<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br><div>Hi Ben,</div><div>Thanks for your extra work in our efforts to communicate. We are obviously failing miserably.</div><div>The fact that everyone in this field has such a difficult time communicating, like this, is a huge problem with the "peer reviewed' journal and book writing system of today. All authors write a paper or book from their own point of view, using their own unique terminology. The papers tend to only be about mistakes they believe exists in other papers describing competing theories. There is no motivation to ever write a paper and say: "A agree", other than to "cite" the paper. (Again, in in many cases, citation are to criticize, nobody tracking any of this.) Nobody ever checks to see if any of the arguments they are presenting convert anyone to a different camp or anything like that. So the same old bad arguments get thrown arround in everyone bubbles (usually polarized between religion and science), nobody ever noticing if anyone on any side, agrees. This gives everyone the false perception that nobody agrees on anything. Everyone believes their own theory is a minority position, even when it is very popular. Basically, zero progress has been made in this field for hundreds of years. I personally know some great experimentalists. When I ask them if they ever studied qualia, they often say something like they spent several years trying to understand the concept, but eventually just gave up, it is all such crap.</div><div><br></div><div>I was facing the same thing, I couldn't get anything form all the crap literature. I just wanted to know what, if any, theory was the most well accepted theory, consensus wise, and all you can find is lots of papers yelling with the same old arguments, about how everyone else is wrong and they are right.</div><div><br></div><div>We're trying to find ways to cut through all that with Canonizer.com. Instead of one person authoring a paper or book, everyone gets together to collaborate on the best terminology to use to concisely describe their current working hypothesis. The disagreements everyone is focusing on are almost always far less important than what the experts do agree on. Canonizer's camp tree structure allows the important stuff that everyone agrees on and trying to build and track consensus around ("<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2">Approachable via Science</a>" with over 50 of the total 60 participants and "<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6">Representational Qualia Theory</a>" with 40 of the 50 approachable people). The only disagreement which everyone is publishing about are minor in comparison competing ideas about the nature of qualia. Canonizer.com let's people push these kinds of disagreements out of the way of the important stuff the experts are building consensus arround. Notice that even Dennett's current "Predictive Bayesian Coding theory" is now in a supporting sub camp position to "<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6">Representational Qualia Theory</a>" Anywhere else you go to find out this kind of info is just ideological polarized crap, saying that Dennett, representing the scientific side disagrees with the religious fold. This kind of false crap is exactly what you everywhere except canonizer example being the wikipedia article on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia">qualia</a>.</div><div><br></div><div>So, back to the material at hand. You said:</div><div><br></div><div>"<b style=""><font color="#6aa84f">My question 'I've falsified the theory, wouldn't you say?</font></b>'"</div><div><br></div><div>Hopefully you can see below, where I did try to agree with this, and point out that you had falsified the idea that glutamate = redness. And I've repeatedly tried to point out how that is missing the point, which you seem so have completely missed. The glutamate=redness is just a way overly simplified description of an imaginary world where there are only 2 colors: red and green - nothing else. We are trying to communicate how one can be non qualia blind (a difficult task in itself) in this type of simplified world. Once people understand qualia blindness in this simple world, they can then apply the same theory to other theories more capably describing everything we know about the physics of the brain, like your theory that qualia are "patterns of information in neural networks". To me, everything you are saying about this sounds perfectly compatible with everything in <a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6">RQT</a>. Like all the other sub camps, you are making yet more competing predictions about the nature of qualia. Would it help if from now on, in my discussions with only you, I replace the word glutamate with "patterns of information in neural networks" ? Of course, you would be the only one this would benefit, which is why we try to canonizer things, to find the best terminology to use.</div><div><br></div><div>Also, you said: "<font color="#45818e">Qualia are not elemental properties of anything</font>", indicating you maybe thinking we are talking about objective descriptions of some new "elemental" physics or something. In "Representational Qualia Theory" we define "elemental qualities" to simply be different than composite qualia. When someone experiences redness, they also experience a LOT of other computationally bound information. Meaning (the color of a strawberry), the word "red", blood.....) Elemental redness is just a constituent of such a composite redness experience. Surely, whatever redness is a quality of, it may not be elemental. This would be true if redness is a "pattern of information". Such a pattern of redness could be further broken down into the elements making up that patter. The point being that if you wanted to fully describe the subjective knowledge of the strawberry, you don't need to descend down and describe all the patterns. All you would need to describe is the elemental redness. That would allow you to reproduce such in another's mind, since you would know the specifics of the "pattern" that was redness and how that might differ from a grenness pattern. In other words "elemental redness" is just the bottom level of description required, to fully describe a composite subjective experience.</div><div><br></div><div>Here's where I tried to say the same thing, before:</div><div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 11:03 AM 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"><div dir="ltr"><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 Ben,</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">Yes, thanks for asking questions about
my intentions instead of just dismissing me as an idiot. I’ve answered this question multiple times on
this list, but I guess you haven’t seen this yet so let me try again.</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 evidence of a clear consensus
around qualia as indicated in “<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6" style="color:blue" target="_blank">Representational
Qualia Theory</a>”. The only
disagreement is what is the nature of qualia, as you can see in the many
competing sub camps.</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">In order to communicate the general
ideas contained in <a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6" style="color:blue" target="_blank">RQT</a> about how
to eff the ineffable, why it is qualia blind to only use one word “red” for all
things red, and why the so called impossibly “hard mind body problem” is really
just a color problem and all that (already a somewhat difficult task to
communicate) Of all the theories of
qualia, we take the most straight forward, easiest to falsify “<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Molecular-Materialism/36" style="color:blue" target="_blank">Molecular
Materialism</a>” theory, and we go way
beyond even that, for simplicity sake.
We imagine an imaginary world where there are only two colors red and
green. Not even any other shades of
color – just red and green. And in this
overly simplistic world it is glutamate reacting in a synapse that has the
elemental pixel quality of redness, and glycine that has the elemental quality
of greenness. All this, so we can say
things like glutamate has a color property of white (it reflects white light)
and it has a colorness quality of redness.
Our abstract descriptions of how glutamate behaves in a synapse is one
and the same as what we directly experience as elemental redness.</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">So, if someone thinks redness =
glutamate has been falsified, just substitute some other set of physics in the
brain that hasn’t’ yet been falsified.
Replace every occurrence of glutamate, above, with whatever that things is.</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">If you think there is a more likely
theory than glutamate = redness (it must be very falsifiable, as most competing
theories of “molecular materialism, it isn’t clear how to falsify them) I would be happy to substitute whatever you
think could be a description of the necessary and sufficient set of physics
that is a description of what we directly experience as redness. And of course, it would be great if you would
create a camp for what you think is most likely, so we can see how many other
people agree with you, compared to competing theories. You still haven’t fully falsified Molecular
Materialism for me, so I’m still supporting that as my top working hypothesis choice.</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></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 problem is, everyone gets lost
in the minor details everyone disagrees on, and focuses on that. While completely missing what all the experts
agree is important (that which is contained in <a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Molecular-Materialism/36" style="color:blue" target="_blank">RQT</a>.) That is the power of Cononizer – the ability
to push disagreements into lower level sub camps, out of the way of building
consensus around what most experts agree is important:” There is no hard mind
body problem, it’s just that nobody knows what color anything is.</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">So, Ben, Please. From here on out, whenever I say glutamate,
please replace that word with a description of whatever physics you most likely
think is a description of redness.</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></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><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"><br>
</blockquote></div></div>