From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Sat Dec 18 1999 - 20:06:30 MST
Technotranscendence wrote:
> Here's my minor entry into the "qualia" thread.:)
>
> > [1] The machine has not detected the COLOR red which
> > by definition is a visual sensation resulting from the
> > impact of light of a particular wavelength on the cones
> > of the retina of the eye.
>
> It's not precisely true that seeing red happens that way.
Dear Daniel,
You are quite right to point this out; I just wanted to make
sure we continued to distinguish machine discrimination from
human perception. The reference above is only to the first
moment of electrochemical activity. The process leading to
distributed stimulation of the occipital lobe and the transition
to the emergence of the perceived datum within a medium of
unknown constitution [1] is so complicated that I am having
a good day when I clearly realize I don't understand it.
Thank you for your important qualification,
Bob
---------------------------------------------------------
[1] The situation is analogous to the propagation of purely
mathematical Maxwellian waves in an invisible but some-
how rigid medium in our crude efforts to model the pro-
pagation of light so we could believe the something that
had to wave was in fact waving... I have no idea how
monochromatic radiation becomes a pre-chromatic electo-
chemical signal and then a complex electronic field phe-
homenon transmuted into--what? Psychophysical quantum
oscillations in mitochondrial tubules, parapsychic patterns
in an anomalous matrix.... All I know for sure is that we
have always solved complex problems by resolving them
into simpler components, and then sweating it out, one
minuscule step at a time.
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
=======================
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