[ExI] What cats see
Brent Allsop
brent.allsop at canonizer.com
Fri Oct 25 18:37:24 UTC 2013
Hi Mike,
Nagal was one of the first to ask this all important question with his
"what is it like to be a bat?" question You seem very confused at
exactly what his question was about. You seem to think he answered this
question???
He was pointing out that we are blind to qualities of nature, he was
asking the same question I'm asking. But asking it for echolocation, vs
light detection, completely confuses everyone about what is
qualitatively important. Much better to simply focus on things like my
elemental redness quality could be your greenness quality.
Think about it for a bit. When I see the strawberry, something in my
brain, which has my redness quality to it, is what my brain represents
this knowledge of the strawberry with. Tetrachromats represent what
they see with 4 colors, and at least some of the light they see is
represented with something my brain has never experienced before.
It could be a neurotransmitter like glutamate, that has the redness
quality I experience. But of course, glutamate reflects white light, so
if your brain represents glutamate with something that has a white
quality to it (very different than glutamate), you are missing what is
all important. That is the essence of the qualia interpretation
problem, and why we are effing blind to any qualitative properties in
any one else's brain, a bat's brain, or of anything in nature.
There is also a good chance that many of us have inverted quale, and so
on. Do you have any interested in knowing if your redness is anything
like mine?
This kind of blind confusion is exactly why the world is completely
missing what we should have discovered long ago. This is not a
scientific problem, we're already way past the required science
required. This is simply an effing communication problem. And
achieving the ability to truly effingly communicate must be the greatest
achievement in physics, and tell us more about reality, than any other
discovery.
Brent Allsop
On 10/25/2013 12:19 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Brent Allsop
> <brent.allsop at canonizer.com <mailto:brent.allsop at canonizer.com>> wrote:
>
> That's kind of interesting. But what is it qualitatively like?
> Surely cat's don't represent the colors with the same elemental
> qualities I do. That's what I want to effing know.
>
> Oh, and I want to know what it is like for a tetrachromat (Most of
> us are trichromats), who experiences colors I've never experienced
> before, also.
>
> Why is nobody asking that far more important question? What is
> reality qualitatively like? Surely the discovery of what has an
> elemental redness quality in physics will be the greatest
> discovery in physics, ever! If people weren't so blind to this,
> surely we'd have discovered this long before now.
>
> Everyone, if you are interested in this, please sign the online
> petition (join at least the Representational Qualia Theory camp
> here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ) so we can finally
> communicate to the world how important this is, and finally figure
> it out.
>
>
> Not sure about a cat, but Nagel's already discussed what it's like to
> be a bat - right?
> (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-minds/201202/what-is-it-be-bat)
>
> Perhaps we aren't so "blind" as confused?
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