If the nature of conscious experience is not amenable to philosophical discussion, then so be it. — Luke
Can you taste your coffee and find it too strong, with not enough sugar or milk? — Olivier5
predict the phenomenal consciousness of a bee..."
I hope you miswrote. What could that possibly mean? I gather it's different to predicting what the bee will do next? Are you suggesting that we might be able to predict hat the bee would enjoy a bit of Borage flower?
Try to make some sense. It will help the thread considerably. — Banno
...add that last post to the list that suggests not paying attention to Frank in the future...) — Banno
So, here it is:
Quining Qualia
Let's take a closer look.
"My goal is subversive. I am out to overthrow an idea that, in one form or another, is "obvious" to most people--to scientists, philosophers, lay people. My quarry is frustratingly elusive; no sooner does it retreat in the face of one argument than "it" reappears, apparently innocent of all charges, in a new guise." — Banno
(5) Qualia as Dennett's attacking them are (I think) subjective state properties ("my experience of the red quale") that are dependent upon a perceptual intermediary (The "Cartesian Theatre" metaphor). — fdrake
In other words, why must qualia advocates be committed to perceptual intermediaries? — Luke
The transduction at the retina, into neuronal impulses, has taken us, it seems, into an alien medium, not anything we recognize as the intimate medium we are familiar with. That activity in V1 is not in the Medium, you might say. It may be a medium of visual information in my brain, but it's not . . . moi. It's not the medium in which I experience consciousness. So the idea takes root that if the pattern of activity in V1 looks like that (and that's not what consciousness is like), there must be some later second transduction into the medium that is consciousness.
I think the point is that none of these require talking in terms of qualia in order to be effectively and exhaustively explained.
— creativesoul
Give it a try. — Olivier5
Location is subjective. I'm standing here and you're standing there. That's a genuinely hard problem for science to explain. — Andrew M
Which properties of your private experience are existentially independent from language use? Which ones exist in their entirety prior to your report of them? What do they consist of?
— creativesoul
The various color, sound, taste sensations, but those are words used in language, so naturally you will complain that I'm using language.
— Marchesk
No, I won't. We must use language.
So, let me see if I have this right...
Color, sound, and taste are - according to you - properties of private experience that exist in their entirety prior to language use.
Are you ok with that? — creativesoul
↪creativesoul Yes. — Marchesk
Actually, that phrase: "something it is like to..." is what does violence to the language. It's a recent invention found almost only in philosophical discourse, and so is inherently fraught. — Banno
Right, because sexual partners have prior to recent philosophy readings never asked each other, "what was it like for you?" — javra
Such intimate conversations will always go awry when "qualia" rears it's ugly head. — creativesoul
Well, of course. One will start arguing about both of them being illusory intuition pumpin' machines; the other starts arguing that the quality to it all is going down the drain. And then presto, the magic is lost and there's no more making whoopee between the two. — javra
On the other hand, there's "qualia": a nifty quantification of quality for those who are endowed with "quanta"-envy.
How many qualia are there to an experience of beauty? Or of the ugly? Or else ... wait for it ... there's no quality to experiences of either. This because materialism can't account for it save via intuition pumps. — javra
I'm not enamored with qualia, as previously mentioned. Still, being charitable here, if we can discern and thereby distinguish between different qualities, then the philosophical notion of qualia might make some sense in certain philosophical contexts.
What say you?. — javra
It does not consist of qualia or quale. — creativesoul
Humorously. — Srap Tasmaner
Ah. I hope so! I was wondering if we'd get into experiential spatiality stuff (proximity, the experiential aspects of place etc) as a result of Andrew M's post. I hope it went straight over my head! — fdrake
Why wouldn't the response just be that there's nothing particularly special about one location over another. Unless location is specific to a question at hand, i.e. the view of a building from a particular place, I don't see how it presents any kind of problem for D. — Wayfarer
Does this conscious experience consist of quality? — javra
Well, indeed. But I think we could say the same for red apples, or illusions, or whatever. They're just normal aspects of our experience which nonetheless seem to generate particular kinds of philosophical confusion. — Andrew M
We're talking about a plurality. — creativesoul
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