Well, no... but we can work out what a metamer is and a theory of protanopia and deuteranopia. I'm pretty sure the things you're looking for are somewhere in the visual cortex.Then we can know about color experiences — Harry Hindu
... but to simply conclude that the color experiences are the same because we're all human sounds to me more like guesswork. — InPitzotl
So? We can talk about color experiences of humans too... we agree on color categories in those 95% of individuals I described earlier. But that says nothing about the experience being the same... only that the categories are.Biologists tell us about the color experiences of cats and dogs, why not humans? — Harry Hindu
...and so is its null hypothesis.it is a plausible hypothesis. — A Raybould
...color grapheme synesthetes (for example) still see color... they're just able to associate graphemes with color. Plausible explanations for color-grapheme synesthesia are here. The existence of conditions like synesthesia only seem to beef up the plausibility of the null hypothesis.For example, I am not a synaesthete, and so will clearly experience some things differently than those who are. — A Raybould
I could think of arguments, but that's irrelevant. The only argument necessary for my strong defense of a non-position is that the null hypothesis is plausible (see below).What arguments are there for the proposition that everyone experiences things differently? — A Raybould
You misunderstand. I don't have a theory of similarity, differentness, or even commensurability of experiences of color. What I have, instead, is a standard... an expectation of what kinds of things I need to see before I start doing silly things like believing a thing, that no random guy with some strong opinion and bad arguments is going to get me to lower. And as unfair as it may seem to be, I expect others to meet this standard before I can grant them my approval of their conjectures.Or do the three of us just have diffferent intuitions about how different they are?
it is a plausible hypothesis.
— A Raybould
...and so is its null hypothesis. — InPitzotl
What arguments are there for the proposition that everyone experiences things [fundamentally] differently?
— A Raybould
I could think of arguments, but that's irrelevant. — InPitzotl
The only argument necessary is that it's plausible — InPitzotl
What I have, instead, is a standard... an expectation that I have of a theory before I start doing silly things like believing it — InPitzotl
Then we aren't talking about knowing red, rather we are talking about knowing what it is like for Harry to see red
— Harry Hindu
Correct. — InPitzotl
Nobody has ever seen a brain state, furthermore, whether it is possible to establish correspondences between so-called brain states and first-person experience is exactly the point at issue. — Wayfarer
7. Given Lemma 3 and premise 6, what Mary gains [is] not knowledge of a physical fact. — jkg20
In Jackson's usage, he is referring to knowledge of physics, but physicalism does not imply or depend on all knowledge being about physics; what it does imply is that knowledge cannot be gained without there being physical change within the entity doing the learning. — A Raybould
Your working hypothesis doesn't work.At this point, my working hypothesis is that you do not have any plausible arguments for that proposition. — A Raybould
Did you bother to try? At the highest level of abstraction this seems incredibly simple to me. We just postulate that there's a large number of potential experiences and that the brain, while learning to see colors, simply picks any of these to bind to the interesting categories. Synesthesia demonstrates that there are different kinds of experiences to pick from, and that they can at least be useful in some people as category tags even cross-sensually. My natural response to this is, if there are this many kinds of experiences, how many can there be? Incidentally, what made you make up your mind in the first place such that it would need to be changed?Your next sentence reinforced that view, and your final paragraph did not lead me to change my mind.
But the argument here is, at least IMO, trivially made. The arguments given for same-experience to me sound like classic textbook hasty generalization. It seems you're describing an approach that is particularly vulnerable to argument from personal incredulity, and is way too quick on the belief button for my tastes.but plausibility itself does not come out of nothing; it needs an argument in support. — A Raybould
At this point, my working hypothesis is that you do not have any plausible arguments for that proposition.
— A Raybould
Your working hypothesis doesn't work. — InPitzotl
But the argument here is, at least IMO, trivially made. The arguments given for same-experience to me sound like classic textbook hasty generalization. It seems you're describing an approach that is particularly vulnerable to argument from personal incredulity, and is way too quick on the belief button for my tastes. [my emphasis] — InPitzotl
Synesthesia demonstrates that there are different kinds of experiences to pick from, and that they can at least be useful in some people as category tags even cross-sensually. — InPitzotl
We just postulate that there's a large number of potential experiences and that the brain, while learning to see colors, simply picks any of these to bind to the interesting categories. — InPitzotl
Conventional epistemology makes a distinction between propositional/knowing-that knowledge and various other forms, such as knowledge-how, (e.g. knowing how to ride a bicycle, which you don't learn from a book), and knowing a person or a place by acquaintance. For a while, the leading response to Jackson was the ability hypothesis, which claims that, on her release, Mary gained, not propositional knowledge, but certain abilities, such as how to recognize, recall and compare colors. These are generally considered to be examples of knowing-how, not knowing-that/propositional knowledge. These days, the favorite form of reply seems to be "old knowledge in a new guise": when Mary sees colors, she does not gain any new knowledge, but sees her existing knowledge of physics in a new way. To me, this seems both implausible and unnecessary, an attempt to explain away something that already has a straightforward explanation, so I am disinclined to describe it further. — A Raybould
You're really missing the point. "Evolution is conservative therefore we all experience redness the same way" is also an opinion. Opinion dismissal is no justification for another opinion; all opinions should be held to the same standard, even if you happen to hold one of them.That's not an argument, it is an opinion. — A Raybould
Not... exactly. This is a guideline to applying relevant standards. You're arguing about differences and similarities of experiences between humans, under the presumption of a physicalist interpretation. So let's start here... is there reason for you to disagree that the key factor to look at here is the neural correlates to experiences?Furthermore, it is an opinion of an argument, not an opinion about how minds work. — A Raybould
But convincing you isn't supposed to be the goal. The goal is supposed to be applying a valid truth criteria. In this case, the criteria of truth should have something to do with neural correlates to experience... would you agree?You are entitled to your opinions, but don't expect anything like this, doubly removed as it is from any substantive issue, to be persuasive. — A Raybould
Binding in this case simply means creating some sort of stable state at some layer in the network; "interesting categories" can be self-discovered by features of the net analogous to how deep neural networks work. I'm not too interested in fleshing out this theory since I don't particularly subscribe to it... I'm more interested in gating the justifications to the things that they're supposed to be including (here is an ancient video including presentation of self-discovered categories using deep neural nets; but here is a link to a paper discussing the kinds of things I think should be included in any speculation).What does 'binding' mean? How are 'interesting' categories determined? — A Raybould
We just postulate that there's a large number of potential experiences and that the brain, while learning to see colors, simply picks any of these to bind to the interesting categories. — InPitzotl
I'm not overly familiar with the particular quandary being debated in this thread, but that Mary has a brain-state that corresponds to her experience of seeing Red does not seem to be an issue. — Kaarlo Tuomi
I think that most proponents of that view would say that she would be able to remember colors, compare colors, and even perform Hume's task of imagining an intermediate hue between two that she is seeing, before ever learning any names for them. It is mildly interesting to wonder if she would divide up the spectrum as we do (at which point, I must say that I have always regarded the distinction between indigo and violet as questionable!) — A Raybould
Why would you need to appeal to chaotic processes?It is not clear to me what you have in mind here, though it seems to be suggesting a chaotic process — A Raybould
Start simple. Imagine we develop a fourth cone type and manage to develop tetrachromacy.but whether that is so may depend on what you have in mind when you say "a large number of potential experiences" — A Raybould
You're making the wrong appeal to the wrong person. I'm not playing the debate game; in fact, I'm skeptical of that entire game. Convincing you isn't the prize I'm after. Tossing that away, the only reading of that statement left is that you're declaring dependence upon me to question your premises for you, which I read as a bad thing.At least until you explain these matters, it is not clear to me that you have a viable argument for your position. — A Raybould
So it's not difficult to see issues with confirmation bias and the like in this kind of scenario. See: Do you believe in God, or is that a software glitch? — Wayfarer
There is no equivocation in the argument I gave, which does not even end with the conclusion that physicalism is false [my emphasis] — jkg20
Even if we admit that one gains the ability to remember and compare colours, it is unclear how or whether this is a gain of knowledge of any sort. — Luke
How long, I wonder, would you have left me under the impression that you still held that view? — A Raybould
Ah, I see why you were confused now. But I think maybe you want to read this post a bit more carefully before suggesting that I might have misled you.For one thing, you say "I'm not too interested in fleshing out this theory since I don't particularly subscribe to it", which is rather an odd thing to say about something you had postulated only a few hours before as if it were a strong argument for your position — A Raybould
Nope, I did not change my mind. I still say that "evolution is very conservative about things that are important to fitness, and our minds" is a bad argument for same-experience theory.so it seems that you changed your mind during the time when I was probing its relevance. — A Raybould
This sounds a bit fishy to me. It sounds like you're guessing that the researchers secretly agree with you, "betting" that they do, and then appealing to this secret agreement.there is no hand-wringing over whether the subjects will be similar enough in their responses to justify the approach, and I would bet that the possibility that it would not be is rarely an issue in the funding of such experiments. — A Raybould
But hang on, that's the wrong take-away. Let's focus on tetrachromacy a bit more... if a human develops tetrachromacy, would you think it reasonable that said human would have more color experiences? I mean either it's that, or somehow the same color gamut just gets "redistributed", or we just happened as human trichromats to max out on the number of potential color experiences (or, supply your own other?) If tetrachromacy does lend to more color experiences though, then there are indeed more potential color experiences to be had. So the next question to ask is, do we need to add more stuff to the brain in order for it to be able to have these additional color experiences, or would the brain somehow wind up with them if we had four cone types giving us richer information? We could ask the same question on lower levels (e.g., how the ganglia forming color opponent channels in the retina would organize), and that leads to questions about, gee, how do they organize anyway, in us trichromats?As for your examples of synesthesia and tetrachromacy, it is not unreasonable to consider them as second-order effects. I don't think many papers reporting this sort of work contain the caveat that their results cannot be extended to these cases. — A Raybould
I think that question is making assumptions that are not yet justified. A response to a stimulus is behavioral. What effect would having different kinds of experiences of similar stimuli have on the behavior? If I experience red a different way than you experience red, wouldn't we still both call red things red?Given the results of this experiment, perhaps you consider color categorization to be a counterexample to the hypothesis that most people's responses to stimuli are broadly similar? — A Raybould
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