From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Fri Feb 25 2000 - 12:38:47 MST
Skye <skyezacharia@yahoo.com> replied:
> There is no *redness* in the brain,
No! This is the classic example of the mistake I believe most
of us are making and why our old science, to date, is miserably
failing. Perception is a long cause and effect process. At the
causal end of this process is the "referent" or what we are looking
at. At the opposite end of this complex cause and effect process,
beyond the retina, past the optic nerve..., somewhere in the primary
visual cortex, is the final result of the perceptual process or our
conscious knowledge of what we are looking at. This is where real red
is!
There is nothing like this outside of our brain or beyond our
senses. As proof of this, how would virtual reality worlds, full of
red and all other colors, be possible? Are you saying there is
"redness" inside of the ram which contains the representation of the
"virtual reality" world that causes the color perceptions we perceive
there? Cirtanly not.
There is something that occurs out beyond our senses, which I
believe you are referring to. Perhaps we can call this "referent red"
since we use red sensations to abstractly represent it. But the two
are very different, exist at opposite ends of the cause and effect
perceptual process, and in fact color blind people sometimes surely
use different sensations or quale to represent the same "referent".
With todays limited "abstract" science all we really know of
such "referents", or all things beyond our representational senses, is
abstract or behavior knowledge. We simply infere that there is
something out there that can cause light of a certain wavelength to
reflect in a certain way. We know nothing of what such "red
referents" are like other than such abstract behavior. Obviously,
when a surgeon does surgery on a primary visual cortex that is
"perceiving red", there is nothing there anything like a "red
referent" that will behave in such a way as to result in a perceptual
process ending up with a real red sensation in the surgeon's
consciousness. Perhaps this is what you really meant?
John Clark <jonkc@worldnet.att.net> also responded:
> I can't even detect your qualia much less measure it.
Obviously our current sensing process, which includes all of
our scientific instruments which simply add more cause and effect
abstract levels to enhance this abstract process of observing only
behavior of these "referents", alone, can't do this. Every level of
such a long perceptual process simply abstractly represents or models
the original referent in some different physical form. Each form is
very physically different from the previous one, and the final result,
our conscious knowledge, is, again, different from them all.
However, this in no way implies that we "can't even detect
your qualia much less measure it."
Our brain takes the abstract information from various senses.
This neural firing representation of this information is nothing like
the original referents beyond our senses that initiated the perceptual
process, it simply abstractly "models" it. Our brain takes this
abstract model of the information and produces our conscious knowledge
of the original referent. Our brain then combines all of these
diverse sensations such as color, smell, sound, warmth, pain... into
one unified conscious world ("spirit world" inside our brain if you
will) where we most definitily can compare and contrast them.
Comparing and contrasting is, by definition, measuring. We most
certainly "detect" them. We know of the existence of these things
more than we know of the existents of their distant referents which we
can really only infer that they exist. (Note: refer to the "brain in
a vat argument", virtual reality...)
> I don't know and will never know if red is complex or not but I do
> know it's indescribable.
I know what you are trying to say but when you really think
about it, this is completely false. You are saying we can't "eff"
sensations. We can't tell someone what salt tastes like. Of course
simple "abstract" communication alone (what science and all our sensing
has been to date) can't "eff". But there is only one simple missing
piece that will give us true "effing" ability.
All that is required to sufficiently model color qualia is the
amount of information traveling through or being modeled by the neural
firing in the optic nerve, Just as the taste of salt can be modeled by
the information traveling through the nerves in the tongue to the
brain. The only thing left for us to do is to enhance our brain, in
the same way nature did when it merged the ability of our
consciousness to feel both red and salty at the same tame, including
our ability to compare and contrast them (i.e. measure them).
In order to do this, we've simply got to realize that there is
more to the referent "behavior" of the neurons we are observing.
We've got to know more than simply how they behave, we've got to start
looking for what is it really like for them to behave that way. Why
is it like that for that person when they behave that way...
Instead of simply assuming that *redness* is simply the
behavior of reflecting light, there might be something additional to
such physical behavior of reflecting light. It may be more than just
behaving in a particular way, it may actually be phenomenally "like"
something. Although the behavior of light reflecting off of something
may not, itself, have phenomenal qualities, something in our brain
(I'm betting it is closely related to the chemical processes that goes
on as the synapse fires or something) is fundamentally phenomenally
"like" something.
We've got to look for more than just abstract behavior, we've
got to discover what and why it is like what it is like. Once we
figure this out, we well then, like nature has done, reproduce
multiple of these sensations within one consciousness, so that we can
experience, compare, contrast, share, or more or less do much more
than measure them. We will say, this one is the same as that one, but
another one is completely different. That new one is nothing like
anything I have ever experienced....
Taking the abstract information being modeled in one person's
optical nerve and feeding this into someone elses consciousness in
such a way that it produces the same phenomenal "quale" is "effing"
and just because we can't do it yet, doesn't mean science can't do it.
And once we can do this, what's to stop us from actually sharing the
conscious spirit worlds constructed of phenomenal qualia in merged
brains so that we don't have to eff, we just both experience the same
things? Won't it be great when we can finally "feel" the whole
experience of having sex, not just half of it?
Dan Fabulich <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu> replied:
> When you have no need of the hypothesis, so the saying goes, you
> ought not make the hypothesis.
As long as the hypothesis has no room for experiencing all of
such experiences, not just half, if there is no room for effing and
all this... they are obviously grossly lacking.
Brent Allsop
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