[ExI] Qualia are incommensurate

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at gmail.com
Wed Jul 24 02:37:40 UTC 2019


Hi Rafal,



“Nothing we speak of is "just the redness", because of the un-articulated,
unspecified complexity hidden behind every image and every word that
pertains to the physical world.”



Let’s try this.



There is one of all possible pixels (smallest spot you can clearly
perceive) on the surface of a ripe red strawberry that is changing between
red and green.  You can focus on whichever spot is changing and you are
clearly aware of it as it changes from red to green.



Would you agree that there was something physical, in your brain, which you
are directly aware of that is this switching knowledge?  And would you
agree that the physics that was the “red” knowledge has a redness quality
you can be directly aware of, and when it changes to green, this different
physics has a greenness quality you are also directly aware of?





On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 7:42 PM Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 12:37 AM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Rafal,
>> You seem to be talking about computationally bound composite qualia, in a
>> way that seems almost blind to elemental qualia.  Elemental qualia, like
>> redness and grenness, can be computationally bound to all the composite
>> qualia you are talking about.  I'm talking about the elemental physical
>> quality that can be physically isolated from the stuff you are talking
>> about.  Redness is something physical, out of which composite conscious
>> experience like you talk about can be built.  It's just the redness,
>> nothing else.
>>
>> ### In pure mathematics you specify everything about the entities under
> consideration, thus an entity is "just" what is being considered. A
> triangle analyzed within an axiomatic system is "just" a triangle, nothing
> else.
>
> Everything else we discuss or see that is not pure mathematics is embedded
> in a physical world that is beyond our understanding. Everything we talk
> about or subjectively experience is complicated and bound to mysteries, no
> matter how simple it may seem at first glance. As David Deutsch puts it,
> even the simplest everyday notions are "theory-laden". Nothing is "just"
> what we think about it. Nothing we speak of is "just the redness", because
> of the un-articulated, unspecified complexity hidden behind every image and
> every word that pertains to the physical world.
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