I thought qualia were a property of perception, rather than a product of perception. If I perceive a blue door, the blue isn't something that follows from the perception, it's a part of it. — Luke
What sort of response do you mean? — Luke
I should have added that science can't tell us that that bat necessarily has a sonar sensation, only whether it has recognizable neural structures (by comparison with ours). — Marchesk
This begs the question. Science only "can't" tell us that if you assume your conclusion that such sensations are private and intrinsic. If you don't, then science has merely failed to tell us that so far. — Isaac
Or at least, that's what the abstracted third-party account tells us, according to Dennett's setup. — Marchesk
So why were you tempted to agree that science needed to modify our nervous system in order for us to know? — Marchesk
To put the matter vividly, the physical difference between someone's imagining a purple cow and imagining a green cow might be nothing more than the presence or absence of a particular zero or one in one of the brain's "registers". Such a brute physical presence is all that it would take to anchor the sorts of dispositional differences between imagining a purple cow and imagining a green cow that could then flow, causally, from that "intrinsic" fact. — Quining Qualia
No, the intuition pumps 8-12 show that we cannot access these 'qualia'. If we could, then we'd be able to tell which pathway had bee tampered with. As we can't, we don't have access to them as a separate step. If they're not a separate step the wine-tasting machines have qualia. — Isaac
Note that the scientists who objectively and verifiably invert poor Chase’s taste buds in IP #8, the pill that changes Dennett’s experience of cauliflower in IP #11, and the inverted spectacles of IP #12 affirm the objective existence of qualia, since they imply that taste and visual qualia can be objectively manipulated by science. Likewise, IP #10 proves that tastes are genetically mediated and a product of our biology, which also lends them objectivity.Intution pumps 8-12 look like we don't have direct access to previous qualia — Marchesk
The most obvious response to the thought experiment is, that although introspection can’t decide between the alternatives, there is still a fact of the matter: either a change in qualia has occurred, or the change is in some other aspect of the individual. There is still the experience of a particular quale, but since we might be misremembering the past (or our tastes might have changed), we just can’t be sure whether that quale is the same as, or different from, some other particular quale.
Dennett dismisses this kind of response as vacuous, on the grounds that he thinks nothing follows from it and that it is as “mysterious as papal infallibility.” But these accusations don’t warrant Dennett in misinterpreting the property under suspicion. Both of his thought experiments are geared towards showing that we can’t be infallible in our comparisons of non-simultaneous qualia, but is this what immediate apprehension in consciousness is supposed to mean? I think not. What the notion implies, is that we are aware of our qualia directly and non-inferentially; there is no room for an is/seems distinction. That is, one cannot “... be unaware of one’s ‘real’ qualitative state of consciousness during the time one is aware of some qualitative state.” This is simply not the sort of mistake we can make; which still leaves a whole range of other sorts of mistakes we can, and routinely do make. It is trivially true, for example, that we often misremember our experiences of qualia (even without nocturnal neurosurgery). — The Qualities of Qualia
Thus telling a blind person that the colour red is experienced as unary, warm, positive, advancing etc, would still not do the trick. — Qualities of Qualia
Qualia are supposedly ineffable because no description by itself can yield knowledge of what it is like to have an experience. A description might tell you certain things about qualia, but it won’t give you them. The question is how this is supposed to be radically different from any other sort of description? All descriptions are in some sense incomplete, in some way less than the things being described. This is not at all surprising. After all, descriptions are something different from the thing being described. — Qualities of Qualia
There is something it's like which is being changed. — Marchesk
This accords with my response. We know first hand of the qualia we're having now, even though we can be wrong about the qualia we did have. — Marchesk
Amazingly (I find), the upshot of this intuition pump for Dennett is "that no intersubjective comparison of qualia is possible, even with perfect technology". This only supports privacy! Otherwise, intersubjective comparison would be possible.
— Luke
Yep, that's right. This is what Dennett is trying to show here, but - crucially - this is only possible under the second model of experience. If we were to adopt the first model it would not be the case. Again, he's showing us how qualia (as conceived) must follow the second model (which he will later demolish) in order to have the properties we ascribe to them. — Isaac
Basically, if we cannot tell whether the causes of qualia, or the responses to qualia have been tampered with, we cannot access qualia independently - so what use are they? — Isaac
It's not so much the independent property of privacy that's been banished. The argument is more like - in order to have the four properties ascribed to qualia they must be conceived of like this, but when conceived of that way, we can neither access them, nor talk about them, nor do we have any neurological evidence for them, so what the point in theorising their existence? — Isaac
In the face of that doubt, how would you defend your belief that there was qualia associared with my tasting? — frank
I never said they did. You asked about whether they provided knowledge of out puts — Isaac
has to be ruled out, otherwise the wine tasting machine and p-zombies have no different an experience to use — Isaac
We cannot examine our 'qualia' independently to tell if they've been changed by a modification to path (a) or if instead we've simply been subject to a modification of path (b).
4. So if we can't access our qualia introspectively — Isaac
sensory input->qualia.....then....b)qualia->(via some judgement/assessment)->response — Isaac
then why are we persisting with them? — Isaac
You can't tell a blind person what it's like to see color, no matter the words you use. — Marchesk
Seeing the colour of that surface is like hearing the timbre of that trumpet. Notice how timbre fills a region of the stimulus either uniformly or with a gradient specific to each of one or more directions, e.g. temporal and pitch-height? Colour is like that.
The proponents of qualia and quale are the ones who attempt to decouple, sever, and/or otherwise separate some aspects of consciousness from the ongoing process, — creativesoul
but you claim qualia are private. SO what is the nature of this privacy? Can you make it clear? — Banno
That conscious experience is the dispositional, relational and functional properties of the biological systems responsible for conscious experience, and nothing additional. — Marchesk
So what is being left out in my view after accounting for dispositional, relational and functional properties, that science can discover? The sensation itself of colors, sounds, feels, etc. — Marchesk
suspect the pumps (no less than 15 of them, mind you) and their increasing esoteric scenarios are there to confuse the reader, to make him lose the plot, not to inform him. It seems to be working on some. — Olivier5
why should someone commit themselves to an independent "phenomenal" type associated with the experiences, when the elements of the phenomenal type ("what is it likes") vary with changes in the type they are supposed to be independent of? — fdrake
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