[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[gts]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 03:20:41 -0500, Marc Geddes <marc.geddes at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Clearly, if color perception is anywhere it's in the brain, not in  
> external objects.

Have you considered this view?...

"Clark & Chalmers (1998) even go so far to speak about an "extended mind",  
the boundaries of the self, as a cognitive system, extending beyond the  
skull and the skin to encompass the things with which we interact. Taking  
this literally, it would even make sense to say that color experiences  
exist in the mind after all, but as qualities of the surfaces of the  
objects around us, rather than as mysterious qualia inside the brain."

Colors may then be in the mind *and* primary qualities of objects.

The problem of qualia would then be with our common-sense concept of mind,  
not of color. We tend to think our minds are trapped in our skulls, but  
why?

While the idea of extended mind may seem strange, it resolves the problem  
quite nicely I think: children and pre-scientific man and common sense are  
correct; things really do have color qualities. Color need not be pigments  
of our imagination or mysterious platonic math-like entities from the  
"multi-dimensional time" that you postulate.

Chalmers and Clark make this very interesting point:

"By embracing an active externalism, we allow a more natural explanation  
of all sorts of actions. One can explain my choice of words in Scrabble,  
for example, as the outcome of an extended cognitive process involving the  
rearrangement of tiles on my tray. Of course, one could always try to  
explain my action in terms of internal processes and a long series of  
"inputs" and "actions", but this explanation would be needless[ly]  
complex. If an isomorphic process were going on in the head, we would feel  
no urge to characterize it in this cumbersome way. In a very real sense,  
the re-arrangement of tiles on the tray is not part of action; it is part  
of thought."

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/concepts/clark.html

If your rearranging tiles on a scrabble tray is a part of your thought  
then your mind is not trapped in your skull. When you watch yourself  
rearranging scrabble tiles, you are watching your mind think.

Simple and elegant. No need for Plato or extra time dimensions.

-gts