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

[LarryS]

Of course. What do eyes provide to the brain other than measurements of measurable physical qualities?

Yes, for the sake of this conversation I will grant the eyes deliver measurable quantities of physical properties . . . but from the mass, spin, charge, frequency, etc. in the cells/molecules of the brain, can we deduce (even in principle) what it is like to love a spouse or a dog?
From any recent neuroscience research I can find - the answer is no. And of recent we hear of researchers comments like Well there has to be some properties of matter we just don't know about . . . and when we discover these properties we'll understand how the brain works. Or Pansychism . . Or when the chips are down they'll take the nuclear option . . . consciousness is an illusion.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

I'd like to zoom in on this particular statement, because I've seen versions of it claimed throughout this thread, and to be honest I flat out disagree with it.

He was asking why we needed a fancy word like qualia for something that was just chemical reactions. I could just as well ask why we need the words "fire" or "rust" since they're both just chemical reactions. The answer is that just saying "chemical reaction" leaves out a lot of what the terms fire and rust are trying to get at.

I claim it is actually nothing more then chemical reactions and neurons firing in the correct sequence.

You claim what is actually nothing more then chemical reactions and neurons firing in the correct sequence? The color red?

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

We can describe red to a blind person...

I don't even think you can describe red to me now on this forum, in the sense of what someone experience when they see red.

Or course, we can speak about wavelengths and frequencies of electromagnetic waves, and cones and rods and chemical reactions and neurons, but none of those are descriptions of the as experienced color of red.

 

[Darat]

Have you considered the possibility that you might be a p-zombie, Darat?

Yes.

 

[Darat]

I don't think that can be the case. You are telling me, that you could explain redness to a blind person and they would have an experience of redness that you could confirm was like your experience of redness? You must be a good explainer.

We have become such good explainers.

 

[David Mo]

He was asking why we needed a fancy word like qualia for something that was just chemical reactions

First of all: it is a new term for an old concept: impression. See Hume and the English empiricists. I suppose inventing terms makes them seem more scientific. No one is safe from the cult of the simpeltonishm.

Second, you need two terms because the wavelength and the impression of a color are not the same. After you have explained the scientific theory of light and colors a blind man still does not understand what it is seeing something red. Therefore, two words are needed.
It may be that you and I think that a certain wavelength of light and its effect on the brain and red are different aspects of the same thing. In any case, red and wavelength are not "the same". And so the problem of impression/qualia begins or ends.

 

[Darat]

How do you know they're red?

Because as I learned language other people referred to that as red and I went along with it. Does a french speaker not have an “experience of red”?

 

[Darat]

When you say that you see that they are alike do you mean that you note that they are both reflecting EM waves with a frequency of 700–635 nm, and then you consult a table of frequencies in the visible light spectrum and look and see that that particular wavelength corresponds to red?

That does not seem to be how our brains work.

 

[Darat]

Oh, that could probably work. It still feels like you are missing the point. I don't think anybody argues that external inputs and brain states aren't the immediate cause of qualia. I certainly don't.

In any case, say you induce the experience of "purpleness" in this blind person. How do you validate that the subjective experience of "purpleness" they have is the same as yours? That's more like what the problem is. The experiment being described doesn't sound like it is testing qualia.

Because the same way of describing a red or purple apple gives sight to different blind people.

 

[Darat]

Correct, the existence of qualia is not based on linguistic shortcomings - but the proposed inability to convey the experience of red providing only knowledge of physical measurable quantities of red (color/vision), measurable quantities such as spin, charge, mass, frequencies, etc.
In fact - one can not use words (linguistics) - one can only describe red using measurable physical quantities.
It's not about the difference between the experience of red, and the experience of redness . . . whatever that is
The question is: In principle, can a brain compute the experience of red provided only measurable physical quantities (assuming brain has full knowledge of those physical quantities)?

Since we can do that the question is now rather moot.

 

[Darat]

Put in "love" or "sarcasm" or "satiety" in place of qualia.

Can we still describe those experiences using the language of physics?

(Admittedly I've not obtained any degrees in physics since the mid-90s, but I'd be surprised if the field has come that far in the interim.)


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Altering brain chemistry has been possible at least for as long as recorded human history.

 

[arthwollipot]

Most peoples' understanding of neuroscience tends to be at least 10-15 years out of date.

 

[David Mo]

Why do you say 20 years time? Sam Harris has described taking a pill that made him feel pure unselfish love for someone that he had never met nor heard of before.

So apparently we already have this technology.

Well, Hitler was getting the same thing without giving anybody pills. I hope no one puts that drug in the hands of world leaders. I don't even want to imagine a rally of a certain person with everyone on drugs.
By the way, what would happen if you drugged a person in front of a goat? That already happened to Queen Titania with a donkey and it was a disaster.
I have the impression that love is too serious a drug to leave in the hands of scientists... and Harris.

 

[Darat]

This is what I have been thinking as well. Darat may be aphantasic. When someone mentions "red apple" to me, I can visualise that apple in my mind even if I can't see it. I can visualise its roundness and its redness - I have a full image of that apple in my mind, and I can even visualise (or "see") what it would look like if I took a bite out of it.

This idea of visualising the redness of an apple leads to the idea of qualia. I don't know if what Darat says about the outdatedness of qualia is true, but I think it would be much more difficult for an aphantasic to experience the qualia of redness.

I am aphantastic, I see red only when something red is in front of me. I have no “minds eye”.

 

[Darat]

Yes, for the sake of this conversation I will grant the eyes deliver measurable quantities of physical properties . . . but from the mass, spin, charge, frequency, etc. in the cells/molecules of the brain, can we deduce (even in principle) what it is like to love a spouse or a dog?
From any recent neuroscience research I can find - the answer is no. And of recent we hear of researchers comments like Well there has to be some properties of matter we just don't know about . . . and when we discover these properties we'll understand how the brain works. Or Pansychism . . Or when the chips are down they'll take the nuclear option . . . consciousness is an illusion.

Seems you are going for the “qualia of gaps”. You are saying, well OK so now you can describe red to a blind person and they will see red, but you can’t explain X so qualia can be shoehorned into that.

 

[Darat]

I don't even think you can describe red to me now on this forum, in the sense of what someone experience when they see red.

Or course, we can speak about wavelengths and frequencies of electromagnetic waves, and cones and rods and chemical reactions and neurons, but none of those are descriptions of the as experienced color of red.

Then how have we made blind people see?

 

[arthwollipot]

I am aphantastic, I see red only when something red is in front of me. I have no “minds eye”.

There you go. It appears to be much easier to get an idea of the redness of red when you can visualise it in your mind.

 

[Darat]

There you go. It appears to be much easier to get an idea of the redness of red when you can visualise it in your mind.

Our perceptions are often misleading. I can be spun around very fast, stopped and I will feel as if the room is spinning.

 

[arthwollipot]

Our perceptions are often misleading. I can be spun around very fast, stopped and I will feel as if the room is spinning.

Can you describe what that feels like? Not in terms of the room but in terms of how you feel?

 

[Robin]

Most peoples' understanding of neuroscience tends to be at least 10-15 years out of date.

Seems to me that most people's understanding of neuroscience is at least 10-15 years ahead of where neuroscience is actually at.

It is often an eye opener to read accounts of actual experiments to see how they differ from popular understanding of them.