Reading a lot does not necessarily indicate learning. — Mww
the capability for "second or third thoughts" in Pratchett's sense:
First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft. — fdrake
‘I would like a question answered today,’ said Tiffany.
‘Provided it’s not the one about how you get baby hedgehogs,’ said the man.
‘No,’ said Tiffany patiently. ‘It’s about zoology.’
‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it.’
‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.’
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? — Olivier5
But how would such a theory ever be confirmed? That theory must be able to tell us the conditions required for consciousness to occur. But how will we test the hypothesis? — khaled
And it's really not condescending to wonder if people are different. — frank
A fair amount of what you just said about me is how I feel about you. I understand that I've been offensive, but I thought I was just being defensive. — frank
I do think we're better off avoiding each other. — frank
The condescending thing is claiming that people who disagree with you over a practically irrelevant philosophical dispute — fdrake
Our theories about the world emerge from our pretheoretical observations and reason...
— Olivier5
What would such pre-linguistic reason consist of? — creativesoul
The condescending thing is claiming that people who disagree with you over a practically irrelevant philosophical dispute literally lack a mental faculty when you've not presented evidence for it — fdrake
The properties of the "thing experienced" are not to be confused with the properties of the event that realizes the experiencing. 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. (I doubt that this is what the friends of qualia have had in mind when they have insisted that qualia are intrinsic properties.) — Quining Qualia
The CI is one of the best philosophical renderings in history, to this day. — creativesoul
Have you heard of "aphantasia"? There are people out there who are really and truly different from other people when it comes to mental experiences. I don't see why different/lack of mental experiences can't be a hypothesis for why disagreements about stuff like qualia get so heated. — RogueAI
It's a category error to say that the difference between purple and green is the neural equivalent of 0 and 1, because numbers aren't colors, and neither are spiking neurons. — Marchesk
...which is begging the question already. As I said earlier, the debate is about these assumptions, discussion is pointless if you're going to start from the premise that they're obviously the case. — Isaac
The last time I ate a burrito the mouth feel of the bread was extremely soft, the chilli inside was quite sour and moderately spicy. There were tingling sensations in my nose from the heat as I swallowed. I felt my cheeks flush too. The texture of the chilli was very smooth, contrasting the hardness of the cool lettuce wrapped in with it. The lettuce was very slightly wilted, having less crunch than I expected. There were sweet fruity notes from the pineapple diced and run through the chilli, that flavour of pineapple didn't permeate the chilli though, it came when my tongue found it. — fdrake
I have never like the term 'what is it like', though. 'What is it like to be a bat'? Apart from the fact that it depends on the particular bat and the time, I would say that there is nothing it is like to be a bat. in the sense that being a bat is not like anything being anything else. Perhaps 'what it is to be a bat' or 'what it is to drink tea' and so on would be less misleading. — Janus
So the issue arises when attempting to explain our conscious sensations — Marchesk
To be conscious is not to be conscious of some perceptual process or 1s and 0s in the brains "registers", it's to be aware of how things seem, whether nutty or purple. — Marchesk
It is a category error. 1s and 0s aren't colors. They're numbers. And neurons aren't colors either. And guess what, neither are photons! — Marchesk
I have no control over what's dumped into my awareness and what's not. — Srap Tasmaner
There are ways that I'm different from most people. I mentioned earlier that I have a cousin who has perfect pitch. That's a very distinct difference and there is a genetic basis for it. — frank
Happens I'm about 3 weeks into an uncontrolled experiment wherein the subject (myself) attempts to acquire absolute pitch. I'm still hopeful of refuting your innatist aspersion, albeit unscientifically.
I aspire also (perhaps) to a Mary's Room type revelation: an additional dimension to my auditory perception. E.g. a 'global' quality attaching to the pitch of a sound, independent of its local relations to other, proximate sound-events (relative pitch). The kind of quality that apparently enables the possessors of absolute pitch to associate different keys with different moods etc.
I would be keen to share the unscientific data with any other interested parties (in a thread), especially if they were minded to share their own? E.g. recollection of their previous attempts, or description of attempts started now, or soon.
Absent that demand, I'll update this (single) post. So WTS if interested... — bongo fury
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