Why? — Isaac
I could ask the same of you. Why is your standard so low? — khaled
Anesthesia prevents both (you don't move during surgery). And in that case we have behavioral equivalence (the complaints are removed). — khaled
So you are seriously suggesting that with enough knowledge the surprise would be eliminated. I think that's a much less reasonable expectation. — khaled
Does it also follow then that we can teach children colors by having them look at enough fMRI scans and reading enough neurology books? — khaled
Incorrect. The doctor knows that the private experience we each describe as "like knives" is indicative of a certain condition that is not the same as the descriptor "like blunt force". — khaled
I already think it will be a waste of time from reading the first bit. — khaled
Let me just dig into this a bit. So if I say "I am experiencing red", you would reply "Actually, you're not experiencing red, you're.....". What is the ......? Could you do that for "I am in pain" too? What exactly would you put in place of those dots? — khaled
Give them a spectrometer and tell them that anything with a wavelength of approximately 625-740 nanometres is called 'red'. — Isaac
That's like saying you can teach a kid math by giving him a calculator. I obviously meant for them to be able to distinguish it alone. — khaled
Our use of language. — Isaac
That's absurd. Does this mean birds don't see colors? — Marchesk
why don't we have the equivalent language for the rest of the EM spectrum or sonar? — Marchesk
But also, meaning is related to use, so any (intentionally) successful use has to have an element of understanding meaning, — Isaac
I bet those patients who were accidentally merely paralysed complained a great deal afterwards. Again, you're applying arbitrary parameters to make the evidence match your model. Why place an arbitrary time restriction on complaints? They are clearly not behaviourally equivalent at all. — Isaac
How does he know this? — Isaac
"Actually, you're not experiencing red, you're... reaching for the word 'red' as a model to help you explain, predict and act on your actual experience which may or may not have included stimulation from some particular wavelength of light". — Isaac
You cannot conclude we have 'red' quale from that. You might, other people might not. — Isaac
On the one hand you want to establish a discursive reality to your experiences as they appear to you to be, then on the other you want to use this to make claims about our shared experience (there is such a thing as qualia, we experience redness, we have experiences etc). — Isaac
If you want to divorce the actual mechanisms from your experience of them (the story you tell yourself about them), then that's fine, but all you have left is a story, you can't then treat it as some matter of fact that can be further investigated. For one it will change minute-to-minute. — Isaac
why are you setting arbitrary limits to what constitutes understanding a term? I've answered for me, but you've not given me your answer. — Isaac
think Hilton's is more about the overlapping of sensorimotor and surrounding tissue nerve ending, the superhighway idea is a consequence of it, but my expertise ends at the neck, so I'm not sure. — Isaac
Denying that there is any conscious awareness, or "phenomenal aspect" and saying that it is not what we might intuitively think it is, that it is not a mysterious non-physical "something", are not the same. — Janus
I would say the theory is ideal, in that it's humans creating a map of the territory, while the territory itself might be understood as physical, assuming a physicalist ontology. That does allow for the possibility that the theory is missing something fundamental. A map is only as good as the map makers and their knowledge of the territory. — Marchesk
Humans, maps and territory are all observable, so I don't know what Marchesk means by "ideal" other than that they like the theory, or that it works for them. The fundamental aspect that is missing is causation - of how maps can be about territories.just means "in terms of observable phenomena". — Janus
Because you seem to be invoking privacy even between normally-sighted people.
— Andrew M
I await your distinction between practical privacy and philosophical privacy. — Luke
Either way, I don't think you've addressed the privacy issue that I noted previously:
"You can't perceive or experience another person's perceptions and experiences. That's just a fact of being you and not them." — Luke
The Wikipedia article on Qualia gives the following definition of privacy: "all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible." — Luke
If the difference between a normal-sighted person and a colour-blind person is not in their supposed "phenomenal layer", then how are they different? Why does colour-blindness involve a practical privacy but normal-sightedness doesn't? — Luke
There's no need to introduce an artificial "phenomenal layer" to account for that difference. — Andrew M
It sounded like you were denying color sensations. But perhaps you prefer to call colors models of wavelength or reflectivity. — Marchesk
An element of understanding doens't translate to the colloquial use of "Do you understand X". Being able to use the word correctly in one sentence doesn't show understanding as it is commonly used. — khaled
But then again, a couple comments ago you said that if a colorblind person says "Hand me the red apple" that that does the same job as an ably sighted person saying it. Even though the colorblind person would clearly behave differently from an ably sighted person upon being handed a green apple. — khaled
How does he know this? — Isaac
From noticing that everyone complaining from a stabbing pain usually has this ailment but if they're complaining about blunt force pain then they usually have this other ailment. — khaled
Experience is talk on a phenomenological level. Your experience is your experience (another way of saying "the way things seem like to you is the way things seem like to you"). Saying "actual experience" makes no sense as it implies a distinction between "fake experience" and "actual experience". Fake experience would translate to "The way things seem like they seem like to you but don't actually seem like that" which makes no sense. You cannot think you're experiencing something and actually not be experiencing that thing. — khaled
You cannot conclude we have 'red' quale from that. You might, other people might not. — Isaac
The fact that I cannot conclude what other people's experiences are like is why qualia are private. — khaled
we both call them "red". In other words, that whatever experience we are having, we both tell the same story about it. What is the issue? — khaled
What do you mean here? The way things seem like to me, is, as a matter of fact, and always will be, the way things seem like to me. I don't see what's non-factual about this. — khaled
You have yet to give an example where knowing a list of things and their colors, but never actually having seen the color results in the same behavior as people who’ve seen that color. — khaled
I keep giving you examples where colorblind people may know that lakes are blue but will still repeatedly fail a test where they're shown drawings of purple lakes and red skies. I am saying that without having seen something red, you will never be able to use the word as appropriately as people who've seen red things. — khaled
Your reply was: Give them a spectrometer. But if "understanding" for you means that a kid with a calculator understands math despite not being able to solve any problems without the calculator, then I think the definition is ridiculous. — khaled
Anyway, I was asking how an anti-qualist puts that into words. A person with chronic pain complains of a bout of the ”same pain" but we know the cause is not necessarily the same. — frank
I keep hearing this argument by all the Quiners here. I want to instead ask, what's the problem with introducing that layer anyways, even if we don't need to (not that I'm convinced of that)? What are y'all afraid might happen? What confusion have you been trying to avoid? — khaled
The doctor knows that the private experience we each describe as "like knives" is indicative of a certain condition — khaled
doctors talk about qualia all the time — khaled
How do we explain this [Hilton's Law] without resorting to talk of phenomenal consciousness? — frank
Maybe painkillers and anaesthesia kill more than complaints. Maybe that's why they're not called complaint-killers. — khaled
how might we teach the colorblind person to be able to distinguish all the colors perfectly in each situation? And that includes seeing new things for the first time too? Answer: We can't. — khaled
This activity causes them to reach for terms like 'lower back', and to show defensive reflexes there. I don't seem to need to talk about their 'experiences' even, let alone 'qualia'. — Isaac
So you would explain the law in terms of the range of words uttered, not in terms of the subject experiencing the same pain. — frank
From where are you getting this empirical data about 'common', 'colloquial' use of the expression 'to understand the meaning of a word'? — Isaac
He would know this no less if he didn't consider 'experience' at all. He has no need of it. — Isaac
were actually experiencing was a virtual reality set-up. You're saying that my use of the term 'actually experiencing" there would make no sense to you at all, you wouldn't know what I was talking about? — Isaac
Other people may not have the experiences you have. — Isaac
You may not even have those experiences in the next five minutes. It might seem to you that the colour 'red' has an experience associated with it, it might not seem that way to others, it might not seem that way to you tomorrow. Others might feel that talk of 'experiences' at all doesn't make sense. You might feel that way tomorrow. — Isaac
This gives you no information whatsoever about mental 'experiences'. — Isaac
Because it is a trivial matter to prove that the way things seem to you (at time t0) will definitely not always be the way things seem to you (at time t1), even on the subject of exactly the same stimuli. — Isaac
'Stimuli cause experiences which then cause responses' — Isaac
before proceeding to expound exactly how an understanding of X — Isaac
"X is not amenable to empirical evidence from the material world of the physical sciences" - before proceeding to expound exactly how an understanding of X should impact our behaviour in the aforementioned material world. — Isaac
I'll get to your recent comments, but my replies require a bit of paving, so...
...conscious experience of seeing red cups requires the capability of seeing red cups, and that all the evidence suggests that biological machinery plays an irrevocable role in helping to provide that capability.
— creativesoul
Do you agree? — creativesoul
Yes — khaled
What you said doesn’t contradict what I said. — khaled
We don’t know the connection the biological machinery has to the experience...
Have we come to any sort of consensus as to what color is? Or pain?
If it's not qualia, is it ... a model? A language game? A private beetle we can't talk about? — Marchesk
I've been willing since I first jumped into this thread and admit that qualia is problematic (certainly as Dennett discusses it). But I haven't seen a good explanation for what consciousness is if it isn't something along the lines of qualia. — Marchesk
Or to put it another way, even if we dispense with the notion of qualia, consciousness still poses a problem for physicalism, because those colors and pains are simply absent from any biological, chemical or physical explanation of the mechanisms behind conscious experience (as best we understand them).
Somehow color and pain pop into existence from the structure and function of the biological systems. I guess one could bite the bullet and endorse spooky emergentism, which would be a form of non-reductive physicalism. — Marchesk
But I'm not sure how strong emergentism is different from property dualism. And I also don't know why you couldn't have a physical universe absent that spookiness. To paraphrase Chalmers: "God has to go to extra work to add in law for consciousness when the right structure and function are in place." And by God, Chalmers just means the additional supervenience that's not logically necessitated from the physical. — Marchesk
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.