[ExI] Do digital computers feel was Re: Is the wave function real?

[William Flynn Wallace]

 belief proof and truth are three different things.  John

We likely agree on 'belief' - an insufficiently supported opinion in many
cases.  'Proof'.  When I hear "I have proof.." I think of verifiable facts
(the outcomes of proving) - facts being reliably observed behaviors of
something or someone.  Proof is a variable in that  there may be very small
amounts of relevant data, or tons of it.

The proof may, should be, relevant to some theory or at least some
abstraction, and there may be proof supporting competing theories, so proof
actually has nothing to do with truth, which is what we would know if every
possible experiment supported the theory.

Given that, no truth exists in the larger sense.  It is true in the trivial
or just everyday sense that I am typing and thinking of supper (not
requiring proof to me).  Scientific truth may never appear, only be
approached.

bill w

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:56 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:35 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> ​>> ​
>>> ​I would agree that red is a subjective experience and "red" is just an
>>> ASCII sequence. ​
>>>
>>
>> ​> ​
>> So you agree that there is a significant qualitative difference between
>> your experience of redness and any abstracted representation of red like an
>> ASCII sequence.  In other words, would you agree that it could be that my
>> brain interprets the word "red" as being your greenness experience or
>> something. (i.e. I could have red green inverted qualia from you.)
>>
>
> ​Certainly I agree.​
>
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> Do you believe that something in your brain has your redness quality,
>>
>
> ​It
> would be more accurate to say
> ​ ​
> something in
> ​my​
>
> ​mind​
>  has
> ​my​
>  redness quality
> ​. Mind is what ​the brain does and sometimes my brain does red.
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> and could anyone else besides you detect this stuff that has your
>> redness quality while you are experiencing it, with any advanced
>> detection system, and could they, using these same detection systems, do
>> things like distinguish this quality from whatever it is that has your
>> greenness quality when you experience that, instead...?
>> ​ ​
>> In other words, by making such observations on others, and on themselves,
>> they could tell if someone else has red green inverted qualia from
>> themselves?
>>
>
> ​No. They could theoretically tell that I am experiencing the color ​I
> associate with tomatoes and stoplights and not the color I associate with
> spinach and golights, but there is no way they could know if my subjective
> experience of those colors was inverted from their own. I don't know what
> it would feel like to be a bat and I never will; the only way would be for
> me to become a bat but then I still wouldn't know because I wouldn't be I
> anymore, I'd be a bat.
>
> John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>
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