Hi Jo,

You said:

"In functional dynamic terms I think we can be pretty sure that there is no dynamic unit in a robot that relates to the world in the way that a human subject does - not in a remotely similar way"

I'm having troubles understanding what you mean by "relates to the world in the way the human does".  And I don't understand how differing degrees of freedom (or differing resolutions?) matters.  Given the following, let me know if I do understand what you mean by "relates to" after all?

It simply seems to me that an abstracted word like "red" does not have a redness qualia.  But the word "red" can relate to a redness qualia, if you know how to interpret it qualitatively correctly.  Why can't a robot relate to "redness" the same way the word "red" does - by using abstracted symbols that aren't actually red?  It can describe and know everything about it, as long as you know how to properly interpret its abstracted knowledge.  While, we as qualitatively conscious humans, use the real redness quality to represent red - so for us, there is no interpretation required - there is no "relates to" it just is.  Is not that the simple functionalist fact of the matter describing this difference between a robot and a human?

Brent Allsop