It is also why Daniel Dennett is obliged to deny that 'qualia', and indeed, the mind or consciousness as we understand it are real. They must be derivative of physical processes, the output of molecular interactions. — Wayfarer

Where, in the article, does he argue for this?

Or is this a Dennett boogeyman?

If the argument is "Dennett is a physicalist, so he has to argue against qualia; physicalism is wrong; hence we need pay no attention to the arguments against qualia" then it's not worth considering. Same goes for the implied argument that logic is not physical, therefore qualia are not physical.

I'm surprised by this response. — Luke

That surprises me. It's what I have maintained since the start fo the thread:

qualia are after all ineffable. — Banno

But more than that, I've argued that they are useless:

In 2013, I said I do not think that there is worth in giving a name to the subjective experience of a colour or a smell. In 2014, I doubted the usefulness of differentiating a smell from the experience-of-that-smell. Never understood qualia. I still don't see their purpose. — Banno

Well, if you begin with Platonism it's not surprising that you end up with Platonism.

...then there are those who insist in talking about how the word is for us, as opposed to how it really is; as if that helped.

That surprises me. It's what I have maintained since the start fo the thread: — Banno

But I thought you were advocating what Dennett says in the article. Doesn’t he deny that qualia are ineffable?

Do you believe that we have inner private experiences?

...then there are those who insist in talking about how the word is for us, as opposed to how it really is; as if that helped. — Banno

:100:

Stove's Gem. We can't see the world as it really is because we have eyes.

Or, we can't see the world as it really is, because we take delusory appearances to be reality. Which is much more likely, given our cultural context.

You want to say that a feeling is of something "in the world", and not of something "in your mind". Okay, but you are either aware or not aware of being touched, and it is the awareness (or not) that makes it a feeling (or not). You are aware of the experience; you are not having an experience of the experience. — Luke

No, I was aware of being touched on the shoulder. That was my experience.

It's not that a person touched me on the shoulder (an external occurrence) and then I felt it (a subsequent internal occurrence). It's that I felt a person touch me on the shoulder. That was my experience - a relation between myself and the world. If I hadn't felt it, then my experience would have been different - an alternative experience that didn't include an awareness of being touched on the shoulder (although I nonetheless was).

This is an example of how we're using the word "experience" differently. Dichotomizing it into internal and external occurrences creates ghosts, or shadows on the cave wall.

What about the feeling of pain - is that a feeling of something "in the world"? — Luke

Suppose I stub my toe. I feel pain in my toe. And my toe is in the world. Or, in another case, I might feel a generalized pain. But I am also in the world. So the Cartesian theater doesn't arise.

If so, then what is the distinction between the feeler of pain (i.e. the person) and the world? Do you consider a person to be identical with their physical body? — Luke

The distinction between a person and the world is one of perception and conceptualization, not one of ontological separation. That is, a person is embedded in the world that they are perceiving. A person is materially constituted by their body, but we conceptualize a person differently from their body (i.e., as having a higher level of structure and organization).

Consider an analogy between a statue and the stone that materially constitutes it. The conceptual difference between the statue and the stone is the form of the stone (i.e., the structure and organization that makes the stone a statue).

Or, we can't see the world as it really is, because we take delusory appearances to be reality. Which is much more likely, given our cultural context. — Wayfarer

Indeed that can and does happen. But we are still capable of seeing things as they are, no?

Ontological pluralism does say there are different ways of being, so perhaps I misspoke. — Janus

Do you know of any philosophers who espouse(d) OntPlu?

It depends on whether you count different ways of being as amounting to different forms or different constitutions.

I'm interested to know where that forms/constitutions terminology comes from.

If the latter, then the claim would have to be that there are no fundamental constituents of the different forms, or that there are a plurality of fundamental constituents that are not all of the same basic nature; i.e. not all physical, or even not all in the categories of physical and mental.

"Fundamental" is a concept that vaguely troubles me in this context. Of course it's a sensible way to look at things from a practical point of view, but does it properly reflect reality "in itself"? Is there a non-arbitrary, objective distinction between what is fundamental and what is derived? We're only seeing things from our own situation (in time and space).

Modern physics tells us that the basic nature of everything is energy and that energy is equivalent to matter. We do have the four fundamental forces: the electromagnetic, the strong and weak nuclear forces and gravity. (Maybe add to that Dark Matter and Dark Energy) They are all counted as physical forces, though, insofar as we can detect and measure their effects.

I'm not dismissing science, I'm pro-science, but these are still only theories, they could be overturned or transcended, our knowledge is far from complete. Maybe there's Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and what else is around that we don't and very likely can't understand? What about adding Space and Time or Spacetime to your list? And particles: where do they feature? Biology? Agency?

Thanks again for prompting these reflections. As you see I am really only starting to explore the topic. And helping us get to 100 pages so we can stop talking about qualia altogether.

Do you know of any philosophers who espouse(d) OntPlu? — Daemon

Do you know of any philosophers who deny ontological pluralism? No abstracts, no numbers?

Do you know of any philosophers who deny ontological pluralism? No abstracts, no numbers? — magritte

In case there's any doubt, I was straightforwardly asking Janus if he or she knew of a school of Ontological Pluralists.

As for your question, surely philosophers have argued over whether abstracts and/or numbers exist? Not that I can name them.

But we are still capable of seeing things as they are, no? — Andrew M

Is a colourblind person capable of seeing things as they are?

T-sentences set this out as clearly as possible: — Banno

If only.

The left hand side is about words, ... — Banno

More specifically, the left hand side raises the question whether the quoted sentence has succeeded in pointing the word "white" at snow. So it's about both.

... the right hand side is about the world, ... — Banno

More specifically, the right hand side raises the question whether snow is such as to be pointed at by the word "white" (in English, else by "weiß" etc.). So, both again.

... and truth is what brings them together. — Banno

No longer makes sense.

The stuff on the right hand side is in unmediated contact with the world; — Banno

Is as mystical as the 'mediated' version.

that is, it just says how things are. — Banno

How they are organised by language.

And it does this simply because that is what words do. — Banno

Hand waving.

Is a colourblind person capable of seeing things as they are? — Daemon

That depends on what one's standard is for seeing things as they are.

In game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication. The concept was introduced by the American economist Thomas Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict (1960).[1] Schelling states that "(p)eople can often concert their intentions or expectations with others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same" in a cooperative situation (at page 57), so their action would converge on a focal point which has some kind of prominence compared with the environment. However, the conspicuousness of the focal point depends on time, place and people themselves. It may not be a definite solution. — Focal point (game theory)

But we are still capable of seeing things as they are, no? — Andrew M

Best you can hope for is seeing things as people agree they are. I think it makes sense to call this “the way things are” when virtually everyone agrees on them (2+2=4) but even then it doesn’t exceed the point of being an agreement. I don’t think this is controversial.

But I thought you were advocating what Dennett says in the article. Doesn’t he deny that qualia are ineffable? — Luke

I'm not sure what to do with this.

If qualia are ineffable, then we can't talk about them.

If not, then they are just everyday tastes and smells and sights; talk of qualia would add nothing tot he conversation...

Stove's Gem. We can't see the world as it really is because we have eyes. — Andrew M

Or, we can't see the world as it really is, because we take delusory appearances to be reality. Which is much more likely, given our cultural context. — Wayfarer

Some folk just gotta 'f the ineffable.

But we are still capable of seeing things as they are, no? — Andrew M

Since we can't, ex hypothesi, see the world as it is, then at the very least we cannot know that what we do see is not the world as it really is.

So there's no way for this approach from @Wayfarer to get past the hot air stage.

Best you can hope for is seeing things as people agree they are — khaled

Really? So if we all agree on something, that makes it true? Or real? All we need to do to get the plane to fly is to agree that it will fly?

You don't really think that.

SIlly season on the forums.

Do you know of any philosophers who espouse(d) OntPlu? — Daemon

See William James, 'A Pluralistic Universe'
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11984

I'm interested to know where that forms/constitutions terminology comes from — Daemon

Well, the 'idea of the forms' is central to Platonism. (The wiki entry is useful in that it has an index at the end of all the dialogues in which the matter is discussed but I'd treat the remainder with a large grain of salt.) The theory, if it can be called a theory, was modified by Aristotle, but in one way or another remained central to philosophy up until the advent of modernity and/or the ascent of nominalism, which denies the reality of universals.

Or, we can't see the world as it really is, because we take delusory appearances to be reality. Which is much more likely, given our cultural context.
— Wayfarer

Indeed that can and does happen. But we are still capable of seeing things as they are, no? — Andrew M

That is the explicit mission of science, but since Galileo, there's something that's been left out. In the attempt to exclude subjectivity, the subject itself becomes excluded; science as now practiced has tended to put exclusive emphasis on the quantitative, what can be specificed mathematically, excluding anything qualitative - hence this debate!

You can see how science itself grew out of the prior conceptions of the Christian intellectual tradition. One of the books I have open is Peter Harrison's 'Fall of Man and Foundations of Science', which argues that 'scientific methods were originally devised as techniques for ameliorating the cognitive damage wrought by human sin'. But later, of course, man him/herself became excluded from the picture, or treated only as a phenomenon through the lens of the biological sciences. The mind is relegated to the role of epiphenomenon which emerges more or less by chance.

Really? So if we all agree on something, that makes it true? Or real? — Banno

No, the other way around. When we call something “true” or “real” all we’re saying is that we agree on it. Nothing more. We’re not accessing some “hotline to truth”. As we could always be mistaken.

That depends on what one's standard is for seeing things as they are. — Andrew M

That's some Protagorean level of sophistry.

When we call something “true” or “real” all we’re saying is that we agree on it. Nothing more. — khaled

Is "We" just you and I? Or a simple majority? Or can we use Hare-Clark?

But I thought you were advocating what Dennett says in the article. Doesn’t he deny that qualia are ineffable?
— Luke

I'm not sure what to do with this. — Banno

Do you agree with Dennett or not?

If qualia are ineffable, then we can't talk about them.

If not, then they are just everyday tastes and smells and sights; talk of qualia would add nothing tot he conversation... — Banno

Isn't this to be expected if qualia are ineffable? - Qualists claim that qualia are ineffable and your complaint is that this "adds nothing to the conversation"? To ask for a third time: since you agree that qualia are ineffable, do you also agree that qualia are private? And while I'm here, I may as well ask: do you also agree that qualia are instrinsic and immediately apprehensible in consciousness?

The point here isn't whether or not qualia "add anything to the conversation", but whether or not they exist. As Dennett states:

The verb "to quine" is even more esoteric. It comes from The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1978c, 8th edn., 1987), a satirical dictionary of eponyms: "quine, v. To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." — Quining Qualia

And further (my emphasis):

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, — Quining Qualia

Of the four properties that Dennett cites, I consider privacy as the main one, which encompasses the other three. Dennett seems to acknowledge that we have inner private experiences, not only in the above quote, but also in the following sense:

And that is just what we do when we seem to ostend, with the mental finger of inner intention, a quale or qualia-complex in our experience. We refer to a property--a public property of uncharted boundaries--via reference to our personal and idiosyncratic capacity to respond to it. That idiosyncracy is the extent of our privacy. If I wonder whether your blue is my blue, your middle-C is my middle-C, I can coherently be wondering whether our discrimination profiles over a wide variation in conditions will be approximately the same. And they may not be; people experience the world quite differently. But that is empiricially discoverable by all the usual objective testing procedures. — Quining Qualia

Empirically discoverable by all the usual objective testing procedures except for the main one: another person's experience cannot be directly detected by the senses. In other words, you can't directly see another person's experience (or their "personal and idosyncratic capacity to respond" or their "discrimination profiles"). In short:

if I have your experiences, then those experiences are mine and not yours. — SEP article on Other Minds

And you seem to agree, via your earlier approval of my exegesis of Wittgenstein, that language cannot access or refer to anybody's personal and idiosyncratic experience - which is why such experience is ineffable. Quite obviously, having this personal and idiosyncratic experience is also what makes it intrinsic and immediate to (or perhaps even constitutive of) consciousness. Hence, it is this sort of privacy which encompasses and accounts for qualia's ineffability, intrinsic nature and immediacy to consciousness. The same personal and idiosyncratic privacy that Dennett admits is, I would think, the same kind of privacy that most Qualists are advocating.

...your complaint is that this "adds nothing to the conversation"? — Luke

No; My complaint is that hence they cannot add anything to the conversation.

The point here isn't whether or not qualia "add anything to the conversation", but whether or not they exist. — Luke

That was what perturbed me about your approach. You think that those are seperate questions.

Qualia exist if they make a difference. They make no difference. Hence they do not exist.

Qualia exist if they make a difference. They make no difference. Hence they do not exist. — Banno

Something exists only if it can make a difference to a conversation? Or what do you mean by "make a difference"?

304. “But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behaviour with pain and pain-behaviour without pain.” — Admit it? What greater difference could there be? — “And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a Nothing.” — Not at all. It’s not a Something, but not a Nothing either! The conclusion was only that a Nothing would render the same service as a Something about which nothing could be said.

Wittgenstein seems to acknowledge a distinction between what exists and what can be said.