The Property, The Brainstate and the Qualia
February 15th, 2009, search relatedRelated posts :: Talking About Qualia :: How Natural, Brown Cow? :: Accepting the Evidence of Experience :: Referencing Qualia, Is That Transcendentalism?
Brown: The Property, The Brainstate and the Qualia
>[Joe]: whether you try to claim that ‘being a certain color’ and ‘being
>a certain distance from Paris’ are both properties or that neither are
>properties you have obliterated the distinction that scientists are
>easily able to make. consequently, the situations have to be described
>differently. I do that by describing them the way that I believe
>scientists would describe these situations:
>1. that a cow has the property of being a certain color and the value
>of that property can be detected.
>2. that a cow does not have the property of being a certain distance
>from Paris.
>Jud: The cow does not exist having the property of the colour brown.
>The so-called *value* of the colour brown is only valuable to the
>classifying attributing scientist. … What HUMANS call *the colour
>brown* is simply the effect UPON THE HUMANS of the reflected light
>which the human eye and brain together translate light into a colour
>unique to the human observer. Light receptors within the eye transmit
>messages to the brain, which produces the familiar sensations of
>colour. Thus, *brown* is not “in” an a cow. The surface of the cow
>reflects the wavelengths we see as brown and we absorb all the rest. A
>white cow appears white TO A HUMAN when it reflects all wavelengths and
>black TO A HUMAN when it absorbs them all.
it is true that the qualia that the human experiences, the color
sensation of brown, is not ‘in’ the cow; but, the discrepancy between
the scientific description and your description of this situation
remains: the scientist can detect the property of reflecting light of a
certain wavelength, whereas you deny that anything has any properties at
all. thus, your linguistic frame of reference is defective.
you also need to explain this doublespeak concerning qualia.
in discussing your ‘theory’ that anyone who claims that the word
‘afterimage’ refers to a patch of color rather than a brainstate thereby
contributes to sectarian violence, you claimed that “With regard to the
word afterimage I do not refer to the qualia, for I reject the whole
Lewisean idea of qualia along with other qualophiles and similar
Nagelian, chiropteran infantile nonsense”.
it seems that words that, in vernacular english, refer to qualia do
refer to qualia in Jud-speak; but, only when it suits Jud.
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
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http://what-am-i.net
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