[ExI] What is "Elemental Redness"?

[Darin Sunley]

What's elemental is that you could know everything about the state of every
neuron in your visual field, and it still wouldn't tell you a thing about
why one of those information patterns is experienced as a blob of red and
one of those information patterns is experienced as a blob of green.

Even if you knew precisely:

   - which patterns generated red experiences
   - and that those patterns always generated red experiences
   - and that no other neural patterns generated red experiences


   - and which patterns generated green experiences
   - and that those patterns always generated green experiences
   - and that no other patterns generated green experiences


,you still wouldn't know /anything/ about what is different between a red
experience and a green experience, because information patterns don't have
a color, but experiences do.

Because neural firing patterns don't have a color (they're mushy gray, just
like everything else in the brain), nothing about their physical properties
has a direct causal relationship with color experiences. Color experiences
are correlated to neural firing patterns, but to flatly declare that they
are caused by neural firing patterns is begging the entire question [and
very probably wrong].

On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 2:31 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I still don't get why we talk about qualia being elemental or fundamental.
> Because they seem to be vivid and direct? Doesn't the color illusion
> experiment I showed demonstrate there is nothing fundamental or direct
> about colors? They seem to me complex artifacts of several brain regions.
> What is elemental about given what we know about how the brain works? I
> don't mean from a silly philosophical point of view but from a scientific
> one.
> Giovanni
>
> On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 1:09 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> "Systematically bridg[ing] between [material] physical and [immaterial]
>> mental characteristics" is the literal expression of Chalmers' "Hard
>> Problem" of consciousness.
>>
>> If you wanna be a famous philosopher, all you have to do is make even
>> infinitesimal progress along those lines. Because no one has yet.
>>
>> On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 1:34 PM Gadersd via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> it's a very odd sort of causation where the physical properties of the
>>> presumptive proximate cause have nothing to do with the characteristics of
>>> the caused phenomena.
>>>
>>>
>>> It would be better to say “seem to have nothing…” Not being aware of a
>>> connection does not imply that there isn’t a way to systematically bridge
>>> between physical and mental characteristics.
>>>
>>> On May 1, 2023, at 1:26 PM, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Qualia certainly correlate to physical reality, but declaring causation
>>> there seems like a bit of a stretch - at least a begging of the question of
>>> materialism.
>>>
>>> it's a very odd sort of causation where the physical properties of the
>>> presumptive proximate cause have nothing to do with the characteristics of
>>> the caused phenomena.
>>>
>>> On Mon, May 1, 2023, 10:46 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 01/05/2023 17:05, Will Steinberg answered:
>>>> > It means, I think, "the conformation of physical reality that
>>>> produces
>>>> > the red quale, on the layer of physical reality that is responsible
>>>> > for qualia"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So, a brain?
>>>>
>>>> A brain is 'Elemental Redness'??
>>>>
>>>> I'm reading "conformation of physical reality" as meaning "arrangement
>>>> of stuff", and "the layer of physical reality that is responsible for
>>>> qualia" as "the organisational level of matter that gives rise to
>>>> subjective experiences", i.e. (as far as we know) neural circuits, in a
>>>> brain.
>>>>
>>>> I see no reason to use the word 'elemental' for that. In fact it's
>>>> wrong. This is far from elemental.
>>>>
>>>> If I'm on the wrong track (which seems likely), well, I did ask for
>>>> "simple terms".
>>>>
>>>> Ben
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