From: Skye (skyezacharia@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Feb 24 2000 - 23:45:05 MST
Perhaps... but this does not mean that there are
qualia. In what way is the visual part of redness
incomputable? I would think... that if a computer
were wired appropriately, the perception would be the
same. Nowhere in the brain does there exist actual
redness after the image is turned into a nerve
pulse... what you get actually *is* electrical
stimulation. All of your inputs are simply variations
on electrical feed from your sense organs. There is
no *redness* in the brain, so it must be... an
illusion, so to speak. A code, perhaps, by which
another part of our brain sees these lower levels.
Our map of the world is inside, after all, and is only
a translation of the senses. Perhaps in a coded
electrochemical sense the images *are* reproduced in
some way for processing... if that is the case, then a
computer could perform the same operation, since they
are reproduced in the form of this code.
There is no where else the information is going, yet
you say the qualia would effect it somehow. In what
way? The only incomputable elements I observe are
brownian motion and heisenberg uncertainty, but
whether that massively affects the general structure
of the human brain is fairly questionable.
In any case, your continual arguements of "I see" and
"I am aware" seem to prove nothing. I can tell that
you see. I do not see what you see, but I am not
hardwired to your sense inputs. If I did, I would.
Would that mean I possessed your qualia? *laughs* I'm
sorry for even stepping into this arguement... look, I
would love, absolutely love to see another revolution
in science. I could *almost* see a reason for
evolution to work it's way down to creating bizarre
quantum effects. Almost. But nonetheless... I
think there is a logical fallacy inherent in
presupposing their existence, and this is becoming
something of a theological arguement. This is my last
qualia post unless I see lab results, and then I'll
write something.
*wonders offhand whether this is the result of
frustration on the parts of the artificial
intelligence researchers*
--- John Clark <jonkc@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Brent Allsop <allsop@fc.hp.com> Wrote:
>
> > the trivial case is simply to say that a "red"
> sensations is defined to
> > represent 700 nm electromagnetic radiation
>
> I'm really not trying to be difficult and that
> definition would be fine for most things
> but you're trying to use it as part of the
> foundation for an objective theory
> of qualia, one good enough for you to know how I
> experience the world,
> and it's just not good enough for that, not nearly
> good enough. I won't even
> bother about "representation", if you want to work
> at such a fundamental level
> you'd need a deep understanding of what "is" is. No
> chance!
>
> >computer representations have numerical 3D
> information but other than that,
> >are not in any related way 3D
>
> Seems good enough to me, In what other way do they
> need to be related?
>
> > Are you saying there is something relevant to
> whether or not
> > qualia exist outside of such simple examples
> of spatial meaning and
> > definitions?
>
> Yes, it's different. I can measure space, I can
> measure the actions of a robot,
> I can measure your actions, but I can't even detect
> your qualia much less measure it.
>
> > There isn't much complexity at all in what red
> is like.
>
> I don't know and will never know if red is complex
> or not but I do know
> it's indescribable. Ever word in the dictionary has
> a definition and every
> one of those definitions are made of words that are
> in the same dictionary,
> but no sequence of those words will allow somebody
> to understand red
> who has not already had a direct sensation of it.
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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