Talk:Qualia

"The fact that the experience of sound is correlated with a measurable physical phenomenon (the vibration and which part of the cochlea reacts to it) refutes the idea that qualia can be inverted in a neurotypical person. Very high-pitched frequencies, for one, tend to cause people physical pain. If inverted qualia were true, we should expect to see a similar reaction from some people when a very low note is played, which doesn't happen" - it assumes it's the high-pitch-sound quale itself is what causes the pain quale, rather than the physical state caused by the too high-pitched sound that causes both the quale of pain and and whatever sound quale one may have associated with it -- both which could theoretically perhaps be somewhat different in different persons, just like there are synesthetes, who will experience totally unrelated qualia from a given sensory input, and perhaps masochists, who will find pain pleasant (I'm not sure it's actually thought that masochism could be some form of synesthesia, though). ^{— Unsigned, by: 201.13.145.30 / talk / contribs}

It has not actually been assumed that the high-pitch-sound quale itself is what causes the pain quale. It has merely been assumed that the high-pitch-sound quale is correlated with the pain quale, however indirectly that may be. Correlated in such a way that inverted qualia as a concept seems weak (imagine a low-pitch-sound quale appearing at the same time as the high-pitch-type pain quale... yeah, that doesn't make sense, now does it). Note that only the concept of inverted qualia is being attacked here, not the concept of varying/differing qualia. They are related concepts, but there's a difference. Nullahnung (talk) 17:15, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see anything minimally problematic with the very-low-pitch sound quale being accompanied as the type of pain-quale normally associated with high-pitch sounds. It's just "unusual"/theoretically not experienced by anyone assuming we don't have inverted/shuffled spectra, but until it's found that the neural correlate for both the sound and the pain is inextricably one and the same, it's even theoretically possible that artificial stimulation could produce such experience, given that we had "definition"/precision of neural stimuli to evoke the same activation patterns. I'm not defending the "likelihood" of inverted spectra and the like, but it only seems to me that they're not ruled out by Hofstadter's reasoning, which seems to "beg the question", to me. But doesn't really matter much, he's an authority, I'm not, and that's an encyclopedia, not a discussion forum for personal ideas/views/gut-feelings. --189.46.121.195 (talk) 22:27, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, this is totally a discussion forum for personal ideas/views/gut-feelings and is certainly not an encyclopedia. My gut feeling would be that you have a point. Nullahnung (talk) 03:34, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, if it's all right to say so, the traffic light argument has the same flaw, perhaps more apparently: if people had green and red reversed, they would learn that what they see as a green light and call a "red" light means stop and what they see as a red light and call a "green" light means go. The person would learn to appreciate the "greenness" (perceived as redness) of the springtime and fear the "redness" (perceived as greenness) of fire. Clearly, they would never know that they were abnormal. David815 (talk) 22:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Info from Canonizer.com

We've been working on the Consciousness Survey Project at Canonizer.com since 2008. Here is a link to a short video about Canonizer. There has been participation from a growing number of experts including Steven Lehar, David Chalmers, Stuart Hameroff, John Smythies, Daniel Dennett and others. You can see that nearly all of these expert’s camps are supporting sub camps of the Representational Qualia Theory camp. The consensus building system at Canonizer has enabled them to achieve and discover a significant expert consensus around the testable Representational Qualia Theory which nobody has realized was possible. Brent Allsop (talk) 15:34, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Can someone who actually knows wtf this is confirm this is actually relevant here? — Dysk (contribs) 15:29, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Sure. A growing number of experts and hobbyists have been working on building and measuring for consensus around the best theories of consciousness, in particular about its qualitative nature or how we might bridge the explanatory gap. Participants (to a greater and lesser degree) already include Steven Lehar, John Smythies, Stuart Hameroff, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, James Carroll, as you can see by the various camp supporters and contributors. Also, any expert is welcome to “canonize” competing ideas, if they disagree, to see if their ideas can achieve as much consensus as any other camp. Most people think there is no consensus in this field, but the consensus building amplification of the wisdom of the crowd system being developed at Canonizer.com is proving that a significant consensus is possible. To date no other theory has been able to achieve any comparable amount of consensus, regarding bridging the explanatory gap.

The findings of this survey, particularly about “Representational Qualia Theory” have been published in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research and presented at the 2017 Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference, the 2018 Long Island Philosophy Society Conference, and the 2018 Computer Science, Computer Engineering Conference in Las Vegas. Other publications are forthcoming. Here is a link of a draft of a document being prepared for publication at the 2019 Long Island Philosophical Society: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uWUm3LzWVlY0ao5D9BFg4EQXGSopVDGPi-lVtCoJzzM/edit

- Jim Bennett 10:12, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

(EC)The actual so-called "de-blinded" method they propose is kinda silly, reconstructing a perceived image from the presence of neurotransmitters in the brain run through a layered neural network algorithm, then magically placing those same neurotransmitters in the same physical location in another brain. A few casual thoughts about the nature of all the components, the brains, the LNN, the eyes, would lead one to instantly think of thousands of ways it wouldn't work. These aren't as their paper says "philosophical problems". They're very basic epistemological and scientific problems.

To answer whether it's relevant, probably some actual philosophers believe this bullshit. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:16, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

And fucking hell, I just noticed the self-promoting name attached to the post here. Your paper is bad and you should feel bad, brent. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:17, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

You are missing the point about what place the neurotransmitters like glutamate are taking in this argument. Many theories of qualia (of which many are described in supporting sub camps to the Representational Qualia Theory supper camp) are significantly more complex and more difficult to grasp. This overly simplified neurotransmitter model is used for simplicity sake, to convey the general idea that qualia could be any similarly verifiable set of physics in the brain. The neurotransmitter glutamate can be replaced with any other set of physics (many of which are described in sub camps) that could be a verifiable candidate for having a redness quale.

The bottom line is, we will likely just disagree. You told Brent: “Your paper is bad and you should feel bad”. But this information has been accepted in all of the above listed publications which indicates otherwise. - Jim Bennett 10:58, 2 January 2019

So we're talking about Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research, the same "high impact" "serious" "academic" "journal" whose first headliner article was "Let All Truth Seekers Be the Vessels to Carry Consciousness Research to New Heights"? The journal published by the well respected academic institution of... "Dream Inc, Quantum", and whose primary editor at-large is listed as "independent researcher", and whose website is "quantumbuddhism dot com"(not linked because it's also domain squatted)? Also a research paper in an unsecured google doc? Also a listed institutional address of a suburban house in salt lake city. Also a primary author with no prior publication in the field, and very possibly no actual credentials to speak of? Yeah, I'm feeling real good about this substantiation of quality. seriously, though, just look at this diagram on their homepage.

Alright, alright, enough antagonizing the actual quality of everything involved, the problem isn't your fucking selection of neurotransmitter, but just baseline shit like the presumption of identical brain morphology. The sizes and shapes of human brains and parts of brains, especially, are very known to vary substantially. Let alone neurons and actual pathways. You can't just fucking treat a scan of one like a fucking map that could be used in another person. Your paper is drivel. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:35, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Also I'll give you one guess as to how many citations his article has on google scholar, and spoiler, if your guess is a positive number, you guessed wrong. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:39, 2 January 2019 (UTC)