Re: Challenge to Curt

"Alpha" <OmegaZero2003@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Show that the APs of a neuron(s) (or any other property of a neuron or
group/net of neurons, or whatever other property of brain you want to
identify with experience) are *identical * with the experience of red.
Do so without bringing in your delusional conditioning/religious beliefs
in swirling atoms and such. Use the real scientific method. Posit an
hypothesis and provide experimental data that shows such identity.

This would require performing experiments on humans brains. That's a bit
out of my reach. Unless you would like to volunteer your brain? I have
the drill!

The very fact that this type of research on humans is so hard to do without
risking harm is why progress on this type of question has been so slow.

My conclusions are all reached by deduction from the facts and evidence
collected by others.

The only way to add up all the known facts and not create a contradiction
is to assume that the experience of red is an identity with some aspects of
physical brain behavior. There's nothing hard to understand about this
assumption.

The interesting problem here is that so many people who would never think
twice about believing in the truth of an assumption which created a
contradiction in other areas like mathematics or physics are none the less
perfectly willing to believe in the assumption here which creates a
contradiction. Or at least, not reject it, or not accept the truth of the
one option which creates no contradictions.

Why is this?

I believe it's because this illusion that the brain creates locks people
into believing what they are "seeing" and they believe that over what logic
tells them must be the truth. They trust their "eyes" over reason.

The problem with this particular illusion is that there's no easy way to
demonstrate it is an illusion. If you see a typical visual illusion, such
as lines which look curved but which are actually straight, there are many
ways to demonstrate that the lines aren't actually bent. For example,
holding up the paper and looking at the lines from the end normally shows
the line as being straight. This allows us to question our perception. We
don't believe the line on the paper actually changed just because we moved
the position of our head, but yet, one minute it looks curved, and the next
it is straight. This allows us to know there is an illusion at work - that
our perception is faulty at some level.

But with the illusion that makes us believe our mental events are not
physical events, there's no way to "move our head" and get a different
perspective to create simple proof that there's an error in our perception.

However, as I have hypothesized many times in the past, if my theory about
the illusion, and the function of the brain is correct, there is a way to
demonstrate the illusion. It only requires that we use a brain scanner to
allow people to see their own brain activity in real time. Doing this,
will allow the brain to experience the temporal correlations between the
physical event of the brain scanner output (which represents the physical
brain activity), and the persons own perception of their mental events.
With enough exposure to the sensory correlations, the brain will rewire
itself to merge the concepts of neural activity, and "redness" (for
example) into one, and the subject will come to see the two as an identity.
A person who has had this opportunity to allow his brain to be rewired by
the experience, will no longer see mental activity as being separate from
his physical brain activity. He will see it as an identity.

What we need to do, is to take someone who is a devote skeptic on this
subject, and who has read and thought a lot about the issue, but doesn't
accept the identity theory, and expose them to the test, and see how their
views on the subject change. This would be the real proof if everyone
exposed to this type of test ended up believing in the identity theory and
believing that the problem before was just an illusion.

Some people are show-me types of people, and some people are rationalists.
If you trust your reasoning, you will believe what I believe. Science has
long since provided all the facts we need to see the truth. If you trust
your "eyes", you will not believe the identity theory (until you are shown
the identity with the help of a high resolution brain scanner).

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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