Information, Representation, and Qualia

[Originally written before 3/28/2004]

Information is often verbal or numeric (both of which are symbolic), but it can also be analog, for example Radio and TV. In this general sense, information is always "quantitative". Information and knowledge are very related, perhaps one could say knowledge is stored information. Information comes on a medium or carrier, and is "about" something else. Some property of the medium (or just its presence) tells us _about_ a property of something else. It has a "reference" to something else.

When light is reflected by objects, we could say the reflected light contains information about those objects, as the reflected light has inherent references (in the form of physical modifications) to the surfaces of those objects.

The medium, or some of its properties, "represent" the information, and the same information can be represented in different ways, on different media. There can be different representations for the same information. Information as such is abstract, that is, it doesn't exist by itself, in empty space, so to speak. It is more a "function" of the medium which represents this information.

There is information when something or the property of something has a reference to something else.

One could say there is a similarity between the medium and what is referenced. This similarity is obvious in a photo, a similarity in form, with the object that was photographed. For reflected light, the frequency and intensity of the light has a similarity with the shape and surface of the objects. (With symbolic information, it is often much more difficult to speak of similarity, but I think it is there in a complex indirect form.) For this discussion, could we simply say: The similarity _is_ the information? I'd say the information is in the similarity of the medium with what it references.

Now to "qualia", with the 3D image which we see consciously as the example:

The 3D image has similarities with the external world in front of our eyes. This similarity is passed on through several phases: the surface of objects, the reflected light, the optical eye, the retina with its cones etc., the nerve pathways from the eye to the brain, lots of processing in the brain, and somewhere in the brain the information affects the 3D image which we see consciously. That is, there must be a similarity between brain processes and the 3D image (so far without saying that the 3D image would be separate from these processes).

Qualia are the property of this 3D image that it looks like something. There is no visible image if it doesn't look like something, of course, so the whole image is based on qualia. The qualia of this image is: color at a depth. From the differences and similarities in color and depth we can abstract areas with horizontal and vertical extension , and also we "recognize" colors in categories like "red", "green", "blue".

The information in this image is in its similarity with the brain processes, or, from a practical point of view, in its similarities with the external world.

So, in the sense in which I understand the word information, qualia cannot be information because information is in the similarity between two things or processes or phenomena, and a similarity is not something that has properties of its own, like visibility, rather it is abstractly in the similarity between two properties.

So qualia must be understood to be a specific representation of this information. (The same information could be represented differently.) They "carry" information, but they are not information. The question is: what are the properties used here for representation, and what are they properties of? What is it that has the property of a visible color at a certain depth? Of course, for example electricity is not known to have such properties. One could even say: if it did, it would not be what we think of as "electricity" anymore.

It would be difficult to convey that the "look" of a color is not just an abstract idea, but a fact, without saying that there is a "specific look". There can't, of course, be a "look" for real without being "specific". One can't separate the two. Everything that exists "really", exists in a specific way, and abstractions don't exist just as abstractions. A mathematical line doesn't exist except when drawn on paper, or as an idea in thought. Then what exists is the drawing, or the idea/thought, but not the mathematical line as such.

The following is what might be called the "really hard problem", because it does away with epiphenomenalism, the belief that qualia, conscious experience, could be just a side effect (or additional layer) which has no consequences for "physical" reality:

Since we cannot verbalize what the "specific look" of a specific color is, one might think it has no further consequences. It might look like this or look like that, but who cares. However, we can verbalize the fact as such, that it looks like "something". Now one might argue that the fact as such might be derivable as a logical conclusion: that when we talk about the fact as such, we are not really talking about the qualia, but only about the fact that they exist. So one might think qualia have no relevant consequence for physical reality. However, the realization that qualia are indeed a fact depends on qualia being specific, as explained above they cannot be a reality without being specific. And we can also verbalize, make the verbal physical statement, that we know them to be fact, that they are not a logical assumption, but that we see them "in front of our eyes" for real. This is only possible because qualia are real in a certain specific way.

So qualia are not just a side-effect without consequences. We could not realize and then express that they exist without their specific properties being additional causal factors. The specific properties are the look of a color in our consciousness, what a conscious sound sounds like, and so on. Qualia cannot be explained as something that exists simply in parallel, corresponding, to physical processes, since then all our action would also have to be explainable without qualia. Yet our realization and subsequent physical statement that qualia are real cannot be explained without qualia actually existing in a specific way, it cannot be explained as an abstract-logical conclusion.

So the question is: are we actually able to realize that we see colors, as a fact, and are we able to make a statement based on what we realize to be a fact?

For me it is obvious that there are colors. I consider it the most obvious fact there is. And I would not write this if it wasn't so. It is not a logical conclusion, not a theory, not a belief. It is a fact. And I write this because it is a fact.