you must map the phenomenal property back to the original to know what information this phenomenal property is representing." Or maybe you could propose something better than this? I feel there is something profound you are getting at, but I am having a hard time fully expressing it. Thanks! Brent Allsop

I agree with much of what Brent says except his statement "until they know where to look for it (in the brain, not on the surface of the strawberry)," There is no evidence that qualia are "in the brain". NCCs of qualia certainly are in the brain but qualia are located in their own (phenomenal) space outside the brain. Furthermore he does not distinguish as he should between the information carried by qualia and qualia themselves.

Folks, richwil created a competing camp to the current consensus YES camp on this topic raising some important issues that I think we would all agree with. See the camp, and the forum of his camp for a description of these issues In other words, with some work I think we can integrate or unify these camps and create a much better unanimous camp that we all sign up for and agree on. Towards this end, I'm going to propose a rename of the yes camp: '''Qualia are a Critical Part of Consciousness''' and submit a proposed complete rewrite of the statement. You will see the proposed version of the camp if you set the 'as of' box on the side to include review. If you disagree with any of it, or think anything critical is being left out, or whatever, I hope you'll work with me to fix it and come up with a great concise and unanimous statement that powerfully communicating what we all agree is important. So, before this is all over, we should be able to come up with one concise YES statement that we all unanimously support and join - abandoning all the others as unnecessary right? Thanks! Brent Allsop