I would not have thought that I have been giving the impression that that’s what I believe. I was stating a position that some people believe that makes no sense to me. — Patterner

You're right, sorry. Basically I just wanted to make clear I distance myself from epiphenomenalism (qualia as real, but causally impotent), so there is no need for you to argue against it.

Did you the sign the 'member of the English speaking community' contract ? Or did you absorb its semantic norms mostly without trying ? — plaque flag

The latter mostly, why does it matter?

Autonomy means [ approximately ] self-rule. Rejecting the unjustified claims of other is part of that. — plaque flag

Why? Why can't a non-autonomous being reject unjustified claims?

The notion of being 'rational' is essentially normative (ethical). One prides oneself on not being credulous, on [autonomously] thinking for one's self. One is ashamed to contradict oneself, embarrassed to find oneself caught in a performative contradiction. One resents being described as a kind of 'machine' that did not reasonably (autonomously) decide but was rather 'programmed' by its environment. 'You are just saying that because you are white/black, male/female, rich/poor, straight/gay.' — plaque flag

Well I cannot speak for the thoughts and feelings of "one" but I see no contradiction whatsoever between being a product of my environment and being rational. To be rational is just to act in accordance with the norms of reason, which have nothing to do with being "autonomous" or any other strange fantasy. I also don't see how this directly relates to qualitative properties.

Rationality is universal. It applies to all of us in the rational community. You don't get your own logic. Neither do I. It's an aspect of a humanism which has liberated itself from scripture. Both the species and its individuals are grasped as autonomous beings, ideally subject only to the laws they themselves recognize as legitimate. Basically, rational people all agree that they have a sort of better self in common, namely a rationality that binds them all. 'May the best human win [ may we fallibly defer for now to whoever makes the best case.]' — plaque flag

Well as far as I can remember I never signed such a contract, but in your view I did so implicitly when I joined the rational community? Could you be more specific about how denying my autonomy results in self-contradiction?

If the same events would take place due to the laws of physics if I did not have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant, then why have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant? It is difficult to understand why evolution would select for this. — Patterner

Personally I don't believe evolution is to blame, I think the concept of qualitative properties is the product of culture. But I also don't believe that qualia is the result of some vestigial or useless "ability" as you seem to do, I think it is simply a mistaken idea that can be gotten rid of just by changing your mind.

Phantom pains exist. Those aren't functional. — Marchesk

Yes they are, anything that has an effect also has a functional component. For example, if you go to the doctor for help with your phantom pain, that is an effect. That the concept of "phantom pain" is even used at all is also an effect.

It actually does contradict what we know, you know need to know how light works to know that's an illusion. This is just wrong and we know the water is fooling us by "bending" the stick. — Darkneos

Sorry, are you being literal here? You think that the water is deceiving you intentionally?

I maintain the water is innocent, it is simply behaving in accordance physics just as everything else. If you are "fooled" by this, the problem is with yourself.

I don't resent functionalism as a mapping strategy, but on a more serious ontological level it looks absurd to me. — plaque flag

Knee-jerk incredulousness is a common response, but I generally find there is not much of substance to back up the sentiment. Which is to say I don't mind "looking absurd" if that is your main objection.

You seem to imply that your words are as empty of meaning as those of a stochastic parrot. — plaque flag

Not to worry, "meaning" too can be accommodated by the functionalist account. Pretty much any useful concept can.

Do you not see that you are making the bold controversial claim here ? — plaque flag

I didn't mean to imply it's wrong to make bold claims (what a boring place this would become then). You just have to be prepared to defend them.

You seem to miss that science and philosophy exist within a 'field' of normatively. Speaking of human speech acts as merely causal is a self-subverting psychologism. — plaque flag

Really? That's not obvious to me, you'll have to elaborate.

Contentious claim indeed, sir ! Could you justify it carefully with one hand in an open flame ? — plaque flag

Sure, and then I'd probably pull the hand back and start screaming, as that is the usual functional response. The functionalist account is in no way lacking in terms of explaining human behavior.

Well it's really just a tangential point, I will rephrase the question so we get back on track: why do you believe that pain has a qualitative component? As you know I view pain only as functional, what is the problem with this?

It doesn’t matter what the origin of thunder is. You can claim it’s an act of god. That doesn’t stop an atheist from hearing thunder. — Patterner

Yes it does, technically. If thunder is an act of god, by definition, then if god does not exist then no one can hear thunder. The "thunder" we would hear would not be thunder, as it did not come from god, but something else.

I think you need to consider the difference between defining something and describing it, the two are very different.

Have you looked into Popper's idea of basic statements ? — plaque flag

No, but I don't think Popper would say you can dodge skepticism of a statement by declaring it to be "basic". If you make a contentious claim you have to be prepared to justify it, if you refuse then you are really only pretending to argue.

I don’t think I feel pain. I feel pain. — Patterner

This is a performative contradiction, if you say "I feel pain" then you must think you feel pain.

Perhaps you meant "I don't just think, I know I feel pain"? But I'm not interested in how confident you are, I want to know how you know.

If you think I don’t, I would like to hear your argument. — Patterner

To make an argument, I would need something to argue against. If you just say "I feel pain" and don't provide any justification for that statement, then what can I do? Your belief is dogmatic, it's not open to discussion.

If you think I am laying claim to the words, I would like to hear what you think a more accurate claim for them is. — Patterner

It's not a matter of which definition is "better", I'm just giving you a heads up, don't be surprised to hear me say weird things like "I don't feel pain" because that is simply the consequence of defining pain as having qualitative character.

To illustrate with a different example, let us say that I defined "thunder" as an act of god. That would mean all the atheists of the world would have to say "I don't believe in thunder", which would make them look pretty foolish.

I think Husserl is correct in that we have a sort of categorial intuition. As humans, we live among concepts as much as colors. — plaque flag

Ok but well, that intuition is bound to vary from one person to another. If we want meaningful discussion and not just sit around in a room and think (though I guess Husserl loved that) we can't insist only on our preferred way of conceptualizing. If someone has a problem with how you conceptualize experience you can't get around this by saying "it's irreducible".

You do not experience blueness or pain? — Patterner

No, not as defined by you.

This what I meant by "laying claim to words" earlier, you have claimed the word "blueness" and "pain", and now I look stupid by having to deny that I experience color or pain. It is very important that you answer my question directly, no matter how stupid it sounds: why do you believe that you feel pain or that you experience blueness?

I did. We can explain things like perception, language, behavior, and memory in terms of things like neurons, circuits in the brain, feedback loops, and algorithms. Neurons, circuits in the brain, feedback loops, and algorithms explain it all without the need conscious experience, like blueness and pain. And they don’t explain blueness and pain. Blueness and pain are qualia. They are unnecessary subjective experience. and unexplained. — Patterner

I don't really understand how this is an answer. Why do you believe in "conscious experience", blueness, pain etc.? Why believe there is anything "unneccessary" to explain in the first place?

1. If qualitative element/subjective experience doesn’t do anything, and everything works without it, why does it exist? — Patterner

I don't believe that qualia/phenomenal properties do exist, so I obviously can't answer this question. I believe the position you're describing is called epiphenomenalism, but it's not one that I share. Did you mean to ask "why do many people believe it exists?"

And for any given cc of matter I suppose? Anyway, all of those things are the steps/building blocks of, in this example, taking my hand away from the fire. How are those physical events/processes also the steps/building blocks of the subjective experience of feeling pain and pulling my hand away from the flame? — Patterner

These are all *your* problems, as it is up to you to reconcile your belief in phenomenal properties with your belief in physical causation. I don't have these issues and that is a strength of my position.

As far as I can tell you haven't yet answered my original question, about why you believe in qualia. I think it's important you provide a direct answer, in particular I need to know if your belief is empirical (via the sense/introspection analogy) or dogmatic/a priori or perhaps a third option I haven't thought about.

Sorry for the late reply by the way.

Do you mean that I'm using tricks of the mind to express my doubts? — Ludwig V

No I'm sorry, this got misunderstood. When I said I wasn't speaking for you that is literally all I meant, that I wasn't speaking on your behalf and that you may or may not agree with what I am about to to say.

What do you mean? Why do I think I see blue? And taste sweetness? — Patterner

If you take those to involve a qualitative element, then yes. Why believe that?

Like I told you I prefer functionalist definitions of taste and vision which do not involve qualia/phenomenal properties.

Not sure I am following you. Are you saying Ludwig V is a Jedi? — Patterner

No I am just saying that my doubt is straightforward, unlike that of an illusionist who needs to invoke something "extra" (illusions in this case) to justify their doubt.

As far as I can tell Nagel never argued for anything in What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, all he did was articulate an assumption. It seems to me the text is liked because many people shared with him that assumption but struggled with putting it into words, however for those who do not buy in the text is really quite useless.



I would like to make things simple for you and just boil this down to a question: why do you believe in qualia? I don't want to speak for Ludwig V but personally I am perfectly comfortable in my skeptical position, I can doubt "plainly" without invoking any tricks of the mind.

H'm. We're talking about slightly different things. "Phenomenological properties exist" and "Phenomenological properties do not exist" are indeed contradictories. Whichever is true must be a contingent, empirical statement. Right? So where does the evidence that they exist, or not, come from? — Ludwig V

For evidence, I think the realist would say "Phenomelogical properties appear to exist, so they probably do exist", and the Illusionist would say "Phenomelogical properties result in unsolvable philosophical problems, so they probably do not exist".

An illusion can only be defined by its difference from reality. — Ludwig V

I believe this is not quite correct, I agree every illusion has a counterpart, "the thing that looks like itself", the thing that does not deceive, but this thing need not be real, only privileged. For example maybe you have seen Penrose triangle sculptures (the real sculptures, not images on paper)? These create the "illusion" of a physically impossible shape, in other words they are claimed to look like something that cannot possibly be real.

If the deliverances of consciousness are illusions, what is the reality? Oh, yes, physics. — Ludwig V

I think in the case of Illusionism, the counterpart would not be physics but phenomenological realism. The Illusionist says "phenomelogical properties appear to exist, but do not", the realist says "phenomelogical properties appear to exist, and do".

You still have the appearance of colors, pains, etc that need explaining. Claiming they don't have phenomenal properties doesn't explain away their appearance — Marchesk

I don't need to "explain away their appearance", the mechanisms of color vision and pain are not a great mystery and not what results in the Hard Problem. The great mystery of the Hard Problem are
the phenomenal properties of introspective states.

What Chalmers argues is that if the hard problem is an illusion (that we have phenomenal experiences), then this illusion needs to be explained. How does the brain produce such an illusion? — Marchesk

Answering that is not really my problem, as I do not believe phenomenal experiences are illusions. The whole point of this thread is to argue against Illusionism and to explain how skepticism of phenomenal properties does not entail Illusionism.

But the very fact of having an inner experience is evidence in favor of the hard problem. — Marchesk

Not really, unless an "inner experience" is taken to involve phenomenal properties by definition.

Calling them interpretive illusions doesn't dissolve the matter. Just shifts it over to explaining how the brain accomplishes these illusions. — Marchesk

I don't think I ever spoke of "interpretive illusions". I don't think there can be such a thing, as interpretations don't have an appearance, they are just propositions.

A mistaken interpretation is not an illusion but merely a mistake. Calling a mistake an "accomplishment of the brain" is pretty funny, but I don't believe that mistaken beliefs are some great mystery to the empirical sciences.

It is better (i.e. less misleading) to say that when we see an illusion of a bent stick in water we don't see an image of a bent stick, but we see a straight stick as bent. No image is required. I think this is what ↪goremand is saying. I also think that disposes of illusions. — Ludwig V

How I would put it is, the straight and the bent stick *share* the same appearance. If X looks like Y, then Y looks like X, it goes both ways. I might as well say that a bent stick is an illusion because it looks like a half-submerged-in-water straight stick.

It is very hard to maintain that when Macbeth hallucinates his dagger he is misinterpreting something that he is really seeing. — Ludwig V

I actually think this could be argued, a hyper-rational Macbeth could glean some insight into his own state of mind if he interpreted the "dagger" correctly. Something like: "I perceive the appearance of a dagger, but I know there is none. The appearance must have some other explanation, perhaps it is a manifestation of my guilt."

The difference between hallucination and illusion in my opinion is where we assign the blame, illusions are blamed on the "deceitful appearances" of some objects, hallucinations are blamed on the "faulty" perceptual or cognitive apparatus of the subject.

While I'm not super comfortable speculating on the psychology behind belief in illusions, I think it's a fact people prefer to fix their beliefs and dislike suspending their judgement. Belief in illusions at least allow us to "externalize" (i.e. blame on something else) our inevitable errors. Like that stereotypical guy who thinks every woman is flirting with him, so it becomes their fault when he gets turned down.

we have consciousness, and the physical interactions are accompanied by subjective experience/phenomenal properties. — Patterner

As I said in the OP I don't agree with this, I am skeptical of phenomenal properties and argue that there is no "appearance of the phenomenal" (as opposed to the appearance being an illusion).

Try to look at this from my perspective, you make an assumption (the existence of phenomenal properties) and this assumption creates a philosophical problem that is so difficult it is called the Hard Problem with capital letters. I think it's worth considering whether this was a safe assumption to make in the first place.

I don't think it's trying to lay claim to words inappropriately. (Love your last sentence!) — Patterner

Thank you, it is unfortunate but there is a bit of a diplomatic aspect to this debate where whomever is allowed to define the terms of mental language gain a lot of rhetorical clout. I would prefer functionalist definitions of course.

It is only an illusion to those of us who know the stick is straight, but see the image contradicting what we know. — Patterner

But the thing is the image does not "contradict what we know". To those who understand how light travels through water, the image is a straightforward representation of reality, no-one is getting fooled.

If consciousness is an illusion, then what is it that knows what's really going on, but perceives a contradiction? — Patterner

Illusionists do not believe consciousness is an illusion, only phenomenal properties. If you believe phenomenal properties are by definition necessary for consciousness, or that phenomenal properties are necessary for perception, I guess it amounts to the same thing. But I think that is a very trivial argument, basically laying claim to as many words as possible to increase the odds of the Illusionist undermining themselves with careless language.

Similar things can be said of for example flat earth, the appearance of the horizon is obviously consistent with a round earth but even some who don't believe in a flat earth will still insist that "it looks flat". "Flat earth" is the privileged interpretation here.

The same idea would apply to our sense of time if that too is to be considered a form of perception (which I believe is reasonable now that you made me think of it).

The idea that a rainbow "appears to be an object" rather than a refraction of light is a good example of what I mean by a privileged interpretation. In truth both interpretations are in line with the actual appearance of a rainbow and it is unclear why I should prefer one over the other based only on that appearance.

Yes, if introspection is to be likened to a sense it must detect something. The question is whether phenomenal properties are a part of this something. The ability to detect internal states alone does not require phenomenal properties in my opinion as even a computer can do it.

As I said in the OP I am skeptical of phenomenal properties, my main point is that skepticism should not be equated with Illusionism. Skepticism of phenomenal properties has been my position for a long time, it does not mean I am in an emotional state of doubt, confusion etc.

"1. Something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality.
2. The state or condition of being deceived; misapprehension."
See the "space" that these definitions open up?

In the second case, although there are different theories of "illusionism" in philosophy, I think that the most common and what I personally came to know about is one that has to do with the nature of consciousness. A view belonging to "eliminative materialism", which considers and describes phenomenal consciousness as an illusion. — Alkis Piskas

I am thinking of illusion in that first sense, as a "deceiving appearance", and yes by Illusionism I was referring to the eliminative theory or at least broadly the idea of phenomenal properties being illusory (and thus presumably targets of elimination). I think that the "illusion" is taken to be sensory, the sense-introspection analogy is very important to the theory and I think illustrated well by a passage in SEP just below what you quoted:

"Illusionism claims that introspection involves something analogous to ordinary sensory illusions; just as our perceptual systems can yield states that radically misrepresent the nature of the outer world, so too, introspection yields representations that substantially misrepresent the actual nature of our inner experience."

What I want is to single out the process prior to anything resembling the generation of a proposition (i.e. something that can be true/false), perhaps calling this "perception" is an abuse of terminology. There is a causal connection between me seeing a red apple coming to believe the proposition "that's a red apple", but the apple does not speak out to me and tell me about itself, I am the one creating that proposition. So if the proposition is false, I have only myself to blame.

The camera analogy does the job insofar as the camera perceives/records/whatever-you-want-to-call-it without making judgments whose truth-value could be subject to evaluation.

While it may be that it's not human nature to perceive without also interpreting, I think the two are distinct. I would say a camera is an example of perception without interpretation in the sense I mean.