If you "have nothing to say about consciousness" then your posts to this thread appear to be off-topic, and apparently just flogging your pet theory.
No. I refuted your statement that "Perception does not pertain." (to consciousness) by noting that perception is the foundation of awareness which is essential to consciousness and I do have many things to say about perception, but only one thing to say about the much more complex consciousness. I.e. that it is not observable, only experienced so we can never know if a machine is or is not conscious. There have been many post in the thread supporting or opposing the possibility that machines may some day (if not now) be conscious.
We can test for belief and relate that to changes in behavior, as well as relate imagined activity to neuroplasticity, ...
True. I noted only that holding of beliefs is one aspect of consciousness, but not required for awareness.
so unless you dismiss all this with solipsism, p-zombie cannot exist that is indistinguishable from humans.
Solipsism dismisses the existence of every non-self aspect of the universe so of course it rejects p-zombies. (
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solipsism: a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing.)
Thus your logic is wrong / inverted. My adoption of Solipsism would REJECT p-zombies, not enable me to assume they exist. I don´t assume they exist but only note that that there is no way (other than
assuming solipsism) to prove they do not. Because they are conceptually possible, consciousness is NOT an observable that can be tested for. P-zombies would hold many beliefs, so demonstrating that creature X, be that machine or animate, has beliefs, is NOT a test for consciousness.
You keep making claims of what "accepted theory" entails, but this (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_perception#Unconscious_inference) seems to cover much of what you argue, so no "great mystery" after all.
Many readers here do not know what is the accepted theory of perception, so I do occasionally state it in a commonly used summary as: "Perception emerges after many stages of neural computational transformations of sensory inputs." which is in full agreement with all your link states, but does not include Helmholtz’s correct observations about built-in inferences such as: "Light generally come from above," etc. that let the neural computations remove some of the image ambiguities.
What is new in my POV, is that perception does NOT emerge with a fraction of a second delay following the long chain of sequential neural transformations but is "real time" perception, achieved by compensatory forward projection of the available input signals in what I call the Real Time Simulation and strongly believe is made in parietal brain. For example a baseball batter could not hit a fast ball if his perception of where it was (with no forward projection) ONLY emerged after many stages of neural computational transforms as the accepted theory of perception asserts is the case.
I know you don´t like me posting evidence (you call it "argumentum verbosium") but sudden unforeseeable events do occur that make the forward projection in the RTS wrong. Then the RTS must be revised. When this occurs, there is a distinct and large positive going spike in the EEG about 300ms after the sudden event. In formal literature it is called the "P300" spike, but everyone who reads EEGs, as I have learned to do to some extent, calls it the "startle spike" and, in full agreement with the RTS being generated in parietal tissue, the "startle spike" is strongest over the parietal lobes. I am only guessing but think it is the large surge of electrical activity when the briefly paused for correction RTS resumes running again.
And what is surprising about brain damage causing problems with perception?
I have spent many hours testing the perception of an old lady who had large parietal stroke some years earlier. Despite protesting that it was silly to guess, when a tone sounded, the color of a briefly flashed dot of light on half of a computer screen which she could not perceive (in her neglected half of the world.) She was correct in her guesses more than 85% of the time (She had only the binary choice between red or green.) These results show she fully processed the sensory input information as conventional theory states, even all the way up to and including correct automatic stimulation of her "verbal lexicon" for more activity in the correct color name. What was missing was parietal creation of perceptual awareness (in the RTS I would assume.)
She lived in an "old folk’s home" and was bored so very pleased to have a young graduate student spend three days testing her. After first half day she no long protested it was silly to say red or green promptly at the tone beep and I pushed the corresponding button to tell the computer her choice. First half day´s data was not used because of her delays and in part because I foolishly watched the screen and occasionally automatically pushed the button for color I saw and not what she actually said.
SUMMARY: Her normal sequential automatic neural computational transforms were NOT damaged by the parietal stroke! They functioned normally, all the way to and including lexicon stimulation of the correct color word. This chain of many stages of neural data transformation was NOT adversely affected by her parietal stroke - only her conscious perception of the light was absent! I.e. The RTS was not creating anything for that half of the real world. She had lived with her condition so long that it was no longer strange to her that she heard voices but saw no speaker if speaker was in her neglected half world.
