From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Wed Feb 16 2000 - 11:41:50 MST
John Clark <jonkc@worldnet.att.net> responded:
> And I predict you that although you may indeed find the correct
> qualia theory someday you will never know for certain it's right, in
> fact you'll never be able to prove that any qualia theory is correct
> and you'll seldom even be able to prove that it's incorrect.
You missed what I'm claiming. Just as we can say that our
salty is not like our red, is not like our warm..., we will be able to
augment our brains with generic qualia experience apparatus and throw
additional sensations into our conscious awareness, undoubtedly some
of which none of us have ever experienced or felt before (as in "what
is it like to be a bat?"). Just as our brain currently makes us able
to know the differences between the ones it uses to represent
information we will also be able to experience and to spiritually know
and contrast what others use to represent information. This is what I
mean by "effing". The theory is that this kind of effing will be the
proof that will end all these kinds of issues and that this will be
the greatest scientific achievement of all time. It will prove what
you claim cannot be proven.
> Even you admit we don't have such a theory now so I wonder, are you
> equally skeptical about the inner life of your fellow human beings
> and if not why not?
Though we can't yet know for sure, I have a good idea that
others have inner lives. Though I bet others do have spiritual inner
lives, (and that todays computers only abstractly "model" such) I'd
bet there are at least some people that use a different qualia to
represent 700 nm light than the particular "red" one I use. Again,
the theory is that once we discover and can eff such and know why and
how..., we will then finally objectively know and prove all this for
sure.
> That's why qualia theories don't interest me much.
This theory implies that we must be interrested in this and
that we can go no place as long as we aren't interested in it.
Brent Allsop
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