[ExI] Why stop at glutamate?

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at gmail.com
Tue Apr 11 04:03:56 UTC 2023


You guys are just pulling my leg right?  You really understand these simple
(what is the code, and what is the referent) ideas and are just giving me a
hard time?

Either way, you failed to answer the all important question: How do you
decode what is encoded?
What is the referent?  You guys are talking about the code, that isn't like
anything, so it needs a dictionary to know what it means, I am talking
about the referent that is what you get when you decode the word 'red'.
Where is the grounding in any of what you are talking about?  Where is the
meaning?  Where is the quality, which the code word red is a label for?

On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 9:13 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 8:51 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jason,
>> Great, qualities are "encoded in the patterns of neural activity" could
>> be a theory that is not yet experimentally falsified.
>> I know there are many others that have made similar claims, I just
>> haven't been able to get anyone to canonize that theory,
>>
>
>
> What theory is it? I could see materialists, mind brain identity
> theorists, neural correlationists, and functionalists all potentially
> agreeing with that statement.
>
> so people like you could just join that camp.  I suspect it might be kind
>> of like I can't get any of the many people that bleat and tweet things
>> like  "in defense of naive realism" to canonizer the theory that predicts
>> redness is a property of the strawberry.
>>
>
> Does anyone believe that? People have, for at least 2300 years, recognized
> that color exists in us, not in the world. Democritus, Galileo, Newtown,
> Shrodinger, have all said that.
>
>
>
>> Can I ask you another question?  You say qualities are "encoded."  To me,
>> a "code" is something that is not what it represents, like the word "red"
>> merely represents its grounding referent.  Or a physical hole in a paper
>> may be a physical property that isn't a redness property and only
>> represents another property (requiring a transducing dictionary to tell you
>> the meaning of the code).
>>
>> How would you decode, what is "encoding" those qualities?  Please don't
>> tell me you'd use light. ;)
>>
>
> Other parts of the brain decode the meaning of the signals they receive.
>

They decode it to WHAT?  Decoding from one code, to another code, none of
which is like anything nor are they grounded is not yet grounding
anything.  It is still just a code with no grounded referent so you can't
truly decode them in any meaningful way.
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