If there was memory of the qualia, then its abrupt absence would be noticed. — noAxioms

I think what you have in mind is an incomplete absence of qualia. For instance, the idea of someone losing all five senses at once. Yet, they are blindsighted in all five senses, so they can still navigate the world as before, just without conscious awareness.

But keep two things in mind:

1. Memory is also qualitative. When we remember, we remember images, sounds, feelings. These are just as much qualia as external sensations. It is just that the brain is able to bookkeep these, marking them as internal (schizophrenia might be the failure of this bookkeeping mechanism).

Someone who lost all qualitative awareness would lose the qualitative aspect of memory as well. So, there would be no mismatch, memory (no qualia) would match current situation (no qualia).

2. Feelings are also qualitative. It is not just distress that would be lost, all feelingds would be lost.

No sensations, no feelings, no memory of either of these. If the sim lost qualia, it wouldn't notice a thing.

I am currently away visiting family for holidays, which is why replies are not always prompt. — noAxioms

No worries, happy holidays!

in so far as they are public, we already have 'red" and "sour" to cover that use — Banno

These don't generally refer to qualia. Rather, to public features. We just happen to identify these features by a internal coding system, qualia. How each of our coding systems presents to us is not communicable by language or any other means, as there is no stable referent language can latch onto. — hypericin

I've kind of stayed out of this exchange, but I have to agree here with you. I do not follow any argument that leads to how Banno sees things, and thus I decline to leverage such thinking to support my opinion.

I am currently inclined to agree with Chalmers in that under 'meaning is use', reference to 'my feeling' is relatable to feeling by a similar context, anchoring the meaning.

Dennett repeats Wittgenstein's point, that if two people cannot compare referents, and cannot check criteria, and cannot correct or be corrected, then they are cannot genuinely be said to be “talking about the same thing.” — Banno

But word usage is not about assertions of the referent being the same thing. Most language is pragmatic, and if a Doctor asks me if I'm in pain, nobody suggests he's asking if I'm experiencing his pain, or pain the way he would. I don't buy Dennett's reasoning.

Chalmers thinks he’s appealing to private, introspected items. But every scrap of evidence he uses for “shared structure” comes from public behaviour — Banno

Introspection is valid evidence. Discussion of introspection is presented evidence, which is indeed public.

What most of us do agree is that there is something that it is like to see an apple and smell ammonia. — hypericin

We probably agree that there is something it is like for another human to experience these things, and that the experience is vaguely similar from one human to the next. This might be totally wrong. I know my father's experience of the apple image is somewhat different than my own, that he could not experience red the way I do. As for non-human experience of X, you can assert that there is something it is like for A to experience it, and assert that there isn't something it is like for B to experience it, all at one's own whim. B cannot experience it because B experiencing it in its own way does not lend support to my unbacked belief system.

"The universe is not composed of true statements" is also an indexical — noAxioms

I don't think so. — Banno

In a universe that IS composed of true statements, the statement above would be false (and perhaps nonexistent). That makes it context dependent, and thus an indexical.
It also makes the mistake of implying the existence only one universe, a very idealistic definition being used for ontology. I did say above that almost anybody's definition of 'exists' is an idealistic one. Not being an idealist, I needed to find a definition that was an exception, resulting in my more or less relational view of such things.

- - - - -

I agree with you that relativity - both special and general - taken literally implies 'eternalism'. And, indeed, the existence of time dilation, the limit of the speed of light, black holes, gravitational waves etc corroborate the validity of general relativity. — boundless

Just for reference, light speed is locally c under both relativity and not. Time dilation is a coordinate effect (not real) under relativity (R), but is real under absolutist (A) interpretations.
Light speed has no limit non-locally. I don't know how (A) frames gravitational waves. They nave to exist since they're empirically detectable. Black Holes? Yea, those can only exist under R, so they make a funny sort of private falsification test, sort of like how a test for an afterlife is private.

All this is a nit. Just me spouting my science-forum background.

However, there is other empirical evidence (mostly experiential evidence) that I can't deny that seem to suggest that 'eternalism' is wrong.

Really. They're empirically the same, except for the BH test I mention above.

can you give an example of a 'mathematical truth' that is not based on axioms?

Maybe not. Not enough of a mathematician to think of one without help.

Ok, fine. In which case, however, you're saying that something that isn't physical exists

Not being a realist, that depends heavily on one's definition of 'exists', but I often go with 'relates to', which is a relation with something else, and sure, I think there are relations between entities that are not necessarily physical.

you can't be a physicalist (unless you are using the term 'physicalist' to describe a 'broader' position in which the mental supervenes/reduces/emerges/is dependent on the physical but doesn't exclude the existence of non-physical entities).

If you say so, then no word describes a stance that doesn't assert that final qualification. Maybe there is one, but I'm unaware of it.
A physicalist cannot suggest that the physical supervenes on something more fundamental? I've always used 'materialist' to express that stance.

I do not get the point you and Carroll make. I'll read Carroll's paper. At best it seems to me that it is an objection to the 'plausibility' of MUH rather than a critique of its consistency and/or it being a correct description of reality.

It kills so many more theories that just MUH. There are many standard cosmological interpretations that fail this test. This doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means that they cannot be simultaneously justified and true.

To [those suggesting cherry pie cannot have a physical explanation], I would reply that in the case of 'consciousness' I see properties like qualia, the experience of 'free will' etc that seem obviously harder to be understood in terms of what we know of the 'physical' than in the case of 'cherryness'. — boundless

But we're not talking about consciousness or the experience of this pie. The person is asserting that the pie itself, never experienced, is more than a physical state of matter. How would you respond to this person? What evidence would you supply to counter this person's incredulity of the alternative?

I would also add that this implies that the 'ding an sich' has some kind of intelligibility. Otherwise, we would able to distinguish which model is 'better'.

Better can be assessed in multiple ways: Simpler, or making better predictions. The predictions are pretty similar between the sun rising each day, and the alternative of the Earth spinning. So in this case, 'better' probably comes from simplicity, from the lack of additional inventions to get it to work. Maybe it's not simpler. If Earth spins, then why don't we fall off? Gravity is arguably more complicated than just blaming everything on God, who happens to have an awful lot of stuff to move around each day, all seemingly constrained to predictable paths, without any will being exercised to break the monotony now and then. That's an awful brutally boring job to have your deity have to do forever, like the lowest factory worker.

However, the skeptic wouldn't agree that we can say that NM or GR (or QM for that matter) can give us true knowledge.

Does anybody? I mean, what, true, complete knowledge? There's always more to learn, and always parts what are interpretation dependent. So truth is forever unreachable. Your bit from Bernard seems to convey your agreement with this.


Concerning p-zombie plausibility:

I think what you have in mind is an incomplete absence of qualia. For instance, the idea of someone losing all five senses at once. — hypericin

As the story is typically told, the sensory hardware is still there, as is all the brain hardware. But the experience of those senses is gone, leaving only the automoton physical response to the data, not a response to the experience. Except I find this utterly implausible since my reactions (talking about it say) are directly due to the experience, not to the data. The data does have effect. I jump due to sudden noises, and shiver/sweat in response to temperature. I have no conscious control over that, so it's evidence that there is at least some processing of the incoming data that is more direct, before it gets to the experience part.

So yea, I assert that since so much of it is in response to experience (perhaps all of language), a zombie could not function identically without it. I labeled it a fantasy to suggest otherwise.

1. Memory is also qualitative. When we remember, we remember images, sounds, feelings.

Some of it is. Memorizing the digits of Pi seems pretty thin on those qualities, but the memory of qualia once had? Yea, that's very qualitative. But where is that memory stored?

It is just that the brain is able to bookkeep these, marking them as internal

This seems to suggest that the brain stores them, meaning our simulated guy remembers the qualia, but isn't getting it anymore. And the implausible suggestion is that he'll not behave any differently with that turned off.

Someone who lost all qualitative awareness would lose the qualitative aspect of memory as well.

This comment on the other hand suggests that qualitative memory is stored offsite (not in the brain, or at least not via the physical properties of it. So the loss is not noticed, but any reactions to qualitative experience is still lost. How does one interpret speech (recognize a voice say) with the qualitative experience of that voice gone?

Feelings are also qualitative. It is not just distress that would be lost, all feelingds would be lost.

Agree. Don't agree that the lack of feelings will result in identical behavior compared to somebody with them. The key difference is the implausibility of somebody totally lacking qualia somehow describing feelings never felt, and insisting that the experience it doesn't have cannot be explained physically.

I have on occasion claimed to be a p-zombie (in all seriousness) simply because it's so obvious to somebody who's conscious, and I only used the words (conscious, qualia, feelings) due to imitation of others, not due to actually having the inexplicable thing that I cannot know. The obvious solution to this disconnect is that some of us are zombies and some not. We don't behave the same. What is so clear to you is baffling to me, and we only use the words because everybody else does.

happy holidays!

Thanks, and same to you if it's holidays. One can never tell.

It honestly seems to me that you missed the point. So for example your "Most language is pragmatic, and if a Doctor asks me if I'm in pain, nobody suggests he's asking if I'm experiencing his pain, or pain the way he would" seems to me to be making the same point as Dennett.

Yes, indeed, there need be nothing "the same" between your pain and the doctor's pain, apart from the game of assessing pain level and location and prescribing solutions. We need not have a shared referent. You reaffirming the idea that meaning and successful communication do not require private referential identity.

So if we agree to talk of a qual of coffee - even if here, now - what is it that is being agreed on? The term "the aroma of coffee" perhaps picks out a pattern of behaviour and report, coordinates shared expectations, and is indexical but public. But it does not pick out a thing. We may avoid the hypostatisation.

What we have is not a qual, but the aroma of coffee.

That makes it context dependent, and thus an indexical — noAxioms

It's not just being context-dependent that makes an indexical. The truth value of an indexical changes with who is doing the uttering.

"I am Australian" is true in my mouth, perhaps not in yours. But the truth value of "The universe is not composed of true statements" does not depend directly on who says it in this way.

Think division of responsibility. Different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions. When receiving information from the world, one part of the brain translates that information into a form that can be easily processed and acted upon. Then the executive, the conscious part, uses that translated information to learn and to act. — hypericin

What I mean is, why is the form it's in not the form that it can most easily process and act upon? I've never asked this question of my own view, but certainly should.

All this is a nit. Just me spouting my science-forum background. — noAxioms

I assume that by 'absolutist' you mean theories like the modern versions of Lorentz Ether Theory (LET). There have been attempts to build versions of LET compatible with GR, but my point wasn't about that. To be honest, I'm not really interested in those attempts, which seem to be somewhat 'forced'. Perhaps, 'eternalism' will be shown to be incompatible with quantum gravity, but I am not enough informed on that topic.

I meant that 'eternalism' seems to be in contrast to our experience of change, 'free will' etc. Perhaps those things are illusory, but personally I need more evidence that they are illusory to accept the idea.

Maybe not. Not enough of a mathematician to think of one without help. — noAxioms

Same here. But, anyway, didn't Godel prove that even simple mathematical structures are based on unprovable axioms? In fact, the very impossibility to prove 'everything' (as 'formalists' like Hilbert believed) was seen by Godel himself IIRC as a proof of 'platonism'. After all, if everything was provable by humans, it would make more sense to think that mathematics is purely an invention (not a decisive point, but nevertheless an evidence against 'realist' views).

This doesn't mean they're wrong, it just means that they cannot be simultaneously justified and true. — noAxioms

Ok, perhaps I see more the point now. However, it is isn't a 'fatal' point against MUH.

The person is asserting that the pie itself, never experienced, is more than a physical state of matter. How would you respond to this person? What evidence would you supply to counter this person's incredulity of the alternative? — noAxioms

Yes, I understood in this way your point. I would answer as I answered in my previous post.

Better can be assessed in multiple ways: Simpler, or making better predictions. — noAxioms

Yes, I would add that if 'physical reality' wasn't (at least partially) intelligible, predictions would be impossible. Indeed, IMO if physical reality didn't have an order, it would be quite difficult to explain how could predictions be possible in the first place.

Does anybody? I mean, what, true, complete knowledge? There's always more to learn, and always parts what are interpretation dependent. So truth is forever unreachable. Your bit from Bernard seems to convey your agreement with this. — noAxioms

Yes, I would perhaps say that IMO physical reality is less 'veiled' than D'Espagnat thought. At the same time, however, I also see the 'total undrestanding' of physical reality as unreachable. Still, I do not see this unreachability as evidence against its intelligibility.

IMO the skeptics just go too far. We might see as 'through a glass, darkly' to borrow an expression from St. Paul the Apostle but we are not 'blind'.