On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 11:21 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List < everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> > > On Friday, 26 April 2019 17:27:48 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote: >> >> >> >> On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 10:08 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List < >> everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Friday, 26 April 2019 16:14:07 UTC+3, Terren Suydam wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> You really can't see the difference between the way a cochlear implant >>>> creates new qualia, versus riding a bike? If you want to be taken >>>> seriously you'll have to do better than that. >>>> >>> >>> What is the difference ? >>> >> >> One introduces a new sense, and the other introduces new experience in >> terms of senses one already has. If it's too difficult to understand that >> difference, we can talk about creating a brand new sense to detect, say, >> the earth's magnetic field, and using a neural implant to feed data about >> the magnetic field into the brain. I wanted to stick though to something >> that has already been achieved, and there is no difference in principle >> between the deaf person with a cochlear implant, and any human getting a >> technology-mediated sense of the earth's magnetic field. >> >> The original question was asking for an explanation of how this new kind >> of sense qualia could arise when it's mediated by a technological device. >> I expect this to be a problem for you, because of your insistence that such >> devices don't exist, and your lack of ability to account for the >> correspondence between brain states and qualia. >> > > I don't think there is any fundamental difference between a new sense and > experiences in terms of senses one already has. They are both > manifestations of emergence. For example, the auditory domain is not > exactly "a new sense". Is just a set of qualia that emerge upon the quale > of time. And then it keeps branching: from sounds in one direction you get > language, in another direction you get music, etc. So it is itself a "new > experience in terms of senses one already has - the sense of time". So the > problem is not particular about how a certain "sense" appears, but is the > general problem of how qualia appear. Now, regarding how qualia appear, the > straight answer is that I don't know. And nobody knows. Nevertheless, I can > give some guiding clues. For example, what we call "senses" and their basic > qualia appear to be sets of qualia that serve evolutionary purposes. As I > also mentioned in another post, red and green appeared to see fruits in > trees, yellow and blue appeared to see the sun in the sky. We can imagine > something like this: an animal was seeing only shades-of-gray and he was > starving. The fruits were right in front of him, but because he didn't have > the qualia of red and green, he couldn't see them. So he was one step from > dying. And then all of a sudden red and green appeared in his consciousness > and he survived. You can take some quantum-suicide view on this: you always > continue in the universe in which you remain alive. So this might be a > tentative explanation. But of course it is not the full story since in > everyday life we keep getting new qualia without our lfie being in danger. > So a more general principle must be sought. Of course, that principle will > only show us the conditions under which qualia appear, but it will not be > able to tell us what those qualia will be. All we will ever be able to do > is to subject ourselves to those conditions and see what qualia appear in > our consciousness. > > Regarding your specific example with the implant that appear to be in > direct connection with generating auditory qualia, this is not so. The > conditions for auditory qualia are already present in the "brain", so that > implant will just activate those conditions. But since in the "brain" most > probably there are no conditions to sense the magnetic field of the Earth, > you will not be able to apply the same strategy. This is not to say that it > is impossible for us to sense the magnetic field. It might be possible, but > you will have to satisfy some more fundamental conditions. > Monkeys that were previously colorblind had their retinas infected with a retrovirus to cause new color sensing cone cells to grow. Within a few months they were able to perceive an entirely new class of colors they were previously blind to: https://www.wired.com/2009/09/colortherapy/ Birds, and some humans have four types of color sensing cones in their retinas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy), by some estimates they can see 100 million colors while most humans can see only 1 million. Some species of shrimp have 16 types of cones. What do you think about the consciousness being able to experience altogether new colors and quale just by being given an additional input signal that is uncorrelated to the existing input signals? Jason -- 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.
