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The study of atoms in the brain doesn't explain the redness of red;Materialism = FAKE

Dave241 said:
This was already posted by Darat, and then I quoted him to remind the conversation, so it's already been pointed out twice that yes, we can do EXACTLY this. We can use surgery to put electrodes into a blind persons brain, then take red light, turn it into electrical signals, send those signals into the blind persons brain and that person can now see. Therefore, this means that we are in fact using math (that would be in the computer code which runs all this) and are able to use that math to describe the color red to a blind person.
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Yeah, but this doesn't show what they are seeing. The quale, if you will.
 
JoeMorgue said:
No. Philosophy refuses to believe science had made any advancement post 1700 or so. The last thing science was allowed to discover is that maggots don't spontaneously appear in rotten beef and Newtonian Physics.

The entire history of neuroscience did not happen in this dojo.

"But the mind is still this mysterious mysterious mystery of mysteriousness that your cold, hard science still has no clue about" is where they have to stay to maintain the wise old man on the mountain personas.

We know more about how the brain works (and have longer) then we do about plate tectonics, but there is no "Hard problem of continental drift" we have to still pretend is a thing because there's no Woo to be gained by it.

We could drag them kicking and screaming in front of an MRI or PETScan machine and make them watch it Clockwork Orange style and they'd still be screaming about how we're showing them the process "but not the experience."

Because like I said they don't understand why it doesn't make them deep to watch someone take a clock apart to understand how it works and stand over their shoulder going "I still don't see the ticking" at each step, but it's nothing but the scene in every wacky time travel comedy where the Caveman or the medieval Knight smashes the TV the free the tiny people trapped inside it.

I refer to Jabba's thread parts 1 through 97 trillion.
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Hahahahah

I like that you are into process philosophy though.
 
Sideroxylon said:
Hahahahah

I like that you are into process philosophy though.
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Why do people think the whole "Ha gotcha, what you're doing is a type of philosophy!" thing is just so incredibly clever?

Do you actually have a counter or point to anything I'm saying instead of glib, meaningless truisms? Because if that's all you've got you are sort of proving my point.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Why do people think the whole "Ha gotcha, what you're doing is a type of philosophy!" thing is just so incredibly clever?

Do you actually have a counter or point to anything I'm saying instead of glib, meaningless truisms? Because if that's all you've got you are sort of proving my point.
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Old ground, Joe. Might have to go back and read some of those threads with you and Heckle and Jeckle. Good times.
 
*Shrugs* So be it. When you finally take the clock apart enough to find "the ticking" in it let me know. Maybe you'll do it before Jabba does.
 
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Sideroxylon said:
Yeah, not my position. *shrugs*
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In yet another stunning parallel to another (and this point many other) discussion I'm having I don't know what your point is, other then I said something bad about "philosophy" and you felt the need to swoop in and defend its virtue like it's your virginal daughter you caught in the hayloft with one of the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. So much like a certain someone still looking for a dragon in my garage you don't have a point, you just have a problem.

I said:

- Science does in fact have a fairly robust (no not 100% complete but that's meaningless) understanding of how the mind works, easily on par with things we aren't having existential crises over.
- "Qualia" is a nonsense term.
- "The hard problem of consciousness" is a nonsense question.
- This board's most fervent self titled "Philosopher" disagree with those statments, and I feel they are wrong.

I stand by those statements. There, now you clearly have my argument laid out.

Let's hear yours.

Or we can get a glib but meaningless witty retort. Let's see which it is.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
In yet another stunning parallel to another (and this point many other) discussion I'm having I don't know what your point is, other then I said something bad about "philosophy" and you felt the need to swoop in and defend its virtue like it's your virginal daughter you caught in the hayloft with one of the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. So much like a certain someone still looking for a dragon in my garage you don't have a point, you just have a problem.

I said:

- Science does in fact have a fairly robust (no not 100% complete but that's meaningless) understanding of how the mind works, easily on par with things we aren't having existential crises over.
- "Qualia" is a nonsense term.
- "The hard problem of consciousness" is a nonsense question.
- This board's most fervent self titled "Philosopher" disagree with those statments, and I feel they are wrong.

I stand by those statements. There, now you clearly have my argument laid out.

Let's hear yours.

Or we can get a glib but meaningless witty retort. Let's see which it is.
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Is it OK if I just laugh at stuff like, “Philosophy refuses to believe science had made any advancement post 1700 or so”?
 
JoeMorgue said:
No. Philosophy refuses to believe science had made any advancement post 1700 or so.
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Sure it doesn't Joe.

Massimo Pigliucci has two PhDs in scientific fields and a long track record of publishing in major journals as a biologist before he became a philosopher, so I am sure he refuses to believe that science has made any advancement since 1700.

Daniel Dennett too.

Why does every single person called Joe have the habit of making broad easily refutable generalisations?
 
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The question was - can you mathematically describe redness to a blind person?

The answer was, in.effect - "yes, blindness can be cured with technology".

Doesn't seem.to fit the question.
 
LarryS said:
I'm not going to take your word for it - How would you use mathematis to explain red to a blind person so that they can 'experience' red. Alternatively you don't have to actually explain it, but provide a link to someone who does.
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Hoe do you think we design and manufacture things like microprocessors? How does the camera convert the photons to electrical impulses and so on?
 
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Robin said:
The question was - can you mathematically describe redness to a blind person?

The answer was, in.effect - "yes, blindness can be cured with technology".

Doesn't seem.to fit the question.
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I think you are getting hung up on thinking "describe" has to use language as we do in every day interactions. If I have a orrey that is describing how planets move (albeit be it a crude model).

Our current technology of microprocessors are based on maths, the maths of quantum. When you use anything with a microprocessor in it you are at the base using maths to describe the real world.

At the next level of abstraction, microcode the mathematical foundations become even clearer.

It's just we tend to not think about what our "black boxes" are doing. They are in effect using mathematical models of the world.

Then there is of course the clear use of mathematics in a high level language that scientists will be using to convert the electrical signals from one device to ones that interface with the brain. All sorts of formulae will be used to carry out those operations.

Sadly we've made the turtles extinct, it's now maths all the way down! ;)
 
Darat said:
I think you are getting hung up on thinking "describe" has to use language as we do in every day interactions.
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Rather we understand the question differently.

I thought it was implied that the person had to be blind throughout, not cured of blindness and shown the colour.

If you cure his blindness and show him red you have not explained it to a blind person, you have shown it to a sighted person.
 
By the way I would be interested in a cite to detecting which colour a person is seeing in real time

It would be unsurprising that we could detect this in later analysis of the data but I am surprised that it can be done in real time.
 
Robin said:
Rather we understand the question differently.

I thought it was implied that the person had to be blind throughout, not cured of blindness and shown the colour.

If you cure his blindness and show him red you have not explained it to a blind person, you have shown it to a sighted person.
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No that is not right.

In this example you have indeed described the "experience of seeing" to a blind person using technology, your description is so full of detail that they can now see things. Switch the technology off i.e. stop describing a red apple and they will again be blind, just like you and I if we were to have a terrible illness or accident and our eyes were damaged to such an extent we lost all sight.
 
Darat said:
No that is not right.

In this example you have indeed described the "experience of seeing" to a blind person using technology, your description is so full of detail that they can now see things. Switch the technology off i.e. stop describing a red apple and they will again be blind, just like you and I if we were to have a terrible illness or accident and our eyes were damaged to such an extent we lost all sight.
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Also, I'm assuming the camera in question is digital, yes? One could presumably record the digital information of the apple image and reproduce it at will. Which means one could "show" the red apple to the blind person even when there's no apple there, even if that person is sitting in a completely dark and empty room.
 
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