Qualia and the Mystery of Colors

I have a question about qualia.

Can we count them and measure their interactions with one another?

Maybe that’s 2 questions. But you get what I’m asking right?

You are right about your direction of seeking answers and those enlightenment philosophers were wrong, including scientists. There is something for sure that is primarily responsible for sensation which resides outside physical brain too. You can name it what you want; qualia, consciousness or something else.

With love,
Sanjay

I like how the first 2 paragraphs give away key information without saying anything. It is a rather elegant writing style.

Destroy certain neurons and you’ll destroy some experience of qualia. Also, I can relieve pain with an aspirin. Apparently the connection between qualia and neuronal activity has not been adequately explained by philosophers or neuroscientists.
That such a connection does exist and is experienced is evidence of the physicality of qualia. I’m with Dennett on this. Attempts to mystify qualia lead to mystical interpretations of natural phenomena. Mary was equipped, genetically, to experience red even though she had never experienced it before. Being genetically equipped to visualize things in a certain way is a survival necessity.

There seems to be a lot of scrap in these posts, so I’m scrapping all of your posts and putting out a new version from scratch.

The bottom line is, the brain seems to be an object that follows our consciousness around, or our consciousness follows it around. When we look in a mirror we see a body and we assume the brain is in our body. When other people die we see their brains fall out their body. But we can never actually see our own brain. The closest we can get to seeing our own brain is when we get a CAT scan and we assume a trustworthy doctor is scanning our brain. Only other way is to have a hole drilled in our brain so we can see our own brains.

As for the color thing, It is a case of Machine seeing state of Other Machines. I dont think the Giant Building analogy is accurate or true. If the brain was a Giant Building, we could actually see the colors. It would be RGB colors because retina only supports three colors. So in the building we would see the actual colors somewhere in some cubicle somewhere. Or electrical impulses the same wavelength as colors.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are no actual colors in the brain. Maybe colors are converted into colorless information and then magically converted into colorful qualia. But I don’t think so. And if I’m right, it’s a case of Machines Seeing Other Machines. Colors are the Absolute. If I can see colors, i can see other people’s colors in their brain. Its like an infinite mirror. I am in a brain, I can see its colors. And if I look at someone else’s brain, I can see their colors they see. But if I cannot see colors, then I can never know what colors is.
And if I’m wrong, if there are no actual colors in the brain, then retina colors are converted into colorless information which magically converts into colorful qualia. One must explore the idea of inverted colors. For instance, if I see blue, my brain could alter the wavelength so that blue is green, but still the colors woould be colors, blue would still be green. It wouldn’t nullify the idea of color. Only thing that would nullify the idea of color is if the mind converted color to random wavelengths, whitenoise, appearing as color. Magic. Therefore, if the mind keeps the wavelength constant, it doesnt matter if it converts it into a wavelength of EM radio frequency. Color is color, we’d just think xrays are blue and blues are xrays, but blue would still be blue, because blue is blue, blue is xrays. So, no magic is involved if the wavelength is not random.
Which means I’m probably not wrong.

I hope yall can understand what Im saying, because Im not even done yet.
Science isn’t fake, but most of yall dont even understand what it even is. If I take a recording that says a lightwave is .1 nanometers, that is ultimate reality. But it aint the lightwave. It is just a rune that says “.1 nanometers”. Like, if I draw a sine wave on paper, that is ultimate reality. But it aint a lightwave, it is just a sketch on paper (although technically, lightwaves are bouncing off it making me see it.) Runes and drawings are like signs, road maps, not the destination. But signs and roadmaps are part of ultimate reality. Like, .1 nanometers is not what a light wave is. It just tells me, this is what the alternative name is for the road I’m going to. If I want to go down the road and see the light wave that is .1 nanometers, I go down to .1 nanometer road, or Blue Highway. Xray may really be Superhighway but we thought it was Blue Highway at first so we call it Xray Highway soometimes but its really Xray highway but converts into BlueHighway. I switch on the thing to .1 nanometers and viola, I’m on BlueHIghway.
So the original thing about BigBuilding is really is your consciousness BlueEnabled because if it is, you should be able to see Blue in other people’s BigBuildingBrains too. unless its converted to Xray, then you need the XrayToBlueConversionModule2.0
Only way I’d be wrong about this, is if retina info is converted into whitenoise. Highly doubt it because that would be crazy.

Key thing of Big Building is macrobility. For example, we hear ideas as word sounds. Audio snippets. So thats ultimate reality. What you hear is what you get. When you see a waveform, you dont hear it. You gotta actually play it, and once you play it, what you hear is what you get. Ultimate Reality is ultimate reality. Saying a waveform is not ultimate reality means you are confused. You are just not playing it in the right format. You are confusing the sign for the road. The Audacity wave from, is what you call “scientific discovery”. But thats not actually the same format as an idea. Your mind is the audio player, that converts the picture of a waveform, into an idea, which is the same as mental audio.
Now mental audio you cannot hear other peoples thoughts, because it is converted into electrical waveforms, rather than atom vibrational waveforms.

As for vision, it seems to fill up our whole fields. Like it might as well be called infinite because it is all there is, we cannot see outside our vision so it might as well be called finite too. Its like, somehow a little kid is our brain, stuck in one cubicle, fixated on it, and cannot see outside of it, cannot see the actual atoms of the brain itself. It can only see and feel in electrical impulses. And this tiny part of our brain, feels like it is gigantic, but yet even though it is gigantic it feels like sounds are a part of it, yet not a part of it because sounds are different. Sounds you cannot see but hear. And what does scale matter? The scale feels big because we are close in proximity to it. Sounds might as well be called infinite, because they have no size, yet might as well be called finite, because they are still within the bounds of our vision, yet are boundless and not even in our vision, so might as well be called infinite and finite.

Rest assured, ideas can be read, if they are converted into the right format, from electrical audio to atom audio. Unless Im wrong and they are random white noise, which would be looney. But still, even encrypted for some odd reason and not a=a type data, see XraytoBlueConversionModule2.0 and so even if encrypted im still right, the only way Im wrong is if whitenoise.

The one thing is taste. So we zoom out of our taste impulses at a certain scale, and somehow the image that emerges is taste? Why do some images taste better than others? And why is the image invisible? Sometimes it feels like God just came out of the sky and said “You cannot see taste images, only taste them. And this one will taste good to you and this one is bad. Why because I say so, there is no explanation.” Of course you can make a psuedo explanation by saying "it triggers oxytocin and other feel good hromones But that is a psuedo explanation, doesnt satisfy me. Why does it not satisfy me? Because hormones are delayed reactions, it doesnt explain why taste immediately tastes good, nor does it explain why taste tastes like tastes and why we cannot see or hear taste images. I could explain the first part though. I can say we are actually living somewhat in the future, and we know tastes are good because we anticipate the feel good hormones from the future. Like how music seems like we are in the future and one measure feels timeless at the same time. So maybe the memory and neurons themselves associated with the prediction of hormones feel good not just hormones.

And it doesnt explain what time is. Why are we time beings that feel like we are real one second, and then all of a sudden months later is not real anymore. Doesnt explain why we are timeless yet timeful.

Irrellus is on the right track though. Irrelus said if we disable neurons we disable qualia. And this is why the neuronal selective disablerenabler device needs to be constructed. We need to explore consciousness directly, by being able to selective disable and reenable neurons and to experience their perceived effects on qualia of consciousness. Only then will we truly understand the secrets of the universe. This is why I am the greatest genius who ever lived, this device is n the same level of genius as the DNA machine. And Irrelus doesn’t know it, but he stumbled on a gem when he said the thing about disabling qualia, making him an accidentally better scientist than most other scientists, because other scientists are wasting their time with goose chases that wont solve all the secrets of the universe.

Thanks for the first positive thing you ever said about me. Yes, the NSDD needs to be devised. We know about consciousness now only from brain probes and brain disorders. Many are still looking for the image inside the computer without considering how the computer produces images. For those who claim to be something other than neurons can produce. there exists no quale, no “I”, without neuronal and genetic hardwire.

BTW, I created a DNA machine in my 1987 novel, “Atom and Eve”; the novel was not published. Readers claimed they could not understand it.

A quale is a quantum of sensation. It is a process that cannot be reduced to something other than its activity, from its formation from neurochemicals and neurons.

The problem of defining qualia comes fro seeing a process as an entity.

If we see a man running, “running” is the process, correct? However, we would see a man running, otherwise known as a runner. The point of the Mary Problem, is that she experiences something new, the color blue for the first time. That new experience is knowledge. The process has to work upon something though, mustn’t it? So we have to identify what the process is doing to things, and those things are elementary quale, aren’t they? Thoughts?

The problem is created by the degenerate tendency to reduce multiplicity (particulars) to singularity (one universal.)

For example, color and wave-length are two different objects neither of which can be reduced to the other for that would confuse, which is to say eliminate distinction between, the two. On the other hand, that does not mean there is no relation between the two. We know, for example, that there is a strong type of correlation between the two that we refer to as causation. We know that when wave-length changes that the color changes too.

There is nothing mysterious regarding qualia. What there is is an illusion of mystery created by the inability to comprehend that categories are man-made and that whether we are going to categorize some object of experience as physical or qualitative does not make that object any more or less mysterious.

The so-called “physical realm” is quite simply a category that includes some objects of experience and excludes others. In its most abstract from, it includes only formulas, viewing physical sensations as merely “subjective” (in other words, it puts them in a category that is called “subjective realm”.)

Someone may ask “if it doesn’t belong to physical realm then where does it belong?” And to be able to answer that question one would have to enumerate every known category and make sure that each one is sufficiently defined so that we can unambiguously determine whether any given object of experience belongs to it or not. Then, we would simply compare our non-physical object against the requirements of every category and note where it belongs, if it belongs anywhere. And what if it belongs nowhere? Then we would simply categorize it as “uncategorized”. Simple.

So, yes, qualitative objects such as color, smell, taste, etc do not belong to or exist in physical realm. No matter how deep you look into a physical brain or perform calculations in order to predict its behavior, you will never experience any colors, tastes, smells, etc. So where do they belong or exist? They belong to or exist in . . . qualitative realm. Realm being nothing but a fancy word for category, class, set and other container objects.

“Oh my god, that’s so deep!”

Yeah, it is deep as hell.

Qualitative objects such as color can have their physical correlates such as wavelength.

No need to confuse the two.
Everyone is happy.

You say that Dennett is correct in asserting that there is no “objective” evidence of qualia. This implies you know what kind of evidence he’s looking for. I, personally, do not, so I would appreciate it if you could help me. What kind of evidence is he asking for?

I would say qualia, e.g. colors, are evident. Whoever denies this, his intelligence must be questioned.

Is he saying that qualia must be something other than qualia in order to be able to accept them as evidently something other than qualia? Wouldn’t such a remark be irrelevant?

Or is he saying that qualia, in the form of qualia, cannot be evident?

Very bizarre.

A slight tangent on this if I may; Dennet is looking for ‘qualia’ when he could just say ‘what is [light and] color’. in other words he maybe looking for something that’s not there and not finding anything lol, but color is there and optical illusions reveal them to be changed perceptually. Ergo you have color as the mind sees it, and color as a camera sees it ~ but they are both the same thing, color. I doubt even Dennet would argue that ‘there is no color there’ or would he lol.
This just leaves us with the fact then, that there is color, and which exists perceptually and physically as light and yet one variant is not defined as being a property of light [the perceptual].

I think Dennett would say that color is not qualia but something within the brain, some neurochemical configuration. But this too would be a confusion, since qualitative object that is color is different from, is not the same as, neurochemical object that is . . . however you decide to call it. They are related but not the same.

Physical realm isn’t an all-encompassing category. It excludes certain objects – such as qualia. That, however, does not mean these excluded objects do not exist. You can say they don’t exist physically but not more than that.

The failure is saying that we see no evidence of qualia when we see evidence of qualia.
If a doctor scans a patient’s brain, saying “I see no evidence of qualia in the brain” this is a fallacy.
Because he is seeing Qualia, the photograph of the brain scan is a Qualia in his brain. Thus he sees evidence of qualia in the brain.

Thus we should reduce this convolution by talking about smells.
If a doctor scans a brain, and cannot smell the smell the patient is smelling, then it means that smell is something not apparent in the physical structure of the brain.

Thus we must ask…what about the brain is producing this essence of smell?

Brain is a category. That means it includes certain objects and excludes others. By definition, brain refers to neurochemical processes. Within these processes, there may be neurochemical correlates of qualia but qualia themselves are nowhere to be found. This is because the category brain, by definition, excludes these objects of experience.

In other words, the photograph of the brain scan we are looking at is NOT inside our brain. Its neurochemical correlate is – whatever it is, if it exists at all – but the photograph itself, as we see it, is not. You can say it is in our mind. Mind being a different category.

Just because two objects are correlated does not mean they are one and the same object.

Is light bulb the same as light switch?
Simply because they are correlated?

And is light bulb an illusion simply because it is passive in relation to light switch?

I agree with Magnus that color in the mind is different to color in the thing ~ that is, the light reflecting off a thing. Same with smell or anything that’s a representative of something out there I.e. sensory and memory information.

The photograph will only reveal physical tissue ~ the light reflecting off it. A deep scan would reveal something more psychedelic. …but we still have the fact that something is given color, or smells. Far simpler organisms still get the smells for example, so this is not a ‘lost in the complexity’ issue.

The qualia is most likely the reflection of a thing upon the observers eye. There is something about the act of observing which yields info about something. But more, that info makes the color happen ~ the quality of the thing exist. A quality must be ‘real’ such to be passed around by particles, that is how a photo and ‘you’ [an observer] can observe the properties of color. I don’t see how we can say the quality of red is one of mind, especially when it is also a property of light and photo-cells, which are not of mind.

Sounds like there must be observers in all things. You can probably build a human/oid from the ground up, switch it on, and there will be an experienced observing individual there, just like we are. No difference between the photo and the red flower, and the minds vision of that, nature is doing the same thing all round.

hmm, or maybe I just contradicted myself, lol. is there color in the given physical thing the same as in us, or is that property different in a brain somehow?
what is ‘the other thing’ to the physics occurring here?

A deep scan would, at most, display identical imagery of the mind as in the brain.

And that is why the phenomenon of smell is so important.
Visual phenomenon, can be explained by A=A, it is what it is.

But with smell phenomenon, there is clearly a transforming going on.
Elecritical signals, manefesting as smell phenomenon for consciousness.

In terms of awareness, would building a synthetic human guarantee Sentience in the form?
No it would not.
We are actually uncertain there is Sentience in other beings.
Sentience can only be verified by local-sentience.

Very strange conclusion.

Light isn’t color. Neurochemicals aren’t color. Color is color. Once again tautology saves the day.

Light and neurochemicals are correlated with color in the same way light switch is correlated with light bulb.

There is no redness in light and I’m sure no redness in neurochemicals either unless we are speaking of their visual form, seeing them with our eyes, instead of simply representing them mathematically, but then that redness is not redness they are correlated with in the manner that we’re speaking of here.

What we cannot see, is hidden from us, we interpret. Using induction. Such as analogical induction. If things are observed to have a lot of similarities, we assume they have some more. That’s how it works. I cannot make an attempt to immerse myself in your consciousness. Thus I cannot see for myself whether you do or do not have consciousness. But because you show many traits I possess that are tightly related to consciousness, I assume you also possess consciousness.