My opinion is that qualia are a basic property of matter, like shape, size, weight, etc., and they arise from complex combinations of superposition in systems of entanglements within entanglements I called coherence fields. This means that colors of the visible spectrum are analogous to the phenomena within our minds: its all extremely complex superposition, hybridized waves or wavicles producing intricate quantum resonances that are images, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings. The following will give you a basic sense for what the model consists in.

In exactly what way consciousness emerged via evolution is a mystery, but we can be fairly certain about what had to obtain in order for it to be possible. Initially, electrical properties in aggregates of tissue such as the brain needed to be robust enough that a stable supervenience of electromagnetic field (EMF) was created by systematic electron fluxing. Quantum effects in molecules of the body are sensitive to trace EMF energy sources, creating a structural complex of relatively thermodynamic mass containing pockets of relatively quantum biochemistry integrated by sustained radiation. EMF/quantum hybridization is likely responsible for our synthetic experience of qualia, how we perceive unfathomably minute and diverse fluctuating in environments as a perpetualized substrate, perturbed by its surroundings but never vanishing while we are awake and lucid, the essence of perceptual “stream of consciousness”. Nonlocal phenomena are ever underlying the macroscopic substance of qualitative consciousness, its EMF properties as well as bulked matter in which nonlocality is partially dampened, and quantum processes in cells interface perception instantiated in bodies with nonlocality of the natural world which is still enigmatic to scientific knowledge. Quantum features of biochemistry have likely been refined evolutionarily so that mechanisms by which relative nonlocality affects organisms, mechanisms of EMF/matter interfacing, mechanisms targeting particular environmental stimuli via functionally tailored pigments along with further classes of molecules and cellular tissues, and mechanisms for translation of stimulus into representational memory all became increasingly coordinated until an arrangement involving what we call ‘intentionality’ emerged, a mind with executive functions of deliberative interpretation and strategizing, beyond mere reflex-centric memory conjoined to stimulus/response. Qualitative consciousness precedes the degree of unification we experience as humanlike awareness, for qualia can exist and perform a functional role in consort with quantum effects and additional gradations of nonlocal reality while an organism is almost entirely lacking the centralized control we would classify as intention.

So basically in this account the brain is a complex cluster of waves that interfere, and these interferences adopt the form of shape, size, mass, weight...and "qualia" or superpositions. If the theory is accurate, qualia aren't an illusion, they're basic to the material world. If any of these concepts are difficult to grasp, I'll be happy to clarify. This has actually been discussed at length already at this forum. The following threads I posted might give you some ideas.

Qualia and Quantum Mechanics
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, The Sequel
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, the Reality Possibly

Wouldn't that be a form of panpsychism?

Wouldn't that be a form of panpsychism? — Marchesk

I'd call it transpsychism in a sense because consciousness or qualitative experience can inhere in more types of matter than organic brains, but qualia are not intrinsically experiential in a way analogous to human phenomenality. The idea is that psychical experience, to the extent we define it as such, is intrinsic to matter, infused into the structure of objects, not generated as a supervenient illusion, abolishing substance duality and the mind/body problem. This does not mean that existence is more animate than inanimate.

It seems about right to me. In view of evolution (including by-products of gene survival traits) being an explanation for pretty much everything about us, I think it reasonable to suspect the same of our experience.

So instead, he suggests that qualia are an illusion. By this, he does not mean the experience of the green leaf itself (or red apple, etc). He just doesn't think the experience has any properties of qualia. It just seems to be that way. — Marchesk

The usage of the word illusion in this context strikes me as strange. What is it an illusion of? If the experience is "real" but doesn't involve any qualia, then the qualia are not an illusion. They're a representation. But that just brings us back to the view Frankish rejects.

So what accounts for the illusion that conscious experience has properties of qualia? Keith suggests that one the one hand there is the perceptual account. But then there is a separate internal monitoring of the perceptual processes that gives rise to the sense of a rich, internal world. — Marchesk

This doesn't seem to solve the issue of how the internal monitoring process constructs the internal world with qualia if no such qualia are present in experience. It would force us to conclude that qualia are a priori properties of the human mind.

And the reason for this illusion is to make ourselves and other humans feel special. The seeming hardness is a feature of the illusion, with the implication being one of survival and ethical considerations. — Marchesk

Isn't this an explanation that could equally be applied to any possible outcome? That is, it merely restates that since all properties of the mind are evolved, qualia must also be evolved. But it doesn't provide any account of how this works.

It seems about right to me. In view of evolution (including by-products of gene survival traits) being an explanation for pretty much everything about us, I think it reasonable to suspect the same of our experience. — Down The Rabbit Hole

The problem is that an explanation for everything is an explanation for nothing. If you can equally explain every outcome, you have zero knowledge. If you look at things from the perspective of evolutionary biology, everything has some kind of evolutionary reasoning. But this only provides you with a plausible explanation given the framing. It doesn't tell you what actually happened.

The problem is that an explanation for everything is an explanation for nothing. If you can equally explain every outcome, you have zero knowledge. If you look at things from the perspective of evolutionary biology, everything has some kind of evolutionary reasoning. But this only provides you with a plausible explanation given the framing. It doesn't tell you what actually happened. — Echarmion

All I mean by the concept of evolution in my quote

In exactly what way consciousness emerged via evolution is a mystery, but we can be fairly certain about what had to obtain in order for it to be possible.

is a convergence of causal vectors we classify as biological. Didn't intend to introduce the baggage of any particular psychological, pious or godless form of that theory.

What I'm suggesting is you'e under an illusion about the nature of the internal world. About what's involved in your having that experience.
— Keith Frankish
...
So what accounts for the illusion that conscious experience has properties of qualia? — Marchesk

Forgive my laziness, but is that what he's saying? I read that as: what you think is going on in the brain is not what's really going on. Chalmers insists there is something to having an experience that is separate from the neurological activity involved in having an experience. This seems to be the illusion to me or, rather, a prejudice. Not that qualia do not exist, but that what we infer from their existence is an illusion. This also seems consistent with what Dennett says: it's not that qualia -- which are familiar, everyday phenomena -- do not exist, but that they are not what we think about them.

This also seems consistent with what Dennett says: it's not that qualia -- which are familiar, everyday phenomena -- do not exist, but that they are not what we think about them. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, except they wouldn't have the properties for us to use the word qualia. We're conscious, just not in the way it seems, I guess. That does raise the question of what it means to be conscious.

The usage of the word illusion in this context strikes me as strange. What is it an illusion of? If the experience is "real" but doesn't involve any qualia, then the qualia are not an illusion. They're a representation. But that just brings us back to the view Frankish rejects. — Echarmion

I think he said in this podcast that perception is representational, but introspection of perception is where it seems like the representation has special properties of qualia. And that's the illusion. But it's a useful one.

This sounds like a metacognition approach.

Isn't this an explanation that could equally be applied to any possible outcome? That is, it merely restates that since all properties of the mind are evolved, qualia must also be evolved. But it doesn't provide any account of how this works. — Echarmion

Yeah, presumably the task is left up to neuroscience.

Yeah, except they wouldn't have the properties for us to use the word qualia. We're conscious, just not in the way it seems, I guess. That does raise the question of what it means to be conscious. — Marchesk

They wouldn't have the extraneous properties, sure. But properties of qualia ought to be no more than those we know we observe. The original definition is suitably vague so as to avoid any illusory qualities:

There are recognizable qualitative characters of the given, which may be repeated in different experiences, and are thus a sort of universals; I call these "qualia." But although such qualia are universals, in the sense of being recognized from one to another experience, they must be distinguished from the properties of objects. Confusion of these two is characteristic of many historical conceptions, as well as of current essence-theories. The quale is directly intuited, given, and is not the subject of any possible error because it is purely subjective. — Clarence Irving Lewis

e.g. red things can be collated across space and time as red things.

Qualia definitions that go well beyond this, such as being the *feeling* of experiencing the colour red, ascribe qualia with additional properties that are probably not real. I am not sure I am ever conscious of the feeling of seeing a red thing. And indeed the point of such definitions is to insist upon an ungraspable component left over when the functional aspect of the mind is understood.

[deleted]

The usage of the word illusion in this context strikes me as strange. What is it an illusion of? If the experience is "real" but doesn't involve any qualia, then the qualia are not an illusion. They're a representation. — Echarmion

We have the illusion of qualia not in the moment of experience, but retrospectively due to our ability to conceptually represent such entities. It's a trick of language, basically; the sort of thing Wittgenstein was on about with his "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.".

Philosophy Bites Podcast

The podcast is only 15 minutes. The two hosts interview Keith Frankish about his position on the hard problem. — Marchesk

I think you meant to link to the podcast here from Oct 11, 2014. The podcast you linked to is on Conscious Thought from Jan 15, 2017 (and is 12 mins long).

The Conscious Thought podcast made perfect sense to me and qualia wasn't mentioned at all. Whereas in the hard problem/qualia podcast, Frankish seems to accept qualia as an apparent phenomena to explain (i.e., which he goes on to say is an illusion), rather than rejecting wholesale the subject/object dualism that gives rise to it. Unlike Frankish, it doesn't seem to me that we experience qualia, so there's nothing to explain (or explain away). Instead, it seems to me that we experience the world, which includes sunsets and red apples and human beings. And those are the things that we seek to explain.

Oh you're right, I did copy the wrong link. I had both open.

Instead, it seems to me that we experience the world, which includes sunsets and red apples and human beings. And those are the things that we seek to explain. — Andrew M

Sunsets and red apples are experienced a particular way because we're human. The physiology doesn't account for why we experience it in terms of colors and other sensations.

Sunsets and red apples are experienced a particular way because we're human. The physiology doesn't account for why we experience it in terms of colors and other sensations. — Marchesk

Don't you imagine the various animals experience in terms of colours and other sensations? Isn't the difference just that, unlike the other animals, we can talk about it, conceive it in terms of mental representations; talk and conceptions which then get reified to appear to us as mental entities we call "qualia"?

I do think many other animals have conscious experiences. I don't know whether our talk and introspection is what makes it seem like a hard problem. It's one possibility to explore. I'm a bit unclear as to the implications.

It only seems to be a problem when we think about it a certain way, entertaining certain assumptions, though, doesn't it? What makes it so certain that those assumptions must be correct? If thinking a certain way seems to produce an insoluble conundrum, then would it not be more parsimonious to simply drop the inherent assumptions that give rise to that way of thinking?

Some people cling to those assumptions because it suits them, because they are emotionally invested, because thinking that way enables them to support imagining a hidden spiritual dimension, reject materialist and/or evolutionary explanations, or whatever; but I don't think you are one of those. I'm familiar with that mode of thinking because I was one of those at least half-heartedly. Am I mistaken?

I don't think it's that simple. I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc. Sure, one can change the philosophical assumptions which lead to the hard problem. Like by rejecting physicalism, embracing Kantianism, panpsychism, Wittgenstein or whatever. But those all have their own issues.

What do you think the assumptions are that lead to the hard problem? Is not the primary idea that experience could not emerge from "brute matter"? Why would that be any more of a problem than the idea that self-organizing life could not emerge from brute matter? In either case, why not? Perhaps it is our conceptions of what experience, life and brute matter are that is the problem. The fact that we cannot exhaustively explain how it happens should not be surprising; we cannot really exhaustively explain much of anything.

Chalmers goes into detail about this, but life can be explained fully in terms of structure and function, but consciousness is different, because our sensations are not the properties of structure and function. It's like saying that color just emerges from neuronal activity. Okay, but how and what does that mean? Is it spooky emergence?

consciousness is different, because our sensations are not the properties of structure and function. It's like saying that color just emerges from neuronal activity. Okay, but how and what does that mean? Is it spooky emergence? — Marchesk

This is nothing more than the usual -of-the-gaps argument: If science were capable of explaining consciousness, it would have already (impossibility of future scientific discovery); Science has not already explained consciousness; Therefore science cannot explain consciousness (and therefore consciousness is magic).

Janus' previous post already deals with your response to it:

What do you think the assumptions are that lead to the hard problem? Is not the primary idea that experience could not emerge from "brute matter"? Why would that be any more of a problem than the idea that self-organizing life could not emerge from brute matter? In either case, why not? Perhaps it is our conceptions of what experience, life and brute matter are that is the problem. The fact that we cannot exhaustively explain how it happens should not be surprising; we cannot really exhaustively explain much of anything. — Janus

:100:

This is nothing more than the usual -of-the-gaps argument: If science were capable of explaining consciousness, it would have already (impossibility of future scientific discovery); Science has not already explained consciousness; Therefore science cannot explain consciousness (and therefore consciousness is magic). — Kenosha Kid

It's not a god-of-the-gaps argument if the difficulty is conceptual. It's more of either something is wrong with physicalism or something is wrong with consciousness. The reason for this could be epistemological, or it could be ontological.

How do the colors, sounds, feels, etc come from the color-less, soundless, feel-less matter? We know about the matter because we experience it with colors, sounds, feels, etc. but our scientific understanding is a necessary abstraction from the particulars of our human experience. So either our abstract understanding is leaving something out, or our particular experiences is not what we think it is. Or there is some way to derive the particulars from the abstract.

Or one can go off in a different metaphysical direction and avoid the hard problem in favor of other difficulties. Philosophy demands some bullet-biting sacrifice from all of us.

the wrong link — Marchesk

Grateful for the reference I needed here:

It's not a god-of-the-gaps argument if the difficulty is conceptual. — Marchesk

But you are not promoting that by saying that "where is the scientific explanation for...?" You are pointing to gaps in knowledge and claiming them for the inexplicable. What I guess you'd like is an ab initio conclusion that consciousness is not amenable to scientific modelling, for which pointing to gaps in knowledge is irrelevant.

but our scientific understanding is a necessary abstraction from the particulars of our human experience — Marchesk

Because the causes of our human experience are not part of that experience.

But then there is a separate internal monitoring of the perceptual processes that gives rise to the sense of a rich, internal world. — Marchesk

This is a an extremely important observation in my opinion but it's probably something that comes out of a reading that's peculiar to me.

Let's, for simplicity, take two of our senses viz. hearing and sight. Current understanding on these sensory systems is that it all boils down to electrical signals traveling along neurons called action potentials. If you were to isolate an auditory nerve (hearing) and a ocular nerve (sight) and observe the action potentials that propagate along them you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, not even the world's most renowned neurologist could. In essence, this means, insofar as our brains are concerned, the perceptual neuronal signals of sight and sound are indistinguishable. Yet, we can identify sounds and sights as separate. At some point in the perception process, our brains can tell the difference between an auditory nerve signal and a visual nerve signal but, as neurology informs us, there's no difference physical difference between the two - they're both action potentials.

Now, it's true that the neurons themselves are dedicated structures in the sense that auditory neurons are sensitive to sound and not light and vice versa for ocular nerves. However, this doesn't solve the problem of how the two perceptions, sound and light, are differentiated because both ultimately end up as action potentials.

As an analogy, imagine two people who speak different languages - one Hindi (ears) and the other English (eyes). Both of them, upon hearing something spoken in their own language translate it into the same language, suppose German, and not only that, into the exact same words in German. So "Karma" in Hindi and "Yellow" in English get translated into the same word, "Herr", in German. How can the receiver of this information (the mind), the information German "Herr", tell if it's "Karma" or "Yellow"? This is inexplicable in physical terms because what's going on physically are the action potentials and one action potential isn't distinguishable from the other at least to my knowledge.

Because the causes of our human experience are not part of that experience — Kenosha Kid

Hmm. I wonder, if this were the case, how could we imagine anything at all. What causes one to experience unicorns and dragons?

And if this were the case then how can we ever say that our experience is about a non-experienced cause? Are you saying that we can only talk about our experiences and not about what caused them? How can we ever talk about things that are not part of the experience, like electrons being waves and how they move through holes?

Are you saying that we can only talk about our experiences and not about what caused them? — Harry Hindu

No, I'm saying that no one is conscious of the causes of our phenomena: we have no knowledge of objects that cause phenomena except indirectly through phenomena; we have no awareness of light lensing through the eyeball and being projected onto the retina; we have no consciousness of outline detection occurring, of images being turned upside down, of colour being whiteshifted, or any of the other processes of the brain that create qualia: the objects of experience and their properties. What we get is, if not an *end* result, a late iteration of a metaview of the data. That is immediacy of qualia.

As @Kenosha Kid and I have already suggested, this supposed unbridgeable gulf of difference consists in our presumptions about science, matter and consciousness, not in the phenomena themselves, but in how we think about them.

For as long as we think that way there will seem to be a chasm we cannot cross; but we don't have to think that way. There is no self-evidence involved in that view, as much as there might seem to be, due to our "bewitchment by means of language", or our emotional investment.

I've listened.

An illusion happens when something is mistaken for something else; the illusion of a magic trick, the illusion of movement in an optical illusion; it appears like one thing but is another.

The notion then is that qualia are an illusion in that they appear one way but are not actually like that.

My objection to qualia is that in so far as they are subject to discussion they are just what we see, taste and feel; and so far as they are of philosophical interest, they are not available for discussion. A close approximation would be someone deciding to call their beetle in a box "Fred". The beetle still drops out of the conversation.

One might understand Frankish as suggesting that consciousness is an illusion. If so, then it appears one way buty is actually another. But I can't see hoe this would work. I can't see how, for example, my pain could be an illusion; what could be mistaken for pain? Perhaps it is just a very strong itch? Then the matter of contention is not the nature of the sensation but the correct word to use - pain or itch.

And don't come along claiming that I disavow qualia and then use them; my beef with qualia is no more than that they are not needed, and that using them leads the discussion astray. I'm happy to talk about sensations, pains, colours and so on.

More generally, it seems that discussions of consciousness fail to take into account the vastly differing experiences we put under that heading. I've often pointed out that the paradigmatic case is the sort of consciousness of which one learns in a first aid course. The discussion should include sleep, dreams, sensations, responses, locked-in syndrome, anesthesia, mental narratives, lack of mental narratives, unconscious reactions, embodied cognition...

SO here's an outline of a quest for you: could you prove that a philosophical zombie - a person who doesn't experience qualia - is not conscious? That is, why shouldn't we extend the definition of consciousness so as to include philosophical zombies? THe answer will be something like that a philosophical zombie is by definition unconscious because they do not experience any qualia. SO would a locked-in person who is separated from their senses and body in such a way that they can neither perceive anything nor respond. Suppose that despite that, they have an internal narrative. Are we going to say they are unconscious? OR are we going to claim that an internal narrative is itself a qual, hence divorcing qualia from perception? If the latter, then isn't what you are describing a homunculus, something that experiences its own thoughts rather than having its own thoughts? Thoughts would then not be constitutive of the self.

My position is that this sort of discussion only serves to further demonstrate the philosophical bankruptcy of qualia.