<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Hi Rafal,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">OK, let me repeat what I hear you saying,
to be sure I have it right.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Red and green qualities are “features
of large neural networks that are implemented in a complex physical substrate.” If our awareness of one-pixel changes from
red to green, there are corresponding changes in this large neural network that
results in the change in the pixel from red to green.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The leading consensus camp at
Canonizer.com is Functionalism (</span><a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Qualia-Emerge-from-Function/18" style="color:blue">https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Qualia-Emerge-from-Function/18</a>
and <a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Functional-Prprty-Dualism/8" style="color:blue">https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Functional-Prprty-Dualism/8</a>). It <span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">sounds like
you are also in a form of this popular consensus camp.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">This is a falsifiable claim, which
the consensus “</span></font><a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt;color:blue">Representational
Qualia Theory</a><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">” describes how to falsify (by not being qualia blind). The </span></font><a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt;color:blue">Materialists</a><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">
provide a way to falsify their claims.
They come up with a hyper simplified example of redness – it is quality
of glutamate we are directly aware of. Glutamate
is an elemental physical quality which can be computationally bound to billions
of other neurons (likely in complex computational standing wave </span><span style="font-size:16px">oscillations</span><span style="font-size:12pt">), firing with different neurotransmitters with different elemental
qualities, out of which our awareness of a changing pixel can be engineered.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">If someone experiences elemental redness,
without glutamate, the theory will be falsified. But if you can't falsify the theory, if nobody can ever experience redness, no
matter what function you try, no matter how large and complex a neural network
you achieve, or anything else, theory
verified.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Functionalists always define things
like you are doing, making it non falsifiable.
An example I’ve tried to provide is a complex set of neurons in a complex
network doing the square root of 16 could result in redness, while a more complex
square root of 32 could result in greenness.
But something like this is so absurd, that it doesn’t seem to pass the
laugh test.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">So, my question to you, then,
is. How might we falsify your
theory? Can you provide an as simple as
possible hypothetical example of your theory about what is the nature of this
super complex </span><span style="font-size:16px">neural</span><span style="font-size:12pt"> net that results in a redness experience, which can pass the
laugh test, which could be similarly falsified or verified?</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 10:06 PM Rafal Smigrodzki <<a href="mailto:rafal.smigrodzki@gmail.com">rafal.smigrodzki@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 10:37 PM Brent Allsop <<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><br><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Hi Rafal,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,112,192);background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">“Nothing we speak of is "just the
redness", because of the un-articulated, unspecified complexity hidden behind
every image and every word that pertains to the physical world.</span>”<span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,112,192)"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Let’s try this.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">There is one of all possible pixels (smallest
spot you can clearly perceive) on the surface of a ripe red strawberry that is
changing between red and green. You can
focus on whichever spot is changing and you are clearly aware of it as it
changes from red to green.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Would you agree that there was something
physical, in your brain, which you are directly aware of that is this switching
knowledge? And would you agree that the
physics that was the “red” knowledge has a redness quality you can be directly
aware of, and when it changes to green, this different physics has a greenness quality
you are also directly aware of?</span></p></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>### Obviously conscious perception is a physical process but physics or awareness in my brain doesn't do anything "directly". There are probably hundreds of synapses involved in the basic calculation of reflectances (colors) in any small patch of the visual field, and the number of neurons involved in conscious, attentive perception of even the smallest sensory input is measured in the hundreds of millions if not billions. The qualities we talk about are features of large neural networks that are implemented in a complex physical substrate, and as I mentioned earlier, these are anything but simple or direct.</div><div><br></div><div>In case you wanted to ask if "redness" could exist independently of a physically functioning neural network, my answer would be "no". And as I mentioned earlier, every unique network that perceives changes in reflectance on strawberries will have its own unique "redness", incommensurate with qualia in other networks.</div></div></div>
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