A human has an accompanying experience. The robot doesn't. — frank

That's not something with which I would disagree - and it doesn't mention qualia.

A step towards some sort of reconciliation.

let’s say we never evolved eyes. — Marchesk

No, don't go changing the argument again, please - I couldn't stand that.

this was meant to cover cases where people do not have the exact same experience, but they can still communicate about the same object. — Marchesk

...and this is because there is a correlation between our noticing an apple and its being in our visual field...

I'm not following that.

That's not something with which I would disagree - and it doesn't mention qualia.

A step towards some sort of reconciliation. — Banno

We'll never make it to a thousand pages with that attitude.

OK, so I'm aware that the use of the word "qualia" in English predates the industrial revolution.

So I'm understanding that qualia are somehow important to your political philosophy - which seems not to be too far form my own leftist leanings - and so you want to defend it.

If "qualia' was shown to be of little use in philosophical discourse, would your political views have to change?

I doubt it.

We'll never make it to a thousand pages with that attitude. — frank

I was thinking of adding an exegesis on the SEP qualia article, which is pretty good, and tending more to your views, I suspect.

But I'm not enjoying having to work both sides of the argument with both Marchesk and Khaled, and I'm not sure I have sufficient interest.

What about you?

Both a robot and a human can detect red light.

A human has an accompanying experience. The robot doesn't.

Right? — frank

I don't believe a robot can detect red light in the way a human can, because a robot is not an entity in the way a human is.

Can a dead person detect red light in the same way a living person can?

but now you say we should use 'isomorphic'. — Banno

Isomorphic is just “homomorphic both ways”. Anyways I don’t plan to use technical terms anymore since they seem to just confuse.

It would be a great help if you articulated your argument. — Banno

I thought I did last comment.
I’ll just summarize:

We have the age old Mary’s room thought experiment which is no longer really a thought experiment. We can “cure” some forms of color blindness or deafness and you always see the participant being shocked at the experience. I’m pretty sure you’d still get the same reaction even if the participant had a PhD in neurology. Point is that there is some information that is present in the experience itself that is not present in a neurological description of the brain as it is occurring. Which is also to imply that they’re not the same thing (as clearly there is some information present in one not present in the other). Otherwise why are people surprised when the see color for the first time?

Another reason to believe this is simply that we don’t have to teach children neurology before teaching them colors. That is what leads me to conclude that “red” refers to a certain experience. It cannot refer to any property of the red object as children likely don’t understand that property, yet they understand red. They don’t know what wavelengths are for example so it can’t be that.

And so that’s where my argument on how we can still have no trouble communicating comes in

It doesn’t matter what I am referring to when I say red and when you say red as long as the relationship is the same. I’ll call my experience that red refers to X and I’ll call yours Y. As I was saying, X could equal Y. But even if they’re not, we will have no issues of communication if:

Everything that produces X for me produces Y for you. That’s roughly what an isomorphism is. That’s what I mean by “the relationship is the same”

If that is the case and I see blood for example, that would produce the experience X, and I would promptly call it “red”. If when you see blood you get the experience Y you will ALSO promptly call it “red”. Therefore there is no issue of communication see? — khaled

This X and this Y are qualia. They do not have to be equal for us to be able to communicate. And here is the interesting bit: It is possible for “blue” for me to be pointing to Y, and for “red” for you to be pointing to X. I mean this in the sense that the “values” are equal, not that I am accessing your experience somehow. So it’s sort of like (forgive the terrible illustration I’m on my phone)

My experience to word table

X -> “Red”
Y -> “Blue”
....

Your experience to word table:

X -> “Blue”
Y -> “Red”
.....

That would be “inverted vision”. If I were to have the exact experience you’re having I’d call the apple blue.


I also gave the example of the speech changing device + color inverting device to Isaac where you said you agreed with him. But that still seems absurd to me. If you were wearing color inverting glasses you’d call the apple blue. That would mean you are a seeing a blue apple yes? But then how does the addition of a speech altering device change that? If you were seeing (what you would normally describe as) a blue apple, and you were forced to listen to yourself lie about what you’re seeing, you’re not really seeing a red apple now are you? You’re seeing blue and reporting red. I’m speaking on a phenomenological level here, I’m not making up neurology as Isaac insists I am.

In other words, the color inverting glasses change Y to X and also change the word that you utter when describing the apple. However that doesn’t mean that you’re actually having the experience related to the word being uttered (you’re not actually having Y. You’re having X and saying “Red”)

So I'm understanding that qualia are somehow important to your political philosophy - which seems not to be too far form my own leftist leanings - and so you want to defend it — Banno

No, it's that I've really struggled to understand the opposing view.

But then I thought about the vast cultural story that phenomenal consciousness is a part of. I thought that touching on that might help.

I was thinking of adding an exegesis on the SEP qualia article, which is pretty good, and tending more to your views, I suspect — Banno

That would be cool. I wonder if it has Chalmers' p-zombie argument.

We have the age old Mary’s room thought experiment which is no longer really a thought experiment. We can “cure” some forms of color blindness or deafness and you always see the participant being shocked at the experience. I’m pretty sure you’d still get the same reaction even if the participant had a PhD in neurology. Point is that there is some information that is present in the experience itself that is not present in a neurological description of the brain as it is occurring. Which is also to imply that they’re not the same thing (as clearly there is some information present in one not present in the other). Otherwise why are people surprised when the see color for the first time? — khaled

I don't disagree with anything here - but it does not lead to a conclusion about qualia.

Your argument on isomorphism is very close to that found in PI. I noted before that your argument hinged on:

Everything that produces X for me produces Y for you. — khaled

and pointed out that there is no way we could know that this is true, given that our experiences are set out as private, unsharable.

Despite this being unknowable, we are able to talk to each other.

The conclusion to be draw here is that the shared understanding is not dependent on our knowing that the other person has the same experience as we do. It can't be, according to the advocates of the theory you posit, since we cannot know that the experiences are the same.

SO the shared understanding cannot be based on a shared experience.

Wittgenstein's solution is to point out that what is shared is the use of language. We don't need to posit a shared experiences, or even hypothesis shared experiences, if instead we look at what we are doing with the words - the role they play in our language games.

Your example of the inverted glasses and inverted voice is just this - it shows how communication takes place without consideration of a mooted shared experience.

I ask you to pass me the red apple. It doesn't matter if you have the same experiences as I, or if they are isomorphic, or anything at all about them, provided that you pass me the red apple.

I wonder if it has Chalmers' p-zombie argument. — frank

Yep, it does.

I thought that touching on that might help. — frank

Cool. I also like to keep one eye on the bigger implications.

But to my eye, introducing qualia seems to be playing in to the schism between reductionism and dualism... that is, to forcing wider an already misguided split.

The solution I see, outlined above, is to treat physical explanations and intentional discussions as distinct language games, neither reducible to the other, but neither implying any ontological concerns for the other.

I surprisingly don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. So I don’t see what your problem with qualia is. Qualia is just the X and Y in the previous example. Those definitely do exist no? And a P-Zombie is something that doesn’t have those Xs and Ys (which is not to say that they’re possible, only that they’re conceivable). The hard problem is why there are Xs and Ys in the first place (though I suspect that this is a question akin to “Why is there gravitational force?” Because there just is.)

We don't need to posit a shared experiences, or even hypothesis shared experiences, if instead we look at what we are doing with the words - the role they play in our language games. — Banno

I don’t think anyone here is positing shared experiences, just experiences. Every “Qualia advocate” has says “inverse vision” at least once here which means we don’t think that we need to have the same experiences to be able to communicate. I went out of my way to show that you don’t need shared experiences, just shared words. As long as red apples produce X for me and Y for you and we both respectively call the experience we’re having “red” there are no issues.

The solution I see, outlined above, is to treat physical explanations and intentional discussions as distinct language games, neither reducible to the other, but neither implying any ontological concerns for the other. — Banno

Thank you! And I’d say Qualia play a key role in language games about phenomenology and intentionality. And that that doesn’t imply anything about the brain.

As long as red apples produce X for me and Y for you and we both respectively call the experience we’re having “red” there are no issues. — khaled

You missed the crux, perhaps:

It doesn't matter if you have the same experiences as I, or if they are isomorphic, or anything at all about them, provided that you pass me the red apple. — Banno

We don't even need to both call the experience we are having 'red'; what we need is that you pass me the red apple.

It doesn't matter if you have the same experiences as I, or if they are isomorphic, or anything at all about them, provided that you pass me the red apple — Banno

Which is to say that provided I don’t pass you the red apple those things matter. Why did I not provide the red apple? Is the disagreement at the level of the Ys and Xs (I am colorblind) or is it at the level of the words used (I assigned the wrong word to X). Both are conceivable as the cause of the issue. But provided everything is running smoothly we don’t need to talk about Qualia. When you call a red apple green, we might have to talk about Qualia, or your understanding of English.

But provided everything is running smoothly we don’t need to talk about Qualia. — khaled

We don't even need to refer to them when things go astray. They are not needed in the diagnosis of colourblindness, nor in the correction of someone's English usage.

For others here, I'll add to the problems introduced by the inclusion of qualia by pointing to the theory of meaning proffered by Khaled, which makes qualia central to language use.

It's worth pointing out that this is a long way from their use in Chalmers and Dennett. It's the sort of confusion that I think best avoided by not talking in terms of qualia.

But qualia is there. — khaled

Where?

Well when asking a colorblind person “What color is the traffic light?” and they reply “The same color as the sky” or something are they making a statement about the sky and traffic lights or are they making a statement about their experiences of them? Because if it’s the latter then that would be talk of Qualia no?

The way I see it: Without Qualia there would be no way to distinguish from someone who stubbornly refuses to use the right words for the right colors and someone who is actually colorblind.

Anyways I’ll have to pick this up later. Thanks for the discussion so far.

I can't directly show you my perceptions or sensations, and neither can anyone else.
— Luke

That's a Cartesian view of perception and experience.
— Andrew M

Why must it be? — Luke

Because you're describing your perceptions and experiences as private and inaccessible to others. That's the Cartesian theater model of perception.

I don't disagree, but that's not showing me your perceptions or sensations. Maybe you're colour-blind and you perceive it differently to me. You can show me the object you are looking at, but that's not showing me how it looks to you. — Luke

Or maybe you have normal color vision and perceive it the same as me. Do you agree that that is a possibility?

If you do, then we have a case where not only are we both seeing a red apple, but the apple also appears red to both of us.

If that condition is met, we have a common reference point in the world that we can use language to talk about.

I agree, it is potentially discoverable and comparable - I'm not trying to argue for anything supernatural. However, it remains private until then. Anyway, it's not really the privacy that's at issue here, but whether there is, in fact, some way that things seem to a person, i.e. some "inner" phenomenal experience. That's the definition of qualia given by Dennett, and what I understand eliminative materialists consider as somehow unreal. — Luke

If the Cartesian theater model of perception is rejected, there is no "inner" phenomenal experience. There is only our experience understood as practical contact with the world. So on an ordinary perceptual model, the 'inner' egg is eliminated (as a ghost that serves no useful purpose), and we simply perceive the egg in the world. Or, more precisely, on an ordinary perceptual model there is no implication of an "inner" egg to begin with.

So how does this model deal with disagreements about what is perceived? Via norms that function much like the standard meter length bar that used to be held in Paris. If you want to check whether the apple is red, find a normally-sighted person and ask them.

I have long considerd the hard problem to be a question of why, rather than how. Namely: why do we have phenomenal experiences at all? That question would not seem to be answered by a complete "map" of how all phenomenal experience corresponds to the body/brain. — Luke

The first step is to properly articulate the problem. If the Cartesian perceptual model is rejected, then the simple answer is that we don't have "phenomenal" experiences at all (i.e., there is no experience of an "inner" egg), we just have ordinary, everyday experiences involving ordinary, everyday things like red apples.

Every now and then, as with the bent-stick-in-water example, things aren't always as they seem. So that becomes a point of difference that can be investigated further.

The Cartesian dualist turns this around and says that all we can know for certain are how things seem to us. And, further, no-one can know how things seem to someone else, since those "seemings" are private. This is then described as "phenomenal" experience (or qualia) which is separate from the things in the world that people naively supposed they were experiencing. The hard problem is then to explain why we have this mysterious "phenomenal" experience at all, and how it could have arisen.

A problem with this might be that a perceptual difference needs to be noticeable in order to...get noticed, and therefore some perceptual differences could remain undiscovered and private. — Luke

That's not a philosophical problem though. It's just a matter of not having discovered something. Since there is a physical difference it is something that can, at least in principle, be noticed, investigated and explained.

Seems you've just gone back to the start of the argument again, so this might be a good place to leave off.

Or, more precisely, on an ordinary perceptual model there is no implication of an "inner" egg to begin with. — Andrew M

...as Davidson said

In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.

The solution I see, outlined above, is to treat physical explanations and intentional discussions as distinct language games, neither reducible to the other, but neither implying any ontological concerns for the other. — Banno

So if Chalmers wants a scientific theory of consciousness that goes beyond function to include the phenomenal, he's just using poor grammar?

Now you gettin' it.

He's invented a game - the hard problem - that will keep him in hot dinners and clean socks.

...as Davidson said

In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the tfamiliarobjects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false. — Banno

:up:

Without Qualia there would be no way to distinguish from someone who stubbornly refuses to use the right words for the right colors and someone who is actually colorblind. — khaled

...but there is no way to distinguish someone who stubbornly refuses to use the right words for the right colours from someone who is actually colourblind.

Or better, the imposter is discovered by examining the structure of their eye. Which has nothing to do with qualia.

Now you gettin' it.

He's invented a game - the hard problem - that will keep him in hot dinners and clean socks. — Banno

Ok. I'm going with cultural rift.

Ok. I'm going with cultural rift. — frank

Ah - that last quote from Davidson finishes a paper showing that there can be no cultural rifts...

Not if they are mooted to be incommensurable.

Ah - that last quote from Davidson finishes a paper showing that there can be no cultural rifts...

Not if they are mooted to be incommensurable. — Banno

Maybe not cultural. Just very different life experiences.

Too cynical?

I was a tutor in a small philosophy department for a year or two. I recall clearly the discussions about needing to encourage existential angst in the student body in order to improve student numbers.

How do you encourage existential angst?