[ExI] The relevance of glutamate in color experience

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 3 May 2022 at 05:43, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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?
>

If the substituted structure can reproduce what you call the abstract
qualities without reproducing the qualia, which means the subject will
behave the same despite a change in qualia, how does this fit with your
concept of what qualia are?

>
> 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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-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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