[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[Marc Geddes]

gts,

As regards the idea that colors may be primary qualities of objects, no
offense,  but I think you're making a very basic mistake, the sort of
mistake a young child makes or pre-scientific man.

We know how the human visual system works and the experience of color is
entirely dependent on the 3 types of cones, which have the structure they do
because random evolutionary processes.   Color is definitey represented in
the brain - the signals from the ganglion cells in the retina through the
LGN in thalmus and then on to the V1 (primary visual system).  The V1 in
turn sends in signals to somewhere in the mid-brain, where the brain
processes assocaited with color qualia are occuring.  Animals which
different brains would see different colors.  Further, as someone turned
out, simply turn the lights up and down and the colors you see are
different.  Clearly, if color perception is anywhere it's in the brain, not
in external objects.

Here's a summary of the visual pathways in the brain:
http://thalamus.wustl.edu/course/cenvis.html

And a schematic of color vision concepts:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/colviscon.html#c1

When I was talking about qaulia having platonic existence, I certainly
didn't mean what you were suggesting!  I simply meant that  qualia are
ultimately mathematical entities, and mathematical entities have an
existence extending beyond physical processes into Plato's world.  So I
think qualia are *partly* equivalent to the material processes in the brain
and *partly* equivalent to the abstract (non-material) processes taking
place in Plato's world (i.e in higher dimensional time).  As I've said,
qualia are processes in multi-dimensional time (and physical brain processes
are a *part* of this).  Qualia are partly in the brain and partly in Plato's
world.  They are not external properties.  There is no green out there.


--
"Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the shadow with teeth bared,
screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on
the last day"
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