Describe to me the sensation of "redness"
So there's a rather deep philosophical implication to the fact that sensations are given according to which nerves are stimulated, and not at all as a result of the actual object stimulating the nerves. While obvious experimentation has shown it to be true, I've never considered it quite so much in a philosophical application. What this means is that, ideally, were all brains constructed identically, the philosopher's favorite problem of the description of the sensation of the color red would be a moot point.
While the language of symbols is definitely ill-suited for anything beyond abstract ideas, the shortfallings of languages doesn't translate to the reasoning that sensations are all distinctly subjective. Given identical brains, in identical initial states (suggesting identical environments, but not necessarily so, for the state would be the nerve impulses and not what it is that stimulates them), giving the same number of action potential energies to the same nerves would give the same sensation. Ultimately, this points quite well to the brain-as-mind's-computer model (which really seems to elegant an analogy to be true, and still has its short-fallings in the way learning and memory work, but then again, philosophy has not had the idea of relating things to data processing machines until recently in history), as even the sensation of "redness" can be translated to a lower code of impulse discharges of a given rate in a given nerve bundle. So in spite of not technically falling into a general language-description, it can fall under an expressible mathematical one. The importance is that there IS a mean of expression of some sort.
Not surprisingly, it also falls in line with synestesia and the three-color biological model of color interpretation by the brain.
Take that, "redness" and "yellowness" problem.
While the language of symbols is definitely ill-suited for anything beyond abstract ideas, the shortfallings of languages doesn't translate to the reasoning that sensations are all distinctly subjective. Given identical brains, in identical initial states (suggesting identical environments, but not necessarily so, for the state would be the nerve impulses and not what it is that stimulates them), giving the same number of action potential energies to the same nerves would give the same sensation. Ultimately, this points quite well to the brain-as-mind's-computer model (which really seems to elegant an analogy to be true, and still has its short-fallings in the way learning and memory work, but then again, philosophy has not had the idea of relating things to data processing machines until recently in history), as even the sensation of "redness" can be translated to a lower code of impulse discharges of a given rate in a given nerve bundle. So in spite of not technically falling into a general language-description, it can fall under an expressible mathematical one. The importance is that there IS a mean of expression of some sort.
Not surprisingly, it also falls in line with synestesia and the three-color biological model of color interpretation by the brain.
Take that, "redness" and "yellowness" problem.