From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 15:25:03 MDT
"John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net> replied:
> 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.
I go over this in much more detail in my paper,
HTML version: http://www.frii.com/~allsop/qualia.htm
MS Word version: http://www.frii.com/~allsop/qualia.doc
but let me try to summarize here. Your left hemisphere is already
connected to the right hemisphere of your brain, via the corpus
callosum. You know that a green tree in the left hemisphere of your
primary visual cortex is drastically phenomenally different than a red
car in the right side of you primary visual cortex. You know this
difference more absolutely than anything else including any laws of
science and physics that you know. In other words, the subjective
world of your left hemisphere is joined to the subjective world of the
right hemisphere. They are the same subjective conscious world. As
long as you are within the same subjective world where both
experiences are shared, there is proof that one sensation is the same,
and another sensation is drastically different. Do you really doubt
that we will be connecting portions of our brains together with
something like a corpus callosum and thereby able to eff and share
subjective experiences, and thereby know, more surely than we know
anything else, that other's base level qualia are really like or not
like our own?
Don't be tempted to make the mistake of getting lost on some
higher level, nebulous, fleeting voluntary and hard to comprehend
feelings like happy or sad. This is just needless and unnecessary
distraction that causes everyone to get hopelessly confused. Just
focus on the raw constant unmistakable senses like salty, green, warm
and so on. Once we discover, understand, and can eff these base
level, constant, involuntary representations - then we can attempt to
worry about the more complex and fleeting cognitive feelings like
happy love... and so on.
Brent Allsop
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