From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 22:49:43 MDT
Brent Allsop wrote:
> I believe I go over this much better in my paper, but let me
>try to quickly paraphrase.
Thanks.
>If anything (a computer, a person, a God, a ghost in a Cartesian
>theater.... whatever) "knows" something, there must be something
>real in that being that is this knowledge.
Okay, what about this example? I make a little robot that can
go from my den to my kitchen by making a couple of turns. It
does this through some assembledge of resistors and capacitors.
(I wish that I had taken some mechanical engineering courses.)
It may be that how long to keep going before one of the turns
is determined by the value of a resistor, e.g., 10 ohms
translates to ten inches. Thus there is no *explicit*
representation of the layout of my house. Is this a counter-
example?
>If open my eyes and I see a green tree out there, there
>must be something in my conscious mind or brain, that is
>my new conscious knowledge of that tree. Otherwise, what
>is it that is my conscious knowledge?
I don't know. But couldn't it be a vast number of
synapses that have ever so slightly more or less of
various neuro-transmitters, and some ever so slightly
greater probabilities (not certainties) of causing
certain other neurons to fire? Sounds preposterous
for a **small** number of neurons, but there are
billions and billions in there, and it might work
like this.
>Surely, my knowledge isn't simply the tree itself
I think that this was covered back in Naive Realism 1B :-)
>- and hence no change in me is required to know of the tree!?
Huh? Sorry if I'm disecting your sentences and not seeing
the forest because of the tree :-))))
but literally that is wrong. There has to be a change in you
to know of the tree (at least the way that I use the words).
> The tree that reflects 500 nm light is the initial cause of
>the perception process,
check. Everyone really is with you here: if you have to
explain this to some people, then they'll not follow you
anyway.
>and the resulting set of 3D green qualia is
>the final result of the perception process.
Your opponents will claim this to be an empty definition,
having no correspondence to what's really happening in
the brain.
>It is my knowledge or phenomenal conscious awareness
>of the tree. It's as simple as that.
Maybe, but of course, others won't think so. Yet.
Lee Corbin
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