[ExI] Why stop at glutamate?

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at gmail.com
Tue Apr 11 03:45:33 UTC 2023


We are just talking about two different things.
You guys are talking about an abstract code word "red" which is, by design,
independent of whatever changing physical property is representing it at
any time, or in any different brain, of any age, as long as the grounding
dictionary for the abstract term is updated appropriately.

Giovani mentioned:

> As we experience
> red in early childhood, and throughout life, we create a different
> perception of red that can be refined or sometimes degraded. It is not
> a fixed forever thing in the brain but it is always changing and
> modifying. This again destroys completely Brent's misconception about
> what redness is.

You said "redness" in that last line but didn't you mean to say code word
"red" instead of redness, it's referent?   At least using  my unambiguous
and well grounded terminology, it would be more clear.

Others have also talked about how knowledge of colors can change, due to
language and tastes can grow and expand based on practice and experience.

It is THESE changes that I am talking about.  What are the physical changes
that are responsible for these subjective changes, and what are they like
before and after those changes?

On the other thread Jason also indicated:  "I still think qualities are
encoded in neural patterns."  completely misunderstanding that a redness
quality is a physical fact, that does not need decoding like a code word.

The question that "destroys completely" your ability to understand what
qualities are (resulting in all kinds of 'hard problems' and ineffability)
is:  How do you decode that encoding?
How do you find out what a person's redness is like when they were younger
and how is it different, now that they are now older?

The way you guys are talking, it is all perceptions of interpretations of
perceptions.  Since you guys have no grounding, people point out that you
suffer from a symbol grounding problem.  That is the only reason you think
subjective qualities are ineffable.

It's no wonder you say you don't know what I'm talking about, when I use
the term quality.  There are no qualities in abstract text and codes.  You
simply need to ground your abstract codes with a pointer to a particular
physical property in a color image.  You need to point to a particular
physical redness quality and say  THAT is what redness was like when he was
young, and it has now changed to this different quality now that he is
older.  That is grounded, unambiguous terminology, enabling effing of what
is, for you guys, ineffable.

Who did you say is the one using confusing, ambiguous, non grounded
ineffable terminology that has no meaning?


On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 1:11 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> On 09/04/2023 23:50, Giovanni Santostasi wrote:
> > Let me elaborate on a point. When I say the pattern matters it doesn't
> > mean that a particular pattern matters. This is very relevant to
> > dismantle Brent's position. I can use any pattern I want to represent
> > red. In fact, let me expand on my previous statement: what matters is
> > the pattern AND the association with a given visual stimuli (in the
> > case of red) or a given thought or memory or whatever. If I associate
> > this pattern with seeing red (probably a given number of times) then
> > that is red in my brain. Given we have similar makeup and there is a
> > lot of software we inherit from our progenitors the association
> > process (basically we come with a lot of NN weights that are
> > pre-trained) is somehow pre-programmed up to a point. As we experience
> > red in early childhood, and throughout life, we create a different
> > perception of red that can be refined or sometimes degraded. It is not
> > a fixed forever thing in the brain but it is always changing and
> > modifying. This again destroys completely Brent's misconception about
> > what redness is.
>
>
> Thank-you Giovanni.
>
> You have put, much more clearly and concisely, what I've been trying, on
> and off, to say for years.
>
> And without a single mention of 'quality', 'knowledge of' or 'abstract'
> to confuse things.
> Well done.
>
> Ben
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