[ExI] consciousness and perception

[Brent Allsop]

John,

I believe you are still completely missing what is important here, as 
proved by the way you talk about this.

This theory predicts that John lock, and Descartes before him, had 
everything they needed to understand the difference between phenomenal 
and behavioral properties.  Tomorrow, someone could revolutionize 
fundamental physics, explain quantum theory in a very different way than 
our current understanding or anything, and that would still not change 
the fundamental difference between the fact that all of that only deals 
with the way matter behaves in cause and effect ways.

A fundamental phenomenal property, red vs green, and what they are 
phenomenally like and how they are different, has nothing to do with 
what stuff is causally or behaviorally like.

Brent Allsop



John K Clark wrote:
> "Gordon Swobe" <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>
>
>> the theory you attribute to Brent did not seem idiotic to the 
>> philosopher
>> John Locke.
>
> And if we were having this conversation 300 years ago during Locke's 
> time I
> wouldn't have thought the ideas were idiotic either, however we have 
> learned
> a few thing about the nature of matter in the preceding three centuries.
> Today Locke's ideas on matter are of historic interest only.
>
>> On Locke's view there exist two kinds of properties of objects:
>> primary and secondary. Primary properties of objects include
>> solidity, extension, figure, motion and rest, and number.
>> Secondary properties of objects include color, temperature,
>> smell, taste and sound.
>
> And very clearly Locke was wrong. We now know that temperature is the
> motion of atoms, so to claim the two concepts are fundamentally 
> different is
> nonsense; in fact neither motion nor rest is a property of the object
> itself, the ideas are only meaningful relative to other objects. Locke
> didn't know the first thing even of classical thermodynamics, not to 
> mention
> relativity or quantum mechanics. Locke can be forgiven for his ignorance
> because during his lifetime nobody else knew anything about these things
> either; but I can not forgive someone today trying to make a grand
> philosophical theory while ignoring the increased understanding of matter
> we've made over the last 3 centuries.
>
>> Aside from the idea that molecules literally "shout" (of course they 
>> don't
>> shout)
>
> I never used the word "literally", and even in Locke's day they could
> recognize a metaphor when they saw one.
>
> John K Clark
>
>
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