[ExI] Red

[Ben Zaiboc]

Brent,

Your claims seem to me so extraordinary and so completely outside what I know about how brains work (and what science has taught us about things in general), that I thought it might be a good idea to confirm that you are in fact saying what it seems to me that you're saying.

One problem I have is that your language is so obscure and elaborate that I have difficulty telling if I have in fact understood you or not.

So, let me know which of the following I've got right and wrong, about what you are claiming:

* Certain material substances (presently unknown) possess properties that can be called 'phenomenal qualities' (which means the feeling of being something, or what it is like to be or experience something).

* These properties are /fundamental/ properties, i.e. low-level physical properties, on a par with electromagnetism, gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, etc.

* In order to experience the things we commonly experience (colours is just one example, but this must include things like fear, pleasure, hunger, fascination, etc., etc.), we must have some kind of interaction in our brains (presumably just our brains) with these unspecified substances. Absent this interaction, we are incapable of having the relevant experiences.

* Because they are the result of (or perhaps because they *are*) some kind of interaction or relation with these substances, our subjective experiences are not actually subjective, but objective phenomena that can be, at least in principle, observed from outside.

* (tentative) There is no actual difference between 'objective' and 'subjective' phenomena. Everything that we commonly experience is amenable to objective investigation, and everything that we regard as 'objective' is, at least potentially, an experience.


Each one of these claims is, to me, completely at odds with what we know about how the world works, so I'll be very happy if you can say that I've got them all wrong, and this is not what you think at all.

---
Ben