RE: subjective reality

From: <chales1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 14:58:56 +1000

Lee Corbin
>
> Colin writes
> > > > So, for subjective experience: Yes it can be an illusion,
> > > > but a systematically erroneous, relentlessly repeatable
> > > > illusion driven by measurement of the natural world where
> > > > its errors are not important - .ie. not mission fatal to the
> > > > observer. Experiential qualities, in their solipsistic
> > > > presentation, need only be repeatable (my red/attached to
> > > > the linguistic token RED), not 'accurate' (internationally
> > > > standardized RED #12398765).
> > > >
> > > > This is equivalent to saying that the experience of HOT
> > > > and the actual hotness of reality (wobbly atoms) _do not
> > > > have to be intimately/directly related_!!! They can be
> > > > completely different and as long as the experience is
> > > > consistently used the behaviour of the experiencer will
> > > > be the same "OUCH".
> > >
> > > Well, wait a minute. The experience of HOT *does* have to
> > > be intimately related: otherwise, the machines we are would
> > > not have been built by evolution in this way. It serves an
> > > extremely important function for our survival as animals.
> >
> > Here I’m afraid we have to disagree. What you are
> > saying is that the experiential quality of HOT,
> > which is _entirely_ generated in the brain (the
> > meter output) from a sensory neuron or two (the
> > measurement probe), is that our brain literally
> > becomes hot?
>
> You think that I am saying that when one has an
> experience of something being hot, the brain is
> hot? What kind of a fool do you take me for,
> anyway? How early do they teach 98.6 degrees F
> where you went to elementary school?
>
> So *I* will take the time to reread the discussion
> above and put my finger on the trouble. It turns
> out to be in your use of the word "intimately",
> which I failed to infer correctly what you meant
> by it.

Sloppy me. Yes you are right. Gazzumpt by the language again.
I was actually going to quote Ramachandran. Glad you did, for the rest of the list... there's a didactic role here...

Back to the measurement thing, just to be very clear....

The _event_ of the expression of the experiential quality in the brain is directly causally connected to the act of measurement(peripheral sensory neurons behaving appropriately). The experience itself (the detail of the quality thereof) could be anything (you could make sensing heat a sound if you wanted - synthesthesia, Ramachandran again). Exactly what experiential quality is selected for representation of hotness will be something for future biophysics to work out. My 'hot' and you 'hot' could be different.

In terms of brain operation as long as the resultant behaviour is appropriate and consistently used the quality of the experience is irrelevant.

The result is that an assumption that one can necessarily claim similarity of the physics of the real world and the brain physics of the behind experience is simply not justified. This does not mean that the physics of the distal world is not in some conformally mapped/useful way _similar_ to the physics of the experience. It just means that you cannot assume that the relationship.

Exactly what 'ism this is I don’t know. Indirect realism? It doesn’t matter much. Naïve realism is out. The philosophers of perception can retrofit the actual nomenclature situation after it’s sorted out by the biophysicists.

I think this encapsulates the position.

I declare you the winner of today's grumpy old guy contest.. :-)

Colin
Received on Thu Aug 18 2005 - 01:03:24 PDT