From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 14:01:25 MDT
Brent, I'll bet you're like me and like to put salt on popcorn and I'll bet you're
like me and don't like to put salt in chocolate milk. That's moderately good
evidence that our subjective experience of the taste of salt is similar,
but it falls far short of a proof. Even in a age of advanced Nanotechnology
and Jupiter Brains I can't for the life of me see how the evidence is going to
be one bit better.
I grant you that a particular Qualia is almost certainly caused by some
neural connection but in order to find it you're going to need a theory.
However in the final analysis the theory is going to be based on things like
" When this group of neurons is firing this fellow makes a noise with his
mouth that sound like "I feel happy" and when this group of neurons is firing
his mouth makes a different sound "I feel sad"", but his actual subjective
experience will be pure conjecture, just as it is now. The mouth sounds
might be 100% reliably reproducible but as for the actual feelings, who knows.
So yes, someday somebody will make a machine that wires our brain together,
and yes, the maker of the machine will claim that taste in your mouth is exactly
how I experience the taste of salt, but there will be no way to know if the maker
of the machine is correct.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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