Hi John,
Don’t give up on me quite yet. Let’s try one more thing.
Testability is the critical point of
everything we are saying. Everyone thinks
qualia are ineffable, or not testable via science, simply because they are
qualia blind. As soon as someone is no
longer qualia blind, qualia become easily testable, discoverable, objectively demonstrable,
or effable.
Consider this image from the Wikipedia
article on qualia.
When you look at that strawberry,
through the normal, non red green inverted picture on the left, your knowledge of
that strawberry has a normal redness quality, right? However, if you invert the red green signal, anywhere
between the strawberry and your brain (one way is by looking through the red
green inverted picture of that strawberry on the right) your knowledge of that strawberry,
in your brain, now has a physical greenness quality, does it not?
So, let’s say you engineer someone,
with a similar red green signal inversion in the optic nerve. Let’s say we do this at birth. This invert’s mother then points to ripe
strawberries, which he sees with your greenness, and his mother says that is “red”. So, he learns to call strawberries that have your
greenness quality ‘red’. She says those
are the strawberries we want to pick.
So, functionally he is able to pick the strawberries, that have your greenness
quality, just as good as you are. This
invert's brain will learn to think of “Harm”, “Wounding” and “Injury” as having your greenness
quality, since that is what he always experiences, when he sees ‘red’ light
reflecting off blood, coming from an injury.
This is all true because of the red green inverter engineered into his
optic nerve.
Brent, I guess I am Qualia Blind because I just don't understand what you are referring to. And if it cannot be tested using scientific methods, I am not interested. But thanks for trying to educate me. John
I don’t think we are talking past
each other. Let me try saying it this
way.
You are still only thinking of “red”
functionally, which is qualitatively ambiguous.
In order to define something, qualitatively, you need to indicate a
specific set of physical properties, for which the word is a label for. You use it to represent any and all the
different physical things YOU interpret as representing “red” functionality
such as “harm”, “homeostasis” (“democrat vs republican”?) In order to not be qualitatively ambiguous (not
be qualia blind) you need to use different terms to talk a about different
physical properties or qualities. In the
“Representational
Qualia Theory” statement, we point out that we use the term “red” as a
label for physical properties that include reflecting or emitting “red” (650
NM) light. We use a different word “redness”
which is a label for a very different physical quality, the final result of the
perception process. Redness is a different
label for a different physical quality we can be directly aware of.
You never use any other words,
except “red” when talking about physical qualities. You are still doing this here. When qualia blind people say “red”, you can’t
tell if they are talking about the properties of the strawberry, the redness
quality of their knowledge of the
strawberry, or someone else’s knowledge of the same strawberry (or them, wearing
red/green inverting glasses), which is like their greenness knowledge.
Hi Gregg and TOK, thank you for your kind words and thoughts. The intent of invoking Relativity Theory is to be all-inclusive, but it may be a 'bridge too far'.....gotta have goals.
I think that 'pain' is subjective, and may/not mean 'ouch'.....in a plant it may just be an aversive reaction to something that it finds undesirable. Given that we are mobile whereas plants are not I wouldn't think that 'ouch' would be response, but the net result would be the same-ish. I have attached a recent paper by Frantisek Baluska, a German botonist and Arthur Reber, a clinical psychologist that may/not be of interest. Frantisek is the Keynote Speaker at that Consciousness meeting I am also speaking at fyi.....John
Hi TOK,
Cool thoughts, John. On this topic, here are some interesting articles about what plants might “feel” that my brother shared with me:
https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/what-about-plants/
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pain.htm
For me, I completely agree that this stuff demonstrates plants exhibit aversion and withdrawal behaviors that are the roots of what we call “pain”. I would like to call them “proto-pain-behaviors”. However, I am a skeptic regarding “plant
sentience,” although they clearly exhibit functional avoidance and aversion responses. When my son Jon badly broke his arm, the docs put him under and they tried to set it. Andee and I watched as his body writhed and he moaned and he pulled away. Was he “in
pain” or did he “feel pain” as it happened? One of my “flashbulb” memories was when, twenty minutes later, he woke up and cried out “I am alive!”. I don’t think he felt pain during that time, at least in any we mean the term (although you might argue yes and
he does not remember). Yet he exhibited behavior that was far more indicative of pain than the evidence cited for plant pain. The body (ours and plants) has lots of “functional awareness and response” mechanisms in it…but it is always tricky to sort out what
observers see as patterns of behavior and what is (or is not) going on at the first person level of experience.
Best,
Gregg
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]>
On Behalf Of JOHN TORDAY
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2019 6:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Qualia
Dear Brent and TOK, in putting together a brief talk on Consciousness, I had to reduce my cell biologic approach to the problem due to time constraints. So I decided to start with E=mc2 as the mathematical expression of the Singularity
of the Cosmos (I assume we're all good on Einstein). Based on that 'logic', development of the embryo as cell-cell signaling is the conversion of 'mass' (growth factors) into 'energy' (the downstream interaction of the growth factor with its receptor (think
'lock and key'), triggering an intracellular cascade of high energy phosphates that ultimately affect growth and differentiation of the embryo, culminating in homeostatic physiology at birth. The aggregate of those cell-cell interactions is Consciousness,
bearing in mind that the origin of the brain is the skin as a graphic. That would explain Qualia as the way in which experiences trigger consciousness, i.e. why seeing 'red' free associates with the physiology of the individual, bearing in mind that those
homeostatic signaling cascades reference not only the physiology of the current individual, but their past experiences as a species as evolution too, so the Qualia go way back in the history of the organism. I hope that was helpful.
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