On Fri, Apr 9, 2021, 4:23 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 4/9/2021 4:57 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 9 Apr 2021, at 02:40, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > On 4/8/2021 12:38 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > Hi Telmo, > > Thank you for these links, they are very helpful in articulating the > problem. I think you are right about there being some connection between > communication of qualia and the symbol grounding problem. > > I used to think there were two kinds of knowledge: > > 1. Third-person sharable knowledge: information that can be shared and > communicated through books, like the population of Paris, or the height of > Mount Everest > 2. First-person knowledge: information that must be felt or > experienced first hand, emotions, feelings, the pain of a bee sting, the > smell of a rose > > But now I am wondering if the idea of third-person sharable knowledge is > an illusion. The string encoding the height of Mount Everest is meaningless > if you have no framework for understanding physical spaces, units of > length, spatial extents, and the symbology of numbers. All of that > information has to be unpacked, and eventually processed into some thought > that relates to a basis of conscious experience and understanding of > heights and sizes. Even size is a meaningless term when attempting to > compare relative sizes between two universes, so in that sense it must be > tied somehow back to the subject. > > There also seem to be counter-examples to a clear divide between first- > and third-person knowledge. For example, is the redness of red really > incommunicable between two synesthesiacs who both see the number *5* as > red? If everyone in the world had such synesthesia, would we still think > book knowledge could not communicate the redness of red? In this case, what > makes redness communicable is the shared processing between the brains of > the synesthesiacs, their brains process the symbol in the same way. > > > I think you exaggerate the problem. Consider how bats "see" by sonar. I > think this is quite communicable to humans by analogies. > > They could in some sense even feel the surfaces with such sonar: is the surface smooth or rough, hard or soft, etc. Sound reflects differently from different types of surfaces. Would they feel these surface differences as colors, or would it feel more like tactile sensations of one's immediate surroundings? > That will communicate the third person aspect, but not the qualia itself. > > > When a blind person has a tactile array placed in their back and attached > to a video camera, they learn to see. I sighted person can have the same > tactile array and video camera and also learn to see thru it. On what > grounds would you deny they experience the same qualia via the video > camera. And then you can ask the sighted person how or whether the qualia > of the two kinds of sight differ...or you could do the experiment yourself. > I read about this experiment recently. One apparent difference was that the blind students fitted with this array were dismayed that when they learned that in looking at erotic images with this device they were not stimulated in the ways as their sighted peers. Perhaps the array was too low resolution, or perhaps the brain's tactile wiring isn't connected to the other parts of the brain in the necessary ways as the visual processing centers are. Some 30% of the cortex is dedicated to processing visual stimuli whereas only 8% is used for tactile stimuli. I would have to imagine then that the resulting qualia could not be the same, though with the right bandwidth, sufficient cortex, and similar interconnections it's less obvious that identical qualia could not be achieved. I think there have been experiments where researchers wired the optic nerve into a monkey's auditory cortex, and after a while similar structures to the visual cortex appeared, and I think the monkey behaved as though it could see. Jason > > > And submarines have sonar which produces images on screens. Is redness > communicable? My father who was red/green color blind had to guess at the > color of traffic lights or just watch other cars when he first started to > drive around 1928. But he understood the concept of color because he could > tell blue from red/green. And later, traffic engineers adjust the spectrum > of traffic lights so that he could tell the difference (they also started > to put the red at the top). > > > Yes, in practice there is not much problem, which explains the lack of > interest in the mind-body problem, but this does not help to solve the > conceptual issue. > It is a bit like saying that in practice GR and QM works very well, so > that we lost our time when trying to get a coherent theory of all forces. > It depends if we are interested in foundational issues and understanding or > in practical applications, I guess. > > > If all the practical problems can be solved, the "foundational issues" are > reduced to armchair philosophizing. There's a reason theology fell into > disrepute. I see work on foundational issues as theory that will help > guide the practical solutions. > > -- > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/32a30cdc-3e00-62c6-62a8-d2b95fbbe0fa%40verizon.net > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/32a30cdc-3e00-62c6-62a8-d2b95fbbe0fa%40verizon.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUi3Ty%3DhXxJzQCd3DJtdOrs1OymC_i77BQ-kB9O1dUZj7Q%40mail.gmail.com.
