This thread is supposed to be about Dennett's paper and the implications thereof. His paper sets out in quite some detail, the problems encountered when treating Qualia the way in which they are treated here. He sets out how the way they at first seem has implications on analysis which are undesirable at least, incoherent at worst. There has then been several hundred word posts from @fdrake, and myself providing more detail and, hopefully, some further exposition of those incoherencies.

This conversation is not going to get anywhere if you don't actually address one of those issues. Just re-asserting that

That it seems there are colored images is the what it’s like for humans to see. — Marchesk

...for example, is just starting back at the beginning again. We know that's the traditional view. Dennett goes on to show some problems with that view, you have to address those problems (preferably by quoting from the text) in order to progress here in any meaningful way.

Thanks, @Isaac. This thread has grown too quickly for me to read all of it, and I had thought that perhaps I was simply not deeply enough involved in the conversation to follow the plot...

It seems to me that the advocates of qualia have entirely failed to address the criticism in the article.

The problem has been solved, to my satisfaction at least. Qualia can't easily be isolated from other qualia, and talking of them as simple objects (e.g. "the color red") is a gross simplification. Rather, there are many different color perceptions than can be classified as "red", depending on the circumstances. Colors and other visual effects are nevertheless demonstrably effective (they work for us), distinct from objective reality, and predictable/replicable to a degree. So maybe Swanson's take on qualia was a bit simplistic (?) but they do demonstrably exist as something stable and predictable, if defined as "the way things look to us."

The term is a bit jargony but I can see if no precise substitute. "Sensations" could work but it's kind of vaguish.

I would like to thank and for their contribution to this thread. You guys are amazing!

It seems to me that the advocates of qualia have entirely failed to address the criticism in the article. — Banno

Yep.

they do demonstrably exist as something stable and predictable, if defined as "the way things look to us." — Olivier5

Read the text...please, and then quote from it a section where you think Dennett's contradiction of the above fails and explain why. Anything less is pointless, we're not doing a poll of what people reckon, we're doing exegesis and discussing implications of a text.

Read the text. — Isaac

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.

One of the points that has been made is that Dennett is ambiguous and equivocating. In this text he does not actually put forth a clear argument that one could address, but smokes and mirrors. Go and read his text, and try and summarize what it says. I predict you won't be able to.

Nothing is added to the description — Banno

Nothing is added to the description of the board. That is true. But it is not the goal of qualia to describe the real world but to describe how it seems to us. And so by saying “the board looks like it is bulging” one says something about our experience of the world that cannot be said by giving the person a description of the board itself.

For example saying “getting stabbed hurts” does not add anything to the description of a knife stabbing someone. But it is still a meaningful and useful statement because it describes what getting stabbed will seem to us like, in order to discourage getting stabbed.

Of if you refer to the programming example I cited earlier on page 16, sure a description of the algorithm of a program doesn’t add anything to the description of what actually happens to the computer when the program is run. But a description of an algorithm is usually infinitely more useful than a description of what transistors do while the program is running. If you want to say that algorithm are an inaccurate abstraction that’s fine, no one is disagreeing. But when you say “algorithms don’t exist” you make it sound like “it is impossible for a computer to follow instructions”. That’s what’s happening here. You don’t say “Qualia doesn’t exist” unless you’re claiming someone is a P zombie. Otherwise “Qualia is an inaccurate abstraction” will do. As for Dennett, he seems to be saying both at the same time to me. “People have experiences, but Qualia are not an accurate description of reality but actually people don’t have experiences”

And I don’t get your question. “The board seems to be bulging” is the qualia I am experiencing, a description of the world as it seems like to me. Same as “the apple seems red”. The apple may not be red, but saying that it seems to be red was never intended to describe the apple itself but rather to describe the experience of seeing it.

I wonder if there are several errors going on:
1) People don't recognize the dualism of the "fiction" of experience vs. the "reality" of the scientific description of the event. It doesn't matter what it's called- it becomes a dualism. The hallucination and the reality. The illusion and the really real.

2) People misplace a debate about origins with a debate about the nature of the event. They displace a debate about causation with a debate what is nature of the phenomena itself. What are mental events is the question, as it is compared to physical states. If you just deny mental events, well I guess it's like Trump denying any news that he doesn't like :rofl: . It's just fake, right? But unlike Trump, the very thing used to call the news fake (experience) is being denied. The goal post moves from the nature of mental events compared with physical to "Well, I'm not denying it per se.. just that it isn't what we really think it is". But that's not the question!!

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

Here I go I guess:

His description of the “properties of qualia” are not how people use them usually. And his intuition pumps fail to address why his own properties are untenable. I’ll start with the ones I can remember right now.

1- Private, 2-Accessible. He claims qualia are private in the sense that they are only apparent to the person experiencing them and accessible in the sense that they are immediately apparent. And to show this is untenable he proposes a thought experiment where someone has their taste buds altered to change their experience of sugar. He then says “gotcha, actually I could’ve just changed his memory of the taste of sugar and he would still think the same thing, therefore he can’t know what went wrong (either his taste buds were changed or his memory of sugar was) therefore he doesn’t have intimate private accessible knowledge when it comes to his qualia”. I’m paraphrasing here, but I’ve read this part 5 times and no matter what it seems like BS.

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. That has been my general experience with the paper. He “disproves” something by saying completely unrelated bs.

Dennett: I shall now disprove that 1+1=2. When you put a male mouse and female mouse in a room you end up with three mice, therefore does 1+1 really equal 2????

Just another one for the fun: the Munker illusion:


Figure 1. Rectangles A, on the left, look much darker than the rectangles B, on the right. However, rectangles A and B reflect the same amount of light.

It works with colors too.


Figure 2. The two rectangles on the right look much darker than the ones on the left. However, they are of the same actual tint.

Thanks for at least trying.

His description of the “properties of qualia” are not how people use them usually. — khaled

How are you assessing how people use them usually, just anecdotally, or do you have some sources?

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

That's the trivial part, and not even part of his argument, Dennett says

I think that everyone writing about qualia today would agree that there are all these possibilities for Chase and Sanborn.

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.

Then in b) he dismisses the possibility of seeing them as logical constructs

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.

Which leaves c) that qualia have an empirical status, they are firstly created by the senses and secondly judged by our aesthetic and rational feeling.

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.

How are you assessing how people use them usually, just anecdotally, or do you have some sources? — Isaac

Anecdotally.

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?

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

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?

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. Again, by borrowing a programming example: No knowledge about what happens in your computer follows from knowledge of the algorithm of the program being run. That doesn’t mean that talk of algorithms is meaningless or useless. The INTENT when talking about algorithms is NOT to explain what happens inside a computer. Just as the INTENT when talking about Qualia is NOT to explain what processes cause it.

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.

Those also suffer from the same problem for me. They seem to “disprove” something by saying something completely unrelated. I’ll take #8 as an example. 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. He says this to imply that somehow that makes Qualia “not empirical”. He shows that no theory will be able to tell which “actually” happens. But that’s not a new situation in science. If you see a ball moving up, does that mean the ball is moving up or you’re moving down? We can’t tell! Oh no! And yet physics I’m empirical.

But most importantly, he hasn’t disproven what he set out to disprove. 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. And by that I don’t mean that he can’t tell whether or not this is coffee or orange juice, no, he needs a situation where Chase is unsure whether or not he’s tasting something in the first place to disprove “Chase is experiencing X (in this case the taste of coffee) is an empirical fact”. Good luck with that one!

Oh it's a clusterfuck unfortunately. Most of the discussion derailed into Dennett's broader points. And it's not really a discussion of them either, it's more "he's wrong! have you considered this extra textual thing?" (link to previous thing or explanation of misinterpretation) "he's wrong! have you considered this extra textual thing?"

:razz: I was just trying to point out how I think you're misinterpreting him. Butting out..

Are we supposed to just agree with Dennett, or are we supposed to limit our discussion to just this particular paper, and not the ongoing wider discussion, of which Dennett has contributed?

And if we're limiting our discussion to Quining Qulia, does that preclude any responses to it from professional philosophers? It's hard for me to just focus on one paper, given the richness of the wider discussion, and given that Dennnett has his share of unconvinced detractors. It's not like the consciousness debate ended with this paper.

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.

That's odd, I thought the ones you called out, including myself, were doing that.

(1) What do you think Dennett's position is in Quining Qualia?
(2) How do you think he argues for that position?
(3) How does that relate to the maxim "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality" (Searle) assertion you've been using your photos to intuition pump for (as I've read them anyway).

@frank

Same questions for you, with changed (3):

(3) How does Dennett's position lead to an equivocation between "3rd person data" and "1st person data"? Why does Dennett believe they are the same thing?

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

I hope you take this in the spirit its intended, which is friendly: why are you trying to exegesize this article when you don't know much about philosophy of mind? You showed that you don't have a clear understanding of the Hard Problem (which you do need to understand), and after I've mentioned repeatedly that we need to take Dennett's externalism into consideration when interpreting him, you still don't seem to understand what I'm telling you.

A while back I tried to engage Banno on the question of "quining" things. It would have been helpful if we had explored that a little further, but you responded by telling me to read the bloomin article and you pointed out a simplistic meaning for something you should know is not at all simplistic.

As it is, it wasn't a clusterfuck. It was like you and your buddies were riffing on the article. Which was cool. But your buddy Isaac seemed to get the impression that this article locks in a rejection of qualia, while you maintained that we're not rejecting qualia at all, just certain rarified definitions of it. Other people intruding into your thread are not the problem here.

(1) What is Dennett's argument in Quining Qualia?
(2) How do you think he argues for that position?
(3) In what sense is Quining Qualia an argument for externalism of mental content? How do the different intuition pumps try to demonstrate the necessity of environmental relationships for mental content to be configured as it is?

If you've got enough time to tell me I know nothing about anything, you've got enough time to enlighten me.

Go and read his text, and try and summarize what it says. I predict you won't be able to. — Olivier5

Dennett argues fairly convincingly(by my lights anyway) against the ineffability, intrinsicality, privacy, and direct apprehensibility of the properties of conscious experience, and in doing so effectively grounds his rejection of qualia. It's worth noting that he does all this by offering physicalist explanations of actual counterexamples(intuition pumps) that are germane to historical notions of qualia/quale. In doing so, he shows that the properties of personal experience that make personal experience what it is, are not special in the sort of way that proponents of qualia claim.

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.

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.

... I mean... he's literally written what the purpose of each group of intuition pumps are for.

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

..therefore...

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?

...in the piece I actually quoted.

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. It makes that particular potential use pointless. The paper is a gradual dismantling of the coherence and utility of the concept. If you agree with Dennett here (that the concept doesn't help in this psychological manner) then good, 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.

No knowledge about what happens in your computer follows from knowledge of the algorithm of the program being run. — khaled

How so? If I know the algorithm causes an output to, say, an Ethernet card, then I can predicted a voltage there. How is that not knowledge about what's happening in my computer?

Just as the INTENT when talking about Qualia is NOT to explain what processes cause it. — khaled

No one is suggesting it is. The Chase/Sandborn section is about private access to qualia, not causes.

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

No. He's talking about our responses, not our 'experiences' and he's comparing them to the change in sensory input, not qualia - are we reading the same section here? The point is to further undermine the idea that we have introspective access to qualia. Chase cannot even tell if his qualia have been inverted.

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

Why would anyone be trying to prove anything about tasting? Dennett is not trying to prove that people can't taste things, so I can't think of any reason why you'd see the lack of such data as a problem for his argument.

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

That's a bit strong. I believe Dennett's argument is that the concept is incoherent because it cannot support all four properties given his intuition pumps showing otherwise.

But saying that therefore nothing to all four about conscious experience is going too far in this paper. Take privacy, how can some conscious experiences not be private to the individual? We don't and can't always know what someone else is thinking or feeling, therefor some of their experience is private.

I do need to go back and reread the paper to respond to fdrake's questions. So I may follow up on this after doing so.

. If you agree with Dennett here (that the concept doesn't help in this psychological manner) then good — Isaac

But it’s worth noting that I don’t agree that it was ever intended to be used that way. So his “opposition” here is meaningless. It’s like opposing quantum theory on the grounds that it doesn’t explain how we evolved from dinosaurs. That’s what I was trying to highlight in my comment

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

That is what I did when going to intuition pump 8 as an example.

If I know the algorithm causes an output to, say, an Ethernet card — Isaac

Algorithms don’t cause outputs. Running a program programmed with a certain algorithm does. An algorithm is just an abstraction. It doesn’t DO anything. An algorithm doesn’t even have to be written in a programming language.

are we reading the same section here — Isaac

Probably not. I’m talking about this:

. 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

It’s not tasting specifically that’s just an example. Dennett said that qualia cannot be a logical formulation, but must be an empirical fact to satisfy its defenders (your quote). But in the intuition pump designed to prove this (8) he did nothing to actually prove it.

Dennett is not trying to prove that people can't taste things — Isaac

He is trying to prove that “I am tasting something” is NOT empirical knowledge. In other words that someone is experiencing so and so qualia is NOT imperial fact. But he completely failed at doing so.

Actually, you’re right. Dennett does deny all four properties in total.

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

So the board appears to bulge, but does not really; and this is a private thing, despite our shared talk about it.

And this is the sort of thing you would call qualia.

Not disagreeing here - just checking if this is what you want to assert.

It’s private in the sense that only I know I’m having the experience, in virtue of having the experience, without telling others or they inferring it from my behavior. I could be staring at the image while thinking of something else. Something I admit to occasionally doing on work Zoom calls, which I’m only found out when asked a question about what I was supposed to be paying attention to.

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

I do not think that Dennett is denying that some thoughts are private, in the sense of being unspoken.

Take that experience and strip it down by removing all public, external, and effable properties thereof...

What's left?

The appearance or the seeming. It appears that I see color, feel pain, etc. it’s those sensations.

That's a self report.