[extropy-chat] effing

[Acy Stapp]

On 12/2/05, gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:22:02 -0500, Acy Stapp <acy.stapp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Nope. Qualia are qualities of the observational interaction between
> > the observer and the observed. They may or may not exist in some real
> > sense but they certainly are not properties of the objects themselves.
>
> Right, not intrinsic or primary properties, but secondary qualities or
> *powers*.
>
> Snow looks white, and there's not a darned thing I can do to change that
> fact. The power to look white comes from the snow. I have no power here.
> The snow has the power.

Here's where I disagree. The snow does not look white, nor does the
power to look white come from snow. The power to look white comes from
"me looking at the snow", an *act*. The qualia is a property of the
act, of a scenario involving me and some particular snow. Without me
*and* the snow, there is no "looking white". One can generalize the
snow to get "all snow looks white to me" or one can generalize the
person to get "this snow looks white to humans", or one can generalize
both to get "all snow looks white to humans". The observer needs to be
on an equal footing with the observed. Locke is, perhaps justifiably,
assuming that all of his readers are humans and thus generalizes to
all of them, but in my mind the failure to make the distinction leads
to a faliure of understanding. To a blind man snow has no property of
whiteness at any level.

>
> The snow also has *primary* qualities. These exist even when no one is
> observing it. The primary qualities of snow are what we normally consider
> the "objective science" of snow.
>

We say this because these properties can be fully generalized to all
observers with no exceptions. In this case the observer is not
relevant.

> The secondary quality of "looking white", the *power* to look white, is in
> some sense real because it "result[s] from the different modifications of
> those [real] primary qualities."
>

I have no idea what this means.
>
> -gts
>

Acy
--
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those
who have not got it.

George Bernard Shaw