Frank, make a point or shut up.

I was under the impression you were saying a belief was a thing in your own mind. I asked if a belief was a thing in your own mind, or just a pattern of behaviour, and you said that was a good question, and then came back and said it must be both.

Frank, make a point or shut up. — Banno

Why? You can't answer a simple question?

I was under the impression you were saying a belief was a thing in your own mind. — Daemon

You want me to expound on the ontology of belief. I think that a muddled notion. The best you can say about belief is what I have said: Belief is the attitude that such-and-such a statement is true. Another way of putting the same thing: Belief is holding that such-and-such is the case.

I don't mind if you want to expound on that, but that wasn't what I was asking. I was trying to get clarity about whether you had said that a belief is a thing in your mind, as that seemed to contradict other things you said. I'm just trying to understand.

But instead let's talk about my dog. I've had him since he was a puppy and he's 8 now, and I have spent a lot of time over those 8 years thinking about his mind, and what he can know, and believe.

So, can he have the attitude that such-and-such a statement is true, despite being unable to formulate or understand statements? When he sees me go into the other room, does he believe I'm in the other room?

When he sees me go into the other room, does he believe I'm in the other room? — Daemon

That's the sort of thing we might say. Usually we would say something like "He thought you were in the other room".

No takers on the Chalmers article?

Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia

What's that about, then?

There's a children's version, one I mentioned earlier, here: The Mark of Zombie

Now, doesn’t all this talk of qualia and consciousness and zombies and non-zombies and hyper-consciousness and dim consciousness and conscious minds and unconscious minds strike you as insane?

The Friends of Qualia didn't seem to want to engage with that, either.

But some idiot philosopher will say that we cannot know about the bush, only about how it seems to us; as if that meant something. — Banno

I never said only. I pointed out the difference between being sweetened and being horsed. One makes sense, and the other doesn't. Qualia is ours, but the forms belong to the world.

I pointed out the difference between being sweetened and being horsed. — Marchesk

...which made no sense to me. Why bother with such odd locutions - a sure sign of things going astray.

What's that about, then? — Banno

I agree that structural invariance makes sense, while absent, fading and dancing qualia do not. Chalmers is a functionalist plus qualia.

...which made no sense to me. Why bother with such odd locutions - a sure sign of things going astray. — Banno

Because you're bing misled by ordinary language and the way English phrases sensations as if they were objective.

...as opposed to being mislead by Platonic forms...

...as opposed to being mislead by Platonic forms... — Banno

The forms need not be platonic. They can just be patterns in the physical. I don't think Chalmers is a platoniist. I believe he has a paper defending nominalism.

The Friends of Qualia didn't seem to want to engage with that, either. — Banno

I'll get on with reading the entire paper and get back with a response or two. I'm in the middle of several things, which is causing my qualia to dance about.

That's the sort of thing we might say. Usually we would say something like "He thought you were in the other room". — Banno

Yes. But anyway it's not just patterns of behaviour?

Both Wittgenstein and Dennett acknowledge that there is a private aspect of conscious experience.
— Luke

Glad to see you have that. I don't deny it, either. — Banno

Great, then I only need you to concede on the two remaining properties.

The job of setting out what qualia are is were it should be: with the advocates of qualia. The purpose of the article is to set out the considerable difficulties involved. — Banno

The title suggests that the purpose of the article is to "deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." Dennett appears to begin by saying that he is attempting to resolutely deny the four "special properties" of qualia, and he ends by saying "there simply are no qualia at all."

On closer inspection, however, Dennett does not begin by denying any properties of qualia. Rather, Dennett's four special properties are qualia:

Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way.

Note that he says qualia are special properties, not that they have special properties.

For Dennett, qualia are not assumed to have the special properties of being private, ineffable, intrinsic and immediate. Instead the special properties of being private, ineffable, intrinsic and immediate are qualia.

However, Wikipedia provides a very different definition of qualia:

In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience.

Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to "propositional attitudes", where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.

This is at odds with Dennett's characterisation of qualia, which is not about the qualitative character of instances of conscious experience, but is instead about some other properties of instances of conscious experience. What Dennett calls qualia are not the taste of wine or the perceived sensation of pain, but are instead the four "special properties" of being private, ineffable, intrinsic, and immediate to consciousness.

To deny Wikipedia's definition of qualia would be to deny the "qualitative characters of sensation". To deny Dennett's definition of qualia would be to deny that a sensation has Dennett's four special properties. Evidently, it is easy to mistake Dennett as trying to deny the qualitative characters of sensation on the basis that sensations do not have his four special properties, rather than merely denying that sensations have his four special properties. Dennett has introduced this confusion through his misuse of the term 'qualia'.

I found it quite difficult to read beyond Chalmers' description of functional organisation and his announcement that he would defend it.

It's absurdly ignorant of what we know about how our bodies work, and how differently computers and robots work.

Evidently, it is easy to mistake Dennett as trying to deny the qualitative characters of sensation on the basis that sensations do not have his four special properties, rather than merely denying that sensations have his four special properties. Dennett has introduced this confusion through his misuse of the term 'qualia'. — Luke

Good post. Something that has never been settled in this thread is whether the qualitative characters of sensation inevitably lead to the one or more of the properties Dennett is eager to quine, and whether what's left over from quining is anything more than a functional account.

If there is something more, then the hard problem remains hard, and if there is not, then there is no reason to talk of conscious sensations. What doesn't work is to talk of colors and pains, but pretend this is not a challenge for physicalism.

There's a children's version, one I mentioned earlier, here: The Mark of Zombie

Now, doesn’t all this talk of qualia and consciousness and zombies and non-zombies and hyper-consciousness and dim consciousness and conscious minds and unconscious minds strike you as insane? — Banno

No, but it can be made to sound insane. One should note that the entire article is written from the third person. We only ever hear the reports of the astronauts, without the first person ever being portrayed. And yet we all have first person experiences, so we know what that's like.

The first sort is conscious things – things like you and me, cats and dogs, and chimpanzees and tigers. These things, the conscious things, have experiences: they experience the redness of red, the paininess of pain, the yumminess of yum, and so on. Philosophers call these experiences qualia. Qualia, by definition, are the sole preserve of conscious things. — The Mark of Zombie

Except saying the "redness of red" can be misleading. It's really just pointing out that red, pain and yuminess are the stuff of conscious experiences. It's something more than a detector discriminating color or Siri telling me it's cold outside.

It's absurdly ignorant of what we know about how our bodies work, and how differently computers and robots work. — Daemon

There is Ned Block's The Harder Problem of Consciousness using Commander Data from Star Trek as a superficial functional isomorph as discussed in this podcast:

https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2019/07/01/ep219-block-papineau/

Block's argument is that we can't tell whether consciousness is functionally or biologically based, so we couldn't tell whether an android would be conscious.

Agreed, though I would say that [objectivity] is grounded in human experience, rather than human subjectivity, which I think captures the empirical nature of the enterprise.
— Andrew M

I would say subjective experience. It helps show that objectivity stems from subjectivity, rather than be the opposite of it. — Olivier5

I was actually referring to ideas, not objectivity (in the brackets above).

Anyway, I appreciate that you're taking an embedded approach rather than viewing objectivity and subjectivity as opposing duals. I can agree with that.

Covid is up next. Think we can make it there ...? — Marchesk

If we keep talking about things as they are, definitely. Very quickly too.

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! — Wayfarer

Science can include the qualitative. Not in the mind as qualia, but in the world as the qualitative characteristics of the things we encounter.

Aristotle discusses this. Along with substances (individuals), quantities, relations, positions and actions, there are also qualities.

3. Qualification or quality (ποιόν, poion, of what kind or quality). This determination characterizes the nature of an object. Examples: white, black, grammatical, hot, sweet, curved, straight. — Aristotle's Categories

Aristotle discusses this. — Andrew M

What Aristotle does or doesn't discuss, is not the point - it was precisely much of Aristotelian science that was demolished by Galileo, was it not? And recall, furthemore, that linked with that, although not established solely by Galileo, was the distinction of 'primary and secondary qualities', which those attributes Arisotle names being designated as 'secondary'.

All belief is meaningful to the creature forming/having the belief. — creativesoul

Do you agree?

Are you really saying that how things are is determined by majority vote? — Daemon

No, I'm not saying that at all. Let's look at that passage again:

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)

It's not the agreement that is the standard. It is the focal point - the aspect of the environment that has some kind of prominence.

See also the picture of the coordination game example. Is there a square that stands out to you? That it stands out is not a function of your agreement with others that it does, but of the way you perceive things in the world.

If it so happens that other people perceive things in the same way as you, then the distinction between that square and the other three squares will result in language that the community will use. Per this example, the words "red" and "blue".

Now suppose you were color blind (often this is between red and green, but I'll stick to the example). In that case, the red square won't stand out. So if everyone were color-blind, there would be no red-blue distinction. Language would instead arise around other (for them) prominent features of the environment. But in a world where most people are not color-blind, the color-blind person has to adapt to the color-normal use (say, learning how to navigate traffic lights by noting the light intensity at a bulb position). With regard to this very specific distinction (and the color-normal standard), they would not be seeing things as they are. But if language instead emerged according to the distinctions that they would naturally make, then they would be seeing things as they are.

This idea can be extended to animals that perceive colors differently. Are they seeing the world as it is? Yes, in relation to their perceptual capabilities. But not necessarily in relation to ours as human beings.

Meaning existed prior to our knowledge and/or awareness of our own thought and belief about the world and/or ourselves(conscious experience), and did so as a direct result of creatures capable of drawing correlations between different things doing so.
— creativesoul

So meaning has become a thing; How sad. — Banno

"Meaning" is a noun. All nouns are persons, places, or things. That's how English works. Your response is cowardly.

This idea can be extended to animals that perceive colors differently. Are they seeing the world as it is? Yes, in relation to their perceptual capabilities. But not necessarily in relation to ours as human beings. — Andrew M

What about in relation to as things are, or at the very least, as modern science describes those things?

If we keep talking about things as they are, definitely. Very quickly too. — khaled

Is Banno's coffee bitter and sweet as it is? Will defeating Covid be inherently sweet?