Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? — Banno

Do you know in which philosophical esay or book the term was introduced, and why? Quite aside from the difficulties you seem to be having in grasping its significance, the fact is that it has become an item of debate. Why, do you think? All a mistake?

Lewis or Pierce? If Lewis, Banno rejects the premise of what he was doing. There is no sense data. The only thing i see saving this, for the purpose of discussion with Banno, is that Lewis expressly noted that the "red" is still an objective physical property, and so "redness" does obtain in that domain.
Many anti-realists posit that it doesn't. I understand the discomfort with that. But Lewis just wanted to discus hte Given, rather than the investigated, part of 'red' (or, whatever). He assesses that you can be wrong, in that a qualia could appear as x, but the object causing it is actually y. This might help move it from "I don't get it" to "here's why that makes no sense".

I've learned that Lewis is generally credited with introducing the term, although Peirce had anticipated it. But the modern problem of qualia took shape in response to the limitations of functionalist and behaviorist theories of mind. The issue isn’t that philosophers want to posit mysterious mental atoms, but that subjective experience resists functional decomposition. This is not an invention or a mistake—it's a response to a real explanatory gap. And one that has been pivotal for the emergent field of consciousness studies, in which David Chalmers has been a principal.

Oh, i fully agree. I'm just putting forth what I think will prevent Banno from interacting with it sufficiently, and where I think that may be able to be overcome.

From the Latin qualis, roughly "what kind?" It apparently goes back to Aristotle, in a different use:

When Aristotle was translated into Latin by the medievals, the values or nodes in the pyramidical structure that are the ingredients of an essence were called ‘qualia’ — Chris Barnham

The very entomology asks what kind of thing an experience is, and so presumes the finite qualitative nature which we might categorise or identify, and which I am questioning.

As always folk claim Pierce as a precedent, but Lewis appears to be the main precursor, although he used it for properties of sense-data themselves, not properties of experiences. It's just an extension of the very old sense-datum muddle, or an attempt to introduce phenomenological analysis into analytic discourse.

The term imports metaphysical commitments about the structure of experience that should be questioned, not assumed.

Almost entirely as expected. A non-engagement.

You have experiences. Either argue against that, or argue that you don't know about them. IF you do know about them, qualia obtain in the very knowing.

Being conscious is something we do, rather than a property; similarly, seeing red is something we do.

If you think of being conscious as an activity, it becomes problematic to ask what it's intrinsic properties are. What are the intrinsic qualitative properties of walking or breathing? Breathing and walking are activities or processes, not entities that have properties in the usual sense. So to ask what their “intrinsic qualitative properties” are risks a category error — as if you were treating walking like a chair, or breathing like a pebble. Properties are generally ascribed to things, and more specifically to substances or states, not to doings.

The responses here are credulous rather than critical.

Nothing here says that we do not have experiences.

The very entomology asks what kind of thing... — Banno

Misleading use of 'thing'. The point about first-person experience is that it is not a thing.

The term imports metaphysical commitments about the structure of experience that should be questioned, not assumed. — Banno

No, it points out premisses that have been suppressed in naturalism.

The precedent for David Chalmer's framing of the question 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness is precisely the question arising as a direct result of scientific naturalism.

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

Chalmers pointed this out - that the modern conception of objective reality excludes the subject to whom it is meaningful. Which is also the basis of Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences.

If you think of being conscious as an activity, — Banno

Hate to point out the obvious, but 'being' is a verb.

The point about first-person experience is that it is not a thing. — Wayfarer

And yet this is the danger of talk of qualia.

being' is a verb — Wayfarer

Well, yes, a gerund, that's the point... a veritable reification.

And yet this is the danger of talk of qualia — Banno

Only to the misinterpretation of it. Anway, enough for now, you won't find the keys under this streetlight.

Credulous.

"We made up the name 'qualia', therefore there must be qual..."

It's just a way to refer to the part of consciousness that isn't covered by functionality.

... and that maybe makes a dozen or so different definitions given here...

"Parts of consciousness"...?

Folk here are almost desperate for qualia to make sense.

Folk here are almost desperate for qualia to make sense. — Banno

It makes sense to me.

It’s not a digital computer, but it’s a device used for calculations. But the rhetorical point, was simply that computers no more intend than does the abacus. — Wayfarer

My point was that an abacus does not process information, and is therefore not a unit in regards to consciousness (according to the idea I'm discussing the last couple weeks). It is only a physical unit to our eyes, and a tool that we use to help us process information.

By the way - I might draw your attention to an AEON article from a few years ago - now a book - The Blind Spot. It is a relevant criticism of the form of panpsychism (of the Harris/Goff variety) that you’re pursuing. — Wayfarer

Well, I am the unlearned one, so I often don't get what most of you are saying. I don't see how that article criticizes what I'm pursuing. I think the physical and experiential are inseparable. The article seems to be saying the same.

I'm interested in how you see this issue. Are you more inclined to grant an agent-like status to the AG program and others of similar sophistication? — J

No, I am not. I think there must be quite a bit more to an entity than just the one kind of mental ability for it to have an agent-like status, regardless of how advanced that ability is. How do we even describe all that is going on in the human brain and body? How much information is being processed within us every second? How many different kinds of information? I don't suspect we could come up with an actual number. And most of it is routed through the brain, which, as it's coordinating all that, trying everything together, is processing an immense amount of its own information.

To get to that point, we, as soon as we're born, learn to manipulate the world around us, giving meaning to everything.

What does the most advanced program do in comparison?

I see that plenty of objections are being ignored. Such is life... — AmadeusD

"There are no dialogues, only mutually exclusive monologues" :P

i would say that thoughts are a sequence of qualia (feels of concepts) that follow in quick succession. — Ulthien

Correct.

On brain scans, we can follow these for a few seconds, and then the brain rests for a few - evaluating "the feel of it" & then it triggers another thought. — Ulthien

Yes, the brain is involved. We, however, should not forget the contribution of the mind, since that is the mind which causes change in the object. It is also influenced by the content of the brain, referred to as experience.

This cycle never ends :) — Ulthien

How do you know? Do you believe that knowledge is endless?

That is how our cybernetics modelling regulator - the brain, works. — Ulthien

That is one of my main struggles right now: How does a human think?

Patanjali in his Yogasutras calls this Cittavrti aka mind-spinning. — Ulthien

I don't understand what that means. I am a substance dualist.

I don't understand what that means. I am a substance dualist. — MoK

well one can be a dualist, but it's better to be a trialist:

matter-brain
energy-EM field of it
mind-reflective inner property of the energy field in conjunction with the neural antennae :)

(you can always READ the Yoga sutras by Patanjali :) )

Yes, the brain is involved. We, however, should not forget the contribution of the mind, since that is the mind which causes change in the object. It is also influenced by the content of the brain, referred to as experience. — MoK

the 3 levels are intricately woven into the same machine. Akin to mobile telephony where we have hardware, air protocols (in the field!) and programs-software :)

This cycle never ends :)
— Ulthien
How do you know? Do you believe that knowledge is endless? — MoK

No, i refer to a cybernetics adaptive machine (the brain) that cycles through sensory stimuli & classifies them via thoughts, then feels qualia to decide next steps/directions (as feeling qualia is the quickest way to "intuitively" decide on these huge plethora if input data). For this adaptive cycling (in order to reach homeostasis aka wished-for-equilibrium) the category of "knowledge" is irrelevant :)

well one can be a dualist, but it's better to be a trialist:

matter-brain
energy-EM field of it
mind-reflective inner property of the energy field in conjunction with the neural antennae :) — Ulthien

Yes, there are more substances involved in creatures that can think. We need three substances for perception and causation, so-called: the brain, the object, and the mind. The mind does not directly perceive neural processes in the brain, but the object. The result of the perception of the object by the mind is what we call experience. Creating a new idea, by the new idea I mean the spark created by the mind, is the main duty of the mind. The idea then translates to thoughts, then the language, and then the result is reported to other minds. I think that the subconscious minds are also involved in our daily activities, including thinking.

the 3 levels are intricately woven into the same machine. Akin to mobile telephony where we have hardware, air protocols (in the field!) and programs-software :) — Ulthien

Yes, three substances are minimal for each individual! There could be more.

The mind does not directly perceive neural processes in the brain, but the object. — MoK

well, the brain builds only a model, a representation of the object "reality".

We have an interface that represents the outer world in the mind, so it is always only subjective.

well, the brain builds only a model, a representation of the object "reality". — Ulthien

I think that the brain is the infrastructure that mainly allows minds to interact with each other. There is also the object between the brain and the mind.

We have an interface that represents the outer world in the mind, so it is always only subjective. — Ulthien

We have the mind. The mind, however, has only direct access to experience.

In a universe only of cats, the cat's pain is qualia, but not his "pain," unless you say pain and "pain" are inseparable, in which case there's no pain and no qualia.

It's just a silly game. We're talking just about talking as if nothing is without words. One would think this reductio would result in abandonment of the theory, but alas, they double down.

There are no private mental states because private mental states can't be confirmed and aren't language and can't be discussed.

Got it.

In a universe only of cats, the cat's pain is qualia, but not his "pain," unless you say pain and "pain" are inseparable, in which case there's no pain and no qualia.

It's just a silly game. — Hanover

This looks interesting, but I can't relate it back to some previous post or comment. Could you expand? What's the pain/"pain" distinction?

This looks interesting, but I can't relate it back to some previous post or comment. Could you expand? What's the pain/"pain" distinction? — J

Cats have no language (thus "in a universe only of cats"), the cat would still have pain regardless of whether anyone could talk about it ("the cat's pain is qualia"), but he would not have "pain" (in quotes, indicating it is a word), but he also wouldn't have pain (without quotes) if you say "pain" and pain are inseperable (meaning you can't discuss pain without language; it makes no sense to do that), which would lead us to the conclusion there's no pain and no qualia (that is the conclusion: you can't discuss something without language).

It's just a silly game (a language game).

This is just linguistic philosophy. It says nothing of the cat's internal state. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's that we can't discuss it. It's beyond the language game.

I say it's silly because of course the cat has an internal state of pain that is worthy of consideration without language. It's metaphysically real and it is subject to discussion.

h

Cats have no language (thus "in a universe only of cats"), the cat would still have pain regardless of whether anyone could talk about it ("the cat's pain is qualia"), but he would not have "pain" (in quotes, indicating it is a word), but he also wouldn't have pain (without quotes) if you say "pain" and pain are inseperable (meaning you can't discuss pain without language; it makes no sense to do that), which would lead us to the conclusion there's no pain and no qualia (that is the conclusion: you can't discuss something without language).

It's just a silly game (a language game).

This is just linguistic philosophy. It says nothing of the cat's internal state. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's that we can't discuss it. It's beyond the language game.

I say it's silly because of course the cat has an internal state of pain that is worthy of consideration without language. It's metaphysically real and it is subject to discussion. — Hanover

But consider a way to deal with this that is not so silly. The answer to the question, what is the nature of pain? is answered in language, or there is no answer at all, and this puts pain outside of language, but this outside is not conceivable, because even the term 'outside' belongs to language. I assume this is already made clear. So even to speak of a cat's world of pain but no "pain" you are still talking nonsense for there is no "out" of "pain". All things are "in" the totality of finite possiblities of predication.

The virtue of this is in the rigorous insistence that things be pinned in language to make sense, and there really is no "otherwise" to this. The moment the the thing is thought at all, it belongs to a totality.

So what is the solution to this absurd game where the world just falls out of existence because it cannot be spoken (and recall that here the young Wittgenstein confesses talking nonsense)? One must reconceive the essence of language and its concepts and the nature pf possibilities. In short, language is a totality, is finite, but this finitude is not closed, but open to the world, and world is allowed to stand "outside" of language as long as language is conceived as an interpretative openness (gelassenheit, to borrow a term) that becomes manifest when inquiry (the question, that piety of thought) assaults, if you will, fixity, dogma, finitude. Consider the cat and move into the deconstruction of the cat's pain: Pain means what? and now language comes pouring forth ideas about biology, the central nervous system, or condemnation or affirmation of the judgment about the pain, and so on, and finally the strange move to acknowledge the "badness" of the pain in the analytic of ethical embeddedness, and talk about the contingencies of bad things and good things, bad couches and good shoes and how these refer to qualities these have, and this moves to what is desirable and not, and now one pulls back and unterstands the nature of the language game: contingency: Things are bound to other meanings for their meaning.

That is until contingencies run out, and one faces the impossible understanding that pain exceeds (superfluity, as Sartre put it) what language can say.

The reconceiving of the nature of language as an openness, rather than a closed finitude, brings into language terms many in philosophy do not approve of. Terms like transcendence and metaphysics. What they do not see is how, frankly, imbecilic analytic philosophy has become in its attempt to close systems of thought to only what is clear and well delimited. This is NOT what our existence IS, and so they live in an ontological and epistemological dream world that insists that, e.g., ethical issues are only about judgments about what is ethical, ignoring the value basis for ethics because value as such is a metavalue issue.

The world IS a metaworld always already.

Thanks, Hanover, I see your point now, and agree with it. We don't even need to involve cats here; a human infant will do as well.

The answer to the question, what is the nature of pain? is answered in language, or there is no answer at all, and this puts pain outside of language, but this outside is not conceivable, because even the term 'outside' belongs to language. I assume this is already made clear. — Astrophel

Not so clear to me. Is this the "absurd game" you're looking for a solution to? Or do you endorse this viewpoint?

It seems to me that the absurdity is evident. An "outside of language" is not conceivable because "outside" is a word? Pain is surely outside of language, as is just about everything else we experience. Whether we must mediate these experiences through language is a separate question, the answer to which will vary depending on which experiences. Pain, I'm guessing, is pretty language-free.

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? If a qual is the taste of milk here, now, why not just talk of the taste of milk here, now? — Banno

We can and do talk of the milk here and now in various contexts and metaphorical extensions, and ironically, and on and on; but what happens when the question is asked philosophically and one wants to know about the nature of an empirical encounter that is presupposed by all of this talk? One moves then into another language context, the study of the prepositional questions that no one but philosophers pay attention to. Such is the nature of philosophy.

Dennett, you will note in all of these "intuition pumps," makes the attempt to remove qualia from meaningful talk by reducing qualia to contextual affairs of meaning making, in which a quale is precisely not accessible, by definition. Such a move makes qualia easy prey, but consider: anything can be undone once recontextualized out of its native contextuality! Just read Derrida. Okay, you don't want to read Derrida. But I can draw up my own "pumps" for the science that is implicit in Dennett's every move toward affirmation. To begin with, I would ask, simply, when science encounters the DNA molecule or the rays of light from a distant start, does it take into account at all the perceptual act that constitutes the observation that "gathers" information? I mean, you follow the primitive thinking that moves, in the presuppostional physical analysis of light perception, from electromagnetic spectrum to object event in the brain, how is it possible, not physically possible but logically possible, for that out there to get into a brain? Here you will find Dennett simply puts the brakes on inquiry, and it is not, certainly, that philosophy has nothing to say about this, but that Dennett has nothing to say about philosophy.

And there are many other such pumps that can be drawn up that reveal stars and geological formations and microbiology all, in their philosophical analysis, are reducible to indeterminacies.

Dennett is essentially arguing that, if we just forget about all those pesky philosophical intrusions upon the way HE wants to world to be, it all turns out rosy. Alas, this is not the world at the basic level of analysis. Science is not philosophy, not even remotely, I would argue.

The reconceiving of the nature of language as an openness, rather than a closed finitude, brings into language terms many in philosophy do not approve of. — Astrophel

I will say that if there is no private language, then what Wittgenstein states related to the limits of language follows. And this should be obvious as you think about it. All things within the private mental state (i.e. qualia) are necessarily off limits because the antecedent of the conditional is that "there is no private language." And so that's where the challenge has to be made, which is to attack the enterprise of private versus public language (if that's your mission).

So what is qualia to Wittgenstein? It is the predictable behavior that surrounds the use of that term, just like any other term. I say "ouch" to pain, so we now know what pain is. But to be clear, "pain" is a word. We don't speak of mental states.

If I say "I'm experiencing qualia," qualia is that thing I say when I perhaps express confusion at my state or I simply mean to say that I'm having a non-descript mental state, not to be confused with the actual mental state. That is "I'm feeling qualia" is known by how I use it. Mostly it's a term used in philosophy forums when other words like "consciousnessess," "Wittgenstein," "mental objects," "silence" and other sorts of words get used.

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? If a qual is the taste of milk here, now, why not just talk of the taste of milk here, now? — Banno

Two reasons: The Wittgensteinian one and the non-Wittgensteinian one.

The Wittgensteinian one: Words have varying uses and they are rarely truly synonomous. A quale has a particularized use, not one that you would expect, for instance, a child to use ("Mama, I need a milk quale in my mental constitution"). That term is used in philosophical contexts to reference limitations of language and considerations as to whether private language might exist. It is also used as an example by its opponents as a superfluous descriptor that ought be subject to elimination. (Note the use of "use" over and over).

The non-Wittgensteinian one: It is the referent to internal feelings, like pain and to representations of reality, as in, it is the conscious experience of the light wave that emits from my computer screen. It references the metaphysical. It is something not necessarily rejected by Wittgensteinian thought as non-existent, but instead as a conversation that cannot take place within a language game because it refers to non-linguistic entities, creating a category mistake by speaking about that which can't be spoken about (or so the argument goes). That is, a quale doesn't get the respect to be told it does not exist. It is told it makes no sense.

My thought after thinking too much about this is that Wittgenstein says truly and completely nothing about metaphysics. Not to overly summarize, but all he seems to be saying is that non-linguistic things cannot be spoken about. That is, if I have an internal language that sorts my internal thoughts, that is my private language, and I have no reason to share it because you won't know what it means. If you do know what it means, it's obviously not private. We're just talking about what we can't talk about. A language no one speaks is hardly a language at all.