[ExI] Mental Phenomena

Ben Zaiboc ben at zaiboc.net
Fri Jan 10 10:49:34 UTC 2020


Brent:

I think I have a way to disprove your idea about physical substances in 
the brain producing qualia, but first need to make sure I'm not wasting 
time demolishing a straw man, so I wanted to clarify what your position 
is, because I'm finding your language very opaque, and aren't quite sure 
that I do understand what you're saying.

Is your position that specific types of molecule in the brain (e.g. the 
infamous glutamate) are what produce specific qualia (e.g. the infamous 
'red'), and that this mapping is one-to-one (eg. glutamate and only 
glutamate produces the 'red' quale and only that)?

The consequence of this would be that if you removed glutamate from 
someone's brain (without killing them somehow), that person would be 
incapable of experiencing 'red'.

I do realise that you're not claiming that glutamate DOES produce the 
'red' quale, but that this is just an example of the kind of thing you mean.

Can you confirm that this is correct?

-- 
Ben Zaiboc



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list