On 10/25/2012 3:01 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:
Citeren "Stephen P. King" <stephe...@charter.net>:
On 10/25/2012 5:16 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:
Citeren Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>:
On Thursday, October 25, 2012 4:58:33 PM UTC-4, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote:
You can identify a particular qualia with certain computational states
of algorithms. All you need to do to (in principle) decide if a system
is "experiencing the color red" is to see if the right algorithm is
being executed.
That may not even be the case at all. In people who are blind from birth,
activity in their visual cortex is perceived as tactile experience.
Craig
That then means that the right algorithm isn't executed. I don't think one can argue
against this, as having a mathematical description of Nature implies this.
Saibal
Hi,
I can agree with both of you but I have to ask you, Saibal, what is it that matches
up the math with the first hand experience?
--
Onward!
Stephen
Good explication
The description of the brain contains in it the information about the state of the
enviroment and the body. The brain is programmed to maintain the body in some ideal
state (or to move toward such a state, even if it is not attainable).
I trust you mean the "programmed" and "ideal" metaphorically: the brain has evolved to
strive for certain states (satisfaction) that were favored by natural selection.
Brent
Then the details of this programming are unknown to us, e.g. we know that color vision
in primates evolved when flowering trees began to grow fruits, but we don't know how
exactly all the neurons are wired in the brain. So, if you see some color, what exactly
happens in your brain you don't know. Those details therefore exist in a superposition
of all the possibilities (an extremely complicated superposition entangled with the
environment, of course).
This means that the moment you experience a color, you are re-running the entire
evolution that led to color vision. This implements counterfactuals in which you would
have a different sense of color vision but in which would have had a lower probability
of existing.
Then the outcome of observing the color red isn't a "sharp state" it is a hugely
complicated entangled state which are all very close to having the maximum amplitude. It
contains in it the information on the consequences of the brain having a slightly
different wiring and of the spectrum of the light being slightly different. The effect
of all that is to implement the higher level algorithm that strives for the body to move
toward the ideal body plan at any given moment.
Saibal
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