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On 01/02/2020 00:01, Brent Allsop wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 12:36 PM
Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org"
moz-do-not-send="true">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<br>
<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">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><cite>>All experimentalists, today,
only use one word for all things red. If they detect any
physical differences in the brains of people percieving red,
they "correct" for this only thinking of all of it as red.
</cite><cite><br>
</cite><br>
Well, I can't speak for "all experimentalists, today", but I
doubt if they fail to understand the difference between the
red light entering the eye, and the internal representation of
whatever red thing is seen, including the abstract mental
category 'redness'. In fact, I can't see how they could fail
to. Are you sure you understand <i>them</i>? I don't really
see how anyone who studies the brain can really think of the
representations of sensory information as being <i>the same
thing</i> as the external signals that drives them. That
would imply they think there is red light inside the brain,
everytime that brain thinks about red light. I'm certain
nobody seriously thinks that.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I challenge you to find (I've been searching for some time)
any peer reviewed journal article on perception, which uses more
than one word for all things "red". I haven't managed to find
one, yet.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I think this is because it's so universally understood that the
processes in the brain are not the same thing as the stimuli that
provoke them, that there's no real need to use different
terminology. I certainly understand the difference between "The pink
ball" and "the perception of pink". Granted, it might be good to be
more careful with the terminology, but I doubt people are
'qualia-blind' as you keep saying, just because they aren't as
careful with their terminology as you.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><cite>>And that is the only reason,
today, nobody can tell is the colour of anything.</cite><cite><br>
</cite><br>
I don't follow that. What do you mean by "nobody can tell the
colour of anything"?<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>When we look out at the world, we see a very colorful world.
But as we've been talking about, none of those colors are
properties of the world out there. And my redness could be like
your greeness, so whos red? Those colors are a property of
something, maybe some kind of process as you say, in our brain.
But nobody can tell us which of all our descriptions of stuff in
the brain, is a description of redness. </div>
</blockquote>
<br>
So you're saying that the experience of colours in our minds is not
the same thing as the actual colours in the outside world
(obviously), and no-one currently can tell what's going on in the
brain when someone sees a specific colour.<br>
<br>
Quite right. At least at present (although I wouldn't use the word
'property' for the brain processes, as that's a bit misleading). As
I said in an earlier post, I expect that at some point, our ability
to see what's going on in the brain will be advanced enough to tell
when someone's seeing red (and the difference between seeing a red
object, remembering a red object, and imagining a red object).<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div>As it indicates in both of the images in "<a
href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6#statement"
moz-do-not-send="true">Representational Qualia Theory</a>"
everything out side of the head is in black and white. This is
because all objective information is abstract, devoid of any
color information.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Nonsense. Abstract information can't represent colour? All
information processing in our brains is abstract. We experience
colours. Therefore, abstract information can represent colours.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div> The only thing of any color, is the color of our knowledge
of the world.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Er, what? <br>
Knowledge doesn't have colours.<br>
"The colour of our knowledge of the world" literally doesn't mean
anything.<br>
You might want to rephrase that, so it makes sense.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div>Redness must be a quality of some set of physics.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
No, it mustn't.<br>
Redness is not a quality. I'm not even sure what "a quality of some
set of physics" means, to be honest. I suspect it doesn't mean
anything in the real world.<br>
<br>
It makes sense to say "Redness (not forgetting that 'redness' is a
higher-level mental category than the thing we're actually talking
about here, which is more like the experience of one specific red
colour with a specific hue, saturation and lightness, but let's
allow 'redness' to be shorthand for that) is a certain 'set of
physics' (IOW, a certain phenomenon in the brain of a specific
individual at a specific time), but we currently don't know exactly
what that phenomenon is, in exact terms (or more accurately, what
that set of phenomena are, as there is almost certainly a lot going
on that contributes to this experience of Strawberry (Hue 0, Sat
67%, etc.)).<br>
<br>
So your statement boils down to "Redness must be some process going
on in a brain". Not exactly an earth-shattering statement, is it?
And a lot easier to understand than the original version.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div>Of all our objective descriptions of stuff in the brain, one
of those is a description of redness.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, not yet, but potentially, one day.<br>
I expect it will be a description that isn't all that easy to
decipher, as well. It will necessarity relate to a large number of
processes, and will be different (possibly wildly different) in
different brains, and likely restricted to a single point in time.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">I can experience redness, but there is no
such 'thing' as redness.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>I would disagree with this. There must be something physical
(even if some kind of process) which is what we directly
experience as a single pixel of redness. And all of our pixels
of colorness must be able to be computationally bound together
into a composite qualitative experience of a strawberry, and
such. Certainly you would agree that you could objectively
observe, and fully describe, whatever this "process" is, and be
able to objectively describe a change to this process, which we
experienced as redness? </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">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> In other words, redness is an
experience, a process, not a thing in its own right,
independent of the brain that creates it.</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This sounds like the popular consensus, that redness "arises"
from some process.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Not quite.<br>
I'd say that, rather than it arising from a process (or a complex
set of processes), it IS a process (or complex ...).<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div> The problem is, I bet you can't give any actual objective
falsifiable description of what kind of process would have a
redness qulia</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Of course not.<br>
As I said, not yet. We simply don't know enough yet, about how all
the millions of neural circuits in the brain interact, how they
relate to our sensory inputs and memories and inherited default
neural patterns, and characteristics of synapses, and at least a
dozen other things, that constitute the experience of a quale.<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">I think this is where we differ most. You
think that 'redness' is a thing that has an existence
independent of a mind. Am I right?<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Objective descriptions of stuff in the brain provide no
information about the color they are describing.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
That doesn't answer my question.<br>
<br>
Sufficiently detailed descriptions of the stuff going on in the
brain, coupled with enough knowledge of how to interpret them, would
absolutely provide all the information needed about things like
colours being perceived. We are just a long way from being able to
extract the descriptions and interpret them properly.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div> Al I"m saying is one of those descriptions, even if it is
some kind of process, that is what we directly experience as
redness.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
What I'm saying is that it's the process itself that IS our
experience of 'redness' or whatever. There is no distinction between
observer and observed, there is just the process.<br>
<br>
What is often overlooked, I think, is that this 'process' is
enormously complex, and involves many interlinked patterns of
information. John Clark is fond of saying that examples are more
important than rules, and I think this is exactly the case here.
Examples of strawberry-red things, for instance, and all the
associated memories and meanings for the individual, and mental
categories distilled from them and linked to them.<br>
<br>
What about a child seeing a strawberry for the first time? No
memories, no names, no associations from the past.<br>
Well, actually that's not true. There will be associations to
something in their past (a familiar context, what they are wearing,
the weather, all sorts of things), and they are constantly forming
new ones.<br>
<br>
Maybe a new-born baby presented with a strawberry will have a
'pure', 'elemental' strawberry quale? A quale that will forever be
embedded in the much more complex experiences they have later on?
Maybe we can then pin it down?<br>
<br>
I doubt it. I think the reason we don't remember our very early
childhood is because there is very little for us <i>to</i>
remember. We haven't yet built up all the complex associations and
memories of sensory input to form coherent experiences of what's
going on around us. There is no meaning yet. It takes a few years
for that to develop. There's a good reason why babies do little else
but waggle their limbs randomly and make strange noises.<br>
<br>
When an adult sees a strawberry, I'm confident that the patterns in
their brain are totally different to the ones present when they saw
a strawberry for the very first time. There will be very little, if
anything, in common. So where is the 'elemental quale' of
strawberry-red? It doesn't exist.<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:mailman.256.1580515287.13152.extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">
<div> If you could provide a description of a kind of process,
from which a redness quality would arize, I'd be happy to
substitute that for 'glutamate' as an easily falsifiable
candidate for what we directly experience as redness.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Again, wrong phraseology, but I can provide a very generalised
description of the kinds of process which are the experience of
'redness'. (As I already have, several times):<br>
Complex, dynamically interacting information patterns in the
neuronal networks of the brain. I can't give you any more than that,
because we don't know the details yet. <br>
Not as compact and catchy as 'glutamate', I know, but a lot more
realistic.<br>
<br>
Is this falsifiable? of course, in principle, once we have enough
technology and understanding (as previously discussed on this list).<br>
<br>
Is it <i>easily</i> falsifiable? No, far from it. We need a lot
more knowledge and technology. Probably upload-level technology, I
suspect. Once we have that, though, I'd expect individuals to be
able to investigate these things for themselves. Having direct
access to our own thought processes will spark off a massive wave of
new ideas and technology, I reckon. And a much deeper understanding
of what we are and how we work.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben Zaiboc</pre>
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