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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Objective access to the subjective
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References: <3bd8s0$1q2@pobox.csc.fi> <3c2ntg$43h@agate.berkeley.edu> <D0InEL.71I@spss.com> <3c90na$90s@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 18:47:16 GMT
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In article <3c90na$90s@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Gerardo Browne <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>Mark Rosenfelder (markrose@spss.com) wrote:
>: I'm not sure what you mean, however, when you talk about being certain
>: you are seeing orange when "the measurements" say you're seeing red.

>: b. The researcher is measuring the wrong thing.  For instance, perhaps he's
>: measuring the red/green opponent response in the retina.  But very possibly
>: other processes farther back in the brain change the color perceived to
>: orange; no problem.  
>
>This is the case I was considering.  I maintain that there is no "right 
>thing" to measure, i.e., no property which is at the same time the
>experience of seeing red, and also measurable by the described apparati.

If that's what you maintain, then you are a dualist.  Now, this state of
affairs (there's no right thing to measure) can't be ruled out; but neither
is there, so far as I can see, the slightest bit of evidence for it.
Why do you want to maintain such a thing?

>: But in the first two cases it would be more accurate to say that the 
>: measurement saying that you're seeing red is incorrect
>
>Now that's an odd way to put it.  Why didn't you say, "the measurement of
>what you saw was incorrect"?  Instead you have the measuring device "saying
>that" I am seeing red, which allows *guessing*.  

You're reading too much into my words here; the machine says that you're
seeing red in exactly the same way that your bathroom scale says that you
weigh _n_ pounds.  My point was that in neither case is it accurate to say
that there is a serious disagreement between you and the machine.  In the
first case, the measurement failed in some way, so its report about what
you're seeing is to be ignored.  In the second case, it was measuring the
wrong thing, and the error comes in identifying what the machine reports
with what you're perceiving.

>But a measuring device can only guess at what my impressions of what I am
>experiencing will be, and IMO my experiences depend logically on my
>impressions of them.

If materialism is true, the first half of this statement must be false:
there must be *some* possible measurement that corresponds to you seeing
orange; if we find the right observable, and measure it correctly, we can't
be wrong.  (Think of whatever it is that makes you say "I'm seeing orange"; 
whatever is is, we measure *that*.)  It's true that by definition your 
subjective impressions must be correct; but it doesn't follow that a
measurement of the brain states underlying them could be incorrect.  
