[ExI] [Qualia Blindness] Was re: Molecular Materialism

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Mike,



Calling people "qualia-blind" because they don't faithfully say your words
back to you is impolite if not abusive.



Thanks for this feedback.  This is good to know that some people think this
way.



For me it is a lot more than just “saying (my) words back to me”  It is a
fact that perception involves at least 2 important physical properties.
The properties of the target of perception, and the properties of our
knowledge of such.  These two properties can easily be inverted from each
other simply by inverting the signal anywhere in between the two.


It is also a fact that in order to know what “red” means, you need to point
to a particular set of physical properties for which you mean for “red” to
be a label for.  In order to know what physical color something is, you
need more than one word (like red and redness) as labels for these very
different physical things.  If you only have one word, you can’t tell which
physical property you are talking about.  It is just stupid, clueless, and
sloppy at best.



Today, all physical science, and all peer reviewed articles on perception
of color, only use one word for “red”.  In other words, it is ALL qualia
blind.  The ever growing number of experts joining and supporting
“Representational
Qualia Theory <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6>”
are basically signing a petition telling everyone we need to stop being
qualia blind, and start using two words (like red and redness) so we can
think about colors of things, and perception of such, in a rigorous non
ambiguous way.



It is a fact that no physicist can tell you which, of all their
descriptions of physics is a description of a redness quality.  They don’t
know the color of anything.  It is time we start calling out people that
don’t realize this, as not thinking clearly.



If someone writes a paper about the perception of red, and they are only
using one word, and not clearly specifying which set of physics they intend
for that word to be a label of, they have a naive and inadequate way of
talking about physical qualities or colors.  It’s time that everyone be
given the tools to recognize all such naive thinking and pointing out how
that particular person has no clue about what they are talking about.



Mike, let me ask you.  Do you think anyone know what it is, in this world,
that is physically responsible for or has a redness quality?  It’s about
time that people start realizing this.  Again, it isn’t “hard mind body”
problem.  It is just a color problem.  We need to start thinking and
talking about things in a more than simplistic and naive way that is
obvious to anyone that thinks about it in any kind of rigorous way is
“Qualia Blind”.  I'd bet that most people here would agree they understand
what "qualia blindness" is and that it is important that everyone start
noticing and calling out this kind of sloppy thinking about the colors of
things.

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 2:01 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 1, 2020, 2:22 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> No, that doesn’t seem to help.  It just shows me that some people have
>> very different ways of thinking about qualia.
>>
>>>
> When everyone else is wrong, it might be time to stop trying to tell them
> what is right
>
> There was a recent post suggesting everyone stop replying to John because
> his unwavering position is not "conversational" for most casual
> interactions.
>
> I suggested a subject prefix of [politics] so i knew which emails to
> ignore, but a [qualia] tag would be even more welcomed.  It's not that I
> don't find the topic interesting,  it's that the conversation has become
> boring.  Calling people "qualia-blind" because they don't faithfully say
> your words back to you is impolite if not abusive.
>
> Whatever.   Words mean whatever you think they mean.  That we ever believe
> anyone "understands" anything is some rabbit hole full of 'qualia' and
> 'p-zombies' and that's good or bad depending on whatever meaning has been
> assigned to those words - since I'm not classically trained in their
> "proper" use, I'm easily disregarded as an uneducated noob.
>
> *shrug*
>
>>
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