The fact that that raw data is input to one person's senses, is processed by that same person's brain which is trained by that same person's past experiences, and is made available to that same person's conscious apprehension, makes it both private and idiosyncratic. — Kenosha Kid

How could you know whether anyone else has been “so effected”? — Luke

I don't see how any processes acting on my raw sensory input to produce my conscious perceptions can be anything other than private. — Kenosha Kid

In their place are relatively or practically ineffable public properties we can refer to indirectly via reference to our private property-detectors-- private only in the sense of idiosyncratic. And insofar as we wish to cling to our subjective authority about the occurrence within us of states of certain types or with certain properties, we can have some authority--not infallibility or incorrigibility, but something better than sheer guessing--but only if we restrict ourselves to relational, extrinsic properties like the power of certain internal states of ours to provoke acts of apparent re- identification. So contrary to what seems obvious at first blush, there simply are no qualia at all. — Dennett

What I meant about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater is that there still remain objects of subjective experience, such that I can see a car without consciously determining it to be a car (even if 1 ms ago I didn't see a car), and that this object is private (internal processing from my raw sensory input to instantaneous apprehension by me) and immediate (I see car as car object is presented to me, which may be some while after I see light from car), but not intrinsic or ineffable, and that these objects and the processes that yield them (e.g. neuron that recognises car) underlie our pre-theoretical conceptions of what theorists call qualia. — Kenosha Kid

more scienticially-grounded ideas of objects of subjective experience, i.e. how we actually appraise such objects as car, taste of coffee, sound of gunshot, etc. — Kenosha Kid

How is this consistent with Dennett’s claimed acknowledgement that conscious experience has properties? — Luke

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}

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All of this is immediately presented to me, by which I mean that, though I may determine these things over time as I focus on them, I do not have to consciously derive them by looking at them. — Kenosha Kid

(1) ineffable (2) intrinsic (3) private (4) directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness Thus are qualia introduced onto the philosophical stage. They have seemed to be very significant properties to some theorists because they have seemed to provide an insurmountable and unavoidable stumbling block to functionalism, or more broadly, to materialism, or more broadly still, to any purely "third-person" objective viewpoint or approach to the world (Nagel, 1986). Theorists of the contrary persuasion have patiently and ingeniously knocked down all the arguments, and said most of the right things, but they have made a tactical error, I am claiming, of saying in one way or another: "We theorists can handle those qualia you talk about just fine; we will show that you are just slightly in error about the nature of qualia." What they ought to have said is: "What qualia?"

My claim, then, is not just that the various technical or theoretical concepts of qualia are vague or equivocal, but that the source concept, the "pretheoretical" notion of which the former are presumed to be refinements, is so thoroughly confused that even if we undertook to salvage some "lowest common denominator" from the theoreticians' proposals, any acceptable version would have to be so radically unlike the ill-formed notions that are commonly appealed to that it would be tactically obtuse--not to say Pickwickian--to cling to the term. Far better, tactically, to declare that there simply are no qualia at all. Endnote 2

This "conclusion" seems innocent, but right here we have already made the big mistake. The final step presumes that we can isolate the qualia from everything else that is going on--at least in principle or for the sake of argument. What counts as the way the juice tastes to x can be distinguished, one supposes, from what is a mere accompaniment, contributory cause, or byproduct of this "central" way. One dimly imagines taking such cases and stripping them down gradually to the essentials, leaving their common residuum, the way things look, sound, feel, taste, smell to various individuals at various times, independently of how those individuals are stimulated or non- perceptually affected, and independently of how they are subsequently disposed to behave or believe. The mistake is not in supposing that we can in practice ever or always perform this act of purification with certainty, but the more fundamental mistake of supposing that there is such a residual property to take seriously, however uncertain our actual attempts at isolation of instances might be.

There's no real difference between the three, it's all a language trick. — Olivier5

A property of your entire life and the environment you've interacted with up to this point, maybe, but that's definitely not on table. — Isaac

He is on quite firm ground, epistemically, when he reports that the relation between his coffee-sipping activity and his judging activity has changed. Recall that this is the factor that Chase and Sanborn have in common: they used to like Maxwell House; now they don't. But unless he carries out on himself the sorts of tests others might carry out on him, his convictions about what has stayed constant (or nearly so) and what has shifted must be sheer guessing.

An honest attempt to at least start with " I see what you guys mean...but..." — Isaac

One dimly imagines taking such cases and stripping them down gradually to the essentials, leaving their common residuum, the way things look, sound, feel, taste, smell to various individuals at various times, independently of how those individuals are stimulated or non- perceptually affected, and independently of how they are subsequently disposed to behave or believe.

The mistake is not in supposing that we can in practice ever or always perform this act of purification with certainty, but the more fundamental mistake of supposing that there is such a residual property to take seriously, however uncertain our actual attempts at isolation of instances might be.

He is on quite firm ground, epistemically, when he reports that the relation between his coffee-sipping activity and his judging activity has changed. Recall that this is the factor that Chase and Sanborn have in common: they used to like Maxwell House; now they don't. But unless he carries out on himself the sorts of tests others might carry out on him, his convictions about what has stayed constant (or nearly so) and what has shifted must be sheer guessing.

Chase's intuitive judgments about his qualia constancy are no better off, epistemically, than his intuitive judgments about, say, lighting intensity constancy or room temperature constancy--or his own body temperature constancy. Moving to a condition inside his body does not change the intimacy of the epistemic relation in any special way

But then qualia--supposing for the time being that we know what we are talking about--must lose one of their "essential" second-order properties: far from being directly or immediately apprehensible properties of our experience, they are properties whose changes or constancies are either entirely beyond our ken, or inferrable (at best) from "third-person" examinations of our behavioral and physiological reaction patterns (if Chase and Sanborn acquiesce in the neurophysiologists' sense of the term).

BTW, also stop trying to wring meaning from the stuff Dennett says. — frank

quine, v. (1) To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant. "Some philosophers have quined classes, and some have even quined physical objects." Occasionally used intr., e.g., "You think I quine, sir. I assure you I do not!" (2) n. The total aggregate sensory surface of the world; hence quinitis, irritation of the quine.

The verb "to quine" is even more esoteric. It comes from The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1978c, 8th edn., 1987), a satirical dictionary of eponyms: "quine, v. To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." At first blush it would be hard to imagine a more quixotic quest than trying to convince people that there are no such properties as qualia; hence the ironic title of this chapter. But I am not kidding.

e.g. pictorial) characterisation of our thoughts — bongo fury

Intuition pump #1: watching you eat cauliflower. I see you tucking eagerly into a helping of steaming cauliflower, the merest whiff of which makes me faintly nauseated, and I find myself wondering how you could possible relish that taste, and then it occurs to me that to you, cauliflower probably tastes (must taste?) different. A plausible hypothesis, it seems, especially since I know that the very same food often tastes different to me at different times. For instance, my first sip of breakfast orange juice tastes much sweeter than my second sip if I interpose a bit of pancakes and maple syrup, but after a swallow or two of coffee, the orange juice goes back to tasting (roughly? exactly?) the way it did the first sip.

Surely we want to say (or think about) such things, and surely we are not wildly wrong when we do, so . . . surely it is quite OK to talk of the way the juice tastes to Dennett at time t, and ask whether it is just the same as or different from the way the juice tastes to Dennett at time t', or the way the juice tastes to Jones at time t.

This "conclusion" seems innocent, but right here we have already made the big mistake. The final step presumes that we can isolate the qualia from everything else that is going on--at least in principle or for the sake of argument.

What counts as the way the juice tastes to x can be distinguished, one supposes, from what is a mere accompaniment, contributory cause, or byproduct of this "central" way. One dimly imagines taking such cases and stripping them down gradually to the essentials, leaving their common residuum, the way things look, sound, feel, taste, smell to various individuals at various times, independently of how those individuals are stimulated or non- perceptually affected, and independently of how they are subsequently disposed to behave or believe. The mistake is not in supposing that we can in practice ever or always perform this act of purification with certainty, but the more fundamental mistake of supposing that there is such a residual property to take seriously, however uncertain our actual attempts at isolation of instances might be.

Wasn't he one of the first to raise the logical contradiction of some theory trying to undermine the reality of human subjective experience, from which all knowledge and theories spring? — Olivier5

At the outset of the study of perception, we find in language the notion of sensation, which seems immediate and obvious: I have a sensation of redness, of blueness, of hot or cold. It will, however, be seen that nothing could in fact be more confused, and that because they accepted it readily, traditional analyses missed the phenomenon of perception. — MMP

Pure sensation will be the experience of an undifferentiated, instantaneous, dotlike impact. It is unnecessary to show, since authors are agreed on it, that this notion corresponds to nothing in our experience, and that the most rudimentary factual perceptions that we are acquainted with, in creatures such as the ape or the hen, have a bearing on relationships and not on any absolute terms — "MMP

What counts as the way the juice tastes to x can be distinguished, one supposes, from what is a mere accompaniment, contributory cause, or byproduct of this "central" way. One dimly imagines taking such cases and stripping them down gradually to the essentials, leaving their common residuum, the way things look, sound, feel, taste, smell to various individuals at various times, independently of how those individuals are stimulated or non- perceptually affected, and independently of how they are subsequently disposed to behave or believe. The mistake is not in supposing that we can in practice ever or always perform this act of purification with certainty, but the more fundamental mistake of supposing that there is such a residual property to take seriously, however uncertain our actual attempts at isolation of instances might be. — Dennett

The perceptual ‘something’ is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a ‘field’. A really homogeneous area offering nothing to be cannot be given to any perception. The structure of actual perception alone can teach us what perception is. The pure impression is, therefore, not only undiscoverable, but also imperceptible and so inconceivable as an instant of perception.. — MMP

The alleged self-evidence of sensation is not based on any testimony of consciousness, but on widely held prejudice. We think we know perfectly well what ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, ‘sensing’ are, because perception has long provided us with objects which are coloured or which emit sounds. When we try to analyse it, we transpose these objects into consciousness. We commit what psychologists call ‘the experience error’, which means that what we know to be in things themselves we immediately take as being in our consciousness of them. We make perception out of things perceived. And since perceived things themselves are obviously accessible only through perception, we end by understanding neither. — MMP

It's not called the Hard Problem for nothing. — frank

If eliminativism here is the same as behaviorism, then this is correct. I think this is why behaviorism is fairly rare: because it implodes. It has to be qualified (ha) to allow humans the ability to theorize. — frank

Analytical or logical behaviorism is a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or environmental interactions. — SEP

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind. — SEP

I didn't understand much of that but I have no objection. — Olivier5

you are not interested in experience either, — Olivier5

And likewise, you are not interested in experience either, you just want to refute the non-eliminativists. It's just another battle of the God Wars for you and Dennett. That's boring metaphysics trying to eliminate some other boring metaphysics, and throwing the baby with the bath water for good measure... — Olivier5

Who are you talking about? Chalmers? — frank

Computers that are equipped with visual, sound, or pressure interfaces call feel things. One could say they have experiences. We imagine that the experiences humans and other animals have go beyond function to include awareness of a quality of being. — frank

Well, since it wasn't specified, I don't care if it exists or not. — frank

I want to shift the burden of proof, so that anyone who wants to appeal to private, subjective properties has to prove first that in so doing they are not making a mistake. — Dennett

The qualia denier seems to have two options as a result: either deny there are any sense data, which seems very unlikely; or deny that sense data have properties, which is to deny a defining characteristic of sense data according to the SEP definition that you quoted. — Luke

Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? 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. That is to say, whenever someone experiences something as being one way rather than another, this is true in virtue of some property of something happening in them at the time... — Dennett

but these properties are so unlike the properties traditionally imputed to consciousness that it would be grossly misleading to call any of them the long-sought qualia. Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way. My claim--which can only come into focus as we proceed--is that conscious experience has no properties that are special in any of the ways qualia have been supposed to be special. — Dennett

The qualia denier seems to have two options as a result: either deny there are any sense data, which seems very unlikely; or deny that sense data have properties, which is to deny a defining characteristic of sense data according to the SEP definition that you quoted. — Luke

]On the most common conception, sense data (singular: “sense datum”) have three defining characteristics:

i) Sense data are the kind of thing we are directly aware of in perception,
ii) Sense data are dependent on the mind, and
iii) Sense data have the properties that perceptually appear to us. — SEP

Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem. — SEP

The concept 'works'. — Olivier5

My goal is subversive. I am out to overthrow an idea that, in one form or another, is "obvious" to most people--to scientists, philosophers, lay people. My quarry is frustratingly elusive; no sooner does it retreat in the face of one argument than "it" reappears, apparently innocent of all charges, in a new guise.

What are qualia, exactly? This obstreperous query is dismissed by one author ("only half in jest") by invoking Louis Armstrong's legendary reply when asked what jazz was: "If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know." (Block, 1978, p.281) This amusing tactic perfectly illustrates the presumption that is my target. If I succeed in my task, this move, which passes muster in most circles today, will look as quaint and insupportable as a jocular appeal to the ludicrousness of a living thing--a living thing, mind you!--doubting the existence of lan vital.

My claim, then, is not just that the various technical or theoretical concepts of qualia are vague or equivocal, but that the source concept, the "pretheoretical" notion of which the former are presumed to be refinements, is so thoroughly confused that even if we undertook to salvage some "lowest common denominator" from the theoreticians' proposals, any acceptable version would have to be so radically unlike the ill-formed notions that are commonly appealed to that it would be tactically obtuse--not to say Pickwickian--to cling to the term. Far better, tactically, to declare that there simply are no qualia at all.

Do you know anything about relevant research? — Srap Tasmaner

Lots of gotchas in there.. — Olivier5

Mental states cannot be explored by any other mean than introspection. The way they appear to us through introspection is pretty much the only data we have about them. No bona fide analysis of their "content" can start from a dogmatic position that the data is not true. — Olivier5

"Qualia" is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of (for you) will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them.

...My claim, then, is not just that the various technical or theoretical concepts of qualia are vague or equivocal, but that the source concept, the "pretheoretical" notion of which the former are presumed to be refinements, is so thoroughly confused that even if we undertook to salvage some "lowest common denominator" from the theoreticians' proposals, any acceptable version would have to be so radically unlike the ill-formed notions that are commonly appealed to that it would be tactically obtuse--not to say Pickwickian--to cling to the term. Far better, tactically, to declare that there simply are no qualia at all. — Dennett

Yes. Vectors are a way of dealing with multiple similar quantities which transform in similar ways. Some of those quantities may be related to one another, but there's nothing I can think of that makes the interpretation of the vector as anything more than a notational convenience. — Kenosha Kid

I won't quote the rest, just sum up. A theory is tested empirically, not it's individual elements. If the theory as a whole (or a subset of elements, catering for irrelevancies to a particular experiment) yields otherwise inexplicable or more accurate predictions for experimental outcomes, it's a good theory. — Kenosha Kid

Nature cannot care that much how we represent it. — Kenosha Kid

We've never managed to measure anything that is a 2x2 matrix either. We use matrices a lot -- they are useful, but they are constructs. I don't think nature knows about them. — Kenosha Kid

Given the way they enter into the equations, my feeling is that it's the latter, but I'm not trying to make that particular case in the OP. However complex things are at root, empirically they manifest as real. — Kenosha Kid

This might trivialize C. Here's a quote from the web, from an educational perspective: — jgill

A vector space isomorphism is only defined between two vector spaces over the same field — jgill

But these aren't physical either. It is simply that complex exponentials are much easier to manipulate than individual sines and cosines. I'm not trying to do the wavefunction down, though. Whatever its ontology, it is important for predicting experimental outcomes and therefore corresponds to something physical. But no complex quantity can be physical in itself, i.e. we can't observe it in nature. — Kenosha Kid