[ExI] are qualia communicable? Was Why stop at glutamate?

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at gmail.com
Sat Apr 15 23:11:42 UTC 2023


As far as an "I" goes, it is just computationally bound knowledge of an
"I".  All our visual knowledge has a referent, out there in reality.
Our knowledge of our I (represented as if it is just behind, looking out
of, our knowledge of our eyes) does not have a referent in reality.
When people have "out of body experiences"  This knowledge of the spirit,
flies around their knowledge of their body, all in the bubble world, inside
their head.
But this fact that there is no referent in reality, doesn't change the fact
that this knowledge of an I is physically real, and objectively observable,
in our brain.
And, as I said before.  Buddhists meditators can eliminate this egocentric
knowledge of an I, so they feel "one with the universe." in a non first
person way.
But of course, in reality, they are just one with their knowledge of the
universe, all in their head.



On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 3:58 PM Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Another even deeper mystery that the communicability of qualia is how the
> brain creates an I.
> If you think about it, somehow the qualia is "communicated" among the
> 100,000s or even millions of neurons that are needed to
> experience something like red. By the way, there was some time ago some
> talk about "mother neurons" or single neurons that were activated when a
> particular face was shown, almost implying we have in our brains a neuron
> that activates when we see Brad Pitt. I'm not sure what is the status of
> that line of research (I will look it up) but I don't think any experience
> is associated with the activation of a single neuron.
>
> Anyway, I'm pretty sure that when we experience something millions of
> neurons are involved.
> Jason, given you know so much about consciousness, how do these neurons
> communicate to each other the experience of red (or anything else)? Somehow
> millions of individual entities come together and say "I see red". I think
> this phenomenon is even more important to understand than qualia.
> Understanding of this phenomenon comes first because somehow there is some
> sharing and integration of experience among these neurons. The qualia are
> indeed communicated among these neurons at least. There is no point to talk
> about qualia if we don't understand how an I is created by the brain in the
> first place.
> How the activity of many becomes the experience of an I?
>
> Giovanni
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 12:17 PM efc--- via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 15 Apr 2023, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote:
>>
>> > We can rewire all of Bob's brain to equal all of Alice's brain. Then we
>> can ensure that when they look at the same strawberry under
>> > the same light they see the same thing. But short of that there will
>> always be doubts, if not an impossibility, that the two can ever
>> > experience the same state of subjective awareness. And the requirement
>> of rewiring a brain I think is proof that qualia aren't
>> > communicable, and why experience is always trapped within and forever
>> bound to the experiencer.
>>
>> You can even argue that time is a component. Space, time, software and
>> hardware, and since the two, regardless of equal hardware and software,
>> cannot occupy the same space at the same time it is impossible to ever
>> be certain.
>>
>> I think I vaguely tried to make this point somewhere "up there" but I
>> think I'll have to reside with Jason on this one.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Daniel
>>
>>
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