On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 3:03 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List < [email protected]> 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
