Then why would a person claim to be a p-zombie? — frank

Who claims to be a p-zombie?

Dennett.

Sense data have the properties that perceptually appear to us. — SEP

At best, a sense datum has properties which are introspectively accessible and are part of one's subjective state. In other words, a sense datum has qualia (or is associated with qualia), rather than is qualia — fdrake

Just trying to make sense of your distinction, which seems valid (and appears to fit definition 2 of my own SEP quote on the different uses of "qualia" (above)). The qualia denier seems to have two options as a result: either deny there are any sense data, which seems very unlikely; or deny that sense data have properties, which is to deny a defining characteristic of sense data according to the SEP definition that you quoted.

The qualia denier seems to have two options as a result: either deny there are any sense data, which seems very unlikely; or deny that sense data have properties... — Luke

I don't think this is quite true. One need not deny the existence of sense data properties to deny that calling them qualia is of any use, or to deny that they then exhibit any of the additional properties associated with qualia. The project seems somewhat reminiscent of changing God into an ineffable feeling in order to preserve the notion when clearly it has been twisted out of all recognition from the standard use.

We can already describe quite adequately the associated mental activity which accompanies the reception of sense data. It's called our response. I'm not sure what benefit there is to reifying it to 'qualia', but, given the history of the term, I can see much unnecessary confusion and distraction in doing so.

What exactly is 'pre-philosophical' about images or symbols? — Olivier5

Not meaning it literally:

Symbols? Sentences? Images?
— bongo fury
Of course! Also humor, dreams, ideas and music. You don't have those? — Olivier5

A book literally contains sentences and images. Many societies encourage the view that brains do, too. I would need persuading. I thought you were about to try. But generalising to all of the things that a book can contain only metaphorically only punctures my intuition of the claim.

The qualia denier seems to have two options as a result: either deny there are any sense data, which seems very unlikely; or deny that sense data have properties, which is to deny a defining characteristic of sense data according to the SEP definition that you quoted. — Luke

Third option; which I take to be Dennett's (then we can get back to the thread).

(1) People feel stuff. (Dennett agrees)

Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? Everything real has properties, and since 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... — Dennett

(2) There are theoretical accounts of how people feel stuff. (Dennett agrees)

(3) The concept "qualia" plays a central role in some of those accounts. (Dennett agrees)

(4) Using the concept "qualia" in one of those theoretical accounts in the commonplace ways in which it is used comes along with theoretical and/or intuitive commitments regarding the nature of experience; of how experience/feeling/consciousness/perception is theorised. (Dennett agrees, Quining Qualia is trying to illustrate and render implausible some of those commitments)

(5) Those commitments are inaccurate, false, incoherent or implausible (this is what Dennett's thesis is).

(6) Therefore the existence of qualia (as theorised or intuited) is false or implausible.

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. — Dennett

If we say that someone is an eliminativist about qualia, that will mean they believe that qualia do not exist. Qualia the theoretical concept. That does not have to mean that "People feel stuff" is false, it simply means that the kind of thing qualia tries to refer to does not exist in the manner it is theorised or intuited. See edit for more detail.

The qualia denier seems to have two options as a result: either deny there are any sense data, which seems very unlikely; or deny that sense data have properties, which is to deny a defining characteristic of sense data according to the SEP definition that you quoted. — Luke

In context, the same theoretical move as above could be applied to sense data; denying the existence of sense data is consistent with belief in the claim that "People feel and perceive", it may mean denying that the intended referent of sense data exists in the manner it is theorised to. In the broader context of Dennett's work, this is what I take his Cartesian theater metaphor to target. Taking target at the idea that an appearance is then interacted with by another perceptual/bodily process to present it to/as that person's experience. eg: (A, bad) attributing the quale "red" to a tomato appearance which was seen vs (B, good) saying that the tomato was seen as red.

I'm sure whole books could be written about the distinction between A and B; the ontological status of perceptual features and how they arise in an agent's perceptual relationship with their environment (and objects within it).

If we keep getting stuck by confusing denial of qualia for denial that people feel things at all, we're never going to understand the issue.

Edit: the same theoretical move that I've just applied to qualia and sense data could be applied to the concept of feeling; if it were the case that the theoretical and intuitive commitments regarding "feeling" in our folk psychology/pre-analytical intuitions were inaccurate or misleading, then the same move that yielded "qualia don't exist" would yield "feelings don't exist" (as they are theorised or intuitied in our folk psychology). But you have to keep in mind that it that's quite a lot different from saying people don't "feel things" in any sense, "People feel things" could be false because we wouldn't feel things in the manner allegedly set out in folk psychology, which is providing the meaning of "feel" in "People feel things".

A book literally contains sentences and images. Many societies encourage the view that brains do, too. I would need persuading. I thought you were about to try. But generalising to all of the things that a book can contain only metaphorically only punctures my intuition of the claim. — bongo fury

Brains contain cells. Actual, physical books contain pages. They do not formally contain sentences. At best they can produce and reproduce sentences, which is different.

Even our minds do not exactly 'contain' much. It's all a flux, 'streams of consciouness'. A stream does not 'contain' its water.

Last time I read a serious scientific book about memory (can't remember the reference, amusingly) it pointed that it's much easier to recognize a face than to mentally picture a face by appeal to memory. Therefore, our memory does not store pictures (the book concluded), unlike the memory chips of computers. It seems to store ways to recognise images, but not images themselves. Likewise for colours: we can recognise them alright, but if we close our eyes and try to summon the memory of "burgondy red", all we (I) can get is a faint echo of it, not the vivid "qualia".

The mind is a set of processes. It's not a static space with some stable, dependable 'furniture' in it. I think we can agree here.

But you have to keep in mind that it that's quite a lot different from saying people don't "feel things" in any sense, "People feel things" could be false because we wouldn't feel things in the manner allegedly set out in folk psychology, which is providing the meaning of "feel" in "People feel things". — fdrake

Computers that are equipped with visual, sound, or pressure interfaces can feel things. One could say they have experiences. We imagine that the experiences humans and other animals have go beyond function to include awareness of a quality of being.

If Dennett is cool with this, then I don't follow the point he's hoping to make. Is he saying that when people believe there's some extra unspecified character to experience, that they're wrong? Well, since it wasn't specified, I don't care if it exists or not.

Computers that are equipped with visual, sound, or pressure interfaces call feel things. One could say they have experiences. We imagine that the experiences humans and other animals have go beyond function to include awareness of a quality of being. — frank

AFAIK that's part of his intentional stance idea. Say if you put an expression which always evaluates as true as the terminating-when-false condition which is checked in the iterations of a while loop, it might be harmless to say "the computer thinks it needs to go on forever". It's an explanatory strategy for what the computer is doing, even if the computer strictly speaking does not think.

The question is going to be how similar "thinking" in "I was thinking about you yesterday" when said to a lover is to the (metaphorical) state we ascribe to the computer in "the computer thinks it needs to go on forever". Is one thinking like the other? Is one imputation of thought like the other? Why and how much? - that kind of thing.

Well, since it wasn't specified, I don't care if it exists or not. — frank

If someone has a theory about how something works, its structure, its properties, it's on them to set out the theory. That people do not do this for qualia, or equivocate between the theoretical construct they're using and the fact that people feel things in some sense is shirking the burden of proof. The essay in the OP as precisely an attempt to study these intuitions in order to specify them and draw out consequences. To shift this burden of proof:

I want to shift the burden of proof, so that anyone who wants to appeal to private, subjective properties has to prove first that in so doing they are not making a mistake. — Dennett

If he ends up saying something absurd; maybe it's on him, maybe it's because what he's criticising is nebulous and unspecified in the accounts of its proponents and it's hard work.

Actual, physical books contain pages. They do not formally contain sentences. At best they can produce and reproduce sentences, which is different. — Olivier5

So, after the careless generalising, a strenuous particularizing.

Ok then, take two:

Thoughts are information, written down and processed by neurons.
— Olivier5

Interesting. Symbols? Sentences? Images? — bongo fury

Please elaborate, for the benefit of those for whom sentences would normally (without notice to the contrary) be classes of printed inscription or sounded utterance, and images would be classes of inscription or illumination?

If someone has a theory about how something works, its structure, its properties, it's on them to set out the theory. — fdrake

When Newton presented gravity, he explicitly said that he didn't know what it was. Were we supposed to wait until it was thoroughly explained to adopt the idea?

If he ends up saying something absurd; maybe it's on him, maybe it's because what he's criticising is nebulous and unspecified in the accounts of its proponents and it's hard work. — fdrake

Who are you talking about? Chalmers?

Please elaborate, for the benefit of those for whom sentences would normally (without notice to the contrary) be classes of printed inscription or sounded utterance, and images classes of inscription or illumination? — bongo fury

There are a number of meanings to the word "Book". I am speaking of the following:

A set of pages that have been fastened together inside a cover to be read or written in.

In this sense, a book is a material object, a set of pieces of paper bound together. Now, some of the pages might also contain ink, disposed on the page in such a way that someone trained to decipher these things might translate them ink dots into sentences in, say, modern English. Someone not trained to decipher them will fail to translate them of course. The translation into sentences happens in the mind of the reader, based on the physical ink dots in the book as he sees them. The sentences are therefore coded (written) on the book pages by way of ink dots, and can be decoded, but themselves are linguistic in nature, not material, and therefore they are not technically "contained" in any material book. You could write a sentence in blue ink, in red ink, in large font, in small italic font, in cursive, in stenography, even in bloody Morse code - it'd still be the same sentence; only its material support (the ink dots) will change.

Who are you talking about? Chalmers? — frank

I had the self refutation objections in my head. The other thread's OP link has Strawson explicating a version of it.

(1) Eliminativism towards (class of mental/phenomenal states with theorised properties relative to an account) is an instance of (class of mental/phenomenal states with those theorised properties relative to that account).
(2) Eliminativism is false.

A non-eliminativist using this argument doesn't have to talk about "that account" - their account - in the second bracket at all to try and refute eliminativism, but you do have to to examine the truth of the first premise. If it were the case that the class was empty, then (1) is false. "The second class is empty" would be true when the entities (like qualia) in whatever account do not exist in the manner they are theorised to, which is an eliminativist position regarding the class in question!

Given that this is a widespread refutation attempt; indeed, a philosopher as prominent and otherwise generous as Strawson targets Dennett with a version of it; the suspicions regarding qualia proponents being unwilling to talk about the structure of qualia seem quite well grounded to me. You can also see it on the forum, people who use qualia language to theorise/intuit experience don't pin down the structure of experience they're using or intuiting, they want to refute the eliminativist rather than discuss the structure of experience.

people who use qualia language to theorise/intuit experience don't pin down the structure of experience they're using or intuiting, they want to refute the eliminativist rather than discuss the structure of experience. — fdrake

And likewise, you are not interested in experience either, you just want to refute the non-eliminativists. It's just another battle of the God Wars for you and Dennett. That's boring metaphysics trying to eliminate some other boring metaphysics, and throwing the baby with the bath water for good measure...

And likewise, you are not interested in experience either, you just want to refute the non-eliminativists. It's just another battle of the God Wars for you and Dennett. That's boring metaphysics trying to eliminate some other boring metaphysics, and throwing the baby with the bath water for good measure... — Olivier5

Nah. I'm an eliminativist towards qualia because how they're used seems to me to commit their user to an account of perception which relies upon a perceptual intermediary which bears or instantiates the qualia. That people's intuitions go towards qualia looks to me to derive from treating their experiences in a present at hand manner. Intuitions that treat experience/perception as present at hand resembles Cartesian Theater rather a lot. Appearance-objects-with-properties (sense data) that we experience, qualia being a type of property, and a perceptual intermediary being the object that bears it.

So I'm eliminativist towards qualia because I think that position reflects the phenomenology of experience; I don't think there are appearance-objects-with-properties, so I don't think there are appearance-objects-with-(subjective)-properties.

I'm also hesitant to say "experience", because that starts looking like treating "an experience" - an instance of perceptual relation - as an object rather than as a distributed agent-environment relation; a corpuscle of correlated interactions between a body, its social context and history, and its environment.

I'm also hesitant to say "experience", because that starts looking like treating "an experience" - an instance of perceptual relation - as an object rather than as a distributed agent-environment relation. — fdrake

I didn't understand much of your post but I have no objection to this particular quote. If you don't want to address the human experience(s) in your own personal philosophy, I suppose that's your call but that's no ground to criticize others when they do address experience. Also, science is based on observation, which is a form of human experience last I checked, so I hope you don't do any of that complicated science stuff...

I didn't understand much of that but I have no objection. — Olivier5

Read the links I provided, then. I did bother to reference the post, but I appreciate that it was very dense and relied upon familiarity with the terms. I could not think of a better refutation of your claim that

you are not interested in experience either, — Olivier5

than showing you how interested I am in the structure of experience. Including showing my work. Can we move onto discussing the actual paper now please? And how it deals with the structure of experience?

I had the self refutation objections in my head. The other thread's OP link has Strawson explicating a version of it.

(1) Eliminativism towards (class of mental/phenomenal states with theorised properties relative to an account) is an instance of (class of mental/phenomenal states with those theorised properties relative to that account).
(2) Eliminativism is false. — fdrake

If eliminativism here is the same as behaviorism, then this is correct. I think this is why behaviorism is fairly rare: because it implodes. It has to be qualified (ha) to allow humans the ability to theorize.

If by eliminativism we're just being reductive about qualia, then Strawson is pointing to the question that must have popped into everybody's mind when they first encountered Dennett describing qualia as illusive. How did Dennett not notice that this particular wording would invite Strawson's objection (that an illusion is an example of first person data, or qualia)? I could speculate, but who cares?

For Chalmers, first person data is not something bizarre or special. Neuroscientists deal with it regularly, as Olivier5 pointed out. Whether physicalism needs to grow (as it did when gravity and electromagnetism were introduced) in order to accomodate first person data as an object of inquiry in itself, is debated. Dennett denies that physicalism needs to change because there is no such thing as qualia, or at least he sometimes appears to be saying that.

BTW, arguably, the concept first appeared in Karel Capek's Rossum's Universal Robots, which was Marxist, just to point to some of the cultural background to the question.

If eliminativism here is the same as behaviorism, then this is correct. I think this is why behaviorism is fairly rare: because it implodes. It has to be qualified (ha) to allow humans the ability to theorize. — frank

I don't think it's the same as behaviourism in general.

Analytical or logical behaviorism is a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or environmental interactions. — SEP

If behaviourism is characterised by the claim that there are no internal states of any sort, then in order for a type of eliminativism to be consistent with the negation of behaviourism all it would require is that type of eliminativism was compatible with there are some internal states of some sort.

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind. — SEP

Specifically; it's prima facie consistent to claim that behaviourism is false, but all the common sense/folk psychological entities that we posit in explaining/describing internal states do not actually exist (as they are described/intuited/theorised). In that case, there are internal states, but the ways we describe them are not true verbatim. The ones we use might still be useful fictions, representative summaries etc. Though that's going to depend on precisely how one is an eliminativist. It might also be that there really are internal states associated with the words we use to describe them (like "emotion"), but that the words we use to describe them in their normal use correspond to a collection of internal states with radically different characterisations - rendering the use of the terms in their normal way occlusive and inaccurate. In that kind of scenario, it may be that we really have gotten the internal states conceptualised right in our normal use of the terms for some internal state categories - but not for others. So perhaps one can be an eliminativist towards what's gestured toward by a usual word we use for some category, but not others - like being an eliminativist towards emotion, but not pain.

TL;DR - eliminativism doesn't have to be the claim that "there are no internal states", it might be a claim that "there are no internal states of type X" or that "there are no internal states of type X as we commonly theorise/intuit/refer to them". That's the kind of intuition being pulled on when Dennett wrote about "the taste of cauliflower" in the first example; the taste? There's one? But it's a time and individual varying relation? It varies over the behaviour that promotes the experiences we aggregate later into "the taste of cauliflower"? Look at all this complication, surely there's some work to do in picking it apart...

Can we move onto discussing the actual paper now please? And how it deals with the structure of experience? — fdrake

Okay, you want to expose some particularly interesting section for discussion?

Note: Banno already convinced me to abandon the jargony "qualia" and use the concept of "sensation" instead. But for the sake of reviewing Dennet's use of the concept "qualia", I will make an exception.

eliminativism doesn't have to be the claim that "there are no internal states", — fdrake

Eliminative materialism wouldn't say there are no internal states. It just requires that all such states are of the central nervous system.

Chalmers wouldn't call qualia "internal" because of the notion of the extended mind.

Dennett is a reductionist. He believes all experience reduces to nervous system functioning, so that once we understand how vision functions, for instance, we understand all there is to know about the experience of vision. Qualia proponents deny that and point to Chalmer's p-zombie argument.

BTW, the most fun topic ever is property emergence and emergence of mind. We should do that next.

...by introducing qualia? — Banno

that such a sense is necessary for self preservation, self affirmation and self reproduction, which are characteristics of life. — Olivier5

No one is disputing this. The physical causes are not disputed, but that there is a mental aspect is at question. What is the nature of this.

No one is disputing this. The physical causes are not disputed, but that there is a mental aspect is at question. What is the nature of this. — schopenhauer1

I would aim a bit lower than that. The true nature of things being apparently inaccessible, let's focus on how we perceive mental phenomena, and perhaps how we can explain our perceptions of them.

Back to qualia, then. Whether it's right to claim that qualia do not exist, at least as they are theorised/described intuited, is going to turn on how they are theorised/described/intuited. As I see it, the contribution Quining Qualia makes is to present us with scenarios that bring to light by challenging commonly held intuitions we have about qualia.

How that fits into the above eliminativism argument depends on to what extent intuitions/theories/descriptions using qualia are accurate and elucidatory of the phenomenon in question. Additional context is that the term is at face value rather vague and conflicted; eg it might refer to a property of a subjective experience, the experienced properties of a perceptual state, a retrojected aggregate over experiences ("the taste of cauliflower" being a singular posited quale), a flavour commonality that nevertheless instantiates into tasting-cauliflower experiences despite how taste subjective states depend on the stage of chewing, it might be a property of the subject that is present at all times over the eating of cauliflower, it might be a relation between the subject and the cauliflower that varies with time... All of those metaphysically distinct conceptions might be what someone is referring to by "the taste of cauliflower quale".

"the subjective state" vs "the subjective properties of the state" vs "the relational properties of cauliflower eating insofar as they relate to taste" vs "the time varying subjective state within cauliflower eating events" vs "an aggregate property over time varying subjective states within cauliflower eating events" vs "an aggregate property over people over time varying subjective states within cauliflower eating events" vs "an aggregate property over people over time varying subjective states over cauliflower eating events" ...

It's only obvious if you don't look.

Fair enough. I'm confusing all manner of abstract Forms with their Material supports. So much for my theory of how belief in abstract mental furniture arises from confusing internal and external materials.

It's only obvious if you don't look. — fdrake

Absolutely. It's not called the Hard Problem for nothing.

The true nature of things being apparently inaccessible, let's focus on how we perceive mental phenomena, and perhaps how we can explain our perceptions of them. — Olivier5

But this has been the problem with people like Dennett- it's always switching the hard problem for easy problems. But the heart of the matter is the hard problem. What are mental states, and what are they in relation to physical states? Anything else is just putting a "Do not disturb" sign up and pushing the Cartesian theater to another area of focus.

What are mental states, and what are they in relation to physical states? — schopenhauer1

The problem is that physical states are always reducible to just another mental state. There is nothing necessary about a physical state, it is merely a notion that mind projects upon the raw substance of experience...if we call it "matter", it is the mind doing so.

The true nature of things being apparently inaccessible, let's focus on how we perceive mental phenomena, and perhaps how we can explain our perceptions of them. — Olivier5

This begs the question: whether or not "mental phenomenon" qualifies as an object of perception? Even if we arrive at an adequate answer for how we percieve mental phenomenon, and can explain those perceptions, we would simply be pushing the problem farther down the line. We'd only be able to explain the true nature of our perception of mental states as we percieve it, as an object of perception (as it is for us, and not what it is in itself)...in the end, we get nowhere that hasn't already been gotten.

The problem is that physical states are always reducible to just another mental state. There is nothing necessary about a physical state, it is merely a notion that mind projects upon the raw substance of experience...if we call it "matter", it is the mind doing so. — Merkwurdichliebe

Certainly this is the idealist and pansychist's view of things.