[ExI] Red

[Ben Zaiboc]

> On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 5:03 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 7:42 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>       
>
>         > We simply need nature to tell us, through direct apprehension, which one is which, so we can have our grounded dictionary of the physical qualities of what we are objectively observing.
>
>
>     This dictionary you keep talking about is going to be huge, perhaps going beyond huge and merging with the infinite; even if by some miracle you possessed such a monstrosity would you really feel that the consciousness problem had been solved? Wouldn't you want to know WHY one molecule has the happiness property while another slightly different molecule has this sadness property? 


I've never understood this 'grounded dictionary' concept that Brent keeps mentioning. How could such a thing be possible? Not just practically, but logically. It makes no sense to me. In fact, the concept of 'grounding' itself makes no sense to me, I don't see how it could be achieved.

The most comprehensible definition of the word I've seen is this:

"Concept grounding is the process by which abstract symbols, linguistic constructs, or model-internal representations are systematically connected to perceptual, sensorimotor, or extralinguistic phenomena."

Which is fair enough, and basically means that our words and other internal symbols that we think with are related to the more basic experiences provided by our senses and the internal world that we construct and assume is reasonably representative of the 'real world' outside our  bodies.
That makes sense, and I've no argument with it.

However, that doesn't seem to be what Brent means by the word. This may be obscured by his use of the term "physical qualities" (why he always mentions qualities but never quantities, I'm not sure, but I've now got used to translating it as 'properties'), which implies that there can be a direct link between our mental symbols (e.g. "cat") and the (presumed*) actual real-world objects they relate to (a large set of furry creatures with a particular set of features like purring, sharp claws and a tendency to sit on whatever you're reading and sleep on the stairs), /without/ going through the intermediate stages that our sensory apparatus and associated brain regions exist specifically for (extracting various features of the input and combining the data together then matching it against previously-experienced similar data, etc.).

It seems obvious that these stages are all that's needed, and this 'grounding' is either exactly these intermediate stages, as per the above quote, or just a fantasy ('direct apprehension' of things in the outside world. which, it should be obvious, is impossible).

In any event, if I'm wrong and he actually does intend the word to mean what the quote above says, then there's no need for any dictionary. So I'm still baffled.

-- 
Ben


* I'm generally in agreement with the view that we can never really know what the 'real world' is like, any more than we can know what goes on in someone else's head. All we have to go on is what happens inside our own heads.