[fnordlord]

It's embarrassingly silly to say but I've frequently just boiled down the hard question to the question of "where is the experience of the color blue stored in the universe?" Even as a non-dualist, I still haven't found much of an answer that I like. I'm all ears if you've got a book recommendation.

[A_D_E_P_T]

The question presupposes that "the experience of the color blue" is a discrete object that needs a storage location. But that's the dualist picture in disguise. On a functionalist view, blueness isn't stored; it's what certain neural activity constitutively is when you're that system observing that blue.

As an aside, isn't it more weird that violet and purple look indistinguishable despite being physically so different? It's said that this is because our L-cones (red-sensitive) have a secondary sensitivity peak at short wavelengths. So violet light triggers S-cones + a bit of L-cone. Purple light (red + blue) also triggers S-cones + L-cones. Similar activation pattern = same quale. It's all functional/physical.

Read Tom Cuda "Against Neural Chauvinism." Also Daniel Dennett.

[goatlover]

> On a functionalist view, blueness isn't stored; it's what certain neural activity constitutively is when you're that system observing that blue.

Why should there be anything a certain neural activity is when making an observation? This is adding something additional to functionalism. You're just sneaking the hard problem back into the picture without realizing it.

[srean]

What is mysterious to me is why and how chemical reactions in a certain part of my brain create an experience of blue.

Yes some chemical change happened there, but so what.

These are not very unusual chemical reactions. They happen and are happening everywhere. Does all the chemical reactions going on generate an experience to some experiencer?

[qsera]

I think the flaw in your reasoning is the assumption that chemical reaction is causing the sensation of blue.

But imagine if the consciousness and what it senses cannot be separated. So the consciousness sensing blue and the chemical reaction happening in the brain, are just correlated. One did not cause the other.

One can ask where that correlation came from. I think that the such correlations are inherent in such worlds where consciousness is possible.

I think everything that we observe as physical laws, causality etc, are just such correlations.

[srean]

That is an interesting thought.

[fnordlord]

This is where these questions take me. Since the experience is the only thing I can be certain of, I'm less drawn to "everything is physical" answers and more drawn to ideas from phenomenology and Bishop George Berkeley. And since I'm not super religious, I'm not really comfortable with those "answers" either.

[qsera]

>where is the experience of the color blue stored in the universe?

It is not stored anywhere. It is part of the consciousness that experience it. In other words consciousness comes bundled with everything it will ever feel.