Dennett says that nature doesn't produce epistemic engines — Marchesk
Look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq6V4OD_DSs
It's undeniable a phenomenal Jesus appears and that's what is being discussed here. When I type this post I am reacting to the image of Jesus and not say- it's dimensions, hue, tone, (bit pieces). — JupiterJess
1. Does it dissolve the hard problem of consciousness by providing a scientific explanation for colors, sounds, smells, etc? — Marchesk
2. Does this entail that direct perception is false, being that secondary qualities (color, taste, etc.) are not properties of things themselves, but rather coding schemes that relate to the chemical makeup of sugar or reflective surfaces of leaves (using the two examples above)? — Marchesk
3. We know that color experience is produced after the visual cortex is stimulated. This can the result of perception, memory, imagination, dream, magnetic cranial stimulation, etc. If a person's visual cortex is damaged enough, they lose all ability to have color experiences, including being able to remember colors. It's hard to avoid concluding that color experiences are generated by the brain. But that sounds like the makings of a cartesian theater, which Dennett has spent his career tearing down. — Marchesk
2. Does this entail that direct perception is false, being that secondary qualities (color, taste, etc.) are not properties of things themselves, but rather coding schemes that relate to the chemical makeup of sugar or reflective surfaces of leaves (using the two examples above)? — Marchesk
Being coloured a particular determinate colour or shade … is equivalent to having a particular spectral reflectance, illuminance, or emittance that looks that colour to a particular perceiver in specific viewing conditions. — Evan Thompson
3. We know that color experience is produced after the visual cortex is stimulated. This can the result of perception, memory, imagination, dream, magnetic cranial stimulation, etc. If a person's visual cortex is damaged enough, they lose all ability to have color experiences, including being able to remember colors. It's hard to avoid concluding that color experiences are generated by the brain. But that sounds like the makings of a cartesian theater, which Dennett has spent his career tearing down. — Marchesk
I don't think saying that the brain produces the experience of colour entails that there is an interior spectator. I imagine Dennett might say, not that the brain produces colours for us to look at internally, but that the relevant events in the brain just are those colour experiences. That's not how I would put it myself, but I don't think the Cartesian theatre is entailed either way. — jamalrob
But the chemical makeup of sugar or reflective surfaces of leaves are properties of those coloured things. — jamalrob
Yes, but our experience isn't of the chemical makeup, but rather of color. And if that color occurs in the brain, then it's hard to see how we could be directly perceiving a red apple. — Marchesk
Perhaps not, but it does still leave all of Chalmers' arguments for the hard problem in play. How do we account for brain events having color experiences? — Marchesk
Thus, colour is entirely relational. According to taste one could see this as a deficiency in the language--because of the way we use "colour", we can't say whether colour belongs to us or the things we're looking at--or else one could see it as demonstrating the essential relational nature of perception. — jamalrob
I don't see why. Evan Thompson's description is consistent with an account of perception that has been described as "direct". But then, different people mean different things by "direct perception". — jamalrob
But then, different people mean different things by "direct perception". — jamalrob
Why do you reject the relational account, under which colour is a proprty of perceived things, as perceived in a certain way in a certain environment? — jamalrob
The relational account holds that the leaves themselves are green (under certain conditions etc). This entails that it is not something mental that is perceived, which is your definition of indirect perception. — jamalrob
The reason for supposing the green is mental is because it's being generated in the brain — Marchesk
But still, it is the things that are green. — jamalrob
Therefore, our perception has a component that isn't in the water itself, since water can't feel cold or hot. — Marchesk
Temperature perception is variable in a way that colour perception is not, and this is expressed in the way we talk and think about hot/cold vs green/blue/red etc. — jamalrob
1. Does it dissolve the hard problem of consciousness by providing a scientific explanation for colors, sounds, smells, etc? — Marchesk
2. Does this entail that direct perception is false, being that secondary qualities (color, taste, etc.) are not properties of things themselves, but rather coding schemes that relate to the chemical makeup of sugar or reflective surfaces of leaves (using the two examples above)? — Marchesk
3. We know that color experience is produced after the visual cortex is stimulated. This can the result of perception, memory, imagination, dream, magnetic cranial stimulation, etc. If a person's visual cortex is damaged enough, they lose all ability to have color experiences, including being able to remember colors. It's hard to avoid concluding that color experiences are generated by the brain. But that sounds like the makings of a cartesian theater, which Dennett has spent his career tearing down. — Marchesk
It doesn't dissolve the hard problem, though it does indicate that at least everything pertaining to consciousness but the hard problem is solvable.
We can imagine physical mechanisms which discriminate between different wavelengths of light, and we can even imagine plausible evolutionary histories...
The hard question would be, why does our experience of color feel like an experience at all? — VagabondSpectre
If the Scientific explanation, for something like the experience of the Color Red, consists of an analysis that ends with particular Neurons Firing then that would not solve the Hard Problem. The Scientific explanation must go beyond the Neurons and tell us How it is that Neural Activity can produce a Conscious experience like Redness. What property of Neurons produces this Redness and How does a particular Conscious Mind perceive this Redness thing. We need to give more importance to the Experience itself. Start with the Experience and work back to the Neural Activity. How can that experience of Redness ever come out of Neural Activity? That is the Hard Problem.This raises several questions/issues for me.
1. Does it dissolve the hard problem of consciousness by providing a scientific explanation for colors, sounds, smells, etc? — Marchesk
Direct perception is obviously false with any analysis of the chain of processing from Retina to Cortex to Experience. The Experience is at the end of this chain of Processing and is always a Surrogate for the External World perceived thing. We never Directly See anything.2. Does this entail that direct perception is false, being that secondary qualities (color, taste, etc.) are not properties of things themselves, but rather coding schemes that relate to the chemical makeup of sugar or reflective surfaces of leaves (using the two examples above)? — Marchesk
Science can tell you what the resultant Neural Activity is for the Perception of the Color Red, but Science can only speculate that there is some undiscovered Property of Neurons that produces the actual Experience of Redness. Science does not know How Neural activity produces Redness. There is a Huge Explanatory Gap here.3. We know that color experience is produced after the visual cortex is stimulated. This can the result of perception, memory, imagination, dream, magnetic cranial stimulation, etc. If a person's visual cortex is damaged enough, they lose all ability to have color experiences, including being able to remember colors. It's hard to avoid concluding that color experiences are generated by the brain. But that sounds like the makings of a cartesian theater, which Dennett has spent his career tearing down. — Marchesk
The chemical makeup and other spectral properties of objects are indeed properties of objects. When photons strike an atom or molecule, it can be absorbed, reflected, or some combination of both. When white light strikes a "green" object a certain portion of its energy is absorbed and the rest is reflected as a photon with a different wavelength. That change in wavelength carries information about the chemical and molecular makeup of the object it last struck, and it is that information color discriminating eyeballs have tapped into. It might be fair to say that our phenomenological perception of color is an abstraction, but it is not fair to say that it does not convey information about the external world. — VagabondSpectre
Does it dissolve the hard problem of consciousness by providing a scientific explanation for colors, sounds, smells, etc? — Marchesk
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