<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 10:59 PM, Brent Allsop </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Quantitative information is that which is represented with abstracted numerically comparable values, like 1, 2... </blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">That's what languages do, represent things or concepts with symbols, and mathematics is a language. </font></div></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>What is physically representing the numerical 1, 2... value is irrelevant, or abstracted away. </blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">When doing linguistic reasoning it's arbitrary what particular symbol you choose to represent a idea, but once you've chosen it you can't arbitrarily change it and expect your reasoning to produce the correct conclusion. </font></div></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Many people, like John, are predicting that it will always be impossible to eff the ineffable or that it will be impossible for me to know anything about John's redness. I, on the other hand, am predicting that it will soon be possible to eff the ineffable,</blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">You will use some theory that says the redness qualia you are experiencing right now is the same redness qualia I am experiencing. Well maybe you are, but how could you ever know you are? How will your ever know your theory is correct? In mathematics there are a infinite number true statements that can never be proven because they have no proof, they're just true. </font></div></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>A simplified example testable theory is that glutamate is the objectively observable side of subjective elemental redness. </blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">The brain consists of more than just </font></div><font size="4">glutamate<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">, so you're saying that when </div>glutamate<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> interacts with the non-</div>glutamate<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> part of the brain a redness qualia is produced. I'm saying that if something that is not </div>glutamate<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> but intercts with the brain in the same was a </div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">redness qualia</font><div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> will also be produced, and there is nothing particularly red about </font></div>glutamate<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">, it's just the arbitrary symbol one particular human brain uses to represent red.</div></font></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>In other words, the observable physical qualities of glutamate are one and the same as the qualities we can subjectively experience as redness. </blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">Neither </div>glutamate<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> nor the English word "red" is red, both are just signals that some brains use to represent red, and that chemical and that word works as well as any but another word of chemical could have been used as long as consistency is maintained. </div></font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>So, if you can prove that if you have one, you always have the other, and only the other, the theory has been proven. </blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">You will have done a lot more than that! If you have proven that something can effect the brain in exactly the same way that </div>glutamate<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> does but it does NOT produce the redness qualia then you will have proven that reductionism, and thus science, doesn't work. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. </div></font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>if you swap a part for another part, that interacts with it's neighbors in the same way, the system as a whole will behave in the same way. I completely agree with this, </span></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Good.</font></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>but the way you do the substitution is erroneous, and you are corrupting the system by always insisting you must be able to remove any way to compare one quality to another, no matter where you theorized that it might be. </span></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">That's called reductionism and despite a lot of bad press from the new age crowd it works brilliantly. Good thing too, if reductionism didn't work and we had to understand everything before we could understand anything we wouldn't understand one damn thing. What separates a great scientist from the not so great is the ability to tell one part from another and the ability to tell that 2 apparently different parts are actually the same part looked at with a different angle </font></div></div><div><br></div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>I assert that if your theory is true, then there must be some "function" that is the redness function, and there must be some other function that must be detectably different that is the greenness function. </span></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div><font size="4">I strongly disagree.<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>If I exchange the steering wheel and the back left tire on you car it will behave very differently so you'd be justified in saying the<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>steering wheel and the tire are different parts; but if I exchange your "redness function" with your "greenness function" your external behavior will not change at all, and even more important subjectively you would have no way of knowing that such a exchange had even happened. </font></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div></font></div><font size="4">So unless there is something that is neither objective nor subjective no change has been made at all and we can then use Leibniz<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">'</div>s<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>Identity of indiscernibles<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>to conclude that the redness function and the greenness function are not separate parts at all but are just different aspects of the same part, the color differentiation part. I mean, if switching them makes no objective difference, and<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>switching them makes no<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>subjective<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>difference<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>, then I think it's safe to say there is no difference period.</font><br> </div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>If you include the ability of the system to behave the same, including comparison of redness and greenness (whether they are material or functional) so that it preserves the ability to say that redness is different than greenness, only then can you consider it to be "behaving the same" </span></blockquote><div> <br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><span style="font-size:12.8px"></span><font size="4">I agree </font></div><font size="4">that redness is different than greenness<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">, but I think something else is true too, if you exchanged the meanings of the words "redness" and "greenness" it would still be true that </div>redness is different than greenness<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">.</div><br></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4"><br></font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">John K Clark</font></div></div><div><font size="4"> </font></div></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div><br></div></div></div></div>