[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[John Clark]

On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 10:55 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Evidently, you’re not fully grasping what is going on
>

One of us is certainly not grasping something. This big change you talk
about is just a change in a convention not in anything substantial; you're
just changing the origin point of a coordinate system, you're changing one
meter to 39.37 inches.


> >> “There would be no way you could even notice subjectively that a
> change of some sort had been made.”
>
>
>
> > False.  Subjectively a physical redness quality you are directly aware
> of would change from redness to greenness, a huge subjective change.
>

Suppose I tell you I will make this "huge subjective change" sometime in
the next hour but not exactly when. I tell you to ring a bell the instant
you detect this "huge subjective change". How in the world are you going to
know when to ring that bell?! As long as the change has been made
consistently there is absolutely no way you could tell. If you can't tell
that a "huge subjective change" has even been made then it can't be huge,
in fact it can't be a subjective change of any sort big or small. And that
tells me the only thing that gives a color qualia meaning is its
relationship with other color qualia, and that's why a old fashioned
photographic negative had as much information as the positive print.

>> “And there is no way I could see any change in your objective behavior
> either.”
>
>
>
> > False, Objectively, you could observe whatever physics it is which that
> brain is using to represent conscious knowledge of the red
>

The brain chemistry might be different but the end result, your behavior,
would be exactly the same. And semiconductor physics and vacuum tube
physics are different but when computers based on those technologies add
2+2 they both output 4, and there is no difference between one 4 and the
other 4.


> *> What is it that you think: “My redness is like your greenness, both of
> which we call red.” Means?*
>

We can both see a difference between a strawberry and a leaf in addition to
their shape and size.

 John K Clark
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