[ExI] Redness comes from Context?

[Ben Zaiboc]

Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com> wrote:

>Hi Ben,
>
>This is all about Shannon?s information theory.  You can?t store a megabyte
>of information in some physical device that is only capable of holding one
>byte.  

Not sure what Shannon has to do with this, but never mind..


>If you know something, there must be something physical which you
>can point to, which is representing that information.  


Yes.  My brain.


>If something ?seems?
>some way, there must be something that is this seeming.  You talked about a
>?vortex?, which is a good example.  In that case, if a vortex exists, there
>is a real liquid, in a real ?vortex? state, which can be described.  The
>physical stuff, along with the state description, are the necessary and
>sufficient set of causal properties that are the real ?vortex?.  If
>something /feels/ some way, the same thing is true, there must be something
>physically real, and some physical state, which is responsible for that
>feeling.  


Yes.  My brain, processing particular information in a particular way.

I'm not sure about this business of calling it a 'causal property'.  That seems to be confusing things.  It's a process rather than a property.  My brain /does/ something, which I describe as 'feeling a certain way'.  This makes more sense than saying my brain /has/ something which 'is a certain feeling', because that leads you to think that the feeling is an independent thing, which is obviously untrue, because when my brain stops working, the feeling ceases to exist.

>There must be some necessary and sufficient set of causal
>properties that are the redness experience.  Obviously, something that
>/feels/ like redness is very different than something that /feels/ like
>greenness.  The qualitative natures of these, and their differences, and
>whatever is responsible for it, is what I?m talking about, nothing more.

OK, so you're talking about the same thing as me:  The processes performed by the brain that we call 'seeing green' or red, or feeling hungry, etc.


>Also, as far as ?elemental redness? goes.  We both agree that when we
>experience redness, we usually have bound to that our knowledge of the word
>?red?, our knowledge of us perceiving redness, a sensation that redness is
>a ?warm? color and a bunch of stuff like that.  While it is true that all
>of these things can be bound together in one person?s brain, would you also
>agree that it is possible to reduce these things down, and isolate them all.
>So that it is possible for a brain to have just a qualitative redness
>experience, with none of the other cognitive information bound up with it?


No, of course not.  Do you think that it's possible to just have a song, with none of the chords, harmonies, rhythms and lyrics that are 'bound up' with it?  Is there such a thing  as the 'elemental "Bridge over Troubled Water"' that can be separated from the words and music?  If you separate out the constituent parts of the 'redness' experience, it goes away.  As in, doesn't exist anymore.

You seem to be dismantling the clock in an effort to find its tick.  The tick is real, it definitely exists, so it must /be/ something, right?  So why can't you find it when the clock is in bits?

Also, please could you avoid top-posting?  It makes things difficult to follow.  Thanks.


Ben Zaiboc