[ExI] Theoretical Breakthrough? Was Re: Do digital computers feel?

[Ben]

Brent Allsop wrote:

"Ben is definitely getting close with this realization he described 
below, but he doesn't quite have it all.  The external behavior, that is 
the ability to verbally report (as in outside the black box behavior) 
qualitative differences inside the black box is possible and important too."

I think you misunderstand me.

When I said "I think Brent is of the opinion that it /does/ matter what 
goes on inside the black boxes of interacting parts", I meant 'black 
box' in the usual sense of a component that nobody is supposed to know 
or care anything about what goes on inside it.

Saying "the ability to report differences inside the black box" is 
meaningless. You simply don't know what goes on inside the black box, 
period. That's the point of the concept. All you know is how it 
interacts with other components of a system.

You talk about using a simplified model of things, this is how you do 
it. Use black boxes, so you can totally forget about what's inside them.


"The goal is to make a very hard topic a little more simple.  If one can 
understand the theory I'm trying to describe, ... then they should be 
able to apply the same theory in the more complex real world.  All that 
is required is to test for, and find, experimentally, in the real world, 
what it is that takes the place of glutamate, glycene, aspartate, and 
the single neuron binding system"

As I keep saying, this isn't going to work, because your 'simplified 
world' bears no relation to the real world. It's not a simplified model 
of reality, it's pure invention, as far as I can tell.

If this 'fundamental redness' exists, as you claim, you need to explain 
what it is, and how we can demonstrate its existence first, otherwise 
this whole thing is going nowhere. What is it, and how does it relate to 
the things we already know such as action potentials, receptive fields, 
lateral inhibition, convergent and divergent networks, all that?


Ben Zaiboc