On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 3:03 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List < everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> For this you don't even need idealism. You can just take the brain as a > black box ready to receive the proper input in order to generate the proper > qualia. You will most likely not detect infrared light and others, simply > because the black box is not made to detect them. > You don't get to say, in one context, that the brain doesn't exist, and then in another, it's a black box that generates qualia. Not to mention, a black box also has zero explanatory power. I'm asking you directly about cochlear implants, which literally enable the generation of new qualia for deaf people. How does that happen? > And there is another thing here: we are not detecting "air movement" or > "electromagnetic oscillation", since this is not what qualia do. Qualia are > all about meaning, we detect meaning. And that meaning serves evolutionary > purposes. I talk about this in the first chapter of my book, where I do an > analysis of sounds and colors and show how they are meaning, not something > related to any "electromagnetic spectrum". The reason is simple: if they > were related to "electromagnetic spectrum", then if you were to not know > the order of the colors in the rainbow, then if I were to give you the > colors, you would know to put them in order by frequency. But since you > cannot do that, colors are not about "electromagnetic spectrum", but are > about survival criteria, like red and green for finding fruits in trees and > yellow and blue for finding the sun in the sky, etc. > I'm color blind. My eyes don't have as many photo-receptors that detect frequencies corresponding to the color red. Because of that, my experience of color is different from ordinary people, and this can be proven. Photo-receptors detect electromagnetic oscillation of specific frequencies, and this leads somehow to the experience of color. If photoreceptors don't exist, how do you explain this? I'm really looking for explanations I can sink my teeth into. Why am I colorblind, but you're not? And why does it seem to matter that physiologically, you have photoreceptors that I do not have? There are objective facts about our nervous systems that have consequences for subjective experience. We could go through a million examples, including brain damage, drugs, brain tumors, Alzheimers, genetic defects. Should we just throw all those explanatory mechanisms away? > On Tuesday, 23 April 2019 22:19:32 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote: >> >> >> Some people who were born deaf have been given cochlear implants, which >> give them the ability to hear for the first time >> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ6vSn7PaPI>. For them, this is new >> qualia they've never experienced. But it's only possible because of a >> technical device interfacing with their living nervous system. >> >> How does your theory account for this, when brains, and cochlear >> implants, don't really exist? When qualia cannot be understood in terms of >> neurology? When purely technical devices don't contain that special >> something that only conscious beings have? >> >> What can you say about "systems of consciousnesses" that would help >> explain how a given person could suddenly be gifted with entirely new >> qualia? What would prevent us from gaining access to all sorts of new >> qualia, by inventing neural prosthetics for detecting infrared light, >> ultrasonic frequencies, the earth's magnetosphere, and so on? >> >> Terren >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
