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

[JoeMorgue]

Yes, I tend to ask questions. Especially since everyone around here is so certain about things that apparently haven't asked many questions about. Glad to help.

Do not mistake "I've asked the question and found it nonsensical" for "I never asked the question."

Philosophy has a major issue with the idea that "The question was never valid and can be rejected" is just as valid as "The answer to the question is X."

Again you're getting real close to Dragon in the Garage territory.

If you're going to hide behind "I'm just asking questions and therefore I'm better than everyone" make sure "Wait, why am I asking this question?" is one of the questions you ask.

 

[RedStapler]

Gee, that was a helpful contribution. Keep Red Stapler going, he's certainly been contributing many helpful insights and topics for discussion in the thread.

Yes, I tend to ask questions. Glad to help.

And yet, most people here do not share your concerns about the 'non-explainability' of consciousness. Which, of course, does not stop you from simply repeating your claims, try to create controversy out of thin air and act like it's us that are just too dense to understand the lol-diculous "Hard Problem of Conciousness":

Especially since everyone around here is so certain about things that apparently haven't asked many questions about.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Philosophy has a major issue with the idea that "The question was never valid and can be rejected" is just as valid as "The answer to the question is X."

Why are you so obsessed with telling us you don't like philosophy? It's not healthy, and certainly not the main topic off the thread.

 

[RedStapler]

Why are you so obsessed with telling us you don't like philosophy? It's not healthy, and certainly not the main topic off the thread.

Why are you so obsessed with a non existing gap in the explanation for consciousness?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why are you so obsessed with telling us you don't like philosophy? It's not healthy, and certainly not the main topic off the thread.

Yes it is. Because whenever nonsense questions like "But what about the hard problem of consciousness" get asked it's always defended as "But it's philosophy."

Again do you actually have a problem with anything outside of the fact that I'm not showing proper reverence to philosophy? But I still have zero idea what you want from me.

 

[MohamedTaqi]

The Socratic Method is just contrarian trolling with pretensions.

The Socratic Method is the dialectic of questioning assertions until you reach a logical contradiction , it is based on the premise that two contradictory statements cannot be both true .. How's that contrarian trolling?

 

[JoeMorgue]

The Socratic Method is the dialectic of questioning assertions until you reach a logical contradiction , it is based on the premise that two contradictory statements cannot be both true .. How's that contrarian trolling?

Because replying to everything by dropping the discussion down one level and going "Now explain that" is the mentality of a four year old.

And it (we're back at this again) it treats every question as valid and needing an answer.

And it's why you can bet your mortgage on the fact that if you ask a Woo-Slinger to provide evidence for something they'll being going "Okay well then prove you aren't a brain in a jar inside Plato's Cave jacked into the Matrix dreaming your a butterfly dreaming they are a man" soon.

The Socratic Method is useful for determining the fewest possible steps to solipsism, little else. And even that is one the few occasions it doesn't stall out on pure semantics.

 

[MohamedTaqi]

Because replying to everything by dropping the discussion down one level and going "Now explain that" is the mentality of a four year old.

And it (we're back at this again) it treats every question as valid and needing an answer.
...

The Socratic Method is useful for determining the fewest possible steps to solipsism, little else. And even that is one the few occasions it doesn't stall out on pure semantics.

I agree with you on the highlighted statements, not every philosophical question we ask is valid.

But then, another question emerges from that : why does it seem that our questions are valid? why there seems to be gaps?

Wittgenstein (again, philosophy) said that the trick is in language.

 

[JoeMorgue]

But then, another question emerges from that : why does it seem that our questions are valid? why there seems to be gaps?

Wittgenstein (again, philosophy) said that the trick is in language.

Because our languages develop in haphazard, unplanned ways so it's inexact and clumsy. It's possible to linguistically form paradoxes and contradictions, it just doesn't mean anything.

Just because you can phrase something into a question and have it work linguistically is completely meaningless.

And again pointing out "But this is a type of philosophy!" thing is old.

 

[MohamedTaqi]

And it's why you can bet your mortgage on the fact that if you ask a Woo-Slinger to provide evidence for something they'll being going "Okay well then prove you aren't a brain in a jar inside Plato's Cave jacked into the Matrix dreaming your a butterfly dreaming they are a man" soon.

Well, if you hate philosophy my friend, then that's also considered philosophy.

I suggest to hate some philosophical stances ... but not the whole field. Because, whether you love it or hated, we are talking philosophy right now. You know .. You don't hate the love of wisdom, do you?

If someone talks about a "brain in a jar", then I would appreciate that they are talking on a philosophical level, I would stop and enjoy pondering their puzzling questions for a moment, and then move on.

It never hurts to think things through ... it is enjoyable in fact.

 

[LarryS]

So you don't give personal experience the highest veracity then - you recognize that your perception can be mistaken, and accept its correction by science?

Absolutely - Needless to say science needs to be convincing in it's claims. Re the claim that what we know about the brain is sufficient to explain consciousness - I don't view this claim as convincing. Now someone can claim that OK so we don't have a clue how the brain generates consciousness, we just know that it does . . . I view this claim as laughable. Perhaps I have a higher quotient of caution then others here, but recent research in brain is demonstrating this caution is suggested. Read a bit on Integrated Information Theory and you'll see what I mean. (Where there's integrated information there's experience, yikes)

 

[JoeMorgue]

Well, if you hate philosophy my friend, then that's also considered philosophy.

Okay seriously stop doing this. Countering everything with "But that's philosophy! / But what you're doing is a type philosophy / But they are just doing another type of philosophy" is so goddamn old.

Yes I know this and that and this other thing and that other thing are all philosophy. Everything is philosophy. I know, I just don't care.

I suggest to hate some philosophical stances ... but not the whole field. Because, whether you love it or hated, we are talking philosophy right now. You know .. You don't hate the love of wisdom, do you?

I hate the fact that every time someone either tries to override reality as a concept or demand we stop intellectual progress toward actual meaningful real world answers to answer some meaningless, unanswerable (unanswerable by design because it's incomplete or badly worded, not unanswerable in any meaningful sense of the term) they hide behind "But I'm doing philosophy!"

Take that however you want. Stopping every esoteric discussion to exactly define how and why I hate philosophy is old.

If someone talks about a "brain in a jar", then I would appreciate that they are talking on a philosophical level, I would stop and enjoy pondering their puzzling questions for a moment, and then move on.

It never hurts to think things through ... it is enjoyable in fact.

Try spending decades with every single intellectual argument against Woo being countered with "Oh but you see I'm doing philosophy!" and see how fun it stays, okay?

 

[MohamedTaqi]

Okay seriously stop doing this. Countering everything with "But that's philosophy!" is so goddamn old.

Yes I know this and that and this other thing and that other thing are all philosophy. Everything is philosophy. I know, I just don't care.

I hate the fact that every time someone either tries to override reality as a concept or demand we stop intellectual progress to answer some meaningless, unanswerable (unanswerable by design because it's incomplete or badly worded, not unanswerable in any meaningful sense of the term) they hide behind "But I'm doing philosophy!"

Take that however you want. Stopping every esoteric discussion to exactly define how and why I hate philosophy is old.


Try spending decades with every single intellectual argument against Woo being countered with "Oh but you see I'm doing philosophy!" and see how fun it stays, okay?

What can I tell you? that's what you think and I respect that.

Surely no one can reasonably hide behind the label "philosophy" to throw any nonsense, but that's not to say that there are questions that some of us , who chose to click on the "Religion & Philosophy" link that leads to this thread, don't ask.

We could've clicked on "Gaming" , and we could have had a relaxing discussion about video games .. but instead we wanted to talk about philosophy and religion, which is highly appreciated IMO.

There is nothing to be irritated about.

 

[MohamedTaqi]

Try spending decades with every single intellectual argument against Woo being countered with "Oh but you see I'm doing philosophy!" and see how fun it stays, okay?

Instead, I would ponder this 'woo', to see if it is really genuine philosophy, or just woo ..

 

[Dave241]

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.

Of course I can't, because I'm not a computer with electrodes implanted into your brain. But if I was, then I absolutely could. Do you deny this, considering we already do this with blind people?

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.

Ok, please tell me the difference between these 2 scenarios. If you can, I think I'll have a better idea of what you think is still missing:

1) A persons eye detects some photons, and based only on the wavelengths and frequencies of the electromagnetic waves it sends a signal to the persons brain. The persons brain then interprets those signals to be an image that their eyes just detected, and they have the experience of seeing whatever their eyes where pointed at.

2) A computer chip detects some photons, and based only on the wavelengths and frequencies of the electromagnetic waves it sends a signal to the persons brain. The persons brain then interprets those signals to be an image that the computer chip just detected, and they have the experience of seeing whatever the computer chip was pointed at.

What is the difference?

 

[Dave241]

How do we know that my experience of red is the same/similar to yours?

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

That seems very straightforward to me.

 

[Dave241]

I suspect you don't understand what qualia are.

THATS BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO TELL US WHAT IT IS!!!!

Heh, sorry for shouting, but I mean c'mon. How can you claim that WE don't know what qualia is when YOU won't tell us? I've been hearing for this entire thread that we aren't even allowed to ask anyone to define it. That tells me right there that it doesn't exist.

 

[Dave241]

Given the opening post and the thread title I've been discussing what I think is the most well known or infamous formulation. Which is the one in which someone apparently learns "everything" there is about "red" but only when they see "red" for the first time do they "experience" redness so there was something "extra" that couldn't be learned from having "red" described to you.

I feel like you hit the nail on the head here, and I want to expand on this and ask a question to the side thats in favor of qualia. Do you really think this quoted part is accurate? In other words, if you took a blind person that was able to see with our technology, and then somehow restored their natural eyes so they could see (to a similar resolution to whatever technology the blind person has at the time), are you claiming they would only then have "really" seen for the first time?

But hey, I did put that qualifier in there about "to a similar resolution as current technology", so perhaps that is where you think the difference is. With todays technology natural eyes can outperform artificial ones, so sure they would get better resolution with fully restored natural eyes. Ok, lets say that there is the difference.

BUUUUUUUTTTTTT........wouldn't that make qualia nothing more then a matter of resolution? Again, what happens in 20 years when artificial eyes have the same resolution as natural ones? THEN would a blind person who was seeing artificially and had their natural eyes restored only then start to really "see"? What about in 30 years, when artificial eyes have BETTER resolution then natural eyes. Would that mean that suddenly "qualia" would shift to only blind people with artificial eyes can truly see, and none of us born with natural eyes have any qualia at all in regards to sight?

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

THATS BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO TELL US WHAT IT IS!!!!

Heh, sorry for shouting, but I mean c'mon. How can you claim that WE don't know what qualia is when YOU won't tell us? I've been hearing for this entire thread that we aren't even allowed to ask anyone to define it. That tells me right there that it doesn't exist.

Can you quote a few of those instances of someone saying you're not allowed to ask anyone to define it?

While you're looking for that you might come across one of the many times it's been defined in this thread. Or go to wikipedia. Or look at a neuroscience journal.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

We do keep hitting a problem in this thread and I think that is because there isn't a single agreed definition of "qualia" and I suspect several of us are talking past each other because we are using different definitions.

Given the opening post and the thread title I've been discussing what I think is the most well known or infamous formulation. Which is the one in which someone apparently learns "everything" there is about "red" but only when they see "red" for the first time do they "experience" redness so there was something "extra" that couldn't be learned from having "red" described to you.

That extra is taken by some to be a "non-physical" element, which is what I have assumed the opening post was on about given the "atoms can't explain redness" malarkey.

And this is why I was saying when we do tell someone/describe in sufficient detail (via hardware and software) red* to a sufficient degree someone will "experience redness". In other words the "non physical" extra doesn't exist.




*Same caveat to where we are actually up to in regards to the technology I previously mentioned.

The formulation you are mentioning is referred to as the knowledge argument[/QUOTE], and sure I guess you could say it's non physical in the same way that the number seven is non-physical or that circles are non physical. Do circles or lines or the number seven exist? You could say the only places they exist are in human minds, which are a product of human brains, which are composed of matter. So really, circles are just represented by certain configurations of matter in brains.

Although at this point I'm not too optimistic anyone in this thread is going to understand any of that.