I haven't seen a good explanation for what consciousness is... — Marchesk
Or to put it another way, even if we dispense with the notion of qualia, consciousness still poses a problem for physicalism, becuase 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). — Marchesk
I think all Dennett wanted to do was shift the burden of proof (which is usually supposed to be on him). — frank
And teach/learn from past mistakes...
What I should have said was...
What qualia? — creativesoul
Without biological machinery there is no conscious experience of seeing red cups; however differently they may appear to each individual. — creativesoul
I think one of the confusions in this thread is that Dennett was directly attacking some commonly accepted understanding of qualia, so that he expected his audience to walk away convinced that there is no such thing.
I found it impossible to get across that this is a misconception. The result of trying to explain what he was doing (which I did ad nauseam) was just hostility. — frank
knowledge of the biological machinery doesn’t allow us to know how the cup appears to people — khaled
You go ahead and tell us all again what Dennett was doing, and if there is even the tiniest hint of hostility I will defend you fiercely even if I know you are wrong, like a mother whose son has stolen a car and committed some dreadful felony. — Daemon
You sure about that?What I mean is that knowledge of the biological machinery doesn’t allow us to know how the cup appears to people. — khaled
You seem to be thinking of qualia as little ghosts. I was introduced to the idea at around 12 years old when I started reading sci-fi in earnest. The idea of little ghosts has never been part of it. — frank
If "physical" means observable, then "physical" isn't fundamental as the physical property of some phenomenon is dependent on the existence of observers. Are observers physical? What about observations? Only a fraction of the universe is observable, so does that mean that only a fraction of the universe is physical? — Harry Hindu
but as something like non-physical mental representations; intermediaries between the perceiver and the perceived. Dualism, the Cartesian theatre with the observer as a kind of homunculus. This folksy intuitive notion goes right back to Plato's Cave. — Janus
I want to instead ask, what's the problem with introducing that layer anyways, even if we don't need to... — khaled
You can't tell us what qualia are, because they are ineffable. — Banno
I read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid too, from the age of about 8 into my teens, as my old man had an extensive collection. I don't recall encountering the idea of qualia. Which author(s) do you have in mind? — Janus
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