whether man discovers or creates his knowledge of the world (perhaps the hard question). — Merkwurdichliebe

Actually, the 'hard question of consciousness', which is relevant to this thread, is

exactly on the point of whether subjectivity is real or an illusion. — Marchesk

The other questions are very interesting, but a different topic.

What does not noticing that have to do with qualia? — Terrapin Station

It fits more into a behavioral, functionalist epistemology. The focus is on its use in a given behavior but not the individual bundle of "quales" it is made out of. (So the person might know they are looking at a museum but not notice its furniture has been changed around).
The perception experiments are supposed to persuade people to think what gives the better explanation for consciousness.

It fits more into a behavioral, functionalist epistemology. — Forgottenticket

Which seems to be starting from an assumption that there aren't qualia, or at least that there aren't subjective experiences qua subjective experiences that are worth talking about. But that approach isn't going to do anything but preach to the choir. It's not addressing the objections that it's "posing" itself as if it's addressing.

How are your imaginings, dreams and inner dialog subjective if I can refer to them with language and use them as explanations for your behavior that I percieve? — Harry Hindu

They're mental things done by the brain. If we use the term "subjective" to refer to mental phenomena, then they're subjective by definition. The definition just suggested in no way hinges on reference, whether any reference is possible, whether we have explanations for anything, whether you can perceive something, etc.

How is that any different than talking about atoms as an explanation for the behavior of matter that I perceive? — Harry Hindu

The difference is that those atoms aren't part of a material system that amounts to mental phenomena.

What makes us think that there is a what it is like for a bat, but not ask the same question of a computer robot with sensory systems? — Harry Hindu

We know that consciousness arises given certain sorts of materials in certain sorts of relationships/structures, when it undergoes certain sorts of processes. We don't know if it's possible for consciousness to arise in other sorts of materials, structures, etc. So it's better to start with fewer unknowns.

The thing is we know that we experience. — Janus

Ok, but what does it mean to experience? Can you be something (in the way Nagel is asking what is like to be something) without experiences? Can you be something that has no subjectivity? It seems to me that in order to be something in any case is that you exist in an objective way that others can talk about if they had the right information, or made the right inferences based on the information that they have.

Does Nagel believe that what it is like to be a bat exhausts everything it is to be a bat including the non-neurological parts of the body that include the stomach, intestines, blood and feces? If not, then he's really not asking what it's like to be a bat. He's asking what it's like to be a specific part of the bat, no?

The difference is that those atoms aren't part of a material system that amounts to mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station

You said mental things are done by the brain. What if the atoms we were referring to make up the neurons in your brain? Isnt electricity a necessary component for the brain to do mental things?

Does Nagel believe that what it is like to be a bat exhausts everything it is to be a bat including the non- nerological parts of the body that include the stomach, intestines, blood and feces? If not, then he's really not asking what it's like to be a bat. He's asking what it's like to be a specific part of the bat, no? — Harry Hindu

He's asking what the experience of using sonar is. Is it accompanied with something like color or sound? The reason for choosing a bat is because it has a sensory modality we lack. It's akin to being born blind and then learning that other people see color, whatever that means for a person blind from birth.

Right, computers don't have neurological structures, and that's why we have little reason to seriously consider the possibility that they might experience anything in the kind of way that we think we and other animals do. — Janus

But they might perform the same functions that brain structures do one day. So then it's a question of whether functionalism or information processing is enough to generate/emerge/supervene experiences. Thus the question of mind-uploading and consciousness (Greg Egan's Permutation City, San Junipero Black Mirror Episode), or replacing your neurons one by one with a silicon version to see whether consciousness fades out or remains (A Chalmers favorite).

Would those things that we don't experience thanks to the limitations of our sensory organs be considered subjective, too? In other words, are you saying that the information that is missing from our experience of the world is subjective and everything else is objective? — Harry Hindu

No, not unless panpsychism is true. The things we can't perceive that we learn about through science are described in objective terms.

The goal is to dissolve the hard problem without just handwaving it away or giving into some form of dualism. But taken illusionism to its logical conclusion has serious ramifications for knowledge. When I perceive an apple, I'm not just aware of the apple's color or its taste, I'm also aware of it's shape and weight. Some qualities of human experience are the basis for science. But if color and taste are illusions, what reason would we have for supposing that shape and weight are not? After-all, we know about apples by experiencing them via our sensations of color, taste, etc. — Marchesk

I'm not sure you have drawn a relevant "logical conclusion": I expect that being an "illusionist" about the putative phenomenon of conscious experience does not entail being an "illusionist" about apples, sensorimotor systems, and perception.

Of course not, but that's what I think the logical conclusion is if you say colors, sounds, etc. are illusions, since that's how we know about apples and everything else.

Maybe you can formulate the p-zombie argument for epistemology?

It seems to me that the meaning of 'illusion' in this context is not so much 'it doesn't exist' as, 'it's not what it seems', in much the same way as the phantom limb pain an amputee may experience is illusory - it's a real pain experience, but is not what it seems to be (a pain in a limb). Similarly, the illusion of consciousness is that it is not what it seems; i.e. it feels like a consistent, unitary, continuous, agent self, when it really isn't.

In the case of colour, sometimes called a 'secondary quality', the 'illusion' is that objects don't themselves have colour, they reflect various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that we use to construct the experience of colour, but the wavelengths are only a guideline - we apply various transforms, such as colour constancy, to make our experience coherent.

I can only make sense of Dennett's denial of consciousness in these terms; I have similar difficulty with his compatibilist defence of moral responsibility....

Of course not, but that's what I think the logical conclusion is if you say colors, sounds, etc. are illusions, since that's how we know about apples and everything else. — Marchesk

I expect most eliminativists or illusionists about the phenomenal character of consciousness will insist the path from perception to perceptual object remains open. They won't deny the existence of intermediate perceptual objects like light, sound, and odor, but only aim to characterize such phenomena in maximally objective terms -- terms that typically embrace the perceptual object construed as a physical system, and the perceiving object, construed as a physical or information-processing system in touch with the perceptual object by way of sensory contacts, while denying that there is a genuine "phenomenal character" or "subjective character" to perception.

Maybe you can formulate the p-zombie argument for epistemology? — Marchesk

I take it by the phrase "philosophical zombie", you mean a creature exactly like a human being in every physical detail, that behaves exactly like a conscious human being, but that somehow lacks sentience, or the phenomenal character of conscious experience, or something along these lines. Is that about right?


I'm not convinced this is a coherent notion.

You said mental things are done by the brain. What if the atoms we were referring to make up the neurons in your brain? — Harry Hindu

If you're talking about brains functioning in mental ways, sure. But contextually you didn't seem to be talking about that.

No, not unless panpsychism is true. The things we can't perceive that we learn about through science are described in objective terms. — Marchesk

It seems to me that even if panpsychism were true, we would still be describing how the world is in objective terms - just different objective terms.

He's asking what the experience of using sonar is. Is it accompanied with something like color or sound? The reason for choosing a bat is because it has a sensory modality we lack. It's akin to being born blind and then learning that other people see color, whatever that means for a person blind from birth. — Marchesk

Then the question Nagel is asking is more concerened about whether or not different senses produce different qualia, not whether or not there is a 1st person perspective of qualia?

https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/illusionism.pdf — Marchesk

These are representations in us that contribute to our cognitive talents without being for us.(In this regard they are no different from the representations of blood sugar level or vitamin deficiency that modulate our digestive systems with-out engaging cerebral cortex at all.)
-Dennett

This is a curious quote from that essay. He's pretty much stating that the "higher" levels of biology are real beyond the way we interpret and think about stuff.

But that approach isn't going to do anything but preach to the choir. — Terrapin Station

There isn't really any other way he can present empirical evidence for his theory that the brain is just a big parallel processing machine with the right kind of information being copied from place to place. It's more or less saying, this is what the world will seem like if I am right.

There isn't really any other way he can present empirical evidence for his theory that the brain is just a big parallel processing machine with the right kind of information being copied from place to place. — Forgottenticket

Okay, but again, in the "what does that have to do with" department, what does that have to do with saying that consciousness is an illusion, with denying qualia, with denying the incorrigibility of subjective experience qua subjective experience, etc.?

A theory that brains work like "big parallel processing machines" is fine. It's just that it has nothing to do with the claims Dennett wants to make about subjective experience.

Right, but then he uses this to argue like Keith Frankish that subjectivity is an illusion. — Marchesk

Dennett's definition of consciousness is purely objective: functional, behavioral or neurophysiological with no additional experiential properties or stuff to go along with it. The colors, sounds, feels, are a trick of the brain. — Marchesk

Dennett's objection is to reflexive ontologizing of naive psychological notions of subjectivity. In the linked essay he gives a quote of Searle (also cited by Frankish) whom he holds guilty of just such a practice: "where consciousness is concerned the existence of the appearance is the reality."

Now, being skeptical of first appearances may sound like a sound principle at first blush, but when you think about it, we hardly ever practice such skepticism, and seem none the worse for it. When it seems right to be skeptical is when first appearances suggest something totally out of the ordinary. And for a naturalist like Dennett, that is just the case with how the likes of Chalmers treat consciousness. Their ontologizing of "qualia" and other half-digested items of folk psychology seem very much like magic ("real" magic, as opposed to stage magic). And not just because of their spookiness, but because philosophically, they are nothing but lazy, magical pseudo-explanations.

Yes, he wants explanations with some meat on their bones, not just fancy names for stuff we don't understand.

I wonder which "empiricist dilemmas" you have in mind.

"Might one day" being the salient phrase here.

Does Nagel believe that what it is like to be a bat exhausts everything it is to be a bat including the non-neurological parts of the body that include the stomach, intestines, blood and feces? If not, then he's really not asking what it's like to be a bat. He's asking what it's like to be a specific part of the bat, no? — Harry Hindu

He's asking what it's like to be the bat for the bat. To the degree that the bat is not aware of the "stomach, intestines, blood and faeces" then those elements of what it is to be a bat will not take part in what it is like to be the bat, even though they will be part of the conditions that give rise to what it is like to be the bat.

Qualia is first person, but I prefer to talk in terms of color, sound, etc.

We don’t have a description for sonar experiences, nor do we have a way of gaining them from science. That’s Nagels point.

We can avoid talk of qualia and consciousness and still arrive at the same problem.

Which is how to account for our experience of colors, sounds, tastes, smells and feels characteristic of perception, memory, dreams, imagination in terms of the sciences. Dennett and Frankish think these experiences are illusions. We discriminate color, but we don't experience it. Color is a magic show.

Charmers is a naturalist also. He doesn’t think experience has a supernatural quality. For him, color, pain, etc. are not an illusion.

But I prefer Nagel's formulation because it gets at the heart of the objective/subjective split, which is that science removes the colors, feels, etc. to arrive at an abstracted, objective understanding of the world.

I take it by the phrase "philosophical zombie", you mean a creature exactly like a human being in every physical detail, that behaves exactly like a conscious human being, but that somehow lacks sentience, or the phenomenal character of conscious experience, or something along these lines. Is that about right?


I'm not convinced this is a coherent notion. — Cabbage Farmer

Nor am I. A p-zombie could not act exactly like a conscious human being because it is by definition not conscious. Even if consciousness were an illusion, we act in many of the ways we do, and say many of the things we do, because we think of ourselves as being conscious, and the p-zombie could not have such a self-reflexive self-understanding.

I take it by the phrase "philosophical zombie", you mean a creature exactly like a human being in every physical detail, that behaves exactly like a conscious human being, but that somehow lacks sentience, or the phenomenal character of conscious experience, or something along these lines. Is that about right? — Cabbage Farmer

Yes, that's what saying consciousness is an illusion amounts to.

Even if consciousness were an illusion, we act in many of the ways we do, and say many of the things we do, because we think of ourselves as being conscious, and the p-zombie could not have such a self-reflexive self-understanding. — Janus

Agreed. This is my problem with the p-zombie argument. But I listened to a recent podcast with Chalmers as the guest, and he doubled down on this. Yes, his zombie twin argues that he's conscious, and yes, there has to be some mechanistic explanation for why the p-zombie makes that argument. Which would also be the same mechanistic reason for us, which is where I jump off the p-zombie bandwagon.

Might one day" being the salient phrase here. — Janus

Yeah, I'm a bit skeptical of mind uploading, but we might get general purpose AI, which then can join this debate. Will be interesting, if that happens. Particularly if they decide to troll us.

Qualia is first person, but I prefer to talk in terms of color, sound, etc. — Marchesk

Then it is already implied that the bat has first person experiences so that you can then go about wondering what it is like to have sonar.

We don’t have a description for sonar experiences, nor do we have a way of gaining them from science. That’s Nagels point. — Marchesk

How would it be useful to have a description for sonar experiences? What purpose would the description serve?

Do you think bats are capable of intentional deception where they can fool others about the contents of their first person experiences with their behavior? If their behavior is all instinctive and it seems to me that their behavior is a direct indication of there first person experience. It would be more useful to know what they know not what form their knowledge takes.

How would it be useful to have a description for sonar experiences? What purpose would the description serve? — Harry Hindu

Useful? Purpose?

This is a philosophical discussion about the nature of conscious experience. It's not about whether being able to know sonar experiences would be useful.

If comparing the similarities between animal brains and human brains and their structures is an indication that these brains share the qualities of subjectivity then why would we not also assume that these same brains experience subjectivity the same way with the same qualia? Why would similar brain structuring mean it provides a first-person experience but with different qualia?