From https://www.imprint.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Farrell_Open_Access.pdf comes the notion that "something it is like..." is not drawing a similarity. Perhaps this lack of similarity is what the Dennett article bring to the fore. So consider:

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.

And further:

I want to shift the burden of proof, so that anyone who wants to appeal to private, subjective properties has to prove first that in so doing they are not making a mistake.

I make coffee for us; we each take a sip. You say it is too bitter for your taste; I say it's not so much bitter as nutty. Conversations such as this are a commonplace. It's understood that the liquid can taste quite different to different folk.

Talk of qualia serves only to obscure such conversation. "You can never know what the coffee tastes like to me"...well, yes I can; I know it tastes bitter. I can surmise that another coffee, even nuttier to me, might well be more bitter to you.

I know what the coffee tastes like for you.

Qualia fail in so far as they deny that we can have conversations of this sort. Qualia are supposedly ineffable - we cannot explain them to others. The taste of coffee is not ineffable. Quite the opposite - folk build careers and indeed whole industries on the basis of talking about the very sort of thing that is supposedly beyond discussion.

Incidentally, the quotes given above and the text around them in the article should be sufficient to put an end to the risible objection that Dennett denies the reality of conscious experience. Those who have made that assertion in this thread are guilty of not having understood what is being said; they ought go back and read at least the introduction of the article.

Personally, I find the dual process account pretty convincing, so I think there's lots of stuff going on with us we aren't aware of. If you want to include all of that under "mind", and I would, then I agree wholeheartedly. The disembodied mind is an abstraction. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I would agree with you. The entire biological system is undergoing a process of self organization, in my view.

Some posters here call subjectivity "self-report" and they see it with a great deal of suspicion. They mistrust themselves. — Olivier5

They do not trust in their own feelings, and so they put their trust in the feelings of others.
As far as I can see, there are no thoughts without feelings. I have yet to experience one! :smile:

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.

And further:
I want to shift the burden of proof, so that anyone who wants to appeal to private, subjective properties has to prove first that in so doing they are not making a mistake. — Banno

The below is a qualia articulation that I believe would satisfy the burden of proof sought. None of these elements can exist separate to the others. Whenever you experience one of these elements you also experience the others.

The qualia of life is consciousness
The qualia of consciousness are experiences.
The qualia of experiences are emotions.
The qualia of emotions are feelings.
The qualia of feelings are points on the Pain Pleasure Spectrum
The qualia of points on the PPS are death - pain / pleasure - life.
The qualia of life is consciousness – this completes the consciousness loop.

In other words, when you are alive, you are conscious, and you are having an experience, which is emotional, as it feels either painful or pleasurable or something in between.

When asleep and dreaming this would apply also, but experience of sleep is mostly ineffable.

I assume the response will be that it might mislead us to think that such properties are subjective rather than objective, and that if the flower is perceived as red or if the coffee is perceived as bitter, then each of them really are red and bitter. Except that's not how everyone perceives them?
— Luke

What do you mean by subjective and objective here? How are the two distinguished? I'm asking because Dennett's position is taken as undermining the distinction between those two, so it should be hard to understand in those terms. (Edit: though I do recall him using the phrase "objective properties" in a paper!)

If you're using "objective" as a placeholder for "all property types", I'd agree with you. If "objective" imputes constraints on the types of property considered and our access to them, I guess I wouldn't. — fdrake

The idea of "objective properties" may be something I erroneously inferred from your earlier comments (e.g. here) regarding 'extrinsic relational properties'. My assumption was that if perceptual properties are not subjective, then they can only be objective. I took 'objective properties' to mean that one perceives an object to be red because the redness inheres in the object, not in the perception. But if there were such objective properties, then everybody should perceive the object in the same way (namely, as red). However, conditions such as colour blindness and cerebral achromatopsia indicate that people have different perceptions and/or properties in relation to the same objects. This suggests that perception/properties are subjective, not objective. 'Extrinsic relational properties' seems like an attempt to have perceptual properties be neither subjective nor objective. However, while I understand that there is a relation involved in forming a perception, I have trouble understanding how a perception - together with its properties - could be anything but for a subject, i.e. subjective.

ncidentally, the quotes given above and the text around them in the article should be sufficient to put an end to the risible objection that Dennett denies the reality of conscious experience. Those who have made that assertion in this thread are guilty of not having understood what is being said; they ought go back and read at least the introduction of the article. — Banno

We're aware of what Dennett claims. It's also been pointed out that he likes to equivocate on terms like consciousness and free will. So he'll say that of course we're conscious and taste coffee and see colors, but then he goes on to argue in a way that denies the first person experience. So the conclusion to draw is that he doesn't really mean it the same way. By consciousness, Dennett means a third-person description amenable to science.

By tasting coffee and seeing colors, Dennett means something other than the sensations of taste and color. He means the behavioral aspect of discrimination, and its biological functions, which includes giving mistaken reports about coffee tastes and red cups, when it entails there being some first person experience to it.

Thus the claim that a wine tasting machine would have the same conscious gustary experience.

That's just another way to say the same thing though. — Olivier5

We seem to have very different understandings of what the issues are here. Not sure there's much else to say.

So he'll say that of course we're conscious and taste coffee and see colors, but then he goes on to argue in a way that denies the first person experience. — Marchesk

Citation.

Because if you do not present what he actually says, then it's just humbug.

My guess is that Dennett was arguing, again, against talking about stuff about which one cannot talk. That seems to be where the core misunderstanding of what he has said sits.

The qualia of life is consciousness
The qualia of consciousness are experiences.
The qualia of experiences are emotions.
The qualia of emotions are feelings.
The qualia of feelings are points on the Pain Pleasure Spectrum
The qualia of points on the PPS are death - pain / pleasure - life.
The qualia of life is consciousness – this completes the consciousness loop. — Pop

Are those who support qualia comfortable with this semi-mystical nonsense? Because this is what bad philosophy looks like, this is where inept terminology leads.

In other words, when you are alive, you are conscious, and you are having an experience, which is emotional, as it feels either painful or pleasurable or something in between. — Pop

Are you saying this dose not apply to you?

Edit. It would not apply to a philosophical zombie. :smile:

I'm pointing out that so far as your post makes sense, it is not about qualia, and so far as it is about qualia, it makes no sense.

Qualia articulates life, consciousness, experience, emotion, feeling, and a pain / pleasure spectrum. It connects them meaningfully.
If you do not like the word qualia, you could use the word quality instead. It is philosophical jargon, I admit, but it is now well established. Would a word change make a difference? I don't think so. The problem is not the word, the problem is Materialism vs Consciousness - that the nature of consciousness is idealistic, is Dennett's problem, wouldn't you agree?

Qualia articulates life, consciousness, experience, emotion, feeling, and a pain / pleasure spectrum. — Pop

That looks exactly wrong. It serves to hide distinctions and similarities by grossly simplifying our tried, attested and substantial language around sensations.

Go back and look at the rest of this post. Wouldn't you agree that simply asserting that our sensations are ineffable serves to remove them from the conversation?

That looks exactly wrong. It serves to hide distinctions and similarities by grossly simplifying our tried, attested and substantial language around sensations. — Banno

I think it is absolutely logical. You can not have consciousness without experience. You can not have experience without emotion. You can not have emotion without feeling. You can not have feeling without a pain / pleasure spectrum. Qualia articulates them, and they are logically inseparable.

Wouldn't you agree that simply asserting that our sensations are ineffable serves to remove them from the conversation? — Banno

We can only remove our sensations from the conversation via anesthesia. This is what needs to be addressed, not negated.

You can not have consciousness without experience. You can not have experience without emotion. You can not have emotion without feeling. You can not have feeling without a pain / pleasure spectrum. — Pop

Where are the qualia in that description? They are not needed.

What is clearer if they are added? Nothing.

All they seem to have permitted is the construction of this:

The qualia of life is consciousness
The qualia of consciousness are experiences.
The qualia of experiences are emotions.
The qualia of emotions are feelings.
The qualia of feelings are points on the Pain Pleasure Spectrum
The qualia of points on the PPS are death - pain / pleasure - life.
The qualia of life is consciousness – this completes the consciousness loop. — Pop

mystical hokum.

yep, that's about right.

We seem to have very different understandings of what the issues are here. Not sure there's much else to say. — Srap Tasmaner

You behave dogmatically here, you try to defend a long-dead dogma (behaviorism), and that's why you have nothing interesting to say on the topic. You think defensively, not creatively.

it remains much more parsimonious, methinks, to allow perceiving its dependability, dismiss qualia as something conditioned by perceiving, and fault understanding a posteriori or judgement a priori, for whatever cognitive errors I make. — Mww

Hope it works for you. I will stick to science and to the tools nature gave me.

...

Because some of them are properties of perception.
...
All of these sort of example demonstrate that our experiences are not simply reflections of the world. They're generated by our act of perceiving and other mental activities. So appealing to some direct realism or externalism still needs to account for perceptual relativity and all the other stuff occurring for the organism. — Marchesk

Statements such as "Alice feels cold" and "the apple is red" abstract over the underlying physical processes. First, as abstractions, they are direct by design and are (high-level) reflections of the world (being true or false). And second, as abstractions, they presuppose a particular perspective. So that permits perceptual relativity.

Note that "feels cold" doesn't predicate Alice's sentience, or perceptions, it predicates Alice herself. The statement does, however, presuppose that Alice is sentient, otherwise it would be a category mistake.

On this ordinary language scheme, subject/object duality is unnecessary, and an internal/external distinction is just an artefact of that duality. So a question of qualia doesn't arise.

I think there's a parallel between qualia and 'secondary qualities' — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree.

The primary qualities are those which are subject to precise quantification, while tastes, smells and so on are secondary and associated with the obsering subject. I think in physicalism, only bearers of primary attributes - that would be 'matter' - is real. It's those annoying 'inneffable feels' that have to be disolved in the acid of Darwin's dangerous idea into the doings of the only real sources of agency, which are molecules: — Wayfarer

So an alternative to that is that Alice's feeling of the cold, or that the apple is red, etc., are first-class attributions which more specialized scientific statements derive from and explain. We're interested in scientific explanations of how it is that Alice feels cold, not in creating artificial distinctions that make such explanations impossible in principle or, on the other hand, denying that they are real at all.

If the word "qualia" has no use, then what are we talking about? What is Dennett talking about? — Luke

He's talking about the word itself. The word exists. I suppose on way to put it if you want to maintain that all words we use must, by that use, have a meaning (a position I have some sympathy with), then you could say the Dennett was showing that we do not mean any single identifiable thing when using the word. That it has no place in technical discussions such a philosophy or cognitive science. we might sometimes mean 'the sensory perception mechanisms', sometimes the resultant behaviours, sometimes a dualistic or platonic entity...etc. Such ill-defined terms cannot play a part in technical discussion even though they might be used in general conversation (except 'qualia' isn't). Have a read of the Farrell paper I cited, which @Banno has kindly found a free online version of. It gives a very good argument as to why 'what it's like' cannot be counted as a technical term and I think the argument applies equally to 'qualia'.

Perhaps our conscious minds "don't work in real time", but why do our brains not work in real time? — Luke

Because they have backward-acting neurons which suppress signals from more primary cortices before they get processed in the models of cortices higher than them. All the while that's happening, these higher level cortices are not on idle, waiting for the results, they're still processing the previous data and this affects the backward acting signals. So basically, before a signal has even left a primary area it is out of date, it has been interpreted post hoc on the basis of a model from a few seconds ago (or a long as a few minutes ago as you go higher up the cortices).

Note that "feels cold" doesn't predicate Alice's sentience, or perceptions, it predicates Alice herself. The statement does, however, presuppose that Alice is sentient, otherwise it would be a category mistake.

On this ordinary language scheme, subject/object duality is unnecessary, and an internal/external distinction is just an artefact of that duality. So a question of qualia doesn't arise. — Andrew M

"The cold is feeling Alice" makes as much sense as "Alice is feeling cold", right? English grammar makes no distinction between subject and object.

Err... sorry, I mean: distinction between subject and object makes no English grammar

Qualia seem to meet the three criteria set out for a technical term. — Banno

Just noticed this edit. Interesting. Personally, I think it fails on the third criteria - 'meaning'. I think Dennett's account here shows that the term does not provide function in the field (of which it is supposed to be a technical term) on account of its technical meaning. It creates questions on account of presumptions about it, but that's not a 'function' in the sense Farrell means it, I don't think. To be a function in that sense it would have to instrumental in answering some question which arose aside from any presumptions about the putative term.

English grammar makes no distinction between subject and object. — Olivier5

I'm referring to philosophical subject/object dualism, not grammar. The grammatical distinction is very useful.

English grammar makes no distinction between subject and object.
— Olivier5

I'm referring to philosophical subject/object dualism, not grammar. The grammatical distinction is very useful. — Andrew M

Okay so on this ordinary language scheme, subject/object duality is necessary.

Personally, I think it fails on the third criteria - 'meaning'. — Isaac

Well, since qualia has no meaning, I'll have to agree that it cannot have a special meaning...

Okay so on this ordinary language scheme, subject/object duality is necessary. — Olivier5

I don't understand your point. Can you elaborate?

So an alternative to that is that Alice's feeling of the cold, or that the apple is red, etc., are first-class attributions which more specialized scientific statements derive from and explain — Andrew M

But the distinction between primary and secondary attributes is hard-baked into our worldview. There’s no easy way to unscramble this particular omelette. Heck, Dennett won’t even admit there’s a need to make the effort, or that there is an issue to solve. Modern scientific method ‘brackets out’ the subjective - that is the meaning of the ‘view from nowhere’. And then, having bracketed it out, it says it can’t find any sign of its reality. There’s a really basic sleight-of-hand behind this entire debate, but for those who can’t see it, it’s devilishly hard to explain.

English grammar makes no distinction between subject and object. — Olivier5

Of course it does. All transitive verbs have one or more objects. In a sentence the subject and object are indicated by the case of the verb which the sentence contains e.g. in sentences such as ‘he gave it’, ‘she took it’ the subject is the agent and the object denoted by ‘it’. Persons are differentiated from objects by the use of the personal pronouns.

In any case the underlying philosophical issue is that of agency, of whether subjects are meaningfully designated moral agents or whether that sense of personal agency is an illusion engendered by cellular automata (as Dennett holds).

Well, since qualia has no meaning, I'll have to agree that it cannot have a special meaning... — Banno

Ha! A much simpler refutation than mine.

In any case the underlying philosophical issue is that of agency, of whether subjects are meaningfully designated moral agents or whether that sense of personal agency is an illusion engendered by cellular automata (as Dennett holds). — Wayfarer

That's one of the related philosophical issue indeed. Another one, much more pressing here in my view, is What founds the knowledge of Dennett, if not his subjective observation of the world?

And then, if Dennett's observations are illusory, why read them?

Or is he saying that everybody else is deluded about their observations and consciousness, but not him?