I was under the impression you were saying a belief was a thing in your own mind. — Daemon
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?
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
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
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
Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way.
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.
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
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
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
It's absurdly ignorant of what we know about how our bodies work, and how differently computers and robots work. — Daemon
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
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
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
Are you really saying that how things are is determined by majority vote? — Daemon
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)
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
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
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