[ExI] What is "Elemental Redness"?

Jason Resch jasonresch at gmail.com
Mon May 1 23:17:47 UTC 2023


On Mon, May 1, 2023, 6:43 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> On 01/05/2023 22:34, Darin Sunley wrote:
>
> Because neural firing patterns don't have a color (they're mushy gray,
> just like everything else in the brain), nothing about their physical
> properties has a direct causal relationship with color experiences. Color
> experiences are correlated to neural firing patterns, but to flatly declare
> that they are caused by neural firing patterns is begging the entire
> question [and very probably wrong].
>
>
> No, colour experiences aren't *correlated with* or *caused* *by* neural
> firing patterns, they *are* neural firing patterns.
>

I disagree with mind-brain identity theory. To say something is something
else established an identity relation, or a 1-to-1 mapping, if A is
identical with B and B identical with C then A is identical with C.

But note that identity theory rules out multiple realizability. If colour
experiences are identical with certain neural activity, then those same
experiences can't be identical with certain silicon computations.

Here, if A is identical with B but we know A ≠ C, then we know B ≠ C.

If multiple realizability is true, then there must be a 1-to-many
relationship between conscious states and realizations of those conscious
states, be they by neurons, computer chips, or any other substrate, and
this precludes an identity relationship between the conscious state and any
realization of it.


How is that not obvious? There's nothing else they could be.
>

We could also say experiences aren higher level patterns than the neural
activity. For example: thoughts, ideas, beliefs, states of awareness, etc.
The neurons then would be a lower level substrate thet supports the higher
level structures. An analogy would be asking "what else a city skyline be
but bricks?" While not entirely wrong, it's perhaps more reasonable to
answer the skyline is made of buildings.

The dynamic information patterns, embodied as neural firing patterns, are
> what we call subjective experiences. They probably need to have a certain
> structure or degree of complexity in order to be conscious experiences, and
> that's something yet to be discovered, but the general principle is not
> only sound, but inevitable (if the patterns just *cause* the experience,
> then what is doing the experiencing? In what are the patterns causing the
> experience to happen? Doesn't make sense, does it? No, the patterns are the
> experience).
>


I don't follow why saying that "experience is" rather than "experience is
caused" escapes or answers the question of who is having the experience.

Jason


> This is similar to the confusion I mentioned earlier, caused by the
> terminology 'my mind'. You don't *have* a mind, you *are* a mind.
>
> These two misconceptions have the same cause, I think. Dualism. Once you
> properly ditch that, these things are blindingly obvious.
>
> Ben
>
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