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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/18/2016 8:36 AM, John Clark
wrote:<br>
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<br>
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cite="mid:CAJPayv10eL+E9f7NHVQv3L9vczb1OW4adBFaLROgJCgcFkK7ew@mail.gmail.com"
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<div class="gmail_default"><span class="gmail-im"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font size="4">if
you don't need "X is certainly true" and "X is
probably true" is good enough then you don't need to
worry about Godel.</font></span></div>
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<br>
Yes, I think we are in a large part in agreement. We can't prove
the sun will come up tomorrow, we just know it has, every day, for
the past 6+ billion years. And the falsifiable prediction is that
we will be able to find a similarly reliable relationship between a
redness quality to it's neural correlate and greenness quality to
it's, and reliably predict one with the other. I refer to what this
would give us as the weak form of effing the ineffable because of
these and other weaknesses.<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAJPayv10eL+E9f7NHVQv3L9vczb1OW4adBFaLROgJCgcFkK7ew@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<div class="gmail_default"><span class="gmail-im"
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Fri, Dec 16,
2016 at 9:48 PM, Brent Allsop </span><span dir="ltr"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>></span><span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br>
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<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">>I believe there is an emerging
consensus around the idea that there is a consistent
neural correlate to a redness quality and a consistently
observably different neural correlate for a greenness
quality. This theory could be proven, if we find these,
and with that can reliably predict (i.e. demonstrably
never fails or is never falsified) at observing such
differing correlates in other's brains</div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br>
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font
size="4">Yes, I could determine that whatever color
qualia you associate with strawberries you also
associate with stoplights, if of course I make the
unproven assumption that you experience any qualia
at all. But for all I know your red could be the
same as my green, or your red could be like nothing
I've ever experienced or ever could experience. Or
it could be about the same as mine. I don't know and
will never know.<br>
</font></div>
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<br>
Maybe not, for sure, via the "week" form of effing the ineffable
that we've been talking about. But there is a much stronger form of
efffing the ineffable. The right hemisphere of your brain knows
absolutely what quality your left hemisphere represents red with and
visa versa - since you experience the knowledge of both the left (in
the right hemisphere) and right (in the left hemisphere) field of
your vision at the same time. Similarly, there are cases of
conjoined twins that share brain parts that can do the same - be
aware of the knowledge and it's qualities in the other's brain (what
the other is seeing out the other eyes). Obviously, the corpus
Collosum is doing something that makes this possible between
hemispheres, possibly neurons firing in synchronized standing waves
as Steven Lehar predicts, the implication being that we will some
day be able to do the same, between brains - enabling you to
experience, first hand the quality of another's knowledge. I refer
to this as the strongest form of effing the ineffable, since you are
directly experiencing the qualities of the same knowledge in the
other's brain, along with your own.<br>
<br>
<br>
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cite="mid:CAJPayv10eL+E9f7NHVQv3L9vczb1OW4adBFaLROgJCgcFkK7ew@mail.gmail.com"
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<span style="font-size:small">The only problem is,
currently, when we observe something in the brain,
our senses give us abstracted information, like
the word "red" to describe what we are detecting,
and this information does not have any quality to
it</span></div>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">
<div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica,
sans-serif"></font><font size="4">You seem to feel
that there is something physical in the brain like a
"red circuit" that does nothing but generate the
subjective qualia red, but random mutation and
Natural Selection could never have produced the red
circuit if it did nothing but produce the quilia
red, but I know with absolute certainty that at
least one human being DOES experience the red
qualia. Therefore I must conclude that the red
circuit must produce something else that Evolution
can see, like behavior, and qualia is just a
byproduct of that in the same way that a spandrel is
the byproduct of an arch.</font></div>
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<br>
The redness neural correlate being a "circuit" of some kind is
definitely a theoretical possibility. I think it is more likely and
I predict that something just physically has each of the elemental
qualities we can experience, like glutamate, reacting in a synapse
having a redness quality and glycene having a greenness quality.
Diversity of representations is important for intelligent
knowledge. That is why you need a representation of a 1 to be
different from a zero. The more diversity the smarter. Evolution
simply harnessed these natural phenomenal qualitative diversities,
so we could survive better by more easily differentiating and
picking out our knowledge of the red strawberry from amongst the
green leaves.<br>
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>
<span style="font-size:small">At best, we interpret
the words like red as if it was representing the
quality of the surface of the strawberry, or the
initial source of the perception process</span></div>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">
<div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica,
sans-serif"></font><font size="4">Yes, we both
agree that red is the color of both strawberries and
stop lights but we don't know if my subjective red
is your subjective green or not. There is nothing
mystical in this it's just a result of the fact that
if X is not Y then X is not Y.</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default"><font size="4"><br>
</font></div>
<font size="4">Thomas Nagel might someday know what it
would be like if Thomas Nagel were a bat, but Thomas
Nagel will never know what it's like for a bat to be a
bat because then Thomas Nagel wouldn't be Thomas Nagel
anymore, he'd be a bat. A bat can know what it's like
to be a bat but nothing else can.</font></div>
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<br>
At the composite qualia level, for sure. But I'm not talking about
effing composite qualia, just elemental qualia from which composite
qualia are constructed. When you have conjoined twins, they may
know and directly experience what each other's elemental redness is
like, but they may have different memories or feelings compositely
bound with any particular elemental quality. And they for sure each
have unique sets of knowledge of different selves looking out of
different eyes, while being aware of each other's knowledge.<br>
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<span style="font-size:12.8px"> </span>- and is only
meant to represent such, given the correct
interpretation. </blockquote>
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font
size="4">That<span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> red </span><span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">neural
correlate </span>does not exist in isolation but
is embedded in and generates qualia as it relates to
the entire brain. My red circuit is interpreted by
the rest of my brain that is not part of the red
circuit, and the non-red circuit part of my brain is
different from the non-red circuit part of your
brain, if it were not we'd be the same person. So
even if the red circuit is identical for both of us
our interpretation of it, that is to say the
subjective experience we get out of it, could be
different.</font></div>
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<br>
I guess that is a theoretical possibility. But I predict something
different - that there are elemental qualities of matter or at least
states of matter that are just as consistent as all other qualities
of matter or in fact glutamate consistently behaves the way it does,
because of it's consistent physical redness quality. The behavior
of the neural correlate and it's quality are one and the same. I'd
like to see you give at least one similar falsifiable specific
example of what physical combinations of matter, or states of matter
could produce your redness. And how would the physical behavior of
redness be different than greenness. Any theoretical possibility
using any set of matter, in any state, in any kind of a "circuit"
(even if it is some kind of unique composite redness that needs to
be "interpreted" [please explain what you mean by this with specific
physical examples] in some special way) would satisfy me. At least
you threw out the real sandrel of an arch. But you need to give a
similar physical example of what could be responsible for your
redness, and how this behavior could be different than greenness.
Until you start providing some specific falsifiable examples in your
predictions, it's hard to know that you are talking about anything
other than just hand waving because we don't know how we might test
for such - even if only to prove there is no consistent relationship
between the dual physical neural correlate and your unknowable mind.<br>
<br>
Brent Allsop<br>
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