<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Hi Ben,</div><div dir="ltr">Thanks for putting so much into this. If I'm wrong in any way, I sure want to know, and I appreciate your help.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div>The reason we're working to canonize better terminology is because current terminology is ambiguous and qualia blind.</div><div>Terminology is 90% of the problem.</div><div>When you say "red" you don't know if someone is talking about the property of the strawberry, the light, something in the retina, or the final result of perception: our conscious knowledge.</div><div>Also, traditional terminology separates phenomenal qualities from physics. i.e. "the neural correlate of redness". I'm interested in the physics of redness, not the physics of the correlate of redness.</div><div dir="ltr"><br><div>You're close, but you're missing a few things.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 8:01 AM Ben Zaiboc 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:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Brent,<br>
<br>
Your claims seem to me so extraordinary and so completely outside what I know about how brains work (and what science has taught us about things in general), that I thought it might be a good idea to confirm that you are in fact saying what it seems to me that you're saying.<br>
<br>
One problem I have is that your language is so obscure and elaborate that I have difficulty telling if I have in fact understood you or not.<br>
<br>
So, let me know which of the following I've got right and wrong, about what you are claiming:<br>
<br>
* Certain material substances (presently unknown) possess properties that can be called 'phenomenal qualities' (which means the feeling of being something, or what it is like to be or experience something).<br>
<br>
* These properties are /fundamental/ properties, i.e. low-level physical properties, on a par with electromagnetism, gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, etc.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, but...</div><div>Phenomenal properties of physics have objectively observable causal properties, but describing or naming these causal properties doesn't tell you what they are like, without a dictionary.</div><div>We are already objectively detecting and describing these causal properties; i.e. they are a subset of all the fundamental causal properties we know. We just don't know which causal properties are for which qualities.</div><div>It's just that describing or naming them (like the word 'red') doesn't tell you what they are like, without a dictionary.</div><div><span style="background-color:transparent">It's like is 700 nm light red or green? You can't know without a dictionary.</span></div><div>We say the strawberry reflects red light because of its red property. It's like that, only the reflection of light is the wrong set of physics, as we know redness is a property of something in the brain - not the strawberry.</div><div>Something in the brain has the redness property, not the strawberry.</div><div>Neurons can do subjective binding of these objectively observable properties, enabling us to directly apprehend them.</div><div>Cause and effect observation is always different sets of causally downstream properties - representing different things. You always need a dictionary to get back to the original. Because of this, objective observation can be mistaken.</div><div>Direct apprehension is infallible, the same idea as "I think, therefore I am."</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">* In order to experience the things we commonly experience (colours is just one example, but this must include things like fear, pleasure, hunger, fascination, etc., etc.), we must have some kind of interaction in our brains (presumably just our brains) with these unspecified substances. Absent this interaction, we are incapable of having the relevant experiences.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>To me "interaction" is the wrong word. Interaction is a fallible causa and effect objective observation term. Direct apprehension of what has the property is different.</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">* Because they are the result of (or perhaps because they *are*) some kind of interaction or relation with these substances, our subjective experiences are not actually subjective, but objective phenomena that can be, at least in principle, observed from outside.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, because they "are" or because something has a redness property. I'm interested in redness, not what causes redness, or what redness causes.</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">
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* (tentative) There is no actual difference between 'objective' and 'subjective' phenomena. Everything that we commonly experience is amenable to objective investigation, and everything that we regard as 'objective' is, at least potentially, an experience.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes. We are already observing the causal properties of phenomenal qualities, we just don't know which are which. We just need to know which is which. We simply need a dictionary to tell us which physics is 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">Each one of these claims is, to me, completely at odds with what we know about how the world works, so I'll be very happy if you can say that I've got them all wrong, and this is not what you think at all.<br>
<br>
---<br>
Ben<br>
<br>
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