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Something that helped me understand why this problem is significant: the things you mention as giving an account of color perception are only accounting for a b

Something that helped me understand why this problem is significant: the things you mention as giving an account of color perception are only accounting for a brain system which evolves through states having structure which is isomorphic to fluctuations of colors in subjective experience[0]. However, the philosophical question isn't about whether you can create such a mapping, it's about reconciling the fact that if you look around your environment it's like something, and what it's like is importantly not a bunch of neurons. And yet when we look inside brains, we only find neurons. So if we want to say that the experience of colors can be explained physically as well, then there should be some physical place where e.g. redness is occurring rather than electro-chemical flux of neuron interaction. [0] Another subtlety here is that the brain states having structure isomorphic to something in subjectivity doesn't necessarily make sense. It would on the assumption that everything is 'structural', but that's not an assumption everyone is willing to make. (You can find demonstrations that mathematics and the sciences can only deal in terms of structure, which is why for their practitioners it makes sense to ignore anything non-structural—but this is very different from a demonstration that everything actually is structural.) In that case, in order to create this mapping, we have to create another structure (for instance, a taxonomy of colors names and relationships between colors), and we can configure that structure in a way which is intended to reflect some moments of subjective experience. Now that structure could be potentially be found isomorphic to some evolving brain states, while to say that the subjective experience itself was isomorphic is likely nonsensical.

mannykannot 9y ago
> So if we want to say that the experience of colors can be explained physically as well, then there should be some physical place where e.g. redness is occurring rather than electro-chemical flux of neuron interaction. I am reminded of an essay by Stephen Jay Gould, on the history of preformationism, and the debate over whether the homunculus resided in the sperm or the egg. The idea that a human could be represented by an ordering of simple chemicals was inconceivable at the time. The idea that physicalism requires a specific physical locus for redness is no more sound than the idea that genetic theory requires human-ness to be located in a specific base on a DNA molecule. Emergent phenomena are real, common, and not, in general, particularly mysterious (though the mind certainly is, at least to me.) More prosaically, maybe redness is actually localized, as a memory of a sensation. Is there anything more to redness than a comparison to prior sensations?
- westoncb 9y ago
  > Emergent phenomena are real, common, and not, in general, particularly mysterious I have no issue with emergent phenomena. It's just that whether the phenomenon is emergent or not is irrelevant to the question at hand. For instance, let's say the brain 'system' responsible for color perception is distributed all throughout the human brain in such a way that it would be impossible to formulate any hierarchical conceptual structure which could account for it. It's just an emergent consequence of a ton of other complex stuff going on. Okay, now if you recall my previous point about reconciling the experience of redness vs clusters of neurons—you can hopefully see that the above makes no difference to the problem. It's just a different mapping of a physical structure onto subjective experience, without accounting for the fundamental difference between the subjective experience and the physical structure. (This answer is less thorough, but I did take my time with what I wrote previously. If you read it more closely I think you'll see the difference in what we're each talking about here.)
  - memebox3v 9y ago
    Matter is a subjective experience. An atom is only an atom because it feels like something to be an atom. Qualia is the basis for all existence. The world is a feeling. No need for duality. Feeling is the a priori element.
    - westoncb 9y ago
      That's how I think things most likely are too.
      - memebox3v 9y ago
        :) philosophy brothers :) My teen self would call me a hippy - but you have to follow the logic!
    - Double_Cast 9y ago
      A priori means derived from logic rather than perceptions and experience. Not "more fundamental".

mannykannot 9y ago

> So if we want to say that the experience of colors can be explained physically as well, then there should be some physical place where e.g. redness is occurring rather than electro-chemical flux of neuron interaction. I am reminded of an essay by Stephen Jay Gould, on the history of preformationism, and the debate over whether the homunculus resided in the sperm or the egg. The idea that a human could be represented by an ordering of simple chemicals was inconceivable at the time. The idea that physicalism requires a specific physical locus for redness is no more sound than the idea that genetic theory requires human-ness to be located in a specific base on a DNA molecule. Emergent phenomena are real, common, and not, in general, particularly mysterious (though the mind certainly is, at least to me.) More prosaically, maybe redness is actually localized, as a memory of a sensation. Is there anything more to redness than a comparison to prior sensations?

westoncb 9y ago
> Emergent phenomena are real, common, and not, in general, particularly mysterious I have no issue with emergent phenomena. It's just that whether the phenomenon is emergent or not is irrelevant to the question at hand. For instance, let's say the brain 'system' responsible for color perception is distributed all throughout the human brain in such a way that it would be impossible to formulate any hierarchical conceptual structure which could account for it. It's just an emergent consequence of a ton of other complex stuff going on. Okay, now if you recall my previous point about reconciling the experience of redness vs clusters of neurons—you can hopefully see that the above makes no difference to the problem. It's just a different mapping of a physical structure onto subjective experience, without accounting for the fundamental difference between the subjective experience and the physical structure. (This answer is less thorough, but I did take my time with what I wrote previously. If you read it more closely I think you'll see the difference in what we're each talking about here.)
- memebox3v 9y ago
  Matter is a subjective experience. An atom is only an atom because it feels like something to be an atom. Qualia is the basis for all existence. The world is a feeling. No need for duality. Feeling is the a priori element.
  - westoncb 9y ago
    That's how I think things most likely are too.
    - memebox3v 9y ago
      :) philosophy brothers :) My teen self would call me a hippy - but you have to follow the logic!
  - Double_Cast 9y ago
    A priori means derived from logic rather than perceptions and experience. Not "more fundamental".