Comment author: DSimon 21 July 2011 05:38:11PM 0 points [-]

That experience of qualia is fundamental in the same way that gravitation and the electromagnetic force are fundamental.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

Comment author: Threedee 24 July 2011 09:12:44PM 1 point [-]

There is no explanation of HOW mass generates or causes gravity, similarly for the lack of explanation of how matter causes or generates forces such as electromagnetism. (Yes I know that some sort of strings have been proposed to subserve gravity, and so far they seem to me to be another false "ether".) So in a shorthand of sorts, it is accepted that gravity and the various other forces exist as fundamentals ("axioms" of nature, if you will accept a metaphor), because their effects and interactions can be meaningfully applied in explanations. No one has seen gravity, no one can point to gravity--it is a fundamental force. Building on Chalmers in one of his earlier writings, I am willing to entertain the idea the qualia are a fundamental force-like dimension of consciousness. Finally every force is a function of something: gravity is a function of amount of mass, electromagnetism is a function of amount of charge. What might qualia and consciousness be a function of? Chalmers and others have suggested "bits of information", although that is an additional speculation.

Comment author: scav 20 July 2011 02:39:25PM 5 points [-]

Hmm. Unless I'm misunderstanding you completely, I'll assume we can work from the example of the "red" qualium (?)

What would it mean for even just the experience of "red" to be ontologically fundamental? What "essence of experiencing red" could possibly exist as something independent of the workings of the wetware that is experiencing it?

For example, suppose I and a dichromatic human look at the same red object. I and the other human may have more or less the same brain circuitry and are looking at the same thing, but since we are getting different signals from our eyes, what we experience as "red" cannot be exactly the same. A bee or a squid or a duck might have different inputs, and different neural circuitry, and therefore different qualia.

A rock next to the red object would have some reflected "red" light incident upon it. But it has no eyes and as far as I know no perception or mental states at all. Does it make sense to say that the rock can also see its neighbouring object as "red"? I wouldn't say so, outside the realm of poetic metaphor.

So if your qualia are contingent on the circumstances of certain inputs to certain neural networks in your head, are they "ontologically fundamental"? I'd say no. And by extension, I'd say the same of any other mental state.

If you could change the pattern of signals and the connectivity of your brain one neuron at a time, you could create a continuum of experiences from "red" to "intuitively perceiving the 10000th digit of pi" and every indescribable, ineffable inhuman state in between. None of them would be more fundamental than any other; all are sub-patterns in a small corner of a very richly-patterned universe.

Comment author: Threedee 21 July 2011 08:02:01AM *  1 point [-]

I apologize for being too brief. What I meant to say is that I posit that my subjective experience of qualia is real, and not explained by any form of reductionism or eliminativism. That experience of qualia is fundamental in the same way that gravitation and the electromagnetic force are fundamental. Whether the word ontological applies may be a semantic argument.

Basically, I am reprising Chalmers' definition of the Hard Problem, or Thomas Nagel's argument in the paper "What is it like to be a bat?"

Comment author: Threedee 19 July 2011 08:48:11AM 2 points [-]

Without my dealing here with the other alternatives, do you Yvain, or does any other LW reader think that it is (logically) possible that mental states COULD be ontologically fundamental?

Further, why is that possibility tied to the word "soul", which carries all sorts of irrelevant baggage?

Full disclosure: I do (subjectively) know that I experience red, and other qualia, and try to build that in to my understanding of consciousness, which I also know I experience (:-) (Note that I purposely used the word "know" and not the word "believe".)

Comment author: Threedee 28 May 2011 10:09:05PM 0 points [-]

This is a more general question than just about Strategic Reliabilism. Obviously, many decisions occur in a social context in which the majority of other people do not necessarily, or even usually, behave based on rational strategies. Given that any strategy a rationalist chooses to use interacts with, or even depends on the irrational behavior of those other people, how can such irrationality be factored into a rationalist-based decision? Perhaps this question is a restatement of: Nothing is Foolproof!

Comment author: Threedee 05 March 2011 08:58:18AM -2 points [-]

Is this too cryptic? :

Throw strikes. Home plate don't move. Satchel Paige

Comment author: Threedee 05 March 2011 08:53:28AM *  9 points [-]

Pragmatic rationality, perhaps? :

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. Yogi Berra

Comment author: Threedee 05 March 2011 08:39:09AM *  3 points [-]

Perhaps this precedes subsequent rationality:

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. John Dewey

Comment author: Threedee 05 March 2011 08:35:47AM *  1 point [-]

Knowing the risk, I quote this (given that I am a utilitarian pragmatist):

Truth is what works. William James

Comment author: Threedee 05 March 2011 08:28:20AM *  12 points [-]

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

William James

Comment author: Threedee 07 February 2011 06:23:49AM 15 points [-]

There are a number of web sites that present such implicit and procedural knowledge. such as: http://www.ehow.com/ http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page http://www.howcast.com/ http://www.howtodothings.com/

I might be useful to somehow select the most generally useful ones of these in one place.

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