[ExI] Why stop at glutamate?

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 4:17 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Hi Gadersd,
>
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 2:35 PM Gadersd via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Brent, where is the glutamate quality of electrons, neutrons, and
>> protons? Which electron has the redness quality?
>>
>> Electrons behave the way they do, because they have a quality you have
> never experienced before. (Note:  I'm a pan qualityist. a panpsychist minus
> the pan computational binding ;)
>
> There exists higher order structure that doesn’t exist in the component
>> parts, hence the phrase “more than the sum of the parts."
>>
>
> I guess that would be a hypothetical possibility.  I try to always point
> out  that some day, someone will experience redness without glutamate,
> falsifying the prediction that it is glutamate that behaves the way it
> does, because of its redness quality.  Once glutamate is falsified, they
> will try something else, possibly including something that is the sum of
> some configuration of parts, or ANYTHING.  The reason we use glutamate is
> because it is so easily falsifiable.  Falsifiability is what we are missing
> with the qualitative nature of consciousness, and ease of falsifiability is
> the reason we are using glutamate as an easy stand-in for whatever redness
> turns out to be.
>
> I just wish people with these kinds of "qualities arise from <whatever>"
> theories would explicitly acknowledge (instead of ignoring), what everyone
> knows absolutely, that color qualities are real, and then provide some
> example of some kind of "function" or some configuration of parts, the sum
> total of which could be pointed to and say: "THAT  is redness."  at least
> in a way that would pass the laugh test?
>
>
You ask of functionalism more than you have achieved for your own theory:
you have yet to name what molecule is responsible for redness which won't
be falsified.

The function for redness is a function that is found in the neural network
of a normally sighted person's brain (likely within but perhaps not limited
to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_centre). It is likely not
anything rudimentary like a square root function, it will be a function
able to (at a minimum) discriminate among millions of possible color
values.

Jason
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