[ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:52, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 6:26 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:13, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I didn't say anything about glutamate, just the quality of their
>>> knowledge.  I recall asking if you agreed with the following statement from
>>> our video, and you said you did agree:
>>>
>>>    1.
>>>
>>>    There is no interpretation of a quale, the quality of  our conscious
>>>    knowledge is just a fact.
>>>    2.
>>>
>>>    It might be a physical fact, or spiritual fact, or functional fact,
>>>    depending on our preferred yet to be falsified theory. But in all cases the
>>>    quality of our knowledge remains a fact about reality.
>>>
>>> If that is a fact, over space and time, as you agreed.  Then what each
>>> person's consciousness knowledge of the strawberry is qualitatively like is
>>> important, and we must be able to recognize when at least one pixel
>>> factually changes from one quality to the other.  And we must be able to
>>> say the two are qualitatively different, as they are reporting.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, I agree that it is a fact that one person experiences (is conscious
>> of, has the quale of) redness and another experiences greenness. If the
>> qualia invert due to some change in the brain, then the subject may report
>> that they have inverted, or at least that something looks a bit different.
>> Even if the subject does not report a difference, we might be able to
>> observe a difference by subjection him to colour testing. But if the
>> subject notices no difference despite going through extensive testing, and
>> we can observe no difference with the testing either, then it dies not make
>> sense to say that the qualia have changed. Do you agree with that?
>>
>
> Yes, and let's get rid of this "looks a *BIT* different" stuff.  Let's
> just keep things simple so we don't get distracted with things that don't
> matter.  The pixel either has a redness quality, ,or a greenness quality.
> If it is a fact that the quality of the knowledge changes, or if the
> quality doesn't change, over space and time, the person both must be aware
> of those facts, and they must be able to report those facts of the matter.
> In other words, the quality of the person's experience of that pixel is
> dependent on it's particular colourness facts, consistently over space and
> time, and they will know if they do or don't change, over space and time.
>

Yes, so if we make some physical change in the brain and the subject does
not notice any difference at all, then that physical change in the brain
has not altered the qualia. The other possibility is that it has altered
the qualia, the subject notices, but is somehow forced to say that there is
no difference; but that seems absurd. Even more absurd is to say that the
qualia have changed but the subject does not notice, because that would
render the idea of qualia meaningless.

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
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