Why would similar brain structuring mean it provides a first-person experience but with different qualia? — Harry Hindu

Because we don't brain structures for sonar perception. That's why Nagel chose bats. He could have also gone with whales and dolphins, which would have been even better, since they're smarter and have something akin to a language.

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

But what if the bat experiences something else that isnt color or sound when using sonar?

It seems to me that you are being inconsistent in your assumptions. You already assumed that the bat has first person experiences and experiences colors and sounds, but then you want to question whether the bat experience is the world similarly to humans?

Because we don't brain structures for sonar perception. — Marchesk

Doesn't the theory of evolution by natural selection show us that are brain structures evolved from previous brain structures like the kind that the bat has?

But what the bat experiences something else that isnt color or sound when using sonar? — Harry Hindu

That's the point.

It seems to me that you are being inconsistent in your assumptions. You already assumed that the bat has first person experiences and experiences colors and sounds, but then you want to question whether the bat experience is the world similarly to humans? — Harry Hindu

I don't know whether any of that is true. The point Nagel was making is there is a gap in our understanding, because it would require us to be bats to know. Therefore, subjectivity is something additional to objectivity. Our objective descriptions of the world are leaving something out. Which shouldn't be a surprise, because we have to abstract the subjective out from experience to arrive at objective descriptions.

Now if bat neuroscience determined that bats used the same structures that we do correlating to color experience for sonar, then we could answer the question. But if they don't, we don't have a means of knowing.

Doesn't the theory of evolution by natural selection show us that are brain structures evolved from previous brain structures like the kind that that has. — Harry Hindu

Sure, but how long ago did we split off form a common ancestor with bats? If bats aren't exotic enough, what about squid perception when it comes to the feeling in their tentacles? What's it feel like to have 8 tentacles with suckers?

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. — Marchesk

Then the purpose is to understand the nature of conscious experience. Unfortunately philosophy doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to solving difficult problems. That is the domain of science. Philosophers can keep asking questions until we are blue in the face, but we have to wait for science to catch up to the questions philosophy asks, or at least determines that they are incoherent questions.

But what the bat experiences something else that isnt color or sound when using sonar?
— Harry Hindu

That's the point. — Marchesk

Exactly. That's why we should be using the term, "qualia" since we don't know that the bat has experiences of color or sound.

What's it feel like to have 8 tentacles with suckers? — Marchesk

I really don't see how questions like this help us get at the nature of conscious experience.

nfortunately philosophy doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to solving difficult problems. That is the domain of science — Harry Hindu

If science can solve such questions, sure. Until then, they remain philosophical.

Exactly. That's the why we should be using the term, "qualia" since we don't know that the bat has experiences of color or sound. — Harry Hindu

I try to avoid qualia because it has controversial properties, and will be used by critics to dismiss the argument.

I really don't see how questions like this help us get at the nature of conscious experience. — Harry Hindu

That it's subjective

If science can solve such questions, sure. Until then, they remain philosophical. — Marchesk

They're just questions to me. It doesn't matter whether they are philosophical or not. They are all eventually solved by science, and philosophy should keep up with science in order to stay valid. In other words, they both one and the same and should be working together, not separately.

I try to avoid qualia because it has controversial properties, and will be used by critics to dismiss the argument. — Marchesk

What is controversial about "qualia" but not about "color"?

That it's subjective — Marchesk

Well, this is a philosophy discussion, as people like to point out, so discuss how it is useful to you.

Here are some articles that explains how bat brains are similar to human brains:
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-human-brain.html

http://www.brainblogger.com/2018/08/23/echolocation-in-humans-and-other-animals-is-it-as-good-as-vision/

It seems to me that science is already trying to tackle this problem but the "I'm a philosopher, not a scientist" group are ignorant of this, hence the absence of the science in this discussion (until now). All knowledge must be integrated.

Because we don't brain structures for sonar perception. — Marchesk

What is the brain structure for first person experience to say that both the human and bat have it?

They are all eventually solved by science, — Harry Hindu

You're a time traveller?

In other words, they both one and the same and should be working together, not separately. — Harry Hindu

So philosophy should just be science? But philosophy asks broader questions and questions that science doesn't know how to address. Some questions like how to live are not scientific questions.

What is the brain structure for first person experience? — Harry Hindu

My guess would be those structures that handle sensory data and integrate them into a perception in addition to the ones for memory, imagination, dreams, thoughts and any kind of experience. There's likely a lot of overlap there.

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. — Janus

I'm willing to grant, at least for the sake of argument, that the bogey in question does act exactly like a human, according to genuine human observers. Along these lines, my point is basically a rehearsal of the physicalist's maxim: No difference without a physical difference. If it acts just the same, and it's made just the same, then it is just the same, and would be conscious like the genuine article -- would be an instance of the genuine article, and no zombie at all. The fact that we -- with our poor knowledge of the relevant empirical facts -- can imagine things otherwise seems no help at all in this matter.

Kick away the assumption I've granted, and I'll agree with you. If the zombie is an honest reporter, then it will report that there is no phenomenal character to its experience, and that it can hardly fathom what such talk amounts to. In these regions of its discourse, the zombie's behavior will differ from ordinary human behavior.

Of course the extraordinary burdens of our tortuous philosophical tradition may lead otherwise ordinary human beings to speak like zombies in this regard. Yet another example of human discourse and belief led astray by rational imagination.

They are all eventually solved by science, — Harry Hindu

You're a time traveller? — Marchesk

No. My statement is based upon the fact that science has a better track record at solving difficult problems than any other method of investigating reality.

So philosophy should just be science? But philosophy asks broader questions and questions that science doesn't know how to address. Some questions like how to live are not scientific questions. — Marchesk

You seem to think that every philosophical question ever asked is coherent enough for, or worthy of, an explanation at all.

Has philosophy been able to answer the question about how people should live? If not, and its not something that science can answer then maybe it's an invalid question in the first place.

My guess would be those structures that handle sensory data and integrate them into a perception in addition to the ones for memory, imagination, dreams, thoughts and any kind of experience. There's likely a lot of overlap there. — Marchesk

Then maybe the entire brain and the rest of the nervous system works together to create the first person experience - which supplies that extended feeling of being in a body with tactile sensations extending from the head where the brain is. In a sense, your mind is what it is like to be your nervous system.

If indirect realism is the case then the brains that we experience may not actually be what is out there. The brains that we experience could possibly be models of the mental processes that you claim science can't get at. Brains are how our minds model other minds. It is brains and neurons that science studies - which is the mental model of other minds.

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? — Harry Hindu

We know, first off, that brain structure isn't identical from individual to individual, so that could easily lead to different subjective experiences. But it also seems to be the case from third-person reports that we don't all experience the same things the same ways, via different aesthetic and gustatory tastes, for example, different impressions of the same sensory phenomena, etc.

What would be the difference between an illusion of consciousness and consciousness, or an illusion of an experience of color, etc. and just an experience of color?

It's not at all clear what the heck the distinction would be. — Terrapin Station

Lets just think about the Redness of the color Red. If you are Experiencing Redness or if you are having an Illusion of Redness, it is still Redness that you are Experiencing. The Illusion still gives you an Experience of Redness. The question is: What is that Redness in the first place regardless of if you want to call it an Illusion or not. Think about Redness as a thing in itself. Redness is a Conscious Phenomenon that is in a whole Category of Phenomena that Science cannot deal with yet. So Redness itself is the thing we need to think more Deeply about. Thinking more Deeply about Redness brings up the 800lb Gorilla in the room called the Conscious Mind.

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.? — Terrapin Station

So Quning Qualia quote 1:

"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, 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."

Quote 2:

(in relation to Coffee taste quale intuition pump)
"It seems easy enough, then, to dream up empirical tests that would tend to confirm Chase and Sanborn's different tales, but if passing such tests could support their authority (that is to say, their reliability), failing the tests would have to undermine it. The price you pay for the possibility of empirically confirming your assertions is the outside chance of being discredited. The friends of qualia are prepared, today, to pay that price, but perhaps only because they haven't reckoned how the bargain they have struck will subvert the concept they want to defend."

It seems in quote 1 he is arguing against a specific kind of conscious experience. The second quote seems too suspiciously like the change blindness videos which he showed to philosophers that I believe that's what he is referring to.

Lets just think about the Redness of the color Red. If you are Experiencing Redness or if you are having an Illusion of Redness, it is still Redness that you are Experiencing. The Illusion still gives you an Experience of Redness. — SteveKlinko

Exactly.

The question is: What is that Redness in the first place regardless of if you want to call it an Illusion or not. — SteveKlinko

I have views about that, but I think it's going off topic for this thread (although maybe we'd rather change the topic, since it doesn't seem like anyone is of the opinion that at least the language that Dennett, Frankish, etc. use in the claims they make has merit).

but these properties are so unlike the properties traditionally imputed to consciousness — Forgottenticket

That was one of my suggestions earlier in the thread: "another possible charitable interpretation is that he's simply denying a view of what consciousness is, while saying that consciousness is really something else instead, but it's not clear just what the view is that he's denying, or just who would hold the view in question/just how universal that view would be."

As I said earlier in that same post: "No one is claiming anything even remotely similar to 'there are no optical (or other similar sensory) illusions.'"

but it's not clear just what the view is that he's denying — Terrapin Station

The closest to definition he comes is here which he describes as fourfold.

"Qualia are: "(1) ineffable (2) intrinsic (3) private (4) directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness"

The experiments are less about illusion and more supposed to show the defenders of qualia are failing to meet that definition.

The experiments are less about illusion and more supposed to show the defenders of qualia are failing to meet that definition. — Forgottenticket

Yes, but Dennett has other arguments where it becomes clear he is arguing that consciousness is an illusion. We don't really experience pain in a subjective sense, because that raises a hard problem. It has to be a trick of the brain.

Yes, but Dennett has other arguments where it becomes clear he is arguing that consciousness is an illusion. — Marchesk

When he says illusion in recent years, he literally means user illusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_illusion

It's difficult to unpack a lot of what Dennett says. Searle once said it took him a while to get what he was driving at when reading one of his essays.

If I remember I can only perceive through my 5 senses, then yes, when I take a bite of an apple, its an illusion, in that I now know I am not perceiving some infinite amount of information outside my 5 senses. In addition, whatever information my conscious mind leaves out (which is a lot) that too contributes to the illusion.

It.'s a question of communication. The two minds communicate (interface) with each other. The are independent of each other, to a degree. The problems we have, generally lie within the communication of the two.

The closest to definition he comes is here which he describes as fourfold.

"Qualia are: "(1) ineffable (2) intrinsic (3) private (4) directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness"

The experiments are less about illusion and more supposed to show the defenders of qualia are failing to meet that definition. — Forgottenticket

But he's doing nothing to show that qualia aren't ineffable, intrinsic, private or directly or immediately apprehensible to consciousness. Rambling through a bunch of optical illusions certainly doesn't accomplish that.

When he says illusion in recent years, he literally user illusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_illusion — Forgottenticket

"According to this picture, our experience of the world is not immediate, as all sensation requires processing time. It follows that our conscious experience is less a perfect reflection of what is occurring, and more a simulation produced unconsciously by the brain. "

Actually, that doesn't follow at all. The only thing that follows from "our experience of the world is not immediate" is itself: our experience of the world is not immediate.

"my consciousness is an illusion" can only mean that my stimulus-responses aren't publicly understood.

If society concludes that my judgement of an object's color is wrong, it only means that my behavioral reaction towards the object isn't inferentially useful for society.

Supposing Dennett tricks you in a change blindness experiment, whereby you are provoked to gasp
"I could swear that I was talking to the same person!". Your statement at this point says nothing about your original experience. Rather, you are merely reinterpreting your original expression of your experience as being inconsistent with your present inclinations.

None of the opinions I have tomorrow about today, can refute my current opinions about today. Because tomorrow isn't today. And it is only through a post-hoc reinterpretation of yesterdays judgments, that we can say yesterdays judgments about today are wrong. For today didn't exist yesterday.

I'm with Galen Strawson.

"What is the silliest claim ever made? The competition is fierce, but I think the answer is easy. Some people have denied the existence of consciousness: conscious experience, the subjective character of experience, the “what-it-is-like” of experience. Next to this denial—I’ll call it “the Denial”—every known religious belief is only a little less sensible than the belief that grass is green."
— Galen Strawson

No difference.

To quote Galen Strawson again:

"When it comes to experience, you can’t open up the is/seems
gap. Descartes makes the point. To suggest, as Dennett seems to, that the apparently sensory
aspects of phenomenology (say) are in some sense illusory because they aren’t the product
of sensory mechanisms in the way we suppose, but are somehow generated by processes of
judgment or belief, is just to put forward a surprising hypothesis about part of the mechanism
of this rich seeming. It is in no way to put in question its existence or reality. Whatever the
process by which the seeming arises, the end result of the process is, as Dennett agrees, at
least this: that it seems as if one is having a phenomenally rich experience of (in his
example) green-golden sunlight, Vivaldi violins, and so on. And if there is this seeming,
then, once again, there just is phenomenology.
— Galen Strawson

As always, Galen Strawson nails it beautifully.

To suggest, as Dennett seems to, that the apparently sensory
aspects of phenomenology (say) are in some sense illusory because they aren’t the product
of sensory mechanisms in the way we suppose, — luckswallowsall

This isn't contra you or what Strawson are saying, but it's difficult to believe that Dennett might actually be saying that people are effectively claiming that there are no such things as optical illusions.

that it seems as if one is having a phenomenally rich experience of (in his example) green-golden sunlight, Vivaldi violins, and so on. And if there is this seeming, then, once again, there just is phenomenology. — Galen Strawson

Exactly this! Notice that it doesn't require any sort of interpretation as to the nature of the phenomenological, it just is our experience. And whatever mechanism neuroscience reveals behind it doesn't change the fact that it is our experience.

I feel pain, I see color, I hear sound, doesn't matter whether all the properties of qualia are coherent or whether we even talk using those terms. It doesn't matter whether one buys any of the intuition-pumps supporting the hard problem. What matters is that we have these experiences, and those experiences aren't the objective facts. Experiences of color, pain, etc. are something additional.

We have experiences and we have descriptions of the world. The descriptions are derived from experience. That's epistemology. Those experiences include the colors, sounds, smells, tastes, feels and proprioception as we interact with the world. That's how we know anything.