But to me, a conscious being, it is clear that after subtracting all these things, you are still left with the phenomenal experience of blue — hypericin
What IS the phenomenal experience of blue? I suspect nothing at all, beyond the distinctions it tokens. — Graeme M
If you were to plop me, a creature evolved in this colorful world, into that one, I would no doubt experience everything as blue. Perhaps that would fade over years. Natives of that world would have no experience nor concept of color, and would be baffled when I tried to communicate this chromatic monotony to them.Let me offer a thought experiment. — Graeme M
That seeming not-required is part of the mystery!Colour as some ineffable deeply personal quality isn't required. — Graeme M
Are you? What IS the phenomenal experience of blue? I suspect nothing at all, beyond the distinctions it tokens. Blue just is what it is for your brain to be in a particular discriminatory state. — Graeme M
The article and thread linked by csalisbury is fascinating. — hypericin
suppose my experience of blue is your experience of red. — hypericin
So if I code up something with an arduino, BASIC, and a color sensor, is that thing experiencing qualia? Seems absurd, no? — hypericin
If you were to plop me, a creature evolved in this colorful world, into that one, I would no doubt experience everything as blue. Perhaps that would fade over years. Natives of that world would have no experience nor concept of color, and would be baffled when I tried to communicate this chromatic monotony to them. — hypericin
Would you say the same thing for pain or pleasure? — Marchesk
Let's say you're driving down a familiar road and you go into autopilot as you day dream. Now, your brain is still discriminating the steering wheel, gas pedal road and anything else relevant for keeping the car on the road. But you're having a conscious experience of imagining something else entirely. How does that work on Dennett's account? — Marchesk
If you are conscious, then where do you draw the line on being conscious? Is your dog conscious? Is it fully, somewhat conscious or not at all? How about a more simple life form? And if you draw somewhere the line between being counscious or not, what are according to you those defining characters to be conscious?I actually felt sorry for him! This sounds exactly like a machine figuring out that this whole consciousness thing was just something it was programmed to espouse. But to me, a conscious being, it is clear that after subtracting all these things, you are still left with the phenomenal experience of blue.
Am I missing something fundamental?
Could Dennett be that confused?
Or, is he a Zombie? Or, as a commenter on youtube put it, a NPC? — hypericin
But my "phenomenal aspect of red" is exactly that which we could say is your phenomenal aspect of blue.There isn't anything that is an experience of red such that we could say it is your blue. It's meaningless... the phenomenal aspect of red... — Graeme M
So if "that's it", and a robot can sort red and blue cards as well as you, must the robot have the same experience?As long as we discriminate, that's it. — Graeme M
Why do you believe this? Why wouldn't your memories of previous phenomenal experience remain intact?If today the phenomenal aspect has a particular quality, then we'd recall all previous examples as being the same — Graeme M
You are equating two things with a verbal equals sign that are entirely separate : "experience of the world", and "concept used to describe your experience". The fact that this distinction seems to elude you makes me suspect that you are, in fact, a p-zombie.Of course you would experience the world as "blue", that is, you'd have a concept of the colour blue that you could use to describe your experience of this world. — Graeme M
Of course not. I'm just an ape pressing buttons which somehow show you symbols representing grunts which I would grunt at you if you were here. Anything can symbolically represent anything else, nothing better than language. But how on earth, given this very crude system, am I supposed to communicate the actual*content* of blue?? All I can do is symbolically represent it. You are asking way too much of abstracted grunts.Can you tell me anything about blue that doesn't depend on using a blue object to describe it? — Graeme M
But my "phenomenal aspect of red" is exactly that which we could say is your phenomenal aspect of blue. — hypericin
So if "that's it", and a robot can sort red and blue cards as well as you, must the robot have the same experience? — hypericin
Why do you believe this? Why wouldn't your memories of previous phenomenal experience remain intact? — hypericin
Of course you would experience the world as "blue", that is, you'd have a concept of the colour blue that you could use to describe your experience of this world.
— Graeme M
You are equating two things with a verbal equals sign that are entirely separate : "experience of the world", and "concept used to describe your experience". The fact that this distinction seems to elude you makes me suspect that you are, in fact, a p-zombie. — hypericin
But how on earth, given this very crude system, am I supposed to communicate the actual*content* of blue?? All I can do is symbolically represent it. You are asking way too much of abstracted grunts. — hypericin
Based on other arguments I've read of his, this seems plausible.Could Dennett be that confused?
Or, is he a Zombie? — hypericin
That would be misleading, as Dennett doesn't believe that.He should have called it "I am not really writing this".... — Pantagruel
This may well be what the a function of what is happening, or the non-experienced facets of what is happening, but it doesn't take away at all from us experiencing them. IOW what you are saying does not contradict the fact that we experience something. It's additional information (you are giving) about what is happening.Qualia are codes for discriminations, they bind up a bunch of useful information about the world such that we can distinguish between internal states. — Graeme M
OK, so we can agree that we both think your dog is conscious, at some level at least.Since consciousness is internal, not observable, I cannot answer that. I can only infer. I think my dog is conscious. But lacking first hand experience, that is all I can say. — hypericin
Or, is he a Zombie? — hypericin
This may well be what the a function of what is happening, or the non-experienced facets of what is happening, but it doesn't take away at all from us experiencing them. IOW what you are saying does not contradict the fact that we experience something. It's additional information (you are giving) about what is happening. — Coben
Returning to the matter of red and blue, red doesn't have a phenomenal quality even though we seem to describe it as such, it's actual property if you will is to codify (stand in for) the discriminatory properties of the brain when "triggered" by electromagnetic radiation of particular wavelengths and intensity. We cannot experience light, all we can experience is the way in which cells behave. — Graeme M
And it's here that an unbridgeable divide opens up between those who are convinced of the hard problem and those who think it isn't a hard problem.
Either one finds the kind of explanation in your post convincing for explaining consciousness, or one finds it lacking. And yet presumably we all have color experiences. — Marchesk
By "not really phenomenal qualities", you seem to mean that they are not qualities of the world. I think most here would agree, they are contrivances of our minds. But nonetheless they are phenomenal in the sense of phenomenalism, and in this sense they are real. They are the elementals of our inner lives.So we all have blue experiences but they aren't really phenomenal qualities, no matter how much we like to say they are. — Graeme M
I actually felt sorry for him! This sounds exactly like a machine figuring out that this whole consciousness thing was just something it was programmed to espouse. — hypericin
Sometimes a psychologist's most assiduous accounts of phenomena of mental imagery have the flavor of tracts by impassioned believers in flying saucers. — Goodman: Sights Unseen
The 'image' and the 'picture in the mind' have vanished; mythical inventions have been beneficially excised. — Goodman: Sights Unseen
After we spend an hour or so at one or another exhibition of abstract painting, everything tends to square off into geometric patches or swirl in circles or weave into textural arabesques, to sharpen into black and white or vibrate with new color consonances and dissonances." — Goodman: Ways of Worldmaking
You might find this old thread interesting : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1308/aphantasia-and-p-zombies/p1 — csalisbury
Here's an account by a man who, at 30 years old, realized that other people could visualize things without seeing them.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/
He never could, and was unaware that anybody else could. He thought that phrases like 'mind's eye,' were figures of speech.
The medical term for this condition is called aphantasia. — The Great Whatever
How our lookings at pictures and our listenings to music inform what we encounter later and elsewhere is integral to them as cognitive. Music can inform perception not only of other sounds but also of the rhythms and patterns of what we see. Such cross-transference of structural properties seems to me a basic and important aspect of learning, not merely a matter for novel experimentation by composers, dancers, and painters. — Goodman: Languages of Art
I am not sure if Dennett's is an anti-representationalist stance. — Graeme M
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