[extropy-chat] effing

[gts]

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 11:58:55 -0500, Brent Allsop <allsop at extropy.org>  
wrote:

> But surely, when we start hacking our minds, effing and so on, we will be 
> adding such control mechanism and we will clearly be able to represent 
> the supposed whiteness of snow with any effing
> phenomenal property we want.

Sure, but Locke might argue that we have in that case not changed the  
white quality of white objects; we have only altered our perception of  
whiteness. White objects are still white but we have doctored our  
perception, in principle no different from wearing colored glasses.

Locke might be wrong but I don't see a logical argument to disprove his  
position. Do you?

His common sense ideas here might seem out-dated and old-fashioned, but  
then perhaps they are not.  Perhaps whiteness really is a quality of white  
objects, just as common sense would have us believe.

Locke's idea of secondary qualities of objects is what I originally  
thought you meant by "phenomenal properties of matter". For example the  
red quale would be a phenomenal property of red ink.

-gts