[ExI] [Exi] Quantum consciousness, quantum mysticism, and transhumanist engineering

Tue Mar 14 21:57:03 UTC 2017

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 10:59 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 
> Quantitative information is that which is represented with abstracted
> numerically comparable values, like 1, 2...

That's what languages do, represent things or concepts with symbols, and
mathematics is a language.   

> > 
> What is physically representing the numerical 1, 2... value is irrelevant,
> or abstracted away.

When doing linguistic reasoning it's arbitrary what particular symbol you
choose to represent a idea, but once you've chosen it you can't arbitrarily
change it and expect your reasoning to produce the correct conclusion.  

> > 
> Many people, like John, are predicting that it will always be impossible
> to eff the ineffable or that it will be impossible for me to know anything
> about John's redness.  I, on the other hand, am predicting that it will
> soon be possible to eff the ineffable,

You will use some theory that says the redness qualia you are experiencing
right now is the same redness qualia I am experiencing. Well maybe you are,
 but how could you ever know you are? How will your ever know your theory
is correct? In mathematics there are a infinite number true statements that
can never be proven because they have no proof, they're just true.

> 
> A simplified example testable theory is that glutamate is the objectively
> observable side of subjective elemental redness.

The brain consists of more than just
glutamate
, so you're saying that when 
glutamate
 interacts with the non-
glutamate
 part of the brain a redness qualia is produced. I'm saying that if
something that is not
glutamate
 but intercts with the brain in the same was a 
redness qualia
 will also be produced, and there is nothing particularly red about 
glutamate
, it's just the arbitrary symbol one particular human brain uses to
represent red.

> > 
> In other words, the observable physical qualities of glutamate are one and
> the same as the qualities we can subjectively experience as redness.

Neither
glutamate
 nor the English word "red" is red, both are just signals that some brains
use to represent red, and that chemical and that word works as well as any
but another word of chemical could have been used as long as consistency is
maintained.    

> 
> So, if you can prove that if you have one, you always have the other, and
> only the other, the theory has been proven.

You will have done a lot more than that! If you have proven that something
can effect the brain in exactly the same way that
glutamate
 does but it does NOT produce the redness qualia then you will have proven
that reductionism, and thus science, doesn't work. I don't expect that to
happen anytime soon.

> 
> if you swap a part for another part, that interacts with it's neighbors in
> the same way, the system as a whole will behave in the same way.  I
> completely agree with this,

Good.

> 
> but the way you do the substitution is erroneous, and you are corrupting
> the system by always insisting you must be able to remove any way to
> compare one quality to another, no matter where you theorized that it might
> be.

That's called reductionism and despite a lot of bad press from the new age
crowd it works brilliantly. Good thing too, if reductionism didn't work and
we had to understand everything before we could understand anything we
wouldn't understand one damn thing. What separates a great scientist from
the not so great is the ability to tell one part from another and the
ability to tell that 2 apparently different parts are  actually the same
part looked at with a different angle

> 
> I assert that if your theory is true, then there must be some "function"
> that is the redness function, and there must be some other function that
> must be detectably different that is the greenness function.

I strongly disagree.

If I exchange the steering wheel and the back left tire on you car it will
behave very differently so you'd be justified in saying the

steering wheel and the tire are different parts; but if I exchange your
"redness function" with your "greenness function" your external behavior
will not change at all, and even more important subjectively you would have
no way of knowing that such a exchange had even happened.

So unless there is something that is neither objective nor subjective no
change has been made at all and we can then use Leibniz
'
s

Identity of indiscernibles

to conclude that the redness function and the greenness function are not
separate parts at all but are just different aspects of the same part, the
color differentiation part.  I mean, if switching them makes no objective
difference, and

switching them makes no

subjective

difference

, then I think it's safe to say there is no difference period.

> > 
> If you include the ability of the system to behave the same, including
> comparison of redness and greenness (whether they are material or
> functional) so that it preserves the ability to say that redness is
> different than greenness, only then can you consider it to be "behaving the
> same"

I agree 
that redness is different than greenness
, but I think something else is true too, if you exchanged the meanings of
the words "redness" and "greenness" it would still be true that 
redness is different than greenness
.

John K Clark
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