Materialism

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Loki said:

Lately I've been thinking about Mary and the KA in computer terms - when we say that Mary has "all the facts" about red, we mean that she has access to the complete source code of the "red" program. She's a very clever programmer, so reading the source code she can see *exactly* what will happen, when, why, and how. She can confidently state that the "red' program will produce the answer "42".

Some of the source code is missing. There are data tables that the code needs to operate, which are not populated until Mary actually sees red. The data tables aren't program statements, but they are part of the code.

Heck, some of those data tables might encode another language which is interpreted by the static program statements, in which case they really are program statements.

All the bits aren't there until Mary sees red.

~~ Paul

 

[DanishDynamite]

A comment regarding my use of "evil". I was replying to Interesting Ian, who usually refers to materialists as idiots, stupid, *ssholes, etc. It is fairly clear that he considers materialism/science beneath contempt. Hence my sarcastic use of "evil materialism/sarcastic".

Win, in regard to your explanation of your position on the "coincidence question", I'll have to side with Paul. I don't see how your explanation deviates substantially from my portrayal of same.

In regard to UCE signing off again, well, it is kind of sad. He was usually worth reading. Course, judging by previous behaviour, there is a fair chance that he'll be back.

 

[Dancing David]

Using Mary raised in the b&w room, she has all the intellectual information needed understand 'red', but she does not have the nueral pathways that percieve the red until she steps out of the room, she does aquire new experience.

Axiom A: she still has the nueral pathways capable of percieving red after the passage of time. Ofetn nueral pathways die if they aren't used.

The last time I heard (nueropsychology along time ago) colors were percieved directly through this little reverberating loops where you have a red receptor surrounded by green receptors in a layer of loops and green receptors surrounded by reds in another layer and then I think that there were interconecting layers beween the reds and greens: in the retina so each receptor feeds into four sperate information chanels, those opposing the color and those matching the color.
Then this is passed through the optic nerves to the nueral visual area where it is processied in these columns strips that sort out the 'true/coherent/ from the "false/incoherent".
So the first time that Mary sees 'red' her brain needs to process the fact that the green middle loops are in the 'off' postion, the red middle loops are in the 'on' postion , the green similar loop are 'off' and the red similar loops are 'on'. This occurs at the retinal level and then the information is passed on to the visual cortex.
The cortex takes time for it to figure out what is going on and then we begin to percieve 'red', it is a learning reverberation through the whole system. It is also why babies should be exposed to colors when they are young.
I imagine that it may take hours to days for her to actualy percieve the color 'red', was she exposed to gray tones? She would most likely percieve the 'red' as black for a while (due to the fact that her rods have already learned to see black and white and her cones have learned to see black and white), if she was exposed to grey tones she would most likely see 'red' as grey and then begin to see the red as 'red'.

So she does have a learning experience based upon the actual sensation of the new color.

Sorry , it is along post.

Peace
dancing david

 

[DanishDynamite]

(bump)

 

[kuroyume0161]

Dancing David,

Those pathways would not wither because gray still requires all three color receptors to "see" gray. Light is light and the eyes see light (a particular band of energies of the electromagnetic spectrum), not colors per se.

Not arguing with you, just explaining my take on how Mary can still see "red" even if raised in a totally grayscale environment. She wouldn't have lost the ability, just the cognition until enough stimulation caused neurons to start connecting. Evolution within such an environment is another story altogether.