That it seems there are colored images is the what it’s like for humans to see. — Marchesk
It seems to me that the advocates of qualia have entirely failed to address the criticism in the article. — Banno
they do demonstrably exist as something stable and predictable, if defined as "the way things look to us." — Olivier5
Read the thread... please try to understand the points being made. The trick is to get out of your denial mode of thinking, to open your mind to new ideas. You can do it.Read the text. — Isaac
Nothing is added to the description — Banno
Read the text...please, and then quote from it a section where you think Dennett's contradiction of the above fails and explain why — Isaac
His description of the “properties of qualia” are not how people use them usually. — khaled
When people say qualia are private and accessible they mean that they are immediately apparent to them and only them. What he disproved was “I can tell exactly what goes wrong if I wake up one day and sugar tastes different”. That is not a contrapositive statement nor can I tell how it’s even related to the two properties he’s trying to disprove. — khaled
I think that everyone writing about qualia today would agree that there are all these possibilities for Chase and Sanborn.
There is a strong temptation, I have found, to respond to my claims in this paper more or less as follows: "But after all is said and done, there is still something I know in a special way: I know how it is with me right now." But if absolutely nothing follows from this presumed knowledge--nothing, for instance, that would shed any light on the different psychological claims that might be true of Chase or Sanborn--what is the point of asserting that one has it? Perhaps people just want to reaffirm their sense of proprietorship over their own conscious states.
Logical constructs out of judgments must be viewed as akin to theorists' fictions, and the friends of qualia want the existence of a particular quale in any particular case to be an empirical fact in good standing, not a theorist's useful interpretive fiction, else it will not loom as a challenge to functionalism or materialism or third-person, objective science.
How are you assessing how people use them usually, just anecdotally, or do you have some sources? — Isaac
That's the trivial part, and not even part of his argument, Dennett says — Isaac
The argument is
a)
There is a strong temptation, I have found, to respond to my claims in this paper more or less as follows: "But after all is said and done, there is still something I know in a special way: I know how it is with me right now." But if absolutely nothing follows from this presumed knowledge--nothing, for instance, that would shed any light on the different psychological claims that might be true of Chase or Sanborn--what is the point of asserting that one has it? Perhaps people just want to reaffirm their sense of proprietorship over their own conscious states. — Isaac
Intuition pumps 8 through to 12 then show the increasing problem with treating qualia this way - namely that there is no way of distinguishing the production of 'qualia' from the response to 'qualia', thus demonstrating that our 'qualia' themselves are not actually accessible at all. At best we could infer them, but if we did so we would be no better (worse in fact) than a third party.
It should be pretty obvious how to productively engage in a reading group thread. A combination of text exegesis, contextualising that argument in their broader work - refutation and critique after demonstrating understanding. Refutation and critique in response to demonstrations of understanding.
You don't have to just agree with the humourless nuts p-zombie man, it would be preferable if you engaged with his arguments. — fdrake
Go and read his text, and try and summarize what it says. I predict you won't be able to. — Olivier5
That's the trivial part, and not even part of his argument, Dennett says — Isaac
Then why did he spend the first 5/6 intuition pumps on it? — khaled
In section 2, I will use the first two intuition pumps to focus attention on the traditional notion. It will be the burden of the rest of the paper in to convince you that these two pumps, for all their effectiveness, mislead us and should be discarded. In section 3, the next four intuition pumps create and refine a "paradox" lurking in the tradition. This is not a formal paradox, but only a very powerful argument pitted against some almost irresistibly attractive ideas.
What do you mean? The purpose of the paper is clearly NOT to argue that this strong temptation exists. How is what you quoted a premise in his argument? “People usually respond with x” therefore what? — khaled
if absolutely nothing follows from this presumed knowledge--nothing, for instance, that would shed any light on the different psychological claims that might be true of Chase or Sanborn--what is the point of asserting that one has it?
You probably mean the bit about how no knowledge follows about the psychological states of the two. And to that I reply: So what? That doesn’t make the concept meaningless or useless. — khaled
No knowledge about what happens in your computer follows from knowledge of the algorithm of the program being run. — khaled
Just as the INTENT when talking about Qualia is NOT to explain what processes cause it. — khaled
Dennett proves that (again), we cannot tell if our experiences are changed due to a change in memory or due to a change in the actual Qualia. — khaled
Again, “No theory will be able to tell how Chase’s experience was changed” does NOT in any way disprove “That chase is tasting X is an empirical fact”. And once again, they’re not even related statements. To disprove the first he must find a situation where Chase literally cannot tell whether or not he is tasting coffee and no one else can tell either. — khaled
Dennett's aim(I'm guessing) was to use a physicalist framework to effectively explain all that quale and qualia are claimed to be the only explanations for, and in doing so show that there is nothing ineffable, intrinsic, private, or directly apprehensible about the properties of conscious experience. — creativesoul
. If you agree with Dennett here (that the concept doesn't help in this psychological manner) then good — Isaac
move on to the next paragraph and see if you also agree with his dismissal of the next use. It's like I'm teaching you how to read a paper here. — Isaac
If I know the algorithm causes an output to, say, an Ethernet card — Isaac
are we reading the same section here — Isaac
. in intuition pump #8: the gradual post-operative recovery, that we have somehow "surgically inverted" Chase's taste bud connections in the standard imaginary way: post-operatively, sugar tastes salty, salt tastes sour, etc. But suppose further-- and this is as realistic a supposition as its denial--that Chase has subsequently compensated--as revealed by his behavior. He now says that the sugary substance we place on his tongue is sweet, and no longer favors gravy on his ice cream. Let us suppose the compensation is so thorough that on all behavioral and verbal tests his performance is indistinguishable from that of normal subjects--and from his own pre-surgical performance.
Why would anyone be trying to prove anything about tasting? — Isaac
Dennett is not trying to prove that people can't taste things — Isaac
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. — Quining Qualia
Qualia are defined as the way things appear to us. — Olivier5
When people say qualia are private and accessible they mean that they are immediately apparent to them and only them. — khaled
Take privacy, how can some conscious experiences not be private to the individual? We don't and can't know always what someone else is thinking or feeling, therefor some of their experience is private. — Marchesk
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