[ExI] Fwd: Paper on "Detecting Qualia" presentation at 2015 MTA conference

[Brent Allsop]

Hi John,

You've got to expand your theoretical world, at least a bit, if we are 
going to communicate.  In particular, your theoretical world has no room 
for inverted or diverse elemental qualia.  You think about reality, and 
your knowledge of reality, as if they were the same thing.  The fact 
that you don't distinguish between the real world, and your knowledge of 
such, is clear in all you say.   You just focus on the stuff that easily 
fits in you simplistic world, and ignore the important stuff that 
doesn't fit in your world.  You need to focus on the stuff that doesn't 
fit, and expand your theoretical world so it can accommodate them.  As 
long as you insist on staying in your simplistic world, I am not going 
to have much success in talking to you.

Let me show you what I'm thinking as I read this.


On 1/29/2015 10:17 PM, John Clark wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Brent Allsop 
> <brent.allsop at canonizer.com <mailto:brent.allsop at canonizer.com>> wrote:
>
>      > Would you agree that something, detectable, is responsible for
>     the elemental redness quality you can experience?
>
>
> Yes, I think that is a reasonable guess.

Whew, as usual, most people agree on the most important things. They 
just quibble over and get lost in the details, while what we agree on is 
ignored and lost in collator damage.

>     > If so, what do you imagine it to be?
>

Oh Great!  He believes the idea of a redness quality is reasonable, and 
now he is going to tell me what he believes redness to be.

> I believe in a theory that was historically developed quite recently 
> is probably true, namely that there is a abstract thing called "650 nm 
> light" that turns on the REDNESS mechanism in human beings.

Obviosly, but why is the focus about what is reasonable to believe about 
REDNESS, suddenly switching to the causal, and zombie red? Why is he 
talking as if these are all the same, and if they have anything to do 
with what we are talking about?

> But people believed in REDNESS long before they knew that waves had 
> anything to do with light or that length had anything to do with red, 
> and they were entirely justified in having that belief.

Exactly.  We have always known, absolutely, that redness exists, and how 
it is qualitatively different then greenness.  But again, why are you 
completely missing or ignoring what is important here, and focusing on 
the completely unrelated causal and zombie red, and thinking as if they 
have more to do with each other, than the switch that happens to turn 
redness on an interpret 650 nm light as if it had that quality?  What 
happens if this switch is inverted, and it turns greenness on?  I guess 
he doesn't care about, and is trying to ignore the fact that a person 
could be engineered so that red light turns on grenness.

> People should demand proof before they believe that wavelike 
> properties of light exist, but they don't need that to believe that 
> REDNESS exists because they have something much better than proof, 
> direct experience.

Exactly, as I said, above.  We know that redness exists more surely than 
we know 650NM light exists.

> REDNESS is something that is very concrete,  650 nm light is more 
> abstract, and a theory with a further layer of abstraction on top of 
> that would be that the 650 nm light is coming from a red tomato.

Wait, now he is talking about his knowledge of the world, and getting 
away from physical reality?  Dang it.  And he is still making the 
mistake of thinking of these two drastically different things, as if 
they were the same thing in his simplistic theoretical view of the 
world.  Your knowledge of 650 NM light is more abstract.  Real physical 
light is something that is very physically real (not abstract), and has 
very detectable properties, possibly qualitative, whether you are 
thinking of it abstractly, or representing it's qualitative nature, or not.

>
> Note:  by "abstract" I mean removed from direct experience, the more 
> removed the more abstract, I don't see what else the word could mean. 
> For example, the set of all Real Numbers is abstract, the set of all 
> subsets of the Real Numbers is more abstract.

Exactly.  And all this "abstract" knowledge, must be represented by 
something that is very physically real, detectable, and not abstract.  
And a redness quality is less abstract than anything.  It is physically 
very literally real, and something, detectable, in your brain, must be 
what has this quality.  If you know something, qualitatively, there must 
be something physical and detectable in your brain that is this 
qualitative knowledge.

> But why does the mind experience 650 nm light as a qualia? How could 
> it not, if the mind experiences a sensation then it is a qualia by 
> definition.  I mean, how in the world could we experience 650 nm light 
> as 650 nm light?
>
> Why does 650 nm light and 510 nm light produce different qualia? 
> Because Evolution found that the ability to distinguish between red 
> and green helped get its genes into the next generation.
>

Exactly.  So are you interested at all, in the fact that the switch that 
turns on the qualia for 650 NM (red) light and the switch that turns on 
the qualia for 700 nm (green) light can be inverted?  And that 
tetrachromats have a large palat of colors for their light to turn on 
than the bichromats, or trichromats, and all the qualitative natures of 
each is likely very different than what it is like for you?  (that is 
unless you are a tetrachromat)  Are you interested, at all, about what 
it will be like for future augmented omni phenomenally engineered beings 
that instead of using 3 primary color qualia, they use 300 drastically 
qualitatively very different elemental color qualia?

Brent







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