Amazing — Olivier5
The illusion is that you perceive the A square as markedly darker than the B square, while in fact they are of the exact same shade of grey... (I actually had to check on MSPaint by sampling each hue, and I can confirm that they are the same)Is it, really? Where, exactly, is the illusion? — Mww
One way of explaining what the program did is: "the program added the natural number 1 to the natural number 2 and computed the result, it then outputted the result 3", but did my computer really add the natural number 1 to the natural number 2? Or was the process actually more like: "fdrake opened up a software environment and wrote in high level code and called it, the computer took that calling instruction and through a laborious process translated the input lines of code into machine code, which caused a bunch of transistors allocated for the task to enter into a specific complex of high and low voltage states, which gets passed up back a complex of circuits into the software environment and the display". If it's the latter, adopting the first description will be an inaccurate approximation that gets even the type of entities wrong; the physical process in the computer is not adding mathematical abstractions together, there aren't even any natural numbers in my computer; but it's a decent functional explanation for a demonstrative purpose. IE, the first is essentially a lie to children, which may suffice for some purposes but certainly not understanding what was actually going on in (in!) my computer. — fdrake
2- Tea tastes like nothing and you are all philosophical zombies which think they're not philosophical zombies. — khaled
Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? 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. Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way. My claim--which can only come into focus as we proceed--is that conscious experience has no properties that are special in any of the ways qualia have been supposed to be special.
The standard reaction to this claim is the complacent acknowledgment that while some people may indeed have succumbed to one confusion or fanaticism or another, one's own appeal to a modest, innocent notion of properties of subjective experience is surely safe. It is just that presumption of innocence I want to overthrow. — Dennett
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. — fdrake
What notion exactly is Dennett trying to attack here? — khaled
"Seeing" is qualia. Though I suspect we're not talking about the same thing. — khaled
I went through that previously in the thread. — fdrake
individuated like we introspect/label them to be by highlighting that those first order properties are contextually variable. — fdrake
There's the issue of if qualia are properties, what are they properties of? — fdrake
All the above are done in the context of distinguishing qualia from functional, behavioural and intentional properties. — fdrake
He's trying to show that common second order properties of qualia are untenable (the list of four things I've brought up). — fdrake
People attack Dennett like he's an eliminativist towards minds, he's not. — fdrake
He sounds like it! — khaled
Everything real has properties, and since I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. — Dennett
Where might I ask? — khaled
Everything real has properties, and since I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. — Dennett
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