[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[Henry Rivera]

Sorry this response wasn’t formulated yet when it was Sent prematurely. 

> On Jan 6, 2020, at 7:50 PM, Henry Rivera <4chaos.onelove at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> “In a pan-psychist view consistent with modern physics, Planck-scale spin networks encode protoconscious (‘fundamental’) experience (qualia) as well as Platonic values.”
> 
>>> On Jan 6, 2020, at 7:03 PM, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> 
>> 
>> Hi Ben,
>>  
>> “The 'thing that is green', or the subjective experience of a specific green object, is not something like a physical property of a chemical.”
>>  
>> And
>>  
>> “The phrase "what it is that has the redness quality you can 'directly experience' betrays a dualistic mindset"
>>  
>> There are some very smart “substance dualists” pointing out that this view hasn’t yet been falsified.  If we falsify that all known physics aren’t responsible for the redness we experience, we must conclude that is it some new physics, possibly something interfaced through to some neither world of the dead?
>>  
>> There are a whole heap of “Property Dualists.”  In fact this is still one of the leading consensus ladder of camps.  I was once a supporter of this camp.  But now I’ve realized, along with multiple others, how misleading even this view is and are now “monists”.
>>  
>> There are two ways of knowing things.  First is objective perception of color and such.  In this view there is the target of perception (like the sugar content or ripeness of a strawberry) there is the very different physics our senses detect as they represent that, and finally there is our knowledge of such.  All of these obviously different physical things.
>>  
>> You don’t perceive colorness properties, you are directly aware of them, in computationally bound register pixels of our conscious CPU.  These are the final result of perception.
>>  
>> The first method is abstract (requires correct interpretation of whatever physics is landing on our senses), and therefor can be mistaken.  As in the case when something “seems” different than it really is.
>>  
>> Colorness is a physical property that just is and can’t be mistaken.  It is the mistaken seeming knowledge that may be incorrectly representing its referent.
>>  
>> It is a necessary truth, that if you consciously know something, there must be something that is that knowledge, and it must be computationally bound into your awareness.
>>  
>> We have knowledge of spirits, in our diorama of knowledge (represented as if existing behind and looking out of our knowledge of our eyes.)  While most of our visual knowledge has a referent in reality, our knowledge of our spirit does not.
>>  
>> The funny thing about people that believe in Ghosts, is that even a ghost, like a “homunculus in a cartesian theater.”  if they are “self-aware” there necessarily must be some subset of that ghost that is its knowledge of self.  Which of course is kind of absurd.
>>  
>> 
>>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 7:00 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 06/01/2020 07:00, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>  >When you experience a redness quality, when you are dreaming or not, 
>>> there must be something, that is that redness quality you are 
>>> experiencing.  My redness could be like your greenness,
>>> 
>>> 
>>> No, I very much doubt it. In order for your 'redness' to be like my 
>>> 'greenness', it would have to be associated with the perception of 
>>> grass, racing cars, limes, and hundreds of other things linked to the 
>>> word 'green' in my mind. The 'something that I'm experiencing' (but see 
>>> below) when I see a lime and am just concentrating on the colour, is far 
>>> from a simple thing. And it's probably a different thing, to some 
>>> degree, each time I do this.
>>> 
>>> The 'thing that is green', or the subjective experience of a specific 
>>> green object, is not somethihng like a physical property of a chemical. 
>>> It's a large pattern of neural activation in my brain. This pattern is 
>>> necessarily linked to other patterns that represent instances of green 
>>> objects, among many other patterns.
>>> 
>>> The phrase "what it is that has the redness quality you can directly 
>>> experience" betrays a dualistic mind-set, I think. As though the 'me' 
>>> that was experiencing the sight (or memory, etc.) of a red object, or 
>>> just a flat field of the colour red, or even the abstract notion of 
>>> 'redness', was a different thing to the actual experience. Which of 
>>> course gives rise to all sorts of awkward and nonsensical questions.
>>> 
>>> That's not what I think is happening. The way of looking at this that 
>>> currently makes sense to me, is that when I'm in that state of 
>>> 'experiencing a red thing', that is what I am. There are not two 
>>> separate things, one having an experience, and the other being the 
>>> experience. There is just one. There is a pattern of neural activation 
>>> going on in a brain. At that moment, 'I' am not 'experiencing' that 
>>> pattern, the pattern is what I am. The next moment, of course, the 
>>> pattern (or rather, the complex set of all the patterns that are 
>>> currently active) changes, and I am something else.
>>> 
>>> This is why I say that "elemental redness" is a nonsense concept, and 
>>> why I don't give any credence to the idea of a chemical substance 
>>> somehow having a 'red property'. If that was the case, I would be that 
>>> red property of that chemical. Which gives rise, again, to all sorts of 
>>> nonsensical questions. Which molecule am I? How do I think of something 
>>> other than red? and so on.
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Ben Zaiboc
>>> 
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