Searching for a good example of what many children learn early in their lives I finally came up with making a paper ship.
Thinking about it, I instantly recognized that I had unlearned how to do it – this nice clip taught me again.
Have fun!
Wann ist eigentlich die beste Zeit, sich Rätseln zu widmen? Ich finde ja eigentlich, dass diese nach der Klausurenphase ist. Aber manchmal hilft einfach aller Lerneifer nicht zu verhindern, den unbesiegbaren Drang nach sinnlosen Knobeleien an Sudokus, Buchstabensalat und Holzwürflen auszuleben.
So auch gestern: Eigentlich wollte ich mich an die Arbeit machen, da gerät mir dummerweise folgendes unter die Nase …
Vier Logiker machen jeweils drei Aussagen:
Quintus: Merlin lügt immer.
Merlin: Aladin lügt öfter, als er die Wahrheit sagt.
Aladin: Merlin sagt immer die Wahrheit.
Merlin: Kevin sagt öfter die Wahrheit, als er lügt.
Kevin: Quintus lügt immer.
Quintus: Aladin sagt öfter die Wahrheit, als er lügt.
Aladin: Kevin lügt immer.
Kevin: Aladin sagt immer die Wahrheit.
Aladin: Quintus sagt öfter die Wahrheit, als er lügt.
Quintus: Kevin sagt immer die Wahrheit.
Kevin: Merlin sagt öfter die Wahrheit, als er lügt.
Merlin: Quintus lügt öfter, als er die Wahrheit sagt.Einer von Ihnen lügt immer, ein anderer sagt immer die Wahrheit. Einer lügt zweimal und sagt dann die Wahrheit, der vierte Logiker sagt zweimal die Wahrheit, lügt aber schließlich im letzten Satz.
- Aber wer tut was?
Auch euch viel Spaß beim Knobeln!
I invite you to participate in a little thought experiment – just spend a few minutes time:
Paul is completely normal human being. Especially his eyesight is completely normal: he needs no glasses, can discriminate colors accurately, is able to perceive depth and contrast etc. Taking a closer look at his visual system, neurologists find out that Paul as a normal retina equipped with rods and cones and even the connections of his photoreceptors are exactly matching the norm: retinal ganglion cells compose the optic nerve leading from the retina via optic chiasm to the contralateral brain hemisphere for the nasal halves of the retinal image (which is the temporal half of the visual field) and to the ipsilateral brain hemisphere for the other half. Paul’s rods and cones are functioning in an orderly fashion, everything is absolutely the way an anatomy book would describe it.
On the other hand, there is Peter. Peter also passes all the eyesight tests, and does not display any difference to Paul with respect to reporting his visual perceptions.
But as neurologists take a closer look at his visual system, they find out that there is a crucial difference between Peter and Paul: Peter also has an optic nerve passing through the optic chiasm in the characteristic way, but his photoreceptors look differently. There are neither rods nor cones, but a single novel kind of structure never seen in any other retina before. Physiological tests reveal that these receptors – isolated – do not respond to color stimulation the way cones do. They rather seem to resemble the response properties of cone cells, i.e. they encode shades of grey and not colors.
However, Peter might just experience a fine grained black and white vision, but he is perfectly able to describe colors, to communicate about them and so on. He is obviously capable of experiencing color vision, although – from a neurologist’s point of view – he is lacking the physiological preconditions.
What does this mean for Peter’s mental states? Does he have the “what is it like”-experience of colors? Does he have qualia?
In my opinion, he has. But it is somehow meaningless. Why would we need to know how Peter’s sensations feel like? We cannot test it anyway…