Let me define Jeff as the “Greatest God-Killer”. Therefore Jeff must exist. Therefore God is dead. I’ve always wanted to try that but I have yet to meet someone who thinks the OA makes sense.

Don't take quotes out of context.

That's fine, but then all you've got is the intent behind the expression, but we're talking about ontological commitments here. — Isaac

Replying to this by saying "you're talking about ontological commitments here" is intended to say that I meant the alternative (the intent). As in the intent behind saying that "this apple is red" is to indicate a specific experience, that is my claim. If you have an issue with what I'm saying address it directly or not at all please.

The belief that a dictionary contains the meaning of a word.

What do they contain?

but we're talking about ontological commitments here. — Isaac

No, you're talking about ontological commitments here. I only meant intent behind the expression

It 'means' whatever the term was used to do. — Isaac

So if someone asks me to describe the apple 3 minutes after seeing it, and I go to that person and say "The apple is red" 3 minutes after seeing it. What do I mean? What am I reporting?

They do not have 'meanings' held in perpetuity in some platonic realm. — Isaac

I never claimed that the meanings of words never change. But your position would judge all dictionaries as nonsense then no? Are you ok with that? After all words apparently can't mean anything outside of the context of their use.

I think at that point mathematics wasn’t divorced from the real world yet. Numbers were representations of things. 5 was a representation of 5 things. But what does it mean to talk of 0 things? That’s literally talking about nothing. Negative numbers came even later (if I remember correctly) for the same reason. It is pointless to talk of 0 things and nonsense to talk of negative things. How could you have -3 tables?

But at the same time I find it depressing, so bad things will happen anyway... — Philosophuser

General life pro tip: If you can’t change it worrying about it is just pointless self harm

I keep commenting this every time someone asks the forum for personal help through philosophy but: It hardly works. Doing philosophy is the worst way to get rid of philosophical angst. And philosophical angst is usually not produced by the philosophy itself but just general stressful life conditions. A book doesn’t have enough power to cause an existential crisis, that was already brewing on its own most likely, and the book was the last straw. My advice:

Try to forget about it, it is not the core of the issue. If you can’t THEN it may be worth considering. In which case you’re free to believe otherwise if you want to. Philosophical beliefs are not binding.

Your claim is that X is associated with Y — Isaac

I am not claiming that when someone says "the apple is red" that they are necessarily having a certain experience. I am claiming that in general use (and assuming one isn't lying of course), "the apple is red" is used to indicate a certain experience produced by the apple. You have shown that saying X, and Y occuring are two seperate operations in the brain which occur at around the same time. So what? You have disproven the former claim but did nothing to the latter.

the use of the word 'red' does not reference a conscious experience. It can't do because the decision to use the word has already been made prior to any occipital originating signals in areas of the brain associated with conscious awareness. — Isaac

Again, I don't see how the first part ("red" does not reference a conscious experience) follows from the second (because the decision to use the word had already been made)

To borrow Marchesk's example, if I look at a red apple and say nothing, then describe to someone the color of the apple 3 minutes later, what am I referencing? What does "the apple is red" then mean if not "The apple invoked the experience we agreed to dub 'red' "?

The equating of experience with qualia assumes dualism, which I reject. — Andrew M

How?

And how do you confirm that the apple is in fact red? — khaled

What I meant was how do you confirm that the apple results in the same experience for everyone. You can't. You only know that it results in some experience we all decided to dub "red" (even though it might look different for everyone).

We would normally assume that two people who look at a red apple and say that it is red are having the same experience. However if their experiences were different, then there would be physical differences that account for it. — Andrew M

Well if it makes no physical differences then we have no reason to assume that the two people have the same experience but other than that I agree.

And Qualia, means specifically these experiences. So just because we can't describe the contents of our experiences to others (if my red was your green we would never be able to tell) doesn't mean those contents don't exist.

By 'an experience' I assumed Yuan meant some conscious awareness of mental states — Isaac

Correct. The word "red" is associated with awareness of a certain mental state. Now if I told you "but actually, you formulate the word before you become aware of the mental state" what bearing does that have on the statement?

No. I could imagine something which is red, I don't think I can imagine 'red' I don't believe there is such a thing. — Isaac

Yea that's what I meant. You can imagine a red screen taking up your vision. Therefore "red" must be associated with some sort of experience no? Or else what does "red" mean exactly? In the absence of an associated experience, when I say "this apple is red" what am I saying?

I was just saying that I don't think anyone means to argue for you second interpretation. — Isaac

When I say "attribute qualia to apples" I meant my second interpretation. Anyways.

If your answer 'red' points to an experience of 'redness', they why are you prone to use it even when seeing the word 'red' printed in blue ink? — Isaac

That I am prone to use it even then does not invalidate the statement "red is associated with a certain experience". And again, I don't see how they're related. If you're going to continue down this path then for the next neurological fact you cite, can you explain how it invalidates the statement "red is associated with a certain experience"

would-be automatons — Olivier5

But then they'd be pretty bad automatons. Because they are not acting as humans well enough. No human doubts that they have experiences, that seems like something only an automaton would do. Maybe Dennett is bugged or something.

But meaningful. Which is why when someone says "Qualia doesn't exist" it sounds to the people who use it like "When you say 'red' you are literally referring to nothing. Aka there is no experience there". This would all be so much easier if people didn't conflate a useless concept with one that doesn't exist or is meaningless.

What I'm getting out of this thread is if Dennett is right he's a terrible communicator. Or I'm a terrible reader. Or both.

No we haven't. Activation of Brodmann's area precedes signals being sent to the working memory. You literally start forming the word 'red' in response to firing from the V2 area prior to being aware of the fact that what you're seeing is red. It's not an 'experience' you're naming, it's just a chain of firing neurons, leading to the production of a name. You have the 'experience' afterwards. — Isaac

That I start to form the word (or expect to see) red before I see red does not in any way show that the statement "We associate 'red' with a certain experience" is false. I don't see how it is even related. If I asked you to imagine "red" you would be able to correct? Does that not mean that "red" is associated with a certain experience? Even if you formulate the word first before imagining the color, what does that have to do with anything?

You're sounding like Dennett here. Giving a completely unrelated fact to disprove something.

I don't think anyone is saying that. — Isaac

The original thing I replied to seemed like an attempt to attribute qualia to apples. Also curious how you were able to understand my comment even though it had the line "this apple produces the experience 'red' refers to". It's almost as if you can understand what I'm saying despite the irrelevant neurological facts you cite.

You're carrying out the consequences of a link between some stored phonology from visual stimulation, this would happen even if your working memory could be theoretically removed in such a way as you have absolutely no formation of real-time experiences at all. — Isaac

But when I say "the apple is red" WHILE my brain is fully intact and functioning I do in fact mean that I am having the experience 'red' points to. That saying "the apple is red" can be done without or before actually experiencing red does not make that statement false. You try to disprove something by citing completely irrelevant neurological facts.

Ah, perhaps you want philosophy — Banno

Some are green, some yellow — Banno

Not quite. Some we all call green, some we all call yellow. Again, my red could be your purple and no physical or chemical theory would be violated. And we would both refer to a given apple by the same name because we've been taught to associate "Red" with a particular experience. However that particular experience may not be the same for both of us. My "word to associated experience" table may be a homomorphism of yours, not necessarily identical.

That is what I mean when I say that "red" is not the property of the apple. If by "this apple is red" you mean "this apple produces the experience 'red' refers to" then yes that apple is red. If by it you mean "this apple produces the experience 'red' refers to for me, equally for everyone" then no not necessarily. You don't know that. The light wave coming from the apple only specifies which "pointer" to use, it doesn't necessitate the the experience pointed to must be the same.

Don't ever apprentice yourself to a green grocer, then. — Banno

If my expereience of color was the exact inverse of what he experiences, we could still work together just fine. We would both look at an apple and call it "red" or "green" or whatever the case may be but if we somehow peered into the others' first person perspective, maybe their "red" is my "purple". And even if that were the case, we would still be able to perfectly understand each other, as long us neither of us tries to "eff" our experience to the other (because they won't succeed).

And I'm saying that there is no reason to believe that my experience of red is not the same as your experience of red. — Banno

I didn't say there was. I'm not advocating for a position on this. I'm saying that we have no reason to believe OR deny that our experiences are identical. And neither position leads to any differences in real world interactions or breaks any sort of physical laws.

what you'r saying is irrelevant — Banno

Practically irrelevant. Agreed.

it has no referent; it makes no difference; — Banno

But these two things are not the same though you seem to use them interchangeably. "It makes no difference". Fine. "It has no referent". No. It refers to the contents of your experience. Think of "red" as a pointer if you're familiar with programming. "Red" is a word that points to a certain experience (qualia). We do not use the the thing being pointed to when we talk (because that are ineffable) BUT we do use the pointer.

So when I say "the apple is red" I'm saying "I am having the experience 'red' points to, and you'll probably have that one too (unless one of us is colorblind)". I am NOT saying that the experience "red" points to has to be the same for us, and I do not need to make such a claim for us to undertand each other. It could be the case that the experience 'red' points to for me is the experience 'purple' points to for you, and we would still have no issue in understanding.

And that's the problem with qualia; if they are worthy of inclusion in our musings, then they are just the colours, smells and tastes of which we already speak; and if they are more than the colours, smells and tastes of which we already speak, then they are outside our musings. — Banno

I didn't disagree with this. Doesn't make the concept meaningless, just useless.

Because that is how colour blind people see a red apple. — Banno

So then “red” must not be an inherent property in the apple right? We can agree it reflects a certain wavelength but beyond that we have no data to indicate that that wavelength produces the same experience in everyone. And with colorblind people we have clear data to show it doesn’t.

And how do you confirm that it isn't in fact red? — Banno

I don’t have to. I’m not the one proposing to attribute experiences to the objects that produce them as properties.

But if you agree that it is red — Banno

I agree that the color I’m experiencing is called red. But I don’t agree that when I say “red” and you say “red” that we’re necessarily referring to the same experience.

The only issue here is you insisting on attempting to "eff" it, anyway. — Banno

I’m not trying to eff it. When did I do that? I’m not trying to describe red to someone who has never seen it. That would be effing. I’m saying that there is no reason to believe that my experience of red is the same as your experience of red. In other words, while the experience of red is ineffable, we have no reason to believe that your ineffable experience is identical to my ineffable experience. That’s all I’m saying.

The solution, as I see it, is to put qualities like color, etc., back in the world where they belong. It is the apple that is red, there is not red qualia in people's minds — Andrew M

But how come some (colorblind) people see the apple as green? And how do you confirm that the apple is in fact red? You can’t see the apple from my perspective to confirm that when you say “red” you are referring to the same experience as when I say “red”.

The problem is this: we can confirm that we all agree on some properties of the apple/experience them the same way. Properties such as shape can be confirmed by asking someone to draw an apple and you’ll find people will agree on an apple’s shape. But someone can be seeing inverted colors from me and there will be absolutely no way to confirm or deny that. In other words, we can confirm the wavelength reflected off the apple, but we cannot confirm whether or not the experience produced when that wave enters our eyes is the same.

Not in this paper. But supposedly that is what he is doing. I don’t know I didn’t read much of his stuff. It’s too technical for me to understand.

leading one day to be able to read someone's thoughts... Science fiction? — Olivier5

Sure but that still doesn't answer why we have thoughts in the first place. Knowing that "brainwave x" corresponds to "I like apples" doesn't tell us HOW brainwave x produces the experience of thinking that one likes apples. Just like my knowing that: when I press a series of keys on my keyboard while highlighting this box a bunch of text pops up, doesn't tell me how a computer works.

The problem is a consequence of not understanding our own thought and belief, what it consists of, how it emerges, evolves, what it gives rise to, and the role that all of this plays in our lives(conscious experience).

That's the only place to start. — creativesoul

Agreed. But that's still a terrible starting place. Considering that I have yet to detect another thought outside of my own head. How might we form a theory about what these thoughts consist of, how they emerge, evolve, etc without being able to detect the thing we are testing the hypothesis for from a third person perspective?

That's why the problem is hard.

what would an answer to this question look like?. — Isaac

One possible answer is that some from of consciousness is inherent in all matter. Another would be some set of conditions that produce consciousness. Another would be whatever Dennett is doing. There are plenty of hypothesis. But without a "consciousness-o-meter" they're all untestable.

If I ask "why do we have noses" an evolutionary, or physiological account suffices as an answer, but for some reason such an account is insufficient for the 'hard problem' enthusiasts. — Isaac

It WOULD be sufficient if it was more than a mere hypothesis and there was some sort of evidence to back it up. In the case for noses what you have provided is "testable" in the sense that we can see noses evolve through time by finding different fossils. But we have yet to find a device that can test hypothesis about how consciousness comes about.

If there's an alternative, then is is necessarily true that it's possible to doubt without having an experience of the thought process (presumably that's what the p-zombie does) and so you cannot then say anyone who doubts must be having an experience of doubting purely on the grounds of there being no alternative. — Isaac

I didn't. There IS an alternative. Them being a p-zombie (or, again, just a zombie since they're not a thought experiment any more). But I would sooner believe that they're just confused than believe they're a zombie

but if you're doubting it about yourself, you're in the minority, and there may be something different about you — frank

Maybe, but I'd much sooner believe that people are only pretending to doubt it about themselves or that what they're doubting isn't "whether or not they have experience" but something more practical like "Is the concept of qualia a fitting description of conscious experience?" than that they are legitimately doubting it. Because I cannot conceive of someone doubting whether or not they are experiencing somthing. The mere fact that they are doubting shows that they are experiencing something (a thought process). Unless they're not in which case they are p-zombies (or just zombies since they aren't a thought experiment anymore)

We may have to recategorize consciousness as a physical thing in order to build a working theory of consciousness — frank

In that case the "Physical" in "Physical thing" just becomes redundant. Which I'm fine with. The list of "physical things" has expanded throughout time. From rocks, to less tangible waves, to less tangaible forces, to less tangible "fields" to less tangible "probability clouds" etc. If consciousness joins the mix then I think the "set of things that are not physical" will be an empty set finally. But then again, that just means that "Physical thing" has just become "Thing".

So solving the Hard Problem just means arriving at a decent theory of consciousness. — frank

But how would such a theory ever be confirmed? That theory must be able to tell us the conditions required for consciousness to occur. But how will we test the hypothesis? Until we can somehow make a "consciousness-o-meter" I can't conceive of that happening. The problem is not just hard it's unapproachable. One person can say "consciousness is physical and it arises when x and y occur" and another might say "consciousness is inherent in all matter and combines according to x and y" but without the consciousness-o-meter, they are both just as clueless as a layman as to what is actually happening.

And I can't conceive of how a consciousness-o-meter will be made. How will we make a device that detects something which we're not even sure has any physical impact. If my couch is conscious, that is still consistent with every physical and chemical law there is. We don't even have a clue on how to begin detecting consciousness, only a bunch of hypothesis all of which are untestable.

That's why I can't see what Dennett says as a serious solution. It is a hypothesis (maybe, I still can't make much sense of the rest of what he says outside this paper) but even as a hypothesis it is untestable. It is funny to me how he dismissed qualia on the grounds of not being able to test for it (among other things) but whatever solution he is posing to the hard problem is equally untestable. I'm not very familiar with Dennett so maybe I'm critically misunderstanding somewhere.

The Hard Problem isn't about explaining how consciousness arises from inanimate matter. — frank

The hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995) is the problem of explaining the relationship between physical phenomena, such as brain processes, and experience (i.e., phenomenal consciousness, or mental states/events with phenomenal qualities or qualia). Why are physical processes ever accompanied by experience? And why does a given physical process generate the specific experience it does—why an experience of red rather than green, for example?

Source

I don't know how reliable that is but there. I didn't say the hard problem is explaining consciousness per se, but explaining what is the relationship between experience and physical matter. What processes bring about the experience of "Oh that's hot".

I keep coming back to something Chalmers said once about Dennett: that he might truly be different from the rest of us. If so, maybe Isaac, Banno, and drake are in that same category — frank

Maybe. The only person I know is not a robot is me.

Just start with doubt that other people have the experiences they describe, as described. — frank

Well as long as he's not doubting that I have experiences he can do whatever he wants.

But I'm more interested in how this:

Dennett thinks we're doing that all the time, and we've gotton so used to it that we're taking the narrative seriously. — frank

Addresses the hard problem in any way. The question is "Why does inanimate matter produce these mental phenomena we are making these (supposedly terribly inaccurate and incoherent) narratives about?" Not "How accurate are our narratives of what we're experiencing?" No answer to the latter will address the former because the latter admits that we are at least experiencing something, which poses the question "Why".

I think both sides are talking past each other now. Qualia advocates believe that Dennett is trying to deny his own internal experience, when he is just trying to come up with better ways to talk about them because "Qualia" is not good enough for that. Qualia deniers believe that the advocates are proposing qualia as a some psychological concept for which we can find neurological evidence, when all they're trying to do is to affirm that people experience things.

I think the contention comes from believing that qualia are properties vs phenomena. Qualia deniers talk of them as properties and so they don't make sense. They argue that the seeming produced by an experience is not a property of the input recieved therfore talk of it is fruitless. In other words, "this apple seems red" is not a property of the apple (or else it would seem red to everyone but it doesn't to colorblind people) so proposing a "red quale" is useless. What exactly is the "red quale" a property of?

Qualia advocates I find usually talk of the concept as a phenomena. A sort of "umbrella term" for experiences. So "this apple seems red" and "I experienced a red quale when looking at this apple" are identical statements.

So to an advocate saying "qualia doesn't exist" is the same as saying "nothing happens when you look at a red apple" while for a denier when an advocate says "qualia exist" it is just advocating an incoherent concept.

It's like if a software engineer talked to a hardware designer with neither knowing anything about the other's job.

SE: Which is faster? Quicksort or Merge sort?
HD: What do you mean "Quicksort"?
SE: Oh quicksort is when you *insert algorithm here*
HD: What are you saying? Starting index? Ending index? None of that stuff exists.
SE: Are you saying that computers just do things randomly without instructions?

And around and around they go. The hardware designer opens up the computer to show that "algorithms" don't exist and wonders why the software designer remains unconvinced while the software designer thinks the hardware designer is just some idiot denying the obvious.

but you claim qualia are private. SO what is the nature of this privacy? Can you make it clear? — Banno

With a chair you can walk up to it to confirm whether or not it’s actually a chair as opposed to a cardboard cutout for example. With Qualia, you have no way of confirming what anyone else is experiencing. You cannot confirm whether or not the sky seems to me as it seems to you. That’s is what it means for Qualia to be private.

I never said they did. You asked about whether they provided knowledge of out puts — Isaac

No I asked whether or not they provide knowledge of what happens in the PC as a program using them runs. And the answer is: they don’t.

has to be ruled out, otherwise the wine tasting machine and p-zombies have no different an experience to use — Isaac

Which would be fine from a panpsychist perspective but aside from that.

We cannot examine our 'qualia' independently to tell if they've been changed by a modification to path (a) or if instead we've simply been subject to a modification of path (b).

4. So if we can't access our qualia introspectively — Isaac

I fail to understand how: “We can’t tell how our Qualia went wrong if it goes wrong” leads to: “We don’t access our Qualia introspectively.

sensory input->qualia.....then....b)qualia->(via some judgement/assessment)->response — Isaac

Or it could be: Sensory input -> Response + Qualia

Qualia doesn’t need to be part of the process, it could be a secondary effect resulting from our brain processing. But even barring that too:

then why are we persisting with them? — Isaac

Because they are useful. Let me just translate this to algorithms real quick.

1- Proponents of algorithms need there to be a difference between a computer that is running a certain algorithm (technically it’s “running a program programmed with that algorithm” but I’ll use this as shorthand) and one that isn’t

Thus input -> output

Has to be ruled out

2- so in order to maintain the difference between computers running algorithms and ones that aren’t it must be

Input -> Algorithm -> output

3- However if a program doesn’t produce expected results we cannot tell if the problem is in wrong input or some mistake towards the end that changes the output.

4- so if the algorithm designer can’t tell what went wrong, and we cannot open up the computer to find the “algorithm” inside then what use is it theorizing about them?

Or to put it even more simply - algorithms are a theorised step in a input-output process which we cannot access independent of either input or output (again, not sure how “can’t tell what went wrong” translates to “can’t access at all” but those are your words not mine) and for which there is no other evidence - so why persist in using them?

Answer: Because they are still immensely useful.

“I see red” is a much shorter description than the description of everything my brain does at the moment of seeing red. Just as an algorithm is a much shorter description of what you can expect a computer to do than a description of which transistors do what.

Addition is different form adding things together. 1+1=2. Even if I place 2 rats in a room and come back a week later and find 20, 1+1 still equals 2. They're completely different unrelated statements.

Yes

. If you agree with Dennett here (that the concept doesn't help in this psychological manner) then good — Isaac

But it’s worth noting that I don’t agree that it was ever intended to be used that way. So his “opposition” here is meaningless. It’s like opposing quantum theory on the grounds that it doesn’t explain how we evolved from dinosaurs. That’s what I was trying to highlight in my comment

move on to the next paragraph and see if you also agree with his dismissal of the next use. It's like I'm teaching you how to read a paper here. — Isaac

That is what I did when going to intuition pump 8 as an example.

If I know the algorithm causes an output to, say, an Ethernet card — Isaac

Algorithms don’t cause outputs. Running a program programmed with a certain algorithm does. An algorithm is just an abstraction. It doesn’t DO anything. An algorithm doesn’t even have to be written in a programming language.

are we reading the same section here — Isaac

Probably not. I’m talking about this:

. in intuition pump #8: the gradual post-operative recovery, that we have somehow "surgically inverted" Chase's taste bud connections in the standard imaginary way: post-operatively, sugar tastes salty, salt tastes sour, etc. But suppose further-- and this is as realistic a supposition as its denial--that Chase has subsequently compensated--as revealed by his behavior. He now says that the sugary substance we place on his tongue is sweet, and no longer favors gravy on his ice cream. Let us suppose the compensation is so thorough that on all behavioral and verbal tests his performance is indistinguishable from that of normal subjects--and from his own pre-surgical performance.

Why would anyone be trying to prove anything about tasting? — Isaac

It’s not tasting specifically that’s just an example. Dennett said that qualia cannot be a logical formulation, but must be an empirical fact to satisfy its defenders (your quote). But in the intuition pump designed to prove this (8) he did nothing to actually prove it.

Dennett is not trying to prove that people can't taste things — Isaac

He is trying to prove that “I am tasting something” is NOT empirical knowledge. In other words that someone is experiencing so and so qualia is NOT imperial fact. But he completely failed at doing so.

How are you assessing how people use them usually, just anecdotally, or do you have some sources? — Isaac

Anecdotally.

That's the trivial part, and not even part of his argument, Dennett says — Isaac

Then why did he spend the first 5/6 intuition pumps on it?

The argument is

a)

There is a strong temptation, I have found, to respond to my claims in this paper more or less as follows: "But after all is said and done, there is still something I know in a special way: I know how it is with me right now." But if absolutely nothing follows from this presumed knowledge--nothing, for instance, that would shed any light on the different psychological claims that might be true of Chase or Sanborn--what is the point of asserting that one has it? Perhaps people just want to reaffirm their sense of proprietorship over their own conscious states. — Isaac

What do you mean? The purpose of the paper is clearly NOT to argue that this strong temptation exists. How is what you quoted a premise in his argument? “People usually respond with x” therefore what?

You probably mean the bit about how no knowledge follows about the psychological states of the two. And to that I reply: So what? That doesn’t make the concept meaningless or useless. Again, by borrowing a programming example: No knowledge about what happens in your computer follows from knowledge of the algorithm of the program being run. That doesn’t mean that talk of algorithms is meaningless or useless. The INTENT when talking about algorithms is NOT to explain what happens inside a computer. Just as the INTENT when talking about Qualia is NOT to explain what processes cause it.

Intuition pumps 8 through to 12 then show the increasing problem with treating qualia this way - namely that there is no way of distinguishing the production of 'qualia' from the response to 'qualia', thus demonstrating that our 'qualia' themselves are not actually accessible at all. At best we could infer them, but if we did so we would be no better (worse in fact) than a third party.

Those also suffer from the same problem for me. They seem to “disprove” something by saying something completely unrelated. I’ll take #8 as an example. Dennett proves that (again), we cannot tell if our experiences are changed due to a change in memory or due to a change in the actual Qualia. He says this to imply that somehow that makes Qualia “not empirical”. He shows that no theory will be able to tell which “actually” happens. But that’s not a new situation in science. If you see a ball moving up, does that mean the ball is moving up or you’re moving down? We can’t tell! Oh no! And yet physics I’m empirical.

But most importantly, he hasn’t disproven what he set out to disprove. Again, “No theory will be able to tell how Chase’s experience was changed” does NOT in any way disprove “That chase is tasting X is an empirical fact”. And once again, they’re not even related statements. To disprove the first he must find a situation where Chase literally cannot tell whether or not he is tasting coffee and no one else can tell either. And by that I don’t mean that he can’t tell whether or not this is coffee or orange juice, no, he needs a situation where Chase is unsure whether or not he’s tasting something in the first place to disprove “Chase is experiencing X (in this case the taste of coffee) is an empirical fact”. Good luck with that one!

Read the text...please, and then quote from it a section where you think Dennett's contradiction of the above fails and explain why — Isaac

Here I go I guess:

His description of the “properties of qualia” are not how people use them usually. And his intuition pumps fail to address why his own properties are untenable. I’ll start with the ones I can remember right now.

1- Private, 2-Accessible. He claims qualia are private in the sense that they are only apparent to the person experiencing them and accessible in the sense that they are immediately apparent. And to show this is untenable he proposes a thought experiment where someone has their taste buds altered to change their experience of sugar. He then says “gotcha, actually I could’ve just changed his memory of the taste of sugar and he would still think the same thing, therefore he can’t know what went wrong (either his taste buds were changed or his memory of sugar was) therefore he doesn’t have intimate private accessible knowledge when it comes to his qualia”. I’m paraphrasing here, but I’ve read this part 5 times and no matter what it seems like BS.

When people say qualia are private and accessible they mean that they are immediately apparent to them and only them. What he disproved was “I can tell exactly what goes wrong if I wake up one day and sugar tastes different”. That is not a contrapositive statement nor can I tell how it’s even related to the two properties he’s trying to disprove. That has been my general experience with the paper. He “disproves” something by saying completely unrelated bs.

Dennett: I shall now disprove that 1+1=2. When you put a male mouse and female mouse in a room you end up with three mice, therefore does 1+1 really equal 2????

Nothing is added to the description — Banno

Nothing is added to the description of the board. That is true. But it is not the goal of qualia to describe the real world but to describe how it seems to us. And so by saying “the board looks like it is bulging” one says something about our experience of the world that cannot be said by giving the person a description of the board itself.

For example saying “getting stabbed hurts” does not add anything to the description of a knife stabbing someone. But it is still a meaningful and useful statement because it describes what getting stabbed will seem to us like, in order to discourage getting stabbed.

Of if you refer to the programming example I cited earlier on page 16, sure a description of the algorithm of a program doesn’t add anything to the description of what actually happens to the computer when the program is run. But a description of an algorithm is usually infinitely more useful than a description of what transistors do while the program is running. If you want to say that algorithm are an inaccurate abstraction that’s fine, no one is disagreeing. But when you say “algorithms don’t exist” you make it sound like “it is impossible for a computer to follow instructions”. That’s what’s happening here. You don’t say “Qualia doesn’t exist” unless you’re claiming someone is a P zombie. Otherwise “Qualia is an inaccurate abstraction” will do. As for Dennett, he seems to be saying both at the same time to me. “People have experiences, but Qualia are not an accurate description of reality but actually people don’t have experiences”

And I don’t get your question. “The board seems to be bulging” is the qualia I am experiencing, a description of the world as it seems like to me. Same as “the apple seems red”. The apple may not be red, but saying that it seems to be red was never intended to describe the apple itself but rather to describe the experience of seeing it.

OK, there is some stability to the way things appear to us.

That can be said, tested, verified, and all without invoking qualia. — Banno

Well when:

Qualia are defined as the way things appear to us — Olivier5

Then no. You cannot confirm stability in said qualia without referring to it. That would be like saying “We can all agree that this table is 2 meters wide without referring to the concept of meters”. Unless you don’t mean the same thing as Olivier when you say “Qualia”

It IS possible to say “this table has had the same width for x time” which technically doesn’t refer to the concept of meters directly. But even then without the ability to measure meters you wouldn’t be able to confirm that. In a visual illusion, not only can we agree of its persistence but we can also “describe” how it seems like to us (a bulge in the board) which is an example of us specifically talking of qualia. And this talk does have some meaning. If I tell someone “this is a visual illusion in which you will see a bulge in a checkerboard” that sentence will be testable for them. Similar to how specifying that a table will be 2 meters wide is testable.

I went through that previously in the thread. — fdrake

Where might I ask? And just to clarify Disentangling "I tasted the tea" is not done by saying "When you drink tea no tasting/experience of any sort occurs, that's just an illusion"

individuated like we introspect/label them to be by highlighting that those first order properties are contextually variable. — fdrake

I don't know anyone who thinks qualia are individuated (although they are admittedly labeled that way). Anyone who's tried a blind taste test would know.

There's the issue of if qualia are properties, what are they properties of? — fdrake

Even I don't agree with that one. I'd classify qualia as a phenomenon. Something that happens as a result of sensory input that is different from the chemical and physical reactions.

All the above are done in the context of distinguishing qualia from functional, behavioural and intentional properties. — fdrake

I don't know what any of those 3 are but I'll get there eventually.

He's trying to show that common second order properties of qualia are untenable (the list of four things I've brought up). — fdrake

These?:

(1) ineffable (2) intrinsic (3) private (4) directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness

People attack Dennett like he's an eliminativist towards minds, he's not. — fdrake

He sounds like it!

I admit I don't understand that part. He claims that "properties of states of consciousness" exist but "a modest, innocent notion of properties of subjectives experience" doesn't exist. What is the difference between "properties of states of consciousness" and "properties of subjective experience"?

When I read it it sounded like he just put this part:

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. — fdrake

Not to sound ridiculous but then immediately dismissed it.

What notion exactly is Dennett trying to attack here?

One way of explaining what the program did is: "the program added the natural number 1 to the natural number 2 and computed the result, it then outputted the result 3", but did my computer really add the natural number 1 to the natural number 2? Or was the process actually more like: "fdrake opened up a software environment and wrote in high level code and called it, the computer took that calling instruction and through a laborious process translated the input lines of code into machine code, which caused a bunch of transistors allocated for the task to enter into a specific complex of high and low voltage states, which gets passed up back a complex of circuits into the software environment and the display". If it's the latter, adopting the first description will be an inaccurate approximation that gets even the type of entities wrong; the physical process in the computer is not adding mathematical abstractions together, there aren't even any natural numbers in my computer; but it's a decent functional explanation for a demonstrative purpose. IE, the first is essentially a lie to children, which may suffice for some purposes but certainly not understanding what was actually going on in (in!) my computer. — fdrake

Although you call the former a "lie for children" it is still the case that whatever explanation you want to use to explain what's "really going on" cannot CONTRADICT the lie. Assuming the lie is true, ie, the program being explained is the same in both explanations and the lie explains the algorithm accurately. If your explanation says at the end that ".....back a complex of circuits into the software environment and displays 5 on the screen" your explanation would be incorrect.

In other words, if you "collapse" the in-depth explanation is must agree with the lie for children.

If you want to call "A red patch is a combination of a shape quale and a colour quale combined in experience" a "lie for children" I'm fine with that. I am not advocating a certain explanation of our experiences. BUT, if the explanation you want to replace the lie with ends with "....and as a result, after a 700 nm wavelength enters khaled's eye khaled experiences nothing" then THAT I have an issue with because it contradicts my experience. When you say "Qualia doesn't exist" do you mean:

1- Qualia is an abstraction that doesn't accurately explain how experience occurs.

or

2- Tea tastes like nothing and you are all philosophical zombies which think they're not philosophical zombies.

I don't care if you want to argue for 1. My problem (and I think most people's problem) is if you are trying to argue for 2.

or is it something else entirely?

You don't "see qualia". "Seeing" is qualia. Though I suspect we're not talking about the same thing.

But if you assume “Truth doesn’t exist outside of this sentence and outside of things that are true by definition” then you have no issue. And this is what is meant usually when people say “Truth doesn’t exist”

I don't think this is physics specific. You can ask "Why" forever in any field and best you will get is circular logic.