[ExI] Fwd: Chalmers

[William Flynn Wallace]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 4:06 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 4:22 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> > I am no physicist nor am up on any of the consciousness research and
>> can't tell qualia from subjective experience.  But - it would seem a simple
>> thing to do brain scans while the subject is looking at red or whatever
>> stimulus you want to trace in the brain to its ultimate destination, and
>> thus get a picture of what happens in the subject's brain when those
>> stimuli are present.
>>
>
>
> It could show you how the noise "I am experiencing the qualia red" was
> produced by the mouth of the subject, but how on earth could a MRI brain
> scan every tell you that the brain in question was experiencing the red
> qualia, or experiencing any qualia whatsoever? How could you even in theory
> ever prove that solipsism was untrue?
>
> John K Clark
>

I am assuming that the neural networks that increase in activity when a
certain stimulus is applied is the same - equal - isomorphic - whatever you
want to call it - as the conscious experience.  They don't produce the
conscious experience as a separate response - they ARE the conscious
experience.  When that network lights up just as it did last time and the
time before and so on, when a red stimulus was presented, you have nailed
down where red is (or, I suppose if you want to be really precise, that
wavelength of red).  If you show a red apple, you get that network and
another one, presumably representing apples.

Of course you also ask the subject what he is experiencing.  He'd better
say red or we are in trouble!

I don't know that solipsism is amenable to proof.   bill w

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