Response to npage85 - Materialism & Qualia

A response to npage85's Rant against materialists.

I contend that qualia are a result of, or are the same thing as the electromagnetic activity coursing about the neural columns of the brain's sensory maps.

This may not be "materialistic", in the classical "res extensa" sense, but I certainly would argue that it's "physical", in the sense of "physical universe".

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Qualia
• electromagnetism
• neural
• columns
• hard
• problem
• consciousness

[allan3141]

This has nothing, whatsoever, to do with what I wrote. Jamie to be honest with you; I have to say, I am now sick to death with your boring disrespectful philistine attitude. I really am sorry but I do not carry, nor am responsible for, whatever religious bagage from your childhood you appear to be carrying; but you clearly have some pressing unresolved issue. I cannot see any other explanation for how you can take my comments and respond in this way. Read what I wrote - you have a problem.

[Drastam]

The EM activity in the columns is the objective side of qualia - the known.

There is need of a knower for the first-person experience of qualia to arise. Without a knower there can be no qualia.

Qualia, and the mind altogether, arise as an effect of the encounter between the knower (?) and the known (neural activity).

Subjective mind is an emergent holographic phenomenon; a process, not a thing.

NB I am not saying the knower is an emergent process; only subjective mind, which is the known.

[Drastam]

The EM activity in the columns is the objective side of qualia - the known.

There is need of a knower for the first-person experience of qualia to arise. Without a knower there can be no qualia.

Qualia, and the mind altogether, arise as an effect of the encounter between the knower (?) and the known (neural activity).

Subjective mind is an emergent holographic phenomenon; a process, not a thing.

NB I am not saying the knower is an emergent process - but that is what materialists are saying.

[jobedied]

If it can be measured or has action causes an affect it is material. least that is the way I see it. Can nothing be material?

Perhaps in theroy, if a sphere can be turned inside out nothing

can be speculated about and such a speculation could have merit.

[allan3141]

In short; why would any neural net look yellow? It seems to me that, this whole argument relies on "blinding them with science." Or indeed being blinded by science. Which I can understand might be quite daunting for a lay person, especially one not wishing to look stupid by saying he does not understand. But once the beguiling fog screen is evaporated by the rays of conscious reasoning, one sees it as amounting to no more then saying a colour can be describe by number! It just can't.

[allan3141]

Cont... would you be in a possition to say, "Wow that's strange that should of been red not yellow"?

The enterprise is as inept and self-evidently in error as embarking on a project to fully describe a shakespeare sonnet with the field equations.

[allan3141]

I would say the whole enterprise is self-evidently dubious from the off (at least should be self-evident). How are you possibly going to bridge the gap between what Yellow looks like and a mathematically describable frequency or field . Consider this hypothetical thought experiment; if you fully mathematically describe an EM field (neural column produced qualianic resonator) associated with the quale yellow if some mischievous entity had eons ago swapped Red for Yellow could you tell? ...cont

[npage85]

@jeffkosmo:

0:32 ) I would say that that hypothetical will never happen, as qualia, by their very nature, can not be objectively "discovered."

1:46 ) I would say EM radiation is physical in nature. Materialists agree that EM waves have an ontolological basis of their own.

I would also say that the idea that the brain creates qualia by way of electromagnetic phenomena is contradicted by the argument at the end of my video, and the properties of qualia that are contradictory to the physical.