Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[T-hawk]

This doesn't even rise to the level of sophomoric. ... you're way way way over your head.

I'm not going to waste time even reading a post bracketed by childish ad-hominem insults.

Bacchus restates my argument correctly, and in better-formalized language.

[ipecac]

This doesn't even rise to the level of sophomoric. ... you're way way way over your head.

I'm not going to waste time even reading a post bracketed by childish ad-hominem insults.

Bacchus restates my argument correctly, and in better-formalized language.

It's not an argument, it's a surrender on the rational level because it rejects reason itself. Madness.

'I believe in this form of determinism, without any reason to do so, because logic and language and reason and evidence and truth-talk are meaningless'.

So be it, run away from the challenge.

[T-hawk]

Here is a question for you T-Hawk -- say there is a neuroscientist, who studies visual perception and color. And she knows her stuff to a standard that 'objective knowledge' of your model demands -- she can tell you down to a particle what happens when someone 'sees' the color red in all its different hues. She herself however is blind, not just eye-blind, her brain just doesn't perform the visual function at all, for whatever reason. She herself has never seen red. Is there a bit of knowledge that she lacks about the world, or does she know everything there is to know about seeing red?

Interesting question. I'll start by deconstructing the abstractions. "Red" is human shorthand for electomagnetic radiation between 700 to 780 nm wavelength. "Seeing" refers to the photons impacting on the retina (which is itself an abstraction) and the chemical changes induced from there through the optic nerves and brain (also abstractions). From that point of view, I would say that yes, she has all the knowledge.

I can see the alternative answer from your top-down ontology: if you define red as a higher-order concept and the photons as its implementation, and seeing as the perceptions of the consciousness, then you can say that she lacks the knowledge of the perceptions of seeing red.

[ipecac]

Yes, that's it. You don't have a rational argument for your belief because you regard reason as meaningless. So what you have left is a mere stance, that you cannot offer any rational support for.

Consider where you wanted to start from: a position backed by science, logic, reason and evidence.

Where are you now? A position that rejects the meaningfulness of all the above, and you are not able to offer a coherent reasons to support it because if it were true, reason itself is dissolved. How absurd, and (as I've said since the beginning) how mad!

You still know you don't have to do this.

[Bacchus]

Here is a question for you T-Hawk -- say there is a neuroscientist, who studies visual perception and color. And she knows her stuff to a standard that 'objective knowledge' of your model demands -- she can tell you down to a particle what happens when someone 'sees' the color red in all its different hues. She herself however is blind, not just eye-blind, her brain just doesn't perform the visual function at all, for whatever reason. She herself has never seen red. Is there a bit of knowledge that she lacks about the world, or does she know everything there is to know about seeing red?

Interesting question. I'll start by deconstructing the abstractions. "Red" is human shorthand for electomagnetic radiation between 700 to 780 nm wavelength. "Seeing" refers to the photons impacting on the retina (which is itself an abstraction) and the chemical changes induced from there through the optic nerves and brain (also abstractions). From that point of view, I would say that yes, she has all the knowledge.

I can see the alternative answer from your top-down ontology: if you define red as a higher-order concept and the photons as its implementation, and seeing as the perceptions of the consciousness, then you can say that she lacks the knowledge of the perceptions of seeing red.

So, I think we can agree that the matter in question is that she doesn't know what's it like to see red. Alternatively she has no direct, first-person experience of seeing red. She knows how the experience comes about, but just not what the content of that experience is. And here is the killer question -- are experiences a fact about the world, or not? If they are, your ontology is plainly incomplete. If they are not... I'd like you to elaborate on just what it means to say that (first-person) experiences don't really exist.

[T-hawk]

An experience is our abstraction to describe a number of facts about the world.  Those facts are the changes induced by the 700nm photons in the particles that make up what we call memory.  Those changes have not occurred in the neuroscientist's brain.  My ontology stops there. That might be what you mean by incomplete, but there's no need for anything else. You'd define the lack of those changes as not knowing the content of the experience.  I have no need to describe any of that, the concepts of content and experience are all subjective abstractions and aggregations.

How about the Total Recall scenario of implanted memories?  She constructs a device that modifies her particle patterns mechanically so that they are indistinguishable from those of a brain that received the red input optically.  Now has she seen red?  I would say yes.  An argument otherwise is necessarily something other than materialism, that objective truth is defined by something other than the current state of the particles, such as their history.

(As before, "the particles" is not necessarily a first principle here; the determinism is. I'm arguing as if particle physics has enough experimental evidence to be considered as truth. It's possible to swap that out for another fundament like field theory or whatever.)

[Bacchus]

Those facts are the changes induced by the 700nm photons in the particles that make up what we call memory. Those changes have not occurred in the neuroscientist's brain.

To be sure. That's just the point though, which goes to address your earlier question about simulating out the entirety of the universe from a model — the neuroscientist can simulate out the particles all she wants, but until they actually occur in her brain she won't have the access to that knowledge. Quite precisely because those changes have not occurred, as you said, they were only simulated. But if there's somehow a difference, that means that the simulation is not enough, even though, on one ontological level, it contains the entirety of information about the world.

Enacting particle changes synthetically is of course viable, and she would have seen red in that case by my account as well. Note that to do so, she would have had to isolate which particles constitute "her" consciousness, and that is impossible to do from particles alone, as mentioned at various places above. Also, the only way to tell whether the right particles were effected is to see whether she had the right experience as a result. If she didn't, it's the particle theory underlying the machine, or its engineering implementation that would have to give, not her conception of what an experience is.

I am also not sure in what sense you want to claim that an experience is an abstraction. I just see a particular thing in a particular way. The name, "red" is an abstraction to be sure as is the concept it references, but the experience of any particular instance of red is surely as concrete as anything.

[T-hawk]

I think you underestimate what is covered by complete knowledge of the particles.  What knowledge does she lack?  She has access to all the knowledge by that definition.  There is no difference whether its implementation is in her neurons or her simulation.  The only differences are in the definitions, defining "experience" to include the first and not the second, or "access" to mean from the neurons and not the simulation.  Either way her causal power can include any results that require that knowledge.


Also, the only way to tell whether the right particles were effected is to see whether she had the right experience as a result.

What are we defining as the right experience and how do we see if she had it?  Again my ontology disclaims those questions as moot, there are no notions of "right" or what determines it.  I think any rigorous answer to how you're defining an experience comes back down to either materialism or not, whether it includes anything other than particle behavior.


the experience of any particular instance of red is surely as concrete as anything.

I think not, since you agreed that synthetically modifying memory would constitute the same experience.  The only thing concrete is the resulting particle patterns.

[Bacchus]

What knowledge does she lack?
Knowledge of what red looks like.

There is no difference whether its implementation is in her neurons or her simulation. The only differences are in the definitions, defining "experience" to include the first and not the second, or "access" to mean from the neurons and not the simulation.
The difference is in the knowledge first and foremost. In one case she knows something that she doesn't in the other. The definitions and the rest have to work to explain that fact.

I think any rigorous answer to how you're defining an experience comes back down to either materialism or not, whether it includes anything other than particle behavior.
Experience is not really something I need to define at all, it's something that you and I just have. Much like the fundamentals of your ontology, which just are (we call them 'particles' in this discussion, but as you note, it could be fields or whatever, 'basic stuff'). Now you say that having an experience means that particles move in a certain way, and I don't disagree. What I point to is that a full description of particles moving is not enough to tell me everything there is to know about the experience, specifically it doesn't tell me at all what it's like to have that experience. That bit of knowledge I can only acquire by actually having the experience.

I think not, since you agreed that synthetically modifying memory would constitute the same experience.
The experience is concrete however it's produced. Either I have it, or I don't. I'm never puzzled whether I'm having it or not, not in the moment at least, and there is no arbitrariness at all in the experience, it is exactly what it is. A particular shade of red looks just like that, pain feels just like this. What the synthetic story shows is that 'red' is not properly definable in terms you've originally given -- wavelengths and photons. It may be definable in terms of particles movements in the brain, except as above, we don't get the knowledge of the content of the experience even by a full description of particle movements. Moreover, the only way to really know whether our picture of how particle movements affect experiences is correct is to try to engender said experiences and see whether people have them. No other way -- no study of particle movements by itself will be able to tell you that yes, these people are having those experiences; that they are, for example, in pain. You can only ask them or, if you want to be completely strict about it, you can only really know by successfully engendering these experiences in yourself and actually having them.

[Bacchus]

Or, in other words: let's say I see two pictures of brain functioning -- my own, and somebody else's. And gosh, they are exactly identical. Do I then know what the other person is thinking and feeling? Yes, but not in the same way that I know what I am thinking and feeling! My experiences I know directly, his I can only extrapolate about, based on data and abstractions. All materialism demands is that I assume that the other person has to be thinking and feeling the same, given identical brain-pictures, but it certainly doesn't demand of me to have direct access to their thoughts. Your version of materialism would demand that though, as far as I can see, at least if I had the full knowledge of how particle movements interact to produce consciousness-states.