Seeing red

[bennyboy]

Here we go.



Whereas A is apple, b is red, and c is "a red apple".  That's what I think ideas are (though I'm sure the idea of red apple is more complicated than this, some ideas..presumably, are not).  Replace the gate above with a neuron and you have comp mind.  Imo a redundant phrase, neurons -are- gates.  An idea is, very literally,  the state of the gate..in comp mind.  Which inputs and outputs are true or false, on or off.

You could as easily draw "idea A" and "idea B" or "fairy A" and "fairy B." The apple-shaped fairy does a little dance with the red-colored fairy, yes?

If what you are saying is right, then I could make a computer which checks if something is/isn't an apple, and whether it is/isn't red. The resultant logical output can easily be displayed in binary terms: 1 1 for (is apple and is red) and 0 0 for (is not apple and is not red). Now, if I print out my name in binary:
011000100110010101101110011011100111100101100010011011110111100100100000

we can see that the name "bennyboy" is a complex expression of various states of appleness and redness. And yet, perhaps only you and a couple of others see red when you read that particular name. Though we can interpret those bits as apple-states, they could represent anything else.

This is the problem with your theory: states are ARBITRARY records, and need a context to establish meaning. And what establishes this meaning? More states? Another layer of operations? You can only wave at the system and insist that with sufficient complexity, all is possible. The brain, then, is your Alpha and Omega, and you worship it not for its physical structure but for the ghost that supervenes on it, for no good reason that you can see.