Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[SteveKlinko]

As I try discerning among the different hues, I might encounter the judgement of why one hue is different and why is it better or worse. My empirical evidence could in fact disagree with the judgement (occasional) of the physical senses. I also have difficulties measuring the bad taste in the mouth. In some antithesis I could agree to pass the knowledge in stone the same way I stenciled the name of my mother on it. I feel the love coming from the cold stone. Maybe I will leave a rose.

Yes, every Sensory Experience, every Experience of Emotion, and everything You Are, is some kind of Conscious Experience. Your Conscious Mind (where the Experiences happen) is separate from your Physical Mind (where the Mechanistic processing happens).

[The Beast]

Thank You Steve. I’m also saying that the hue of the rose is the stronger and there is no physical presence

[Consul]

Very good descriptions of the Taste and Color Brain Mechanisms. But these things have been known for many decades. These are the Neural Correlates of Taste and Color. These descriptions, although interesting and important when we are first trying to understand Taste and Color, are not Explanations of the Conscious Experiences themselves, even in an incremental way. It has been known for a hundred years that Neural Activity is related to Conscious Experience. Discovering more and more details about the Neural Activity does not help with solving the Hard Problem.

Yes, of course it does—unless, of course, consciousness is a state of supernatural souls!

Churchland is right that "[h]ere there is definite encouragement for the identity theorist’s suggestion that any given sensation is simply identical with a set or pattern of spiking frequencies in the appropriate sensory brain area." For, arguably, those patterns are not just neural correlates of tastes and colors, but their neural constituters, such that they are (identical with) what you experience as tastes or colors.

[The Beast]

And yes. It is a covariance and something else

[Papus79]

Actually no colors exist in the outside world, rather waves do and the colors are our visual interpretation of them - ie. the way light comes in through rods and cones then feeds a signal that yields a particular subjectively experienced result. It's amazing actually that we can have such highly correlated visual systems that we can agree on ranges (I would think most slippages would be someone having a different correlation where what they interpret as orange falls into most people's yellow category and other kinds of shifting, color-blindness on the other hand is it's own interesting phenomena).

I think what's worth debating is the question of how there's anything that it's like to experience red. That's where the hard problem actually lies. To that degree then the mystery of experiencing red suggests that if there were no experience of red then red as a category would likely be meaningless - ie. an AI might not need color and thus not lean on it. There's some suggestion that our primary purpose for seeing color is for identifying food (and for fruit the idea would be to color the outside to distinguish the fruit from the rest of the plant). Similarly color comes into mating strategies with clothing, with peacock's tails, cuttlefish oscillating skin pigmentation, etc.. To some degree we also then abstract that off in art and a lot of our more transcendental cravings seem like their tied into areas that borrow from and sublimate sexuality-related cascades. What's more tangible and measurable in our art and in particular adornments of the sacred is mathematics and fractal recursion. I tend to think when we see the beauty of mountains what we're seeing is very organized recursive patterns (ie. the layering) thrusting up into amazing shapes.

[Papus79]

Small cringe - I did a their/they're mix-up above toward the end of the second paragraph. I think my meaning still translates.

[Sculptor1]

There are no explantions; only descriptions.

Why? Please explain!

I can only tell you how. I cannot tell you why.
Please examine any scientific theory and tell me how it exceeds a clever description!
The point about science is that it deals with what is the case. When you describe the universe closely enought it shows how other things work. But the emphasis is HOW and not WHY.
You can describe how graivty works in the matter of orbits, but there is no answer why there is such a thing as gravity. It just is the case.
In the matter of concsiousness we learn that it is not located in the sould or in the heart as once thought. The brain is more than a cooling mechanism. Science is in the habit of describing how different part of the brain work to sense and move the body.

Like gravity is a property of mass, magnetism a property of iron we have to accept our findings about the brain. Ultimately there is no why for any of these things.

[Belindi]

Any phenomenon and all phenomena are experienced within perceptual frameworks. It's impossible to see red and not see a red something plus at least one other hue.

Perceptual frameworks suffice to explain qualia if you add in intentionality.

Intentionality is the word for how we live life towards the future however banal and trite our personal future may be we live our life towards it. In order to do so we need a perceptual framework. A perceptual framework is called a gestalt.

Please do let's not mystify qualia!

I disagree. Look at a Fire Truck, then at an Apple, then at a Stop Sign. These are all different things and when you are Looking at them they are in the context of many other things. But now Realize that there is a Property or Experience about all of these things that is created in your Mind. That is the Redness of these things. No larger Context or Framework necessary. The Redness is a thing in and of itself that needs to be Explained.

Redness is a quality (hue) and a quantity(intensity) that one abstracts from the totality of an experience. The varieties of quality one can abstract from any given experience depends on the richness or otherwise of the experience, organs of special sense, and learned complexity of relationships. The gestalt is primal and abstract qualities are subsequently learned or not as the case may be.

I really don't know what you are trying to say. Redness is not complicated like you are describing. Redness is a Thing In Itself that exists in the Manifest Universe. It exists in your Mind, which is also a Thing that is in the Universe. We are at an Impasse.

Nobody sees redness apart from its context. When I say "context" I mean the meaning context is whole. Try to think map or pictogram or picture instead of linear text.

If human consciousness were a matter of disjointed qualia it would be impossible to plan ahead.

[SteveKlinko]

Thank You Steve. I’m also saying that the hue of the rose is the stronger and there is no physical presence

Food for thought!

[SteveKlinko]

Very good descriptions of the Taste and Color Brain Mechanisms. But these things have been known for many decades. These are the Neural Correlates of Taste and Color. These descriptions, although interesting and important when we are first trying to understand Taste and Color, are not Explanations of the Conscious Experiences themselves, even in an incremental way. It has been known for a hundred years that Neural Activity is related to Conscious Experience. Discovering more and more details about the Neural Activity does not help with solving the Hard Problem.

Yes, of course it does—unless, of course, consciousness is a state of supernatural souls!

Churchland is right that "[h]ere there is definite encouragement for the identity theorist’s suggestion that any given sensation is simply identical with a set or pattern of spiking frequencies in the appropriate sensory brain area." For, arguably, those patterns are not just neural correlates of tastes and colors, but their neural constituters, such that they are (identical with) what you experience as tastes or colors.

But you are postulating Supernatural properties for the Neurons when you claim Conscious Experience is in the Neurons, but have no idea How it is in the Neurons. Yes, that Redness Experience is just Magically produced by the Neurons. No Explanation, no Chain of Logic, just pure Belief.

[SteveKlinko]

Actually no colors exist in the outside world, rather waves do and the colors are our visual interpretation of them - ie. the way light comes in through rods and cones then feeds a signal that yields a particular subjectively experienced result. It's amazing actually that we can have such highly correlated visual systems that we can agree on ranges (I would think most slippages would be someone having a different correlation where what they interpret as orange falls into most people's yellow category and other kinds of shifting, color-blindness on the other hand is it's own interesting phenomena).

I think what's worth debating is the question of how there's anything that it's like to experience red. That's where the hard problem actually lies. To that degree then the mystery of experiencing red suggests that if there were no experience of red then red as a category would likely be meaningless - ie. an AI might not need color and thus not lean on it. There's some suggestion that our primary purpose for seeing color is for identifying food (and for fruit the idea would be to color the outside to distinguish the fruit from the rest of the plant). Similarly color comes into mating strategies with clothing, with peacock's tails, cuttlefish oscillating skin pigmentation, etc.. To some degree we also then abstract that off in art and a lot of our more transcendental cravings seem like their tied into areas that borrow from and sublimate sexuality-related cascades. What's more tangible and measurable in our art and in particular adornments of the sacred is mathematics and fractal recursion. I tend to think when we see the beauty of mountains what we're seeing is very organized recursive patterns (ie. the layering) thrusting up into amazing shapes.

Very Good. Yes, no Color Outside, only Inside. But if it is Inside then it is produced by our Brain/Mind Mechanisms and it is therefore part of what we are. We are that Redness. Since we are all the Colors then we are Light (Conscious Light not Electromagnetic Light). We are beings of Light. This is not a Religious proclamation but a Scientifically deduced fact of our existence.

[SteveKlinko]

I disagree. Look at a Fire Truck, then at an Apple, then at a Stop Sign. These are all different things and when you are Looking at them they are in the context of many other things. But now Realize that there is a Property or Experience about all of these things that is created in your Mind. That is the Redness of these things. No larger Context or Framework necessary. The Redness is a thing in and of itself that needs to be Explained.

Redness is a quality (hue) and a quantity(intensity) that one abstracts from the totality of an experience. The varieties of quality one can abstract from any given experience depends on the richness or otherwise of the experience, organs of special sense, and learned complexity of relationships. The gestalt is primal and abstract qualities are subsequently learned or not as the case may be.

I really don't know what you are trying to say. Redness is not complicated like you are describing. Redness is a Thing In Itself that exists in the Manifest Universe. It exists in your Mind, which is also a Thing that is in the Universe. We are at an Impasse.

Nobody sees redness apart from its context. When I say "context" I mean the meaning context is whole. Try to think map or pictogram or picture instead of linear text.

If human consciousness were a matter of disjointed qualia it would be impossible to plan ahead.

I am perfectly able to concentrate on the Redness Color in my Visual Experience. I can even close my eyes and think about Redness as a Thing In Itself, apart from any Meaning Contexts. Normal Visual Experience is presented as a whole, but nothing can stop us from deconstructing it to observe its many disjointed components.

[Belindi]

Redness is a quality (hue) and a quantity(intensity) that one abstracts from the totality of an experience. The varieties of quality one can abstract from any given experience depends on the richness or otherwise of the experience, organs of special sense, and learned complexity of relationships. The gestalt is primal and abstract qualities are subsequently learned or not as the case may be.

I really don't know what you are trying to say. Redness is not complicated like you are describing. Redness is a Thing In Itself that exists in the Manifest Universe. It exists in your Mind, which is also a Thing that is in the Universe. We are at an Impasse.

Nobody sees redness apart from its context. When I say "context" I mean the meaning context is whole. Try to think map or pictogram or picture instead of linear text.

If human consciousness were a matter of disjointed qualia it would be impossible to plan ahead.

I am perfectly able to concentrate on the Redness Color in my Visual Experience. I can even close my eyes and think about Redness as a Thing In Itself, apart from any Meaning Contexts. Normal Visual Experience is presented as a whole, but nothing can stop us from deconstructing it to observe its many disjointed components.

What you are thinking of is a red abstract shape. When we deconstruct, ultimately we arrive at a sort of Planck unit where we must stop deconstructing.

Moreover, when your thinking this red abstract shape endures over a few moments the red shape begins to acquire meaning such as for instance the works of an artist who has painted abstract coloured shapes, and even feelings e.g. " I liked that red shirt I had in the 70s" .

[The Beast]

&0's “We have been invited to the great concert of lights” It was the theme of ‘Close encounters of the 3rd kind” in a theory of change the director of the orchestra will be Simone de Beauvoir. She might call the motif: ‘Feminist ethics’

[SteveKlinko]

I really don't know what you are trying to say. Redness is not complicated like you are describing. Redness is a Thing In Itself that exists in the Manifest Universe. It exists in your Mind, which is also a Thing that is in the Universe. We are at an Impasse.

Nobody sees redness apart from its context. When I say "context" I mean the meaning context is whole. Try to think map or pictogram or picture instead of linear text.

If human consciousness were a matter of disjointed qualia it would be impossible to plan ahead.

I am perfectly able to concentrate on the Redness Color in my Visual Experience. I can even close my eyes and think about Redness as a Thing In Itself, apart from any Meaning Contexts. Normal Visual Experience is presented as a whole, but nothing can stop us from deconstructing it to observe its many disjointed components.

What you are thinking of is a red abstract shape. When we deconstruct, ultimately we arrive at a sort of Planck unit where we must stop deconstructing.

Moreover, when your thinking this red abstract shape endures over a few moments the red shape begins to acquire meaning such as for instance the works of an artist who has painted abstract coloured shapes, and even feelings e.g. " I liked that red shirt I had in the 70s" .

I disagree. I can think of a formless Redness. The Redness has nothing to do with any kind of shape, The Redness is the Thing. We are at a Stalemate here.