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I am not reducing an experience to the stimulus. I am simply reducing its identity to "that experience which is correlated with this stimulus." My brain can de
by geofft 6y ago
I am not reducing an experience to the stimulus. I am simply reducing its identity to "that experience which is correlated with this stimulus."
My brain can detect three items without me having a conscious experience of three, and I can dream of three items without three items existing. I am simply saying that - whatever it is - your brain also has some experience it correlates with the stimulus of three, and there is no meaningful way to compare or contrast that experience with my brain's experience beyond noting that they're both correlated with the same stimulus.
We think we can imagine, what if my experience of "red" is your experience of "blue," and vice versa? But that's as meaningful as asking, what if my experience of "two" is your experience of "three," and vice versa?
> it's about whether the pattern of neurons firing would necessarily be the same between people
Nothing in my argument has anything to do with patterns of neurons firing or even with the existence of brains themselves. Perhaps my "red" neurons are in one place and your "red" neurons are in another place, sure, whatever. Why should that mean that our experiences are different?
I mean, certainly, the neurons themselves are not the same. Your neurons don't fire when I see red, or vice versa. But that's not enough to settle anything.
- goatlover 6y ago> I mean, certainly, the neurons themselves are not the same. Your neurons don't fire when I see red, or vice versa. But that's not enough to settle anything. Correct, other than it makes an identity theory of mind problematic. > Why should that mean that our experiences are different? That's not my objection. You stated in the previous post: > There is no "experience" of seeing red beyond the simple fact of perceiving 700nm-wavelength light. I'm objecting to attempts to reduce experience to its physical substrate and then say there's nothing more to the matter. But there is if the reduction doesn't work. And it doesn't in this case, because there are red visual experiences which are not perceptual. Dreams, memories, visualizations and hallucinations can all contain red visual experiences in the absence of 700nm photons. So can directly stimulating the right neurons with a magnet or electrodes in the brain via surgery. This leaves the hard problem intact.
- geofft 6y agoYou're right, my phrasing was not accurate in my initial post. Let me rephrase: You cannot identify/designate the experience of seeing "red" any more precisely than "that experience one has on seeing 700nm-wavelength light," just like you cannot identify the experience of seeing "three" any more than "that experience one has on seeing a thing and another thing and another thing." It's true that you do not need the actual perception in order to have the experience, in either case. But do you believe there is a hard problem of the experience of three? Do you ask whether the exact symphony that plays in your brain plays in mine when we look at the same three objects? (Maybe yes, and I'm misunderstanding what you think the hard problem is?)
- goatlover 6y ago> But do you believe there is a hard problem of the experience of three? I think there seems to be a hard problem of any experience, be it red, three, pain, etc, because nobody has come up with a convincing way of how to reduce that to the physical. > Do you ask whether the exact symphony that plays in your brain plays in mine when we look at the same three objects? I doubt it does as individual brains differ, although there are likely similar patterns of neurons firing. This is why it's hard to reduce experience to brain activity. > Maybe yes, and I'm misunderstanding what you think the hard problem is? Making consciousness compatible with physicalism.