[ExI] Zombie glutamate

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stuart,

I would normally point a person to the "Detecting Qualia" paper to 
answer this question:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vxfbgfm8XIqkmC5Vus7wBb982JMOA8XMrTZQ4smkiyI/edit

But then, if you know as much as you know, you must have already read 
the paper?

I don't know if I've used the exact term "Zombie Glutamate", so someone 
else must have used this for the first time, after reading and 
understanding the paper.  Did you hear this term from someone else, or 
are you the first to think of or use it?  It's a good term.  It makes me 
happy that people are starting to understand things to this level to be 
able to use this terminology in new and powerful ways like this.

The answer to this is described in the "Intrinsic Qualia verses 
Representations of Qualia" section of the paper.

The testable prediction is that something in physics is responsible for 
a qualitative property of our conscious knowledge, like the taste of 
salt or the color red.  The falsifiable prediction is that it could be 
something like the neurotransmitter glutamate that has the intrinsic 
redness color we can experience.

All of our physical senses and scientific instruments that detect 
qualia, produce representations of glutamate, that are only like 
glutamate, in that they can be interpreted as if they were glutamate.  
In the same way, we have knowledge of glutamate.  But glutamate, in it's 
crystalline form, reflects white light, so we represent it with 
knowledge that has a whiteness quality.  Or worse, we represent it as 
something that has no quality at all.  Both of which could miss 
interpretations of the real redness quality of glutamate.  (Or whatever 
is responsible for a real redness quality.)

The bottom line is, the testable theoretical prediction is that all 
physical science done today, is qualitatively naieve zombie physical 
science, simply because we don't know how to interpret the zombie 
information we have about such things as glutamate.  Both zombie 
information and qualitative information systems can model, simulate, and 
represent the other.  But, as long as you don't have real glutamate, and 
you have something that is just being interpreted, as if it was the real 
thing, unless you know how to qualitatively interpret what it 
represents, it is zombie glutamate.

Let me know what, if any of the above, does, or does not help.

Brent Allsop



















On 2/13/2015 8:49 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote:
> In trying follow another thread, I kept running into a term I can't process:
>
> What in Darwin's name is zombie glutamate?
>
> Is it the salt you get by reacting an alkaline zombie with glutamic acid? And what is zombie red for that matter? I know what philosophic zombies are but since when did zombie become an adjective?
>
> And most importantly what does it *mean*?
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
>
> Sent from my phone.
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>