Dennett is attacking the notion/idea of Qualia as (1) ineffable (2) intrinsic (3) private (4) directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness, and he's doing it on several fronts. He's explicitly not denying the reality of consciousness, or that consciousness has properties. He's just denying that consciousness has those aforementioned properties.

from the beginning of the paper...

I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. I grant moreover that each person's states of consciousness have properties in virtue of which those states have the experiential content that they do. That is to say, whenever someone experiences something as being one way rather than another, this is true in virtue of some property of something happening in them at the time, but these properties are so unlike the properties traditionally imputed to consciousness that it would be grossly misleading to call any of them the long-sought qualia. Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way. My claim--which can only come into focus as we proceed--is that conscious experience has no properties that are special in any of the ways qualia have been supposed to be special...

Moreover, he then goes on to further sharpen his focus...

My claim, then, is not just that the various technical or theoretical concepts of qualia are vague or equivocal, but that the source concept, the "pretheoretical" notion of which the former are presumed to be refinements, is so thoroughly confused that even if we undertook to salvage some "lowest common denominator" from the theoreticians' proposals, any acceptable version would have to be so radically unlike the ill-formed notions that are commonly appealed to that it would be tactically obtuse--not to say Pickwickian--to cling to the term. Far better, tactically, to declare that there simply are no qualia at all.

So, here he talks about the source concept of Qualia, noting the "pretheoretical" condition, which - it seems to me at least - must be met if we are to even attempt to attribute Qualia or conscious experience to language less creatures, or language users who've yet to have the mastery required to talk about conscious experience as a subject matter in it's own right. So, the properties of ineffability, intrinsicality, privacy, and direct or immediate apprehensibility in consciousness are supposed to be further refinements for the criterion of what counts as pre-theoretical.

So, I'm asking any of the proponents of Qualia...

What meets these standards? Better yet what could?

I do not understand it as an answer to your exchange either.

Visual perception of red apples does not guarantee conscious experience of red apples.

Seems to me that that follows from what has suggested.

"The process" of conscious experience...

Perfect!

What does that consist of?

The apple isn't always going to taste the same to everyone. — Marchesk

Without the apple, there is no apple taste for anything or anyone, and yet you wish to claim that the taste of apples is in the perceiver. Yeah...

No.

I don’t know; how does an apple taste to you (or to anyone else)? Can you show me how it tastes to you?What reason is there to assume that how it tastes to you will be identical to how it tastes to me? — Luke

An apple tastes precisely and exactly just like an apple... to all apple eaters. That's how...

If an apple has a taste, then there is a way it tastes. Am I Englishing wrong? — Luke

"A taste"...

There is no experience of qualia beyond the language game of talking about the use of "qualia".

Full circle...

What does "qualia" pick out to the exclusion of all else?

:clap:

Great work down there!!!

There is no sense in which the notion that "the quali could be different" could be meaningful. It cannot have a role in a language game.
— Banno

What cannot have a role in the language game? Qualia? I thought it was the subject of this discussion.

With regards to intuition pump #3, you know what is being indicated by "we experience entirely different subjective colors", don't you? I assume you must, since you asserted in your previous post that we can't "ever determine that".

I take it that you know how pain feels and how the colour red looks to you, even though it is not from your own case that the words "pain" or "red" get their meaning. What is "how pain feels to you" or "how red looks to you" - an illusion? Meaningless gibberish? Can't we talk about how red looks to a colour-blind person or to someone with cerebral achromatopsia? Surely the private language argument excludes something (whatever it may be) from providing the basis for linguistic meaning. — Luke

"Qualia" is the name of all that?

Why 'waste my vote' on Biden when he cannot win my resident state (Georgia)? — 180 Proof

:wink:

I feel that morals are grounded in ethics, — Brett

The distinction between morals and ethics is ill-conceived. They are both one in the same thing.

Are we as a society moving away from morality to ideology?

Are morality and ideology different.

Is the categorical imperative an ideological concept? — Brett

One cannot move away from what counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour, for that standard directly influences one's own thought, belief, and actions, both deliberate and not. All things moral are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and behavior. Ideology is not always.

Are you ever going to explain what you're talking about? What are you picking out to the exclusion of all else with "conscious sensation"?

The green tea leaves?

Your being a pain in my ass?

Either you can explain what you're referring to when you use "conscious sensations" or you cannot. It's not my job to fill in your blanks. I do not use such language. I'm aware of "conscious sensations" as an utterly inadequate metacognitive notion borne of a gross understanding of thought and belief, and thus conscious experience.

What is it like to have synesthesia? Some people will see number symbols and letters shaded or tinged with color. — Marchesk

:brow:

Why ask if you already know?

You don't shiver conscious sensations? — Marchesk

I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc. — Marchesk

What conscious sensations?

...

Good advice.




Weird that you would say something not yet said. I'm reading the discussion. So far, I've seen no coherent line of inquiry.

No, it's not the notion of categorical imperative I'm discussing.

I'll go back and read...

:up:

Could be fun.

What case? Sorry, want to be sure we're talking about the same scenario... Set it out for me, if you would...

I suggest you re-think this a bit... seriously. You've made several errors here.

You're arguing against The Golden Rule, not the CI. They are not one in the same. They do not mean the same thing to everybody. Some people realize that there's good reason for the two different names! Two different referents. Not really synonyms either.

...conscious sensations of color, sound... — Marchesk

:smirk:

. I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc. — Marchesk

What better reason to throw such empty notions and/or language use aside?

:brow:

I disagree with the semiotic distinction between syntax and semantics when it comes to meaning, but other than that..
— creativesoul

I'm not sure what you mean. — apokrisis

No biggie. I'm stoked to see the genuine agreement between our views regarding conscious experience(consciousness).

Gay men like being fucked.

Straight men don't.

Straight women get fucked.

Gay women get fucked only with devices.

I am sorry to have been forced to be so vulgar. — god must be atheist

...and wrong too!

Not all...

"What if everyone acted like that?"

"If everyone acted like that, would the world be a better place?"




Such questions foster helping, cultivating, encouraging, and developing goodwill towards others. They are easily understood, easily taught, and can be put to immediate good use at an early age.

The categorical imperative, in its simplest expression, says a bible quote, "Do unto others as you wish to be done unto you". — god must be atheist

No it doesn't.

...Consciousness - in that view - is simply what it is like to be in a meaningful and intentional semiotic modelling relation with the world... — apokrisis

Sounds about right to me. Generally I mean. I disagree with the semiotic distinction between syntax and semantics when it comes to meaning, but other than that... Yeah, that sounds about right.

Conscious experience is meaningful to the creature having it.

Good points.

...a requirement of a proper definition of consciousness such that explaining consciousness is actually explaining something is that we can identify it in something that has it that is not ourselves... — Kenosha Kid

Agreed.

Hard to find something if you do not know what you're looking for.

By 'definition' the hard problem arises. The framework is the problem.

Correlations drawn between color and other things are not so much caused by color so much as they are made possible by color. Color is one basic elemental constituent of all conscious experience of color... that of red/redness notwithstanding.
— creativesoul

I don't see these as exclusive. — Kenosha Kid

Color and conscious experience thereof? Think about the elemental constituents. Think about the existential dependency.

Apples are not the cause of apple pies. They are an elemental part thereof. An elemental constituent. A necessary precondition. An existential pre-requisite. Color is no more the cause of conscious experience thereof, than apples are of apple pies.

By having a different, frequency-dependent mapping between light and perceived colour, we have multiple colours to distinguish and colour itself emerges from that distinction.

What does this add to our understanding of conscious experience of color?

There are multiple colors to distinguish between and the biological machinery necessary for doing so, prior to distinguishing between colors. Color doesn't emerge from that distinction. Color is an elemental part thereof. Color allows it to happen in the exact same way that all of the other elements of conscious experience of color allow it to happen. They are the necessary ingredients.

Crust, filling, topping...

Apples allow apple pies to be made. Colors allow correlations between colors and other things to be made(drawn).

If we saw in high-contrast black and white, such that any light below a certain threshold frequency appeared to us black and any light above this threshold appeared the same intensity of white, we would have a single colour of sorts (white) but no differentiation: it is either present or absent. We could not distinguish between a nice purple berry and a dangerous red one, and colour as a linguistic concept certainly wouldn't exist. I'm not sure it would make sense to say we have an experience of colour in this case: we have an experience of light above that threshold. — Kenosha Kid

This portion seems agreeable enough. I mean, that sounds about right, to me. If that were the case, we certainly would not be capable of having conscious experience of color. In fact, I would say that rendering eliminates sight altogether.

Some language less creatures can learn that fire hurts when touched. That does not require language.
— creativesoul

That's because it's not language. — Wayfarer

:brow:

Some language less creatures can learn that fire hurts when touched because learning that fire hurts when touched is a process that does not always include language use.

Bacteria can learn. It's basic to any living organism to be able to respond to stimuli. That's what I mean when I refer to 'stimulus and response' - it describes a huge gamut of behaviour, even human behaviour to a point. But language depends on abstraction and on reason. (I don't see why the notion of 'reason' is fraught, either, although I don't know if I want to argue the case.) — Wayfarer

I agree that stimulus/response describes a kind of behaviour, and there are many examples thereof, including some human behaviour. I disagree with the implication that stimulus/response alone is adequate for learning, and that learning is basic to any living organism as a result of stimulus/response. There's a gap between stimulus/response and learning that needs bridged.

Not all stimulus/response counts as learning. Motion detectors count. Fire alarms count. Smoke detectors count. Surely, we're not saying that those are capable of having conscious experience, or learning, are we?

Stimulus/response is autonomous. Learning begins that way as well. However, learning as a conscious experience requires more than just stimulus/response capabilities.

Well put.

The hard problem arises as a result of positing an ontological division between one set of features and the other. That is, a solution becomes impossible in principle because it has been defined that way. — Andrew M

Seems that way to me as well. Dennett also pointed it out.

Andrew M is arguing that perspective is fundamental to knowing - which I agree with. — Wayfarer

I've seen very little, if anything, that Andrew has argued here that strikes me as obviously mistaken. Andrew also seems to be skirting around, or nearly touching upon what I call existential dependency and elemental constituency. Unfortunately, he seems to be working from a dichotomy of sorts that is itself inadequate. Perhaps the physical/mental, or physical/ non-physical, or material/immaterial? I'm not sure, however, none of those is capable of taking proper account of that which consists of and is existentially dependent upon both. All conscious experience is of that sort of existential/elemental variety, for it all consists of thought and belief, and all thought and belief consists of and is existentially dependent upon physical and 'mental', material and immaterial, internal and external, physical and non-physical, etc...

Not only human children have the capacity to acquire language. What I'm saying is that language use alone is inadequate for reason, as well as unnecessary. In fact, the very notion of reason is fraught by being based upon a gross misunderstanding of thought and belief.

Some language less creatures can learn that fire hurts when touched. That does not require language, nor metacognition, but it does require basic rudimentary thought and belief which amounts to recognizing and/or attributing causality. That is most certainly a conscious experience of touching fire. Deliberately avoiding fire thereafter seems rational by my lights...

The problem with all this talk of consciousness and the easy and hard problem are the notions of consciousness at work.

You seem to want to require metacognition, which is the most complex sort of conscious experience known to man, and it comes after simple linguistically informed consciousness and language less consciousness. Entertaining a perspective requires first having one and the ability to think about it as a subject matter in and of itself. Of course only humans can do such a thing, that we know of, for doing so is a process that requires complex language use replete with the ability to talk about one's own 'mental' ongoings... and others'.

If it seems hard to explain how consciousness 'pops into existence', perhaps it's because it doesn't. The framework being used to take account of that which exists in it's entirety prior to our awareness(the first two varieties of conscious experience) is inadequate for doing so as a result of conflating the different complexity levels of conscious experience...

That's the way it seems to me.