Questions for the friends of qualia.

[raw_thought]

"Then, when these blank structures are formed, the baby doesnt see color yet until each color structure gets assigned a value. When this process is complete, the color information from the eye can interpret specific colors, like red or green."
Scott Mayers
Are you saying that I cannot experience green until I know the word for it?

[raw_thought]

????????????????????
You are saying that a materialist is not saying either of the below 2?????????????
1. The visualized triangle resembles a triangle.
2. The visualized triangle does not resemble a triangle.
Either the visualized triangle looks like a triangle or it does not. What is the third possibility that you propose??????????????

I don't propose it at all. I don't have to because it is well documented in the literature. It can be found under cascades and neural synchrony. Your 1 and 2 serves to draw a false dichotomy.

I confess, you confuse me. So you are saying that it is well documented that a part of the brain does not resemble a triangle and it also does not not resemble a triangle???

[Scott Mayers]

“The particular feeling of 'red' (quale) is NOT actually 'red'. It is just a data assignment in a unique structural format.”
Scott Mayer
I disagree. I experience red, pain, heat….
You are explaining how brain states correlate to experiences ( I never denied that they do) . You did not explain how they create experiences. As a matter of fact “conscious experience” never enters your discussion. It even seems that your explanation as to how the brain creates consciousness ( experiences) is to deny that experiences exist.

More detail beyond what I spoke here is in order. But it requires understanding my theory on consciousness and requires its own thread.

[Hobbes' Choice]

"Then, when these blank structures are formed, the baby doesnt see color yet until each color structure gets assigned a value. When this process is complete, the color information from the eye can interpret specific colors, like red or green."
Scott Mayers
Are you saying that I cannot experience green until I know the word for it?

That would seem to be what is being said. How absurd!
This would mean that only human have colour vision, which is idiotic. He's taking the position far too far, which otherwise has merits.
It also means that people who never acquire language- for whatever reason, have no colour vision. This is not only intuitively absurd but logically so, as you cannot nominate a colour that you cannot already "see".

[Scott Mayers]

"Then, when these blank structures are formed, the baby doesnt see color yet until each color structure gets assigned a value. When this process is complete, the color information from the eye can interpret specific colors, like red or green."
Scott Mayers
Are you saying that I cannot experience green until I know the word for it?

No, the name I gave to general or specific structures don't actually require a naming convention. I was giving the analogy to a computer programming "structure" AND the naming convention is only to help you relate since we use words here to make sense of it. In biology, these are replaced by unique chemical identifiers and/or quantities of some common chemical, pathways, and other physical and logical discriminators.

"Redness" might, for instance be simply the arbitrary assignment of the Nth "Color" structure. The neurons connecting the information from the eye go directly from a cone that might differentiate between two simple colors, like red/green. This cone might send signals that identify the balance between the two by a quantity of one given neural transmitter over another. This can have a direct path to the general structure "color" area. There, among the many different particular structures, the type of 'charge' may relate to both quantity and frequency such that only those particular color structures get activated where the way the information comes in acts as a 'key' to initiate the cells of some unique phenomena. If this is confusing, this is why I opted to simply use names instead. The particular structure of "redness" may simply be defined as the "first structure that arbitrarily responds to a gate cell that requires the smallest charge to activate but no greater than another. This 'tunes' in that cell to become active like a radio tuning in to a specific channel.

If a baby first opens its eyes to perceive, it might arbitrarily take one experience from some cone and assign it to the first general structure available. If this was "redness", whatever that structure has is simply what is assigned as the 'feeling' of "redness". But the same structure could have been assigned "greenness" if it arrived as the first experience.

I cannot go into further detail without requiring a lot of background educating on various subjects. You'd need an understanding of biology in neurology, the theoretical inspection of consciousness, and logic -- computer logic specifically, especially with regards to how the architecture and programming operate.

[Ginkgo]

????????????????????
You are saying that a materialist is not saying either of the below 2?????????????
1. The visualized triangle resembles a triangle.
2. The visualized triangle does not resemble a triangle.
Either the visualized triangle looks like a triangle or it does not. What is the third possibility that you propose??????????????

I don't propose it at all. I don't have to because it is well documented in the literature. It can be found under cascades and neural synchrony. Your 1 and 2 serves to draw a false dichotomy.

I confess, you confuse me. So you are saying that it is well documented that a part of the brain does not resemble a triangle and it also does not not resemble a triangle???

I am saying that you have made a distinction where no distinction is required. Provided of course you are making your distinction from the first person point of view. I assumed this is what you were doing.

From the third person point of view there is nothing in the neural activity of the brain that resembles a triangle when looking at the various individual modes. Seeing a shape of an object in the visual field means there is a corresponding activity in the visual cortex at the back of the brain. By "corresponding activity" we mean the beginning of neural binding. This binding process alone does not allow us to recognize the shape of any object. What is required is a further "processing" in a different layer of the brain whereby we can see contrasts. Still further processing can account for lines and angles and so on. The viewing or imagining some objects can even create activity in the motor cortex as well.

We may well be viewing or imagining a triangle, but the cognition of a triangle comes as the result of activity in different parts of the brain. An explanation as to how the first person point of view manifests itself can be found in Prinz's "Attended Intermediate-Level Representation Theory". The theory doesn't account for any sort of qualia in the way you and I would like.

[Ginkgo]

double post

[Ginkgo]

Which shows his dishonesty! He denies subjective experience and then says that he never denied subjective experience! Dennett once was at my university and admitted that he says outrageous things that he does not believe in order to get publicity.
Subjective experience = qualia.,
" I grant moreover that each person's state of consciousness have properties of something happening in them...
Dennett ( the quote you gave)
In other words subjective!
Dennett is famous for contradicting himself.So he says that conscious experience has properties. OK, what? subjectivity? Nope,according to him. Oh yeah, he DEFINES consciousness as a brain state. IN other words he redefines "consciousness" . Cute trick, but it is VERY dishonest! Academic philosophers have renamed his book (Consciousness explained) Consciousness denied. Dennett should use the established definition of consciousness and simply admit that he does not believe that consciousness exists.
To say that pain is and only is C fibers firing is to say that pain does not hurt. Most philosophers regard Dennett as either slightly mentally ill ( Searle) OR A CON MAN.

As to the status of Dennett as a dishonest conman is irrelevant at the moment. The fact of the matter is that Dennett doesn't deny subjective experience. If the relevant quotes managed to manifested themselves in your post then you would realize there was no need to make such a claim. Clearly Dennett doesn't because he says as much. As you point out the issue is actually about Dennett as a dishonest conman,or someone who holds a contradictory position, or both.

I'm happy now to discuss these issues with you.

[raw_thought]

"Then, when these blank structures are formed, the baby doesnt see color yet until each color structure gets assigned a value. When this process is complete, the color information from the eye can interpret specific colors, like red or green."
Scott Mayers
Are you saying that I cannot experience green until I know the word for it?

That would seem to be what is being said. How absurd!
This would mean that only human have colour vision, which is idiotic. He's taking the position far too far, which otherwise has merits.
It also means that people who never acquire language- for whatever reason, have no colour vision. This is not only intuitively absurd but logically so, as you cannot nominate a colour that you cannot already "see".

I am saying that one can experience green without knowing the word for it. Obviously, you are confused.

[raw_thought]

"I think the problem is resolved if we reduce the idea of qualia to how the brain stores its data."
Scott Mayers
Sure if you redefine "qualia" as a "brain state" you can have a physicalist understanding of qualia. However, that is disingenuous. Whether you believe in qualia or not, it is disingenuous to redefine it. Qualia is what something feels like. For example, pain hurts. That FEELING of pain is a quale.
Pain is a feeling. It hurts. To say that is and only is C fibers firing is silly because it follows that pain does not hurt.
Your argument is
1. Pain is (and only is) a brain state.
2. Therefore, it is a brain state.

[Hobbes' Choice]

"Then, when these blank structures are formed, the baby doesnt see color yet until each color structure gets assigned a value. When this process is complete, the color information from the eye can interpret specific colors, like red or green."
Scott Mayers
Are you saying that I cannot experience green until I know the word for it?

That would seem to be what is being said. How absurd!
This would mean that only human have colour vision, which is idiotic. He's taking the position far too far, which otherwise has merits.
It also means that people who never acquire language- for whatever reason, have no colour vision. This is not only intuitively absurd but logically so, as you cannot nominate a colour that you cannot already "see".

I am saying that one can experience green without knowing the word for it. Obviously, you are confused.

Read more carefully, Scott seemed to be implying that

[raw_thought]

Dennett does deny subjective experience. He also says that he accepts them.
See the beginning of his quining qualia. He defines qualia as subjective experience. He then denies that qualia exist. Therefore, it follows that he denies that subjective experience exists.
However, a paragraph later he says that he does not deny that subjective experiences exist!
That obvious contradiction must be because 1. a lack of understanding regarding logic and /or 2. disingenuousness.

[raw_thought]

So what? That has nothing to do with the debate. OK, he agrees that one can experience green without knowing the word for it.
So, subjective experiences are ineffable! That is another criteria for qualia!

[raw_thought]

I was simply responding to the silly accusation that I claimed that one cannot experience green if I do not know the word for it.

[raw_thought]

Ginko,
The problem for the materialist is that the visualized triangle cannot be experienced because it is subjective and has no physical form.. I know that I can visualize a triangle, therefore I know that qualia exist.
As Searle pointed out, Dennett is comfused because he does not understand that appearance is reality when one is talking about subjective experience. In other words to say that a hallucination does not correspond to objective physical reality, is not the same as saying that one is not experiencing a hallucination.