[ExI] consciousness and perception

John K Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Mon Jan 26 16:31:44 UTC 2009


On January 25, 2009 "Brent Allsop" <brent.allsop at comcast.net> Wrote:

"This theory predicts that the apple, the sodium chloride, or anything like
that has no phenomenal qualities that we know of."

On January 24, 2009 "Brent Allsop" <brent.allsop at comcast.net> Wrote:

"This theory simply predicts that in addition to these behavioral
properties, something about atoms also has phenomenal qualities like
red, green, the taste of salt."

I'll say one thing for you Brent, sometime in the last 2 days you were
right. Or perhaps you just agree with Niels Bohr who said:

"Never express yourself more clearly than you can think"

> the most scientific consensus [.] is  about phenomenal properties
> arising from any functionally equivalent computational substrate:

One of the great understatements of all time! If the scientific community
took any other position they would not only have to abandon one of the
great pillars of modern physics, exchange forces, they would also have
to abandon Darwin's theory of Evolution. That seems a very high price
to pay, especially considering that there is not the smallest particle of
experimental evidence that your ideas are correct.

> So, if you guys claim to be representationalists [.]

I make no such claim. I refuse to define myself on the basis of agreeing
with a trivial observation. Of course my subjective feeling of red is the
way my mind represents electromagnetic radiation that has a wavelength of
700nm. Have you ever met someone sane who was not a "representationalists",
somebody who thought the quale red was the same as light at that wavelength?

It seems to me all representationalists ideas can be put into one of 3
categories:

1) True but trivial
2) Wrong
3) Exercises in typing

   John K Clark







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