[extropy-chat] effing

Brent Allsop allsop at extropy.org
Thu Dec 1 21:42:33 UTC 2005


gts,

>>> Is the red quale a phenomenal property of red light (in which case it is
universal)? Or is it a property of the neural correlates of seeing red (in
which case it may be different for each person)? <<<

I think this should be obvious since we could splice a color inverter in
your optic nerve so the strawberry is now represented by green and the
leaves with red and yet the light or the nature of the strawberry it is
reflecting off of have not changed at all.  Or you could put a person in a
room with no light, stimulate his visual cortex appropriately - and he will
experience red.

> This is John Locke talking about Brent's idea of "phenomenal properties".
> 
> Locke called them "secondary qualities". (Same thing, Brent?)

No, people like Locke and so many others that worked so hard to argue about
direct perception and such were just idiots like the robot I described
falsely thinking its knowledge was the real thing.

>>> Secondly, the power that a body has, by reason of its imperceptible
primary qualities,

Primary qualities are obviously causal and therefore detectable and
therefore perceptible by us and by abstract computers.

>>>> to operate in a special way on one of our senses,

Anything causally upstream from our senses has nothing to do with qualia and
qualia do not "operate in a special way on our senses."  Qualia are the
final result of the perception process - causally downstream from our
senses, in our brain, not the initial cause.  That is - if this particular
theory is the one that is correct.

Brent Allsop






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