Qualia Blindness

[Atla]

You don't seem to get it. We already know beyond any reasonable doubt that something in the head, say glutamate, is the same as intrinsic redness.

But you can never directly show that in an experiment in a way that both glutamate and red will show up at the same time.

Yes you can. Admittedly, the never failing dictionary that would result if redness is always, and only experienced with glutamate (and can never be falsified with any exceptions), this is only what we call the 1. Weakest form of effing the ineffable. The 1. Week, 2. Stronger, and 3. Strongest forms of effing the ineffable are described in this "Objectively we are blind to intrinsic qualities" paper.

The strongest form of infallibly effing the ineffable was first proposed by VS Ramachandran, back in the 90s, in his “3 laws of qualia paper”. He proposed connecting 2 brains together with a "bundle of neurons” that can computationally bind elemental qualia, like the corpus callosum can, resulting in composite qualitative experiences. If one of your hemispheres had knowledge that was red green inverted from the other, the corpus callosum would enable you to experience and know this, directly, as half your visual knowledge would be red green inverted from the half in the other hemisphere.

This was portrayed as a neural ponytail in the Avatar movie. With such a computational binding neural ponytail you could be aware of all of the experiences with your partner, not just half.

OH, and did I mention that such a nural ponytail would falsify sceptical theories like solipsism?

Again, no. Even if you build a device that can put glutamate molecules into people's heads, and then those people say "yes now I see red", there will still only be a correlation between what your instruments show, and what those people are reporting.

[Brent.Allsop]

Again, no. Even if you build a device that can put glutamate molecules into people's heads, and then those people say "yes now I see red", there will still only be a correlation between what your instruments show, and what those people are reporting.

Well, if you can reliably know what color things are, and can do things like discover new colors, and augment these into your brain, amplifying your consciousness, (I'm currently only a trichromat. I want to be a lot more than just a tetrachromat) what else matters?

[Brent.Allsop]

Again, no. Even if you build a device that can put glutamate molecules into people's heads, and then those people say "yes now I see red", there will still only be a correlation between what your instruments show, and what those people are reporting.

Well, if you can reliably know what color things are, and can do things like discover new colors, and augment these into your brain, amplifying your consciousness, (I'm currently only a trichromat. I want to be a lot more than just a tetrachromat) what else matters? Won't it be fun to show how all the people that still think there is a 'hard mind body problem" are just being sloppy with their color epistemology?

[Atla]

Again, no. Even if you build a device that can put glutamate molecules into people's heads, and then those people say "yes now I see red", there will still only be a correlation between what your instruments show, and what those people are reporting.

Well, if you can reliably know what color things are, and can do things like discover new colors, and augment these into your brain, amplifying your consciousness, (I'm currently only a trichromat. I want to be a lot more than just a tetrachromat) what else matters? Won't it be fun to show how all the people that still think there is a 'hard mind body problem" are just being sloppy with their color epistemology?

I guess you honestly don't realize that this hasn't solved the Hard problem. It merely simplifies the problem: how or why is it possible that physical things and qualia are one and the same, and what does that mean, what are the implications? (Which leads to Advaita eventually, which is the Ockham's razor solution, and THEN we can dismiss the Hard problem.)

[RCSaunders]

I would be interested to know if you would agree with or support Dennett’s current Predictive Bayesian Coding theory, which is now in a supporting sub camp to “Representational Qualia Theory”, or if you will make a competing camp to this now emerging consensus?

I am not part of any, "camp," and have no interest in starting one and no interest in convincing anyone else. Everyone has their own mind and is required to use it, do their own thinking and come to their own conclusions.

I only write for those interesting thinking for themselves.

[RCSaunders]

Tell you what. If you can tell me what it is that is intrinsically red, and justify your claim in any way that can’t easily be shown to be wrong, I will consider “Representational Qualia Theory”, to be falsified.

From the description of the theory:

Since this theory predicts qualia are physical things in our brain, we should be able to detect them. [Emphasis mine]

I don't think it's necessary to point out that qualia certainly cannot be some kind of physical entities, which would have to keep poping into and out of existence if they were what is called conscious perception; so by, "physical things," must mean, "physical events." But no event in the brain can possibly by what we mean when we consciously perceive something. Someday specific events which accompany every perceptual experience may be discovered and identified, but those events will only be physical events, not the conscious experience that accompanies them.

All attempts to provide a purely physical explanation of perception end up as TVs running in an empty room. So long as one holds onto their, "there can only be physical properties in nature," superstition, which is just as mystical as any religion, the nature of consciousness will never be understood.

To deny that material existence includes the properties of life, consciousness, and mind as perfectly natural properties as all the physical properties is as baseless a superstition as any so-called supernatural explanation of things. So long as one holds on to that baseless faith in the physical being all there is flies in the face of the evidence of their own life, consciousness, and mind by which they perceive and come to know and understand the physical which they have made their God. There is nothing mysterious or supernatural about life, consciousness, or human conscious minds, they are simply additional natural properties of material existence along with all the physical properties, but they can and will never be explained in terms of the physical properties alone.

[Sculptor]

Bringing a camera into it does not help. We had redness before there was camera.

Who's redness is this? Your redness, or someone who has been engineered (or is an invert from birth) to be red / green qualia inverted from you? An invert has had an inverter placed in the optic nerve as illustrated in this "perception inverted" section of the video. And also has a different dictionary that defines your greenness to be red.

There is no clarity here at all.
And I still do not see what you mean by the last phrase; " "using one word for all things red"?
You seem to be offering a solution where there is no problem.

Tell you what. If you can tell me what it is that is intrinsically red, and justify your claim in any way that can’t easily be shown to be wrong, I will consider “Representational Qualia Theory”, to be falsified.

When did you stop reading the responses on this thread?
I have already covered your queries.

[Brent.Allsop]

When did you stop reading the responses on this thread?
I have already covered your queries.

I've read all the posts in this thread, many times. Noplace does anyone tell me what color anything is.

I'm simply predicting that once experimentalists stop being qualai blind, they will be able to discover what it is that has a redness quality, and thereby falsify all the other crap in the gap theories of consciousness. And that we'll be able to definitively track achieving this consensus, as it happens in real time here.

[Skepdick]

I just want to know the intrinsic color of things. Today, nobody can tell you what color anything is.

Why does anybody need to tell you what color things are?

What's stopping you from learning the color of things all by yourself?

[RCSaunders]

I just want to know the intrinsic color of things. Today, nobody can tell you what color anything is.

No one can tell you what your conscious experience is, but you cannot not know what it is. If you see a color, you see it, period. Call it whatever you like.

When someone else see's a color they see whatever they see. You cannot know what their experience is, nor do you need to.

If you are both looking at the same object you will both see whatever color you see and may agree to call whatever that experience is, "chartreuse." Either of you may use that word (concept that identifies chartreuse) for your own personal experience but that is all it can possibly mean. Since whatever one experiences as a color is whatever light is being reflected, transmitted, or produced by the entity seen, whenever an entity relfects, transmits, or produces that same light (wave length or combination) you will probably call it chartreuse since you will be having a similar visual experience. What's the problem?

There is, by the way, no reason to suppose people have different visual experiences when perceiving the same light. Since all human beings have the same essential nature as living, conscious, beings, it is very unlikely their conscious experiences are not similar.

[Impenitent]

humans with colorblindness aside... not all men are created equal...

-Imp

[henry quirk]

The quality we call blue is in the light, not our heads, so...

The quality we call blue is in the light, not our heads, so...

Blue
Blue
Blue
Blue

All the shades (the quality, the information) are in the light: we just give 'em names.

Color (the quality, the information) is in the light, so -- yeah -- it's mind independent.

We name it, ascribe meaning to it, but color exists independent of you and me and him and her.

Color (the quality, the information) is in the light, so -- yeah -- it's mind independent.

We name it, ascribe meaning to it, but color exists independent of you and me and him and her.

"Is this a shade of blue or a shade of red?"

Color

Me, I don't know what the common placeholder is so I'll just call it phugly.

My point (again): we assign names to that which exists. In the light there's information (wavelength) and we assign names to various slices of that spectrum.

Looping back: if all the big brains were blind, the sky (the light) would still be (still contain) blue.

'nuff said (for now, cuz I gotta go make bucks).

If the lightwave's frequency is F Hertz/second, then it carries 2F bits per second.

Is that a lot?

Well, you know what your purpose is - how many do you need?

Irrelevant. All that matters in this lil discussion is: I (we) name that which already exists. Nuthin' comes into being cuz I (we) name it. BLUE (any shade) is the placeholder we apply to a particular slice of light. We originated the placeholder, not the particular slice of light we assign the placeholder to.

We assign names to the categories we invent.

And we assigns names to things. 'Apple' can refer to a category or to the specific example I bite into. As category name 'apple' is a bit abstracted, as signifier for a specifc example, it's concrete.

#

Light exists. "Red" or "Blue" are just arbitrary categories on the light spectrum.

Light exists and 'red' and 'blue' are placeholders arbitrarily assigned to specific slices of the spectrum. All seven billion plus of us could decide to rename 'red' as 'gnarfle' and the the particular slice of light (formerly known as 'red', now known as 'gnarfle') would not change at all. The quality we call 'gnarflness' (formerly 'redness') is in the light, not in our heads.

#

It wouldn't. Because the sky is not blue. It's just what we say about it.

Sure, we can change the placeholder 'blue' to whatever we like, but the quality most of us currently name 'blue' does not change just cuz we decide to call that quality 'lindytwist'. 'Lindytwistness', formerly known as 'blueness' is in the light, not in our heads.

"Physics tries to guess what exists"

I don't need physics to know the coffee I'm drinkin' is real, exists, and exists independent of me (like the quality in light we call color).

"The thing you bite into is concrete, but it's not an "apple"."

Yeah, I know. 'apple' is the placeholder most english speakers assign to a particular thing of category of things. Change the placeholder and the thing remains the same (in the same way the quality we call color today and papaloo tomorrow remains the same).

#

"It's not in the light - it's in the way your brain processes the information from your retinas."

I process the information in the light apprehended by my eyes.

#

"Even IF qualia exist - they are entirely subjective. Qualia are about experiences. Colors are most definitely in your head."

Nope. The names, the assessments, the meaning I apply to the information in the light that I apprehend with my eyes is in my head, but the information, the quality, is in the light.

"Coffee doesn't concern itself with its "existence"."

No, it just sits there, existing.

""Light" is not apprehended by your eyes. Photons strike your retina. This generates electrical impulses which your brain interprets. That is what you call "light"."

Half a dozen of one, six of the other.

#

"But "the light' is in your head!"

Nope, the model or reconstruction is in my head, the information I use to model or reconstruct is in the light, er, 'photons'.

"Existence is tricky subject at the Quantum scale"

mebbe so, but between 'there' and 'here' (the human scale) the trickiness gets tamped down quite a bit.

#

"It may as well turn out that they don't actually exist, except as mathematical artefacts in our current understanding of the world."

Things exist, they exist independent of me; information about those things, intrinsic to those things, is conveyed to me by something. Big brains can rejigger the models as they like, apply whatever placeholders they like, but the foundation doesn't change (things exist, they exist independent of me; information about those things, intrinsic to those things, is conveyed to me by something).

"Why? Because physics doesn't apply at human scale!"

Hell if I know.

Brief anecdote: I knew a fella who, like you was (mebbe still is) a big brain. He'd pontificate, after a few beers, on the illusory state of the world. One of his favorites was the one about matter bein' mostly empty space. When he did that, I'd smack the table hard with a fist, sayin' seems pretty fuckin' solid to me.

I know, at the deepest levels of Reality, things are queer, but up here, where I live, things aren't.

I can't explain the disparity, (you probably can: but, don't, cuz I don't care), but practically, as I move through the world, I don't have to.

#

"If the DNA of an apple was transfered to your brain via your eyes, it would take 15 minutes! And that's just one strand - what about the rest of the apple?!?"

Yeah, but I don't need all that information to recognize an apple, to eat an apple, to enjoy an apple. All I need is the lil bit of consistent, coherent, information that I get through my imperfect, finite senses, that I process in my marvelous, imperfect, finite, brain.

I don't need to dissect Reality to live in it, to successfully navigate it.

"Only a tiny fraction of a thing's information-identity makes its way to your perception via your senses."

So what?

Looping back: All the information is outside me, Independent of me. Much of it is lost to me, but the sliver I apprehend is enough for me to successfully navigate through the world.

interesting conservation. Sounds a lot like perceptual realism v subjective idealism.

"Perceptual realism" is epistemology.

Everything that is known or knowable is perceptual and therefore subjective.

We can, do, have subjective takes on what's objectively there, what objectively exists.

But...

Normally, naturally, our takes align pretty closely with what's objectively there, what objectively exists, cuz what's objectively there, what objectively exists, while it contains mysteries, is not mysterious. Ever time you walk through a crowded room, weaving through a shifting group of people, you demonstrate that your senses, and your assessment of what your senses gather, is fairly accurate (so your take is fairly accurate).

Sure, there are folks with defective senses, or defective processors, and yeah, sometimes the slice of the world we apprehend is overtly mysterious, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

The rule: the World is largely as we perceive it with our naked, un-enhanced senses. The models we create in our heads are fairly accurate. The World, and all the things in it exist, and do so independent of an observer.

"Information is a Mathematical equation."

That's one valid way to look at it. Another: I am in the world, I apprehend the world, I assess the world, I (begin to) understand the world. It may all foundationally be computation but I'm not a computer, *Sebastian, I'm physical.









*Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner

[Sculptor]

When did you stop reading the responses on this thread?
I have already covered your queries.

I've read all the posts in this thread, many times. Noplace does anyone tell me what color anything is.

Nothing has any colour! FFS Colour is an illusion of the mind. What else do you not understand about the concept of qualia!!!?

I'm simply predicting that once experimentalists stop being qualai blind,

Whatever the F that is!!!...

..they will be able to discover what it is that has a redness quality,

They know that already by experience.

... and thereby falsify all the other crap in the gap theories of consciousness. And that we'll be able to definitively track achieving this consensus, as it happens in real time here.

Like I said above, you are offering a solution where no problem exists.

[Sculptor]

The only person on this thread that is "qualia blind" is Brent.Allsop.

It seems everyone else has a clear idea of what the theory of qualia achieves.

[Atla]

The only person on this thread that is "qualia blind" is Brent.Allsop.

It seems everyone else has a clear idea of what the theory of qualia achieves.

Don't speak for others retard. Just as you've shown that you are ignorant about almost every philosophical topic out there, you alse seem to be qualia blind.