Comment by mannykannot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mannykannot | Hacker News Reader

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> 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?

> 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.)

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.

That's how I think things most likely are too.

:) philosophy brothers :)

My teen self would call me a hippy - but you have to follow the logic!

A priori means derived from logic rather than perceptions and experience. Not "more fundamental".

Well according to wikipedia it means knowledge independent of experience not "dependent on logic". In this sense it is similar to saying that something is axiomatic. Besides I'm not at all sure there is a difference between knowledge gained from logic or from experience: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xO3Gw0zlmWM

> Well according to wikipedia it means knowledge independent of experience not "dependent on logic".

wikipedia:

> Thus, the two kinds of knowledge, justification, or argument, may be glossed:

> A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience, as with mathematics (3 + 2 = 5), tautologies ("All bachelors are unmarried"), and deduction from pure reason (e.g., ontological proofs).[3]

> A posteriori knowledge or justification depends on experience or empirical evidence, as with most aspects of science and personal knowledge.

There's nothing wrong or controversial about my definition. Non-Experiental Knowledge is Logical Knowledge by exhaustion. "Feeling" is exactly the kind of thing "a priori" was intended to exclude.

> In this sense it is similar to saying that something is axiomatic.

In no sense of the word, colloquial or academic, does "a priori" mean "axiomatic". They are different beasts.

> Besides I'm not at all sure there is a difference between knowledge gained from logic or from experience: <skims youtube video>

The video redefines the Problem of Infinite Regress as "Modus Morons". I've read What the Tortoise said to Achilles myself. Yes, the truth of modus ponens is arguably derived from induction. But that's a topic I'm not going to get into right now. At the very least, the terms are useful to label their disparate track-records.

If you want to dig further, your general position is called Idealism.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2ZHmCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA23&lpg...

You have an argumentative style which implies that you are more interested in winning than seeking the truth. As such I am dissinclined to take you too seriously.

Because this isn't about truth. This is about diction. You are using "a priori" in a non-standard way.

Also. Maybe meditate on the irony of citing wikipedia articles without reading them and then criticizing polemics.

But is the collective experience of matter a subjective experience?

This including any kind of scientific hardware we use to measure it?

How many people believing otherwise would it take to change the experience of matter in general public, if it is subjective? (Because if it is subjective, it must be malleable.)

Well the whole universe believes that matter behaves the way it does. A few billion lumps of gooey brain tissue isnt going to change it. But cut that matter off from the experience of the rest of the universe and it's free to do anything it damn well pleases. Until you look at it again and then it becomes something that fits with what its supposed to be doing wrt the universe at this moment

If the issue at hand is the denial of physicality, then the issue of emergence is significant, because arguments that claim qualia cannot be physically localized can quickly be dismissed as naive. Much more significantly, if you are actually attempting to understand consciousness, then you are ill-equipped to do that if you are unaware of the nature of emergence.

If you insist that there is no difference, then it goes both ways. I think you are actually right in a way you did not intend: more sophisticated versions of the qualia argument are ultimately no better, as at some point, it always comes down to what you are prepared to believe - that there is a fundamental difference that cannot be bridged.

There was a time when humanity found it impossible to believe that life could arise from matter alone, yet dualism in this regard has effectively been abandoned, at least scientifically and philosophically. While this does not, of course, prove anything about the mind, it does show how arguments from the fundamental difference between matter and information-like things are really appeals to plausibility. As an observation that there is a gap in our understanding, that is fine; as a claim that the difference can never be resolved, they are just opinions.

And as I briefly speculated in my last paragraph, the physical basis for color as a quale might be surprisingly localized...

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