[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[Brent Allsop]

You are not yet understanding the model, and only focusing on what doesn't
matter.

You are not distinguishing between reality and knowledge of reality.  This
is a necessary truth: "If you consciously know something, there must be
something that is that knowledge."  It is the qualities of this knowledge
of which we are talking, which you are ignoring.

Of the shades of red and green, which you can distinguish, you are not
blind to those colors.  In order to be able to consciously distinguish them
requires that you have conscious knowledge of those colors that are
different.  For the ones which you can't distinguish, you are blind to
those differences.  You are talking about the former, I'm talking
about the latter.  The reason you are blind to these differences in this
case, is because your brain uses the same physical quality to represent
both of those colors, making it impossible for you to be consciously aware
of their difference.  The qualities of knowledge has nothing to do with the
retina or the light, as all this knowledge can exist in a brain in a vat,
in a dark room, with no eyes, as long as you stimulate the optic nerve
identical to the way the eye would.








On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 12:32 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Thanks for the reply, Brent.  Let's focus on the color blind issue for a
> moment as I think it will help me better understand your position to dig
> down on it, if you have the patience :-).  We can get to the robots later.
>
> You say that red/green color blind use the same quale to represent both
> red and green, but there are different levels of severity of red/green
> color blindness.  I know what red and green look like (at least to me), and
> can differentiate the two for many shades, so I don't understand how I am
> using the same quale to represent both red and green.  I can see that
> strawberries are red and their leaves are green for example.
>
> Let's propose another experiment on color blindness.  Suppose I really
> could not distinguish red from green because of a severe issue with the
> cones in my eyes.  Suppose also that I buy your argument that I only have
> one quale for both red and green at this point (TBH, I still don't but
> let's assume I do for this thought experiment).   Let's also suppose there
> is a new genetic therapy for true R/G color blindess that restores the
> normal pigmentation structure to my cones, and I can now distinguish all
> shades of red and green.   What happens to the formerly single quale for
> red/green and where does it happen in the brain, and why?
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 2:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Dylan,
>> Thanks for jumping in.  Nice to have some additional input.
>> The prediction is that the brains of people that are red/green color
>> blind simply use the same quale to represent both red and green.  As John
>> would point out, you don't have enough diversity in your knowledge to
>> represent both red and green knowledge, making you blind to what the rest
>> of us have sufficient physical diversity to represent.
>>
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