[ExI] What is Consciousness?

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 4:55 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Hi Rafael,
> I'm still failing to communicate the point.  Let me try this.  Physical
> properties can be used as 'codes' to represent information, as long as you
> have a dictionary defining those codes.  Redness is a physical property
> which can represent, or be a code for 'red' information.  If you put a
> red/green signal inverter between the retina and optic nerve, this changes
> the dictionary so the code for 'red', becomes a greenness physical
> property.  The question is, which of all our descriptions of stuff in the
> brain is a description of that greenness quality, that is now a code for
> red?
>

### I really do not understand this paragraph at all. "Red/green signal
inverter" ? There isn't really a color signal extracted at the level of the
retina or optic nerve, the color information is extracted at higher levels
of the nervous system. Do you mean rewiring the retina so the L cones and
the M cones swap their connections somehow? I guess it would give you a
pretty psychedelic experience, possibly color blindness, until the higher
levels of the brain rewired themselves to respond to the altered input.

 -------------------------

>
> If "The specificity of coding for colors comes from their location within
> the neural net", what is it that makes one location have a physical redness
> quality, and the other code for red location have a greenness quality?
> This is what you are ignoring.
>

### Oh, not ignoring. Nobody knows why signal processing through these
differing parts of the neural network feels as it feels, rather than
feeling as something else. This is the hard problem of consciousness.
Nobody has even the rudiments of the knowledge of ontology that is
presumably needed to solve this problem.

Since the problem is way beyond my (or anybody else's) capabilities, I
defer further analysis until and if new pertinent information is available.
I would advise all people to do the same.

Rafal
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