pjeby comments on Seeing Red: Dissolving Mary's Room and Qualia - Less Wrong

38 Post author: orthonormal 26 May 2011 05:47PM

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Comment author: pjeby 06 June 2011 03:27:36AM 4 points [-]

You have conceded it is special with regard to its place in the conceptual hierarchy and its communicabulity, for all that you are holding out that a metaphysical explanation isn't required.

I've conceded that they're as special as birds that don't fly. That is, that they're things which don't require any special explanation. One of the things you learn from computer programming is that recursion has to bottom out somewhere. To me, the idea that there are experiential primitives is no more surprising than the fact that computer languages have primitive operations: that's what you make the non-primitives out of. No more surprising than the idea that at some point, we'll stop discovering new levels of fundamental particles.

Among programmers, it can be a fun pastime to see just how few primitives you can have in a language, but evolution doesn't have a brain that enjoys such games. So it's unsurprising that evolution would work almost exclusively in the form of primitives -- in other words, a very wide-bottomed pyramid.

Humans are the special ones - the only species that unquestionably uses recursive symbolic communication, and is therefore the only species that makes conceptual pyramids at all.

So, from my point of view, anything that's not a primitive neural event is the thing that needs a special explanation!

[mathematicians, male gynecologists, etc.]

You appear to be distorting my argument, by conflating experiential primitives and experiential grounding. Humans can communicate metaphorically, analogously, and in various other ways... but all of that communication takes place either in symbols (grounded in some prior experience), or through the direct analog means available to us (tone of voice, movement, drawing, facial expressions) to ground a communication in some actual, present-moment experience.

But, I expect you already knew that, which makes me think you're simply trolling.

Why are you here, exactly?

Clearly, you're not a Bayesian reductionist, nor do you appear to show any interest whatsoever in becoming one. In not one comment have I ever seen you learn something from your participation, nor do I see anything that suggests you have any interest in learning anything, or really doing anything else but generating a feeling of superiority through your ability to remain unconvinced of anything while putting on a show of your education.

Your language about arguments and concessions strongly suggest that you think this is a debating society, or that arguments are soldiers to be sent forth in support of a bottom line...

And I don't think I've ever seen you ask a single question that wasn't of the rhetorical, trying-to-score-points-off-your-opponent variety, which suggests you have very little interest in becoming... well, any less wrong than you currently are.

So, why are you here?

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