QC

We can use words to point to the way out of words, into everything else. Rumi remix: out beyond ideas, there is a field. I'll meet you there?

Are you pessimistic about neuroscience being able to do this definitively in some eventual future? i.e., it giving us a recipe for guaranteeing that when I “say” “Concept”, we can both know that you’re grokking the same thing I am?

(I have read it, and generally agree with the thrust), we might be talking past each other with different definitions of “same”. If I say “capitalism”, this necessarily ignites some constellation of neurons in your mind, informed by things you read, stories you’ve heard,etc ...

...and this pattern is structurally (syntactically) different than the pattern that fires when I say “puppy”. I don’t think it’s meaningless to ask “can I make the pattern of neurons that fires in your brain when I say ‘puppy’ look most similar to mine?”

That's a meaningful question, but I think it's a very different question from the one I think you're actually interested in. "Similar" patterns of neuron firing in our brain might code for very different concepts, due to plasticity and whatever else.

I mean, it depends on how you define “similar”. If “similar” means “feels the same from the inside”, then that’s exactly the question I want to ask. Literally looking the same only works if we have identical brains :P

I still think it's really tricky to nail down what "feels the same" means. Maybe you love puppies and I hate them. That'll probably show up in neural activation. Do we have the "same" concept of puppies then?