Seeing red

[The Grand Nudger]

First of all, with regard to seeing-- the hell I don't.  In some dreams, I'm body-aware: I have the sensations of sounds, touch and sight and they are coordinated just as they are in waking life.  I look through my dream-eyes, not knowing that I'm dreaming, and I see stuff, no less than I do in waking life.

First of all nothing, again.... you are equivocating, and again, it doesn't matter because I understand what you mean.  You don't have any "dream eyes".  That's an imaginary organ.  That should probably have tipped -you- off to the fact that you're equivocating before I ever had cause to mention it.  Next thing you know you'll be telling me how your heart feels and what justice tastes like.................you have "visual qualia" with your eyes closed.  To call this seeing is to shit on sight.

I've asked whether you think you have visual qualia regarding colors that your eyes -can't- see, not whether or not you can have that experience with your eyes closed.  I doubt that you do, just as I doubt that you imagine sounds that the human ear can't hear.....and for the same reason in both cases. It's not beyond the realm of possibility, but I doubt it -greatly-.

This is less a workable theory, then, than an expression of your already-held belief system.  Basically, you are as guilty of borrowed concepts as you say I am: you're borrowing words from our traditional dualistic view of mind, and then trying to apply things like "consciousness" or "ideas" to a physical system.  You say an idea is a physical thing-- fine, show me one.  Show that they exist in the sense that you say they exist.  Give me some evidence.

Not what a stolen or borrowed concept means, and this is why you could never grasp the trouble you created for yourself in your arguments for idealism..you -still- don't know wtf a stolen concept is, and I'm tired of explaining it to you.

 -You- are the one pestering me about ideas.  I think about neurons, about states, as I've made expressly clear.   Do you doubt the existence of neurons or states?  Do you need evidence that neurons exist or that states exist, or do you doubt that a neuron can present a state?  You asked me how I would explain an idea (or mind) from a comp mind perspective.  Did you expect me to explain comp mind by reference to pixies? Of course it's an expression of my opinion on the mind, that's what you asked for.

Keep in mind, now, that I'm trying to play ball.  I sincerely want to know what an idea is in your physical world view, and you keep using words about mind, neglecting the physical mechanism you say are involved, but insisting rather that mind is matter just 'cuz that's what you already believe.

No you aren't, and I'd be disappointed if you were.  If I wanted to say that mind was "just cuz" I probably could have done so in fewer words.  "Just cuz" comes to mind...but instead we've got this thread.

The problem is that you are relying on the subjective report of a person in order to establish an "objective" understanding of mind.  That being said, I think maybe we will one day have enough data logged about "redness" and other forms that a computer WILL be able to tell what a person is thinking about.  I guess we'll see?

I'm fine with peoples subjective experiences.  That's what mind is, isn't it, regardless  of what it's made of?  Whats the problem?  We're either exposing someone to the color red, or asking them to think about red, and seeing what their brain does.  This is an awfully standard experiment.  The collected subjective experiences of enough subjects may give us insight into an objective description of mind...it's been working thusfar............ particularly with regards to seeing red. 

You take issue?  

I'm not certain that we would learn that much from an individual human.  In an artificial neural network, or in a computer (as you've already talked about in a sense), you might have Windows running on two computers, but the state structure of chips could be so radically different that you could never really compare the two.

We could learn that brain wasn't even -involved- in mind if we removed one from a human being and they still seemed to possess mind.  For most applications, though, you'd want a large group of people subjected to the same group of sensory or lines of questioning - like we currently do, sure.

The "state structure" of the chip is irrelevant as to whether or not they can run windows (and if they don't share the same fundamental architecture they -can't- both run windows).  A state is just however the lever lies, as it were.  Whats on, and whats off.  That's all a state is.  You seem to have something more in mind.

A gate is on, 1, true..that's a state.  A gate is off, false, 0, that's a state.  It doesn't matter what the gate does or what it refers to.  If it's on it's in a state, if it's off it's in a state.  This is -all- that a state is, in context. As soon as I can find an image that will post for an and gate I can give you a diagram as to what an idea is to comp mind, if that will help us get on the same page