[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 1:36 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Hi Ben,
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 3:50 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Brent:
>> I think I have a way to disprove your idea about physical substances in
>> the brain producing qualia,
>
>
> Wonderful!! Falsifying theories, forcing a scientific consensus, and
> rigorously tracking this progress when people abandon falsified camps, is
> what canonizer is all about.  And thanks for asking for clarification on my
> poor English.
>
>
>> 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)?
>>
>
> Yes, but you are being qualia blind when you only say 'red', as I
> understand 'red' as being anything that reflects or emits red light.  But
> it sounds like you are instead talking about the very different physical
> quality, redness.  My redness could be like your grenness, both of which we
> label as red.
>
> The only claim the consensus supporters of representational qualia are
> making is that conscious information is represented by some type of qualia,
> and that today, most everyone uses qualia blind (one word) models and
> language.  The lack of consensus is just around the nature of qualia.  Some
> predicting qualia are functional
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Qualia-Emerge-from-Function/18>, other
> that qualia are different than physics
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Substance-Dualism/48>, others that they
> are down at the quantum level <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Orch-OR/20>
> ….   We only use a simplified version of the easiest theory to falsify, "elemental
> qualia are molecular material qualities
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Molecular-Materialism/36>," is to better
> help people understand what it means to be qualia blind.  Once people
> understand how not to be qualia blind with the simplest theory, and they
> can easily falsify (or verify) that glutamate = redness, they can then do
> the same for all other more capable theories.  Not being qualia blind is
> what is required before experimentalists can start to falsify all these
> competing theories predicting the nature of qualia.  Any theory is
> justified for being used as a working hypothesis, till it is falsified.
> So we need to close this last remaining gap full of crap by falsifying
> all the crap.
>
> 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'.
>>
>
> Exactly, this is how you falsify the prediction that redness = glutamate.
> This kind of falsifiability is the whole point.  If this is achieved, you
> just select another theory that has not yet been falsified as your new
> working hypothesis.  You then do a global replace of the word 'glutamate'
> in everything I have been saying, with another "working hypothesis of
> what is redness, until you have found the necessary and sufficient set of
> stuff that has a redness quality.  Then we will have eliminated all the
> crap, knowing which theory is THE ONE, and only then we will finally know
> what color things are.
>
>
> Brent
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD
Schuyler Biotech PLLC
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