<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">> are you really implying that I think that rainbow picture
can’t be represented by an array of values including RGB(FF0000), as it appears here?
</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div>You appear to be defending the position that there is some ineffable, not-representable-by-other-means qualia in the image. Without agreeing or disagreeing with that position, I am pointing out that the specific example given is a remarkably weak defense of that position.</div><div><br></div><div>> Are you saying that RGB(FF,00,00). or any other
such abstract software is physically red?
</div><div><br></div><div>No. I say it is a representation of red, similar in nature to representations of red in the human brain.</div><div><br></div><div>"Physically red", to me, consists of reflecting and/or emitting - within the visible spectrum - primarily red photons, which are photons close to 680 nanometers in wavelength. A mathematical construct (such as "RGB(FF,00,00)", which is in turn most often represented as the number 16,711,680) is not a physical object, and thus is not "physically" anything. It can, however, serve as part of an instruction for a physical thing - say, a pixel on a monitor - to become physically red. Physical redness can be measured, just like any other physical color properties, but the number that results from the measurement is just another representation. "The map is not the territory", as it's said.</div><div><br></div><div>This debate in general seems to be suffering from a remarkable level of redefinitions on the fly and goalpost-moving. I am not saying you exclusively are doing that, I'm saying that's the discussion in general. This has been my main reason for staying out of the debate until now.</div><div><br></div><div>Most egregiously, what exactly is "qualia", other than "magic that defines the experience of redness/et cetera"? Some people seem to be insisting that qualia can not be defined in any measurable terms. Over and over, I have seen strawman examples set up - the original supposition about a "color scientist who had all the physical information, and then one day actually saw red" being an example. One reason there is dissonance is that, intuitively we know there can not be such a thing as someone with "all the physical information", thus the premise is rejected and what is actually evaluated is someone who has a lot of data but nowhere near "all". Another reason is that it confuses "information" in the intellectual sense with memories of experiences: of course someone who doesn't have a specific memory won't have that memory, but that says nothing about that person's ability to learn information.</div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps this debate could be settled more quickly if people simply did not use words that have been muddled so much within the conversation itself. Specifically, state the concepts without using the word "qualia" (or making up any other words).</div><div><br></div><div>For instance, going back to Mary the color scientist. Let's say she is color-blind due to a defect located entirely in her eyes, but knows how to do brain surgery, specifically on the sensorimotor cortex. Might she be able to implant something, or rewire someone's brain, so they see red? If so, would it be correct to say that she has triggered that person's perception of red?</div><div><br></div><div>Let's say she then programs a robot or instructs other people to do the same surgery to her. They do (let us assume correctly and perfectly, which is certainly possible), and she gets a perception that she has never had before - but she has a word for it: "red".</div><div><br></div><div>Everything that can be measured says Mary and this other person had the same experience. They both use the word "red" for it, but of course words can mean different things to different people. There are probably different emotional connotations and reactions, but these trigger off the representation in the brain, not actually off the physical redness itself. (In almost all real cases, physical redness is the only viable means to create this representation - but that doesn't make physical redness and the representation literally the same thing.)</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 6:38 PM Brent Allsop <<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com">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"><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 Adrian,</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">Thanks for jumping in.</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">And I often get sucked into missing when
people are just yanking my chain.</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">So, just to get that out of the way,
this entire response seems like someone is just yanking my chain, it seems to me
to be so obviously wrong and twisted in so many ways.</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">“</span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">fails to refute the concept
that image qualia can be represented in other forms.</span><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"> </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">Along with most everything else in this
reply that is so mistaken, are you really implying that I think that rainbow picture
can’t be represented by an array of values including RGB(FF0000), as it appears here? Are you saying that RGB(FF,00,00). or any other
such abstract software is physically red?</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">Software = qualia </span><span style="font-size:16px">people</span><span style="font-size:12pt"> are so infuriating to me. The best I can understand from what qualia arise from software say is redness arises from software via <magic happens here>. They certainly never provide anything better
than that, that I can see. I wonder what
a person believing qualia arise from software will do if experimentalists
discover that the only thing anyone can find in this universe that has a
physical redness quality is glutamate. Would
they continue to try to find some way to make something like RGB(FF,00,00) produce
a redness experience for someone, and continue to claim you can’t disprove a
negative as the theists always do about the existence of their God? After all, you never know, if you add enough
RGB(FFFFFFFFFFFFFF….,00,00) it could finally result in a physical redness quality,
right?</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 you are not yanking my chain,
again, still, thanks for jumping in. I
still must not be adequately communicating what I’m trying to describe. Or maybe I'm just failing to understand what you are trying to say. I appreciate everyone’s patience on this. It is always helpful when a new person joins
in. I’ve improved a lot in the way I say
things (having much more success than I once had), but I evidently still have a
LONG way to go. Unless you are yanking
my chain? ;)</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">Brent</span></p></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 4:37 PM Adrian Tymes 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"><div dir="ltr">I see orange and cyan there, too. Also, a rainbow is a gradient, which your list of words fails to note. There is also no mention of the sky, clouds, or arc of the rainbow, nor of the transparency toward one end.<div><br></div><div>It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Exacttness of that measure aside, trying to equate a picture to a very few words is a strawman argument, and as such fails to refute the concept that image qualia can be represented in other forms.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 8:44 AM Brent Allsop 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"><div dir="ltr"><br><div>Your wrong, unless you see no difference between this</div><div><div><img src="cid:ii_k4nhwi5j0" alt="image.png" width="318" height="159"><br></div></div><div>and the abstract words "red, yellow, green, purple and blue".</div><div><br></div><div>Notice how I can redefine the words purple and blue.</div><div>You can't redefine your purpleness, and blueness, it just is, and you know that more absolutely than you know anything.</div></div></blockquote></div>
</blockquote></div>
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