Posts

Showing posts from July, 2020

Do We See Colors in the Same Way?

This question is not new: when I see red, how do I know that you don't see blue and are just calling it "red"? I don't think this is question is impossible to answer, even though it seems that the only way to know would be to upload your mind into someone else's brain. You'll have to allow me one assumption, though: that the brain "invented" the concept of red in order to react instinctively and quickly to danger, thus allowing increased chances of survival, procreation, and domination of whatever gene mutation allowed the concept of visually perceiving red to form. Obviously, the brain didn't invent anything, especially not intentionally. Thought Experiment Way back, two groups of people split from each other. One stayed on continent A, and one moved to B. On A, a very nutritious fruit has a lot of 300 nm light given off, and a certain predator has fur that gives off 700 nm light. On continent B, it's the other way around. Each group's b

Consciousness, Determinism, and the Evolution of Morality

Consciousness doesn't actually exist. Well, it does, but in definition only. Consciousness does not exist in the same way that the color red does not exist: it is a word to help us describe a certain concept. In the case of the color red, it is the phenomenon of a brain interpreting the wavelength that a particular photon has. Consciousness the word we give to the complex interactions of group of interconnected neurons. Consciousness does not exist without or outside of a brain. A thinking agent does not actually "think". It's more of a live simulation of the chemical and electrical signals interacting with internal and external stimuli. You can always say you would have made a different decision, but that is incorrect: you would have always made that decision (hence the titular Determinism). But you may say, "Well, couldn't the inherent randomness and uncertainty due to quantum mechanics allow electrons to interact slightly differently and allow me to make a