thomblake comments on Consciousness - Less Wrong

2 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 08 January 2010 12:18PM

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Comment author: thomblake 08 January 2010 07:27:39PM 3 points [-]

Well we wouldn't want to "just define" a word that's supposed to refer to something in the world, without figuring out what that thing is yet.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 08 January 2010 07:44:16PM -1 points [-]

OK, but it's not too hard to describe what makes a thing blue. The only obvious sticking point is who's standard of blueness we're using. Perhaps a "blueness function" would be better than an equivalence class of all things blue, then. Regardless, determining whether or not a given thing is blue doesn't seem to be what the OP is asking about; I'm suggesting that this suffices.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 09 January 2010 05:47:12PM 0 points [-]

I think you're missing the point of the post. The problem is about blue qualia, not the category blue. There would still be blue in a world of p-zombies, but not blue qualia.