[ExI] Frank Jackson's brilliant color scientist Mary

[William Flynn Wallace]

  We don’t perceive redness, redness is the final result of perception, the
quality of the physical knowledge we are directly aware of.

This seems completely contradictory, as you have 'perceive' and
'perception' opposed, or something.  bill w

On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 4:36 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Yes, physics can explain everything about qualia, the problem is, all
> these abstract labels for and descriptions of physics that come to our
> senses tell us nothing about the physical quality they are describing.  The
> only thing qualitative is subjective experience.  Everything we get from
> objective observation is abstract.  The physics that interacts with our
> senses isn’t anything like whatever is the target of perception.  So, in
> order to know the qualitative color of something, you need to experience it
> directly.  For example, it is a theoretical possibility that the causal
> properties of redness are the causal properties of glutamate as it reacts
> in a synapse.  In other words, both the abstract words redness and
> glutamate are labels for the same thing.  We don’t perceive redness,
> redness is the final result of perception, the quality of the physical
> knowledge we are directly aware of.
>
>
>
> The word red isn’t physically red.  In order to know what red means, you
> need to point to something physical (or in Stathis’ case, maybe point to
> something functional or magic) and say THAT is red.  Because physicists and
> neuroscientists never do this, they are qualia blind.  They can’t tell us
> what THAT is, as a definition of red.
>
>
>
> Frank Jackson started to far one way (physics can’t explain qualia) and
> was wrong.  Then he swung the other way, and is still wrong (has no idea
> how to bridge the explanatory gap) And as usual, the answer is somewhere in
> the middle.
>
>
>
> Once experimentalists stop being qualia blind (use two words color and
> colorness as in glutamate’s color is white, since it reflects white light
> but it’s colorness is redness.) they will soon discover what the definition
> of red is.  They will be able to finally tell us which of all their
> descriptions of physics is the description of redness.
>
>
>
> Discovering this will obviously falsify all but *THE ONE* true theory of
> qualia, from amongst all the yet to be falsified diverse sets of theories
> predicting the extreme diversity of possible physical natures of qualia.
> You can see all the competing theories in the sub camps of Representational
> Qualia Theory <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6>.
>
>
>
>
> Hopefully it is obvious to everyone that I am in the Molecular
> Materialism camp <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Molecular-Materialism/36>
> .
>
> Or here is the entire parent chain of my camps:
>
> *Agreement
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/1> / Approachable
> Via Science
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2> / Representational
> Qualia
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6> / Mind-Brain
> Identity <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Mind-Brain-Identity/17> / Monism
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Monism/65> / Qualia are Material Qualities
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Qualia-are-Material-Qualities/7> / Molecular
> Materialism <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Molecular-Materialism/36>*
>
>
>
> Stathis, you are still a functionalist, right?  But which type of
> functionalist are you?  A Monist functionalist
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Qualia-Emerge-from-Function/18> or a property
> dualist functionalist
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Functional-Prprty-Dualism/8>?  Or some
> other camp?  Or have I falsified functionalism for you yet?
>
>
>
> How would each of you rank the best of these theories?  John, William,
> anyone else?  Does anyone know of a theory that hasn’t yet been canonized?
>
>
>
> And even more, would anyone care to make any kind of bet as to which camp
> will be the first to achieve a 90% or better consensus, using the peer
> ranked mind expert canonizer algorithm
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/81-Mind-Experts/1>?
>
>
>
> Also, how long do people think this will take to get to a 90% scientific
> consensus?  I predict it will happen within 5 years of achieving a
> total participation of 1000 verified people participating in the Theories
> of Consciousness
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/1> topic.
> There are currently less than 100 total participants.  So it is all up to
> you to help with the amplification of the wisdom of the crowd process and
> basically sign the petition that you believe scientists need to stop being
> qualia blind so they will get the message sooner.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 2:55 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> In this case, one can note that Mary can not possibly acquire "all the
>> physical information" even in a lifetime of work.
>>
>> That doesn't mean the information isn't there, just that the method
>> proposed would obviously fail to provide enough resources to acquire it.
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 11:52 AM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Existing physics can't explain qualia (as well as many other, actually
>>> more tractable problems) but yes Mary the Color Scientist is a bad thought
>>> experiment.  As are many thought experiments, because they don't exist in
>>> reality.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20191222/ce891d6a/attachment-0001.htm>