AIAP: On Consciousness, Qualia, and Meaning with Mike Johnson and Andrés Gómez Emilsson

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May 23, 2019

Guest

Mike Johnson

Guest

Andrés Gómez Emilsson

Andrés Gómez Emilsson, consciousness researcher and QRI co-founder with a computational psychology background, and Mike Johnson, QRI executive director specializing in neuroscience and philosophy of mind, explore whether consciousness is formalizable. They discuss qualia realism, the Symmetry Theory of Valence, resonant brain harmonics, limits of functionalism, and implications for AI alignment and ethical value.

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INSIGHT

Realism Earns Its Keep Through Predictions

QRI's strongest argument for qualia realism is predictive power: a formal theory should compress and predict phenomena better than ad hoc functional accounts.
They treat falsifiability as central: good theories should make testable phenomenological predictions.

INSIGHT

Valence Is Patterned In Phenomenology

Valence realism: pleasure and pain are natural kinds encoded in phenomenological structure, not reducible to mere goals or reinforcement.
QRI links valence to patterns in experience explaining why novel stimuli (BART screech, subpac) have consistent hedonic effects.

ADVICE

Use Self Reports To Falsify Phenomenological Models

Validate formal phenomenology with self-reports and objective measures; use relative calibration when absolute reports are noisy.
Andrés warns self-report isn't gold but is the best available validation for predicted phenomenological differences.

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Consciousness is a concept which is at the forefront of much scientific and philosophical thinking. At the same time, there is large disagreement over what consciousness exactly is and whether it can be fully captured by science or is best explained away by a reductionist understanding. Some believe consciousness to be the source of all value and others take it to be a kind of delusion or confusion generated by algorithms in the brain. The Qualia Research Institute takes consciousness to be something substantial and real in the world that they expect can be captured by the language and tools of science and mathematics. To understand this position, we will have to unpack the philosophical motivations which inform this view, the intuition pumps which lend themselves to these motivations, and then explore the scientific process of investigation which is born of these considerations. Whether you take consciousness to be something real or illusory, the implications of these possibilities certainly have tremendous moral and empirical implications for life's purpose and role in the universe. Is existence without consciousness meaningful? In this podcast, Lucas spoke with Mike Johnson and Andrés Gómez Emilsson of the Qualia Research Institute. Andrés is a consciousness researcher at QRI and is also the Co-founder and President of the Stanford Transhumanist Association. He has a Master's in Computational Psychology from Stanford. Mike is Executive Director at QRI and is also a co-founder. Mike is interested in neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and complexity theory. Topics discussed in this episode include: -Functionalism and qualia realism -Views that are skeptical of consciousness -What we mean by consciousness -Consciousness and casuality -Marr's levels of analysis -Core problem areas in thinking about consciousness -The Symmetry Theory of Valence -AI alignment and consciousness You can take a very short survey about the podcast here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YWHDFV7