[ExI] Red

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Keith,
How about we drop it down a level from knowing what is and isn't
"conscious" what it is like, and what conscious engineering will be like in
the future (what will and won't be possible?)

Let's instead ask the simpler question: "What are the color qualities of
physical stuff?"

Do you realize we can't answer this simple fundamental physics question?
see "Physicists don't understand color":
https://www.jneurophilosophy.com/index.php/jnp/article/view/54

There is a clear consensus that color qualities are properties of something
(even if that is some kind of 'function')  in the head, not of the physical
stuff we see.

We can describe everything in the brain, but a description doesn't tell you
what it is like.
We just don't know which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a
description of redness.



On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 12:27 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> For years, this entire topic has gone right over my head.
>
> I realize it might be significant, but to me it reminds me of the medieval
> arguments over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. OK, a ripe
> strawberry has the quality of red. So what?
> Also, never read why angels would want to dance on the head of a pin.
>
> Keith
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 10:47 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Yes.  There is a non euclidean bubble world in your head, which is your
>> conscious knowledge of the Euclidean world out there.
>> There is plenty of clear proof that half of this bubble world resides in
>> each hemisphere, yet somehow we experience it as one unified, infallible,
>> gestalt experience.
>>
>> I hope you're not going back to Descartes' idea of the pineal gland in
>> the center of the brain, which he thought contained everything we
>> consciously know in one point?
>>
>> And of course every subcomponent doesn't know this.  In fact if parts of
>> knowledge, like redness, are experienced with your memory of ripe
>> strawberries,.., that memory must also be subjectively bound with redness
>> via some mechanism.
>> It is possible that qualities in the left hemisphere are bound only to
>> qualities in the right, without the memories also being subjectively bound
>> with them.  Lots of this kind of stuff is clearly happening with people who
>> have congenitally bound brains.  They can "see out their twin's eyes" even
>> though their memories are different.
>>
>> There is also evidence that we have subjectively bound
>> conscious knowledge not bound into our main conscious knowledge.  This
>> would be a kind of separately conscious gestalt entity residing at a
>> different location in the brain/hemisphere.  If the subjective binding
>> mechanism isn't present, it can't be part of an infallible gestalt
>> experience.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 11:00 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 12:35 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat
>>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> > On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 5:03 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >> You can objectively observe your own "yellowness quality" but you are
>>> the only conscious being in the universe that can do that; meanwhile I have
>>> my own "yellowness quality" that you will never be able to objectively
>>> observe.
>>> >
>>> > This assertion is obviously falsified by the simple fact that your
>>> left hemesphere knows infallably, what redness in the right hemesphere is
>>> like.
>>>
>>> Does it now?  Just because you know it does not mean that every
>>> subcomponent of you knows it.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20260709/512737f6/attachment.htm>