[ExI] The relevance of glutamate in color experience

[Brent Allsop]

Stathis, as usual, we are always talking about completely different things.

The prediction is that for each redness pixel of our knowledge of the
surface of a strawberry, there must be something that has that redness
quality.  Nothing will be able to produce that redness quality for that one
pixel, other than that set of physics, an example being glutamate.  And the
system must be able to detect, when the pixel changes, and it must be able
to act differently, when it does change.  The neural substitution doesn't
allow for that redness to be anything, even something functional, for the
same reason, so is just an absurd argument.  The system must be able to
detect when redness changes to greenness, or anything else.  What, if not
something physical, could be responsible for any such change in the quality
of the substrate of our knowledge of the strawberry, in a way so that we
can report that it has changed?







On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 12:39 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, 3 May 2022 at 04:01, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, May 1, 2022 at 10:07 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Jason,
>>>
>>> Yes, this is the Neuro Substitution Argument for functionalism
>>> <https://canonizer.com/topic/79-Neural-Substitn-Argument/1-Agreement> Stathis,
>>> I and others have been rehashing, forever, trying to convince the other
>>> side..  Stathis, Chalmers, and other functionalists
>>> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/18-Qualia-Emerge-from-Function>
>>> believe they must accept functionalism because of this argument.  This is a
>>> specific example of the 'dancing qualia' contradiction (one of many) which
>>> results if you accept this argument.
>>>
>>> I like to point out that this argument is dependent on two assumptions.
>>> 1., that all the neurons do is the same thing discrete logic gates do in
>>> abstract computers.  2. That the neuro substitution will succeed.  If
>>> either of these two fail, the argument doesn't work.
>>>
>>
>> ### This is not true. The argument is valid regardless of the mechanism
>> of computation in the device that is substituting for a part of the brain.
>> Only requirement for the substitution argument is that the substituted
>> device must not change the way the rest of the recipient brain works (i.e.
>> the overall pattern of neural activity and behavior controlled by the
>> brain).
>>
>> By way of illustration, instead of using a digital device for
>> substitution, we may consider a genetically engineered brain that has the
>> identical functional organization as a normal human brain but substitutes
>> e.g. D-glutamate for L-glutamate as the transmitter. This would require
>> re-engineering the structure of the relevant glutamate receptors, adding a
>> glutamate isomerase to make D-glutamate out of L-glutamate and perhaps
>> other minor tweaks but it would not change the functional aspects of
>> neurotransmission in the modified brain or its parts.
>>
>> Obviously, if the chemical structure of glutamate somehow determined
>> qualia, then such a modified brain would have different qualia. If however
>> the modified D-glutamate brain is able to substitute for a part of the
>> standard L-glutamate brain without changing the overall patterns of neural
>> activation and without changing behavior then the substitution would prove
>> that glutamate has nothing to do with qualia.
>>
>
> The argument can be generalised by using a black box that interacts with
> the brain in the same way as the replaced tissue. It is an argument showing
> that qualia cannot be separated from behaviour.
>
>> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
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