I use the term “phenomenal consciousness” to mean the momentary contents of consciousness. Right now I am experiencing a visual field, which contains a computer screen with a LessWrong comment field on it. Thoughts about the comment I am writing are happening in my auditory field in the form of imaginal vocalisations as I type.
However, I’m also not currently thinking about the conversation I was having on Discord just before – though I could summon memories pertaining to that, and they would also spawn into my imaginal auditory field. I could accept that those un-rendered memories exist in “access consciousness”, and that they enter “phenomenal consciousness” when the visual and verbal memories are rendered using specific qualia.
Thank you for sharing these resources. I saw you talking about several nonobvious things in your post (field theory, morphisms weighted by Kolmogorov complexity), but was very thrown off by your use of “phenomenal” and “qualia”. Usually I just strong down vote such posts and move on, but given the rest of your post decided to query for more information. I could have been nicer in asking, but I don’t think infectious diseases deserve to be treated nicely. They should be quarantined and disinfected. (Describing the terms “phenomenological” and “qualia” here.)
The issue with these terms is they were created in opposition to consciousness. As in, “no, a simulated/artificial brain is not actually conscious, it doesn’t have phlogistonphenomenal consciousness”. For a similar reason, I do not like the term “access consciousness”. There is just consciousness, and being finite beings, what we can access of it.
I skimmed through Max Hodak’s talk and it matches my intuition. I think our ideas of consciousness are mostly the same, including the field theory of memes.
Based on this, I can translate what you are saying by making the word maps:
“qualia” → “particle/meme”
“phenomenal”→”″
I can understand your adoption of religious language (even though you are not referencing the same thing as the believers) to avoid being labelled a heretic, especially because this is your research area and you do not want to lose funding.
I read a couple of your blog posts, and they are interesting, mostly because of your math background. I’ll probably read more later. Again, thanks for responding despite my pessimism.
I tend not to like the term “access consciousness”, but can work with it if I have to.
Perhaps this is an alien way of thinking, but I am fairly wedded to the idea of qualia as something like a pre-paradigmatic field theory. There’s a fair amount of content pertaining to this on my blog.
I use the term “phenomenal consciousness” to mean the momentary contents of consciousness. Right now I am experiencing a visual field, which contains a computer screen with a LessWrong comment field on it. Thoughts about the comment I am writing are happening in my auditory field in the form of imaginal vocalisations as I type.
However, I’m also not currently thinking about the conversation I was having on Discord just before – though I could summon memories pertaining to that, and they would also spawn into my imaginal auditory field. I could accept that those un-rendered memories exist in “access consciousness”, and that they enter “phenomenal consciousness” when the visual and verbal memories are rendered using specific qualia.
Thank you for sharing these resources. I saw you talking about several nonobvious things in your post (field theory, morphisms weighted by Kolmogorov complexity), but was very thrown off by your use of “phenomenal” and “qualia”. Usually I just strong down vote such posts and move on, but given the rest of your post decided to query for more information. I could have been nicer in asking, but I don’t think infectious diseases deserve to be treated nicely. They should be quarantined and disinfected. (Describing the terms “phenomenological” and “qualia” here.)
The issue with these terms is they were created in opposition to consciousness. As in, “no, a simulated/artificial brain is not actually conscious, it doesn’t have
phlogistonphenomenal consciousness”. For a similar reason, I do not like the term “access consciousness”. There is just consciousness, and being finite beings, what we can access of it.I skimmed through Max Hodak’s talk and it matches my intuition. I think our ideas of consciousness are mostly the same, including the field theory of memes.
Based on this, I can translate what you are saying by making the word maps:
“qualia” → “particle/meme”
“phenomenal”→”″
I can understand your adoption of religious language (even though you are not referencing the same thing as the believers) to avoid being labelled a heretic, especially because this is your research area and you do not want to lose funding.
I read a couple of your blog posts, and they are interesting, mostly because of your math background. I’ll probably read more later. Again, thanks for responding despite my pessimism.