Comments

  • What is a strong argument against the concievability of philosophical zombies?
    The argument against the conceivability of zombies could be that there is no logical way to know whether you are conceiving of zombies without qualia, or simply conceiving of replicants. Since qualia is inherently subjective in nature, there is no way for us to conceive of "what it would be like" to not have a "what it would be like", as that would be akin to conceiving of nothingness, which we (or at least I) cannot truly do. So in the end, you could say there's no real way to differentiate between zombies without qualia and simple replicants that just act like zombies. The subjective nature of conscious experience makes it impossible for us to conclusively conceive of the scenario of "zombies" as a coherent metaphysical possibility. We're really just imagining duplicates, not true qualia-less beings.
  • Wondering about inverted qualia
    I guess I lean towards qualia being the union of the physical and the non-physical. Qualia unifies the physical senses with the reflective subject. Qualia is the experience of something coming to be, the experience of becoming, while it is the experience of something that already is, at the same time, in a subject, like Mark. Like AliceFire Ologist
    Thank you so much for taking the time to respond! You have a very interesting and refreshing view of qualia that I really appreciate. Your response reminds me of something I read by Karl Jaspers where he said "At the summits the activity is the inner action by which I become; myself; it is the revelation of Being; it is the activity of being oneself which yet simultaneously experiences itself as the passivity of being-given-to-oneself". Thank you again for your wonderful insights!
  • Wondering about inverted qualia
    There are objective facts about colour. They are constructed, linguistically, but that to which they refer is objectively xxxHz or some such designation which is independent of experience or observation (it is hte same observation, however it is noted by the S observing it - the langauge is not important to this element).AmadeusD
    Thank you for taking the time to respond! I agree with your point, there are objective facts, however for the sake of the argument I was just elaborating on the inverted qualia argument, which does not argue for a physical possibility but rather a logical one.