<div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, 6 Jan 2020 at 15:26, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Hi Ben,</div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Jan 5, 2020 at 3:42 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</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">Brent Allsop <<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
>When we experience red, there are lots of other physical memories and <br>
things computationally bound to that elemental redness, just as you <br>
pointed out.<br><br>
No, I didn't. I was pointing out that 'elemental redness' literally <br>
doesn't mean anything, as far as I can see. You seem to think it does. <br>
Please explain that. Just that, without any of the other stuff. What do <br>
you mean by 'elemental redness'?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>When you experience a redness quality, when you are dreaming or not, there must be something, that is that redness quality you are experiencing. My redness could be like your greenness, either naturally, or engineered to be that way. You claim glutamate could function identically to glycine, but that physical difference is the point. If you engineered someone to be identical to you, except that person swapped all redness/glutamate with glycine/grenness, and visa versa, you would function identically, but qualitatively your knowledge would be physically different. My redness would be like your grenness.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If you swapped glutamate for glycine and glutamate receptors for glycine receptors, then the redness and greenness qualia would remain the same, as I thought you (almost) agreed in an earlier discussion with me. This is assuming that the neurotransmitters and receptors only do what we know them to do; if glutamate has other effects, like its breakdown products stimulating other neurons, then there might be a difference.</div><div dir="auto"> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> >Also, even if this physical change in your pixel of awareness was a <br>
single neuron switching between firing with glutamate and glycine.<br>
<br>
I know that the 'one neuron, one neurotransmitter' paradigm has recently <br>
been challenged, but as far as I know, if a glutaminergic neuron somehow <br>
started secreting glycine from the same synapses, then nothing would <br>
happen because the post-synaptic receptors wouldn't have glycine <br>
receptors, would they?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is missing the point. The idea of a single neuron firing with with either glutamate or glycine is just an over simplified example to simplify understand how we might bridge the explanatory gap, or find out whether your redness is more like my grenness, or not. Once we can bridge the explanatory gap (eff the ineffable) with an overly simplified theory, we can use the same qualitative effing thinking on all more capable theories.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
But in any case, as I keep saying, individual neurotransmitters are <br>
irrelevant.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The idea that glutamate has the redness physical property is meant to be easily falsified, via the ways you are proposing, or any other way. Falsifiability is the point. If this is falsified, you just try something else in the brain, till you can't falsify it. Then you replace glutamate with whatever that is. Then you know what it is that has the redness quality you can directly experience.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Another term I'm not sure about the meaning of, is 'pixel of awareness'.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>For every pixel, on every surface you are aware of, there must be something, physical, that is that conscious knowledge of that point, and it must be able to change to any other color, at any time. We're trying to imagine the simplest possible theory for this simplest point of knowledge, where falsifiability is the point.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Many of the things you say don't seem to relate to neuroscience at all, <br>
as far as I'm aware. It would help greatly if you could ground your <br>
ideas in what we actually know about how the brain works, then I might <br>
be able to make some sense of them.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Objective observation of the brain can give you descriptions of everything in the brain. The problem is, you can't know, qualitatively, what any of that is describing.</div><div>The only thing qualitative is direct awareness of the colorness properties of something in your brain. We some how need to make the connection between the abstract objective and the qualitative subjective. Again, once you understand how it could be true, in a world simpler than our own, that our abstract descriptions of glutamate, binding to a glutamate receptor could be a description of what we directly experience as redness, the connection would be made. Again, if it isn't glutamate, you keep trying other stuff in the brain till you find which abstract description of stuff in the brain is the description of subjective redness. Then you replace whatever that turns out to be with all instances of the word glutamate I have been using.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div></div></div>
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</blockquote></div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Stathis Papaioannou</div>