1, because Merleau-Ponty takes biology seriously, unlike Popper for instance, who only thinks about physics as the 'queen science'. And biology imposes a whole series of constraints that can help understand the biological phenomena called "thoughts". Physics and chemistry are too distant from thoughts to offer much clues. Biology is much closer; brains are biological, and biology is most probably where a scientific resolution of the mind-body problem will come from, not quantum physics. — Olivier5

The idea here (as I faintly see it) is that the mind-body problem appears intractable if the body is seen as a dead machine, because a machine and a mind are too far apart, as Descartes noted. But the picture changes if the body is seen (as MMP does) as already intentional, already infused with information-for-the-purpose-of-living, information-with-intention. If this is the case then conscious perception can be seen as a mere extension of this fundamental biological tendency to "grab information for a purpose". The hiatus between a living body and its own consciousness is easier to bridge than between a dead machine and its ghost. So this perspective makes the hard problem a little less hard.

Dennet says absolutely no such thing. — Isaac

Give us your interpretation then.

Let It Bleed, 1969 — 180 Proof

I agree it's their best album, but I cannot chose between the tacks... They are all perfect blues gems.

We all need someone we can bleed on...

Another correspondence between the two thinkers in this context is the attitude of skepticism towards "pure impressions" - — fdrake

Thanks, good points. I'll read it again. I agree that Merleau-Ponty criticizes the concept of 'elementory' sensations with arguments similar to Dennett, but he does so from a very different perspective. He finds eliminativism intellectually dishonest and absurd. What he is trying to do is perceive perception, so as to improve his understanding of it, not to deny it.

Unlike many here, Merleau-Ponty realizes that all knowledge and all science comes from human consciousness and perception, and that science cannot effectively deny the minds that produce it.

In other words, Dennett says: qualia are magical and thus do not exist, while MP says: qualia are too simplistic, because perception is always a whole, a gestalt, and what animals perceive is not individual qualities ("red") but nuances and differences and contrasts between qualities (eg a "red" vs a "green"). Hence perception is systemic, not an addition of discrete, independent elements.

Note the similarity with Saussure, who posited that in language, concepts have relationships and differences between them from which they derive their meaning. "In language there are only differences."

I'm not sure I follow him all the way there, because in system thinking (and biology is systemic), elements do exist objectively and can be disentangled from the whole system, even though their full meaning is given by the whole. For instance you can cut a finger off, but then it dies. So do the colors described as "red" die when not compared to other colors? I'll keep reading PoP and chew on it.

Another important point, perhaps the central point of PoP is that perception is by the body and for the body, seen as far more than a machine: the body is not a mechanism to which a mind has been affixed (as in Descartes), but a part of the subject, and influencing the mind. I see this as very important, for two reasons.

1, because Merleau-Ponty takes biology seriously, unlike Popper for instance, who only thinks about physics as the 'queen science'. And biology imposes a whole series of constraints that can help understand the biological phenomena called "thoughts". Physics and chemistry are too distant from thoughts to offer much clues. Biology is much closer; brains are biological, and biology is most probably where a scientific resolution of the mind-body problem will come from, not quantum physics.

2, because what MP says is that there is no life without intentionality, without a fear or a desire or a goal. Perception is not a static, passive "impression" of an external object in our mind, it is dynamic, opportunistic capture. Perception grabs stuff, it is always a living body seizing what it needs to seize. There is an intention, a desire, in every perception. Because we are not passive machines but living bodies.

This last point helps a lot. For instance it explains why when you try to analyse a perception from a purely logical standpoint, you kill it, you morph it into something dead. It also explains why the same dish will taste much better if you are hungry then if you're not. "Hunger is the best sauce" as we say in French. It's all a matter of desire.

I know about my own mental phenomenon from introspection, — Merkwurdichliebe

I consider introspection as a sense.

Either way, self reporting or MRI scans, neither give our senses direct access to mental states. — Merkwurdichliebe

Do we have direct access to anything?

Have you read PoP in French? Is it the same in French as in English? — frank

It was 30 years ago... I remember very little of the book, except that the text made more sense to me than Husserl. I actually never came back to phenomenology after that. Probably should.

We're in Merleau-Ponty territory. — frank

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?

Scientific points of view, according to which my existence is a moment of the world’s, are always both naïve and at the same time dishonest, because they take for granted, without explicitly mentioning it, the other point of view, namely that of consciousness, through which from the outset a world forms itself around me and begins to exist for me. To return to the things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, whence knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the countryside in which we have learned beforehand what a forest, a prairie or a river is.

Phenomenology of Perception - Introduction

I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she would meet her connection
At her feet was her footloose man
No, you can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime you find
You get what you need

And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a fifty-amp fuse"
You can't always get what you want...

I went down to the Chelsea drugstore
To get your prescription filled
I was standing in line with Mr. Jimmy
And man, did he look pretty ill
We decided that we would have a soda
My favorite flavor, cherry red
I sung my song to Mr. Jimmy
Yeah, and he said one word to me, and that was "dead"
I said to him
You can't always get what you want...

I saw her today at the reception
In her glass was a bleeding man
She was practiced at the art of deception
Well, I could tell by her blood-stained hands
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need...


I think they muted Keith Richard... LOL

I see the same contradiction. — Mww

'nough said.

Popper's 'World 3' 'contains the products of thought. This includes abstract objects such as scientific theories, stories, myths, tools, social institutions, and works of art.[2] World 3 is not to be conceived as a Platonic realm, because it is created by humans.') — Wayfarer

Thanks for bringing that up. This is one of many excellent contributions of Popper to philosophy. World 3 is akin somewhat to what researchers call 'the literature'.

I think it sloppy for anyone to do that; — Mww

Nah. Intuition is as good a philosophical concept as any... But when a self-described p-zombie makes an appeal to intuition, he is contradicting himself.

The wine tasted like wine — Isaac

Isn't that the definition of a qualia? That there's something like the taste of wine. It's a bit simplistic of course, as wine can taste like crap or paradise depending on the bottle. It's not exactly as predictable as Coca Cola.

. If we fail at the former we come face to face with the ineffable. — TheMadFool

Yes, I agree.

I love you too, Isaac.

Will he describe the taste of his meal and wine to a level that will satisfy him? — TheMadFool

Probably not. But he would be able to faintly evoke it, enough to wet the appetite of his readers. So I agree that 'qualia' (sensations as we perceive them subjectively) cannot be adequately described in words, but they can be evoked, which is better than nothing. The same applies to the meaning of words, words that roll out our tongue nevertheless. So this is not something unusual.

Blackberry Eating
-- Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths and squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

The taste of blackberries is not described in the above poem but it manages to evoke the explosion of the blackberry juice in one's mouth through words like squeeze, squinch and splurge.

Can Daniel Dennett describe to us what his supper and the wine he washed it down with, presuming that was/is his evening meal, tasted/tastes like? — TheMadFool

If instead of a zombie, Dennett was a culinary critic with a gift for wordsmithing, he could make an attempt at it.

And to point to your knowledge of you being angry, impatient or happy, well that is a matter of your word, there is no way for me to perceive what you know, especially what you know about the mental events you may be experiencing. — Merkwurdichliebe

I suspect you also know something about your own mental phenomena, and this knowledge is based on a capacity for introspection. It doesn't come from nothing. The distinction between knowing and sensing is weaker than you seem to think: you know because you sense.

And yes, mental phenomena are subjective by definition. But MRI of brains can detect emotions, so self-reporting is not the only tool we have to study these things.

Self consciouness, I suppose. I kinda know when I am angry, impatient or happy. I kinda see the colour red. Etc.

Trawling through the pop-science books — Isaac

makes a good point when he speaks of brain plasticity. This is a proven fact, that one's efforts to learn something can plastically change one's brain. And I think he is right that this scientific fact contradicts naïve materialism.

You cannot perceive your own mental events? That's odd.

anything that doesn't apply to elephants and atoms?

But the heart of the matter is the hard problem. What are mental states, and what are they in relation to physical states? Anything else is just putting a "Do not disturb" sign up and pushing the Cartesian theater to another area of focus. — schopenhauer1

Note we don't know what matter is. We may never know, and yet we still study it.

If by "what ARE mental states" you mean "how can we categorize them usefully and think about their relations with other things", I agree with you that it's a good question. (My answer is mental events are informational in nature). But if you are asking about the true ontology of minds, I'm afraid you will have to wait forever for an answer.

Still, it's pretty sloppy for Dennet to use the very psychological term "intuition" in an attempt to annihilate psychology. Others have noted that he contradicts himself all the time.

is, therefore, an object, a thing. It has no inner life, it's not a being. The whole thing is a phantasm of the disease of what passes for philosophy in the modern world. — Wayfarer

In America and the UK, you mean? At this point in time, the rest of the world seems rather immune to the siren songs of naïve materialism and its view of humans as mechanical puppets. It's more a problem in Anglo-saxon philosophy. I never heard of p-zombies in a French or Italian context.

whether or not "mental phenomenon" qualifies as an object of perception? Even if we arrive at an adequate answer for how we percieve mental phenomenon, and can explain those perceptions, we would simply be pushing the problem farther down the line. We'd only be able to explain the true nature of our perception of mental states as we percieve it, as an object of perception (as it is for us, and not what it is in itself)...in the end, we get nowhere that hasn't already been gotten. — Merkwurdichliebe

What you say is not specific to perception of of mental phenomena, it applies to elephants and atoms too. And yet scientists go somewhere that has not been 'gotten' by studying their perceptions of elephants and atoms. So there's a gap in your logic.

My point is: p-zombies have no ability for intuition that I can see.

I love the subtitles.

“Intuition Pumps”. — Mww

How do p-zombies define "intuition", by the way?

No one is disputing this. The physical causes are not disputed, but that there is a mental aspect is at question. What is the nature of this. — schopenhauer1

I would aim a bit lower than that. The true nature of things being apparently inaccessible, let's focus on how we perceive mental phenomena, and perhaps how we can explain our perceptions of them.

Can we move onto discussing the actual paper now please? And how it deals with the structure of experience? — fdrake

Okay, you want to expose some particularly interesting section for discussion?

Note: Banno already convinced me to abandon the jargony "qualia" and use the concept of "sensation" instead. But for the sake of reviewing Dennet's use of the concept "qualia", I will make an exception.

I'm also hesitant to say "experience", because that starts looking like treating "an experience" - an instance of perceptual relation - as an object rather than as a distributed agent-environment relation. — fdrake

I didn't understand much of your post but I have no objection to this particular quote. If you don't want to address the human experience(s) in your own personal philosophy, I suppose that's your call but that's no ground to criticize others when they do address experience. Also, science is based on observation, which is a form of human experience last I checked, so I hope you don't do any of that complicated science stuff...

people who use qualia language to theorise/intuit experience don't pin down the structure of experience they're using or intuiting, they want to refute the eliminativist rather than discuss the structure of experience. — fdrake

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...

Please elaborate, for the benefit of those for whom sentences would normally (without notice to the contrary) be classes of printed inscription or sounded utterance, and images classes of inscription or illumination? — bongo fury

There are a number of meanings to the word "Book". I am speaking of the following:

A set of pages that have been fastened together inside a cover to be read or written in.

In this sense, a book is a material object, a set of pieces of paper bound together. Now, some of the pages might also contain ink, disposed on the page in such a way that someone trained to decipher these things might translate them ink dots into sentences in, say, modern English. Someone not trained to decipher them will fail to translate them of course. The translation into sentences happens in the mind of the reader, based on the physical ink dots in the book as he sees them. The sentences are therefore coded (written) on the book pages by way of ink dots, and can be decoded, but themselves are linguistic in nature, not material, and therefore they are not technically "contained" in any material book. You could write a sentence in blue ink, in red ink, in large font, in small italic font, in cursive, in stenography, even in bloody Morse code - it'd still be the same sentence; only its material support (the ink dots) will change.

A book literally contains sentences and images. Many societies encourage the view that brains do, too. I would need persuading. I thought you were about to try. But generalising to all of the things that a book can contain only metaphorically only punctures my intuition of the claim. — bongo fury

Brains contain cells. Actual, physical books contain pages. They do not formally contain sentences. At best they can produce and reproduce sentences, which is different.

Even our minds do not exactly 'contain' much. It's all a flux, 'streams of consciouness'. A stream does not 'contain' its water.

Last time I read a serious scientific book about memory (can't remember the reference, amusingly) it pointed that it's much easier to recognize a face than to mentally picture a face by appeal to memory. Therefore, our memory does not store pictures (the book concluded), unlike the memory chips of computers. It seems to store ways to recognise images, but not images themselves. Likewise for colours: we can recognise them alright, but if we close our eyes and try to summon the memory of "burgondy red", all we (I) can get is a faint echo of it, not the vivid "qualia".

The mind is a set of processes. It's not a static space with some stable, dependable 'furniture' in it. I think we can agree here.

I was ready to be schooled in information theory, or some such. But you revert to a pre-philosophical declaration of wonder. — bongo fury

But what are images, if not information? What are symbols if not information vehicles? What exactly is 'pre-philosophical' about images or symbols?

If you need to learn, then be ready to unlearn your prejudice about what constitutes a legitimate philosophical issue. I contend that colours as we perceive them form a significant field in neurology and psychology, a domain extensively studied by modern science as a sort of gateway to the hard problem; that colours and how to reproduce them were a major incentive for technological advances in chemistry, printing, TV, computer displays, and scores of other economically important domains; that there are several theories or systems of primary colors, complete with mathematical space coordinates and functions; that we can see colours for a reason: because natural selection built the system, wich is useful to spot berries and stuff.

Colours are an important part of human experience, economy, art of course, technology and science. What makes you believe philosophy has to deal with them with a ten foot pole?

Thanks man.

On the shallowness of words and men's love.

is this not a case of Cartesian Theater yet again? Whence the first person aspect from information itself? What makes information experiential or have a subjective "what it feels like" aspect? — schopenhauer1

Personally I believe that these questions must have some simple biological answer. Living organisms self-reproduce. Animals have a piloting system that helps them chose where to go. They try to protect themselves from hazards. Our immune system constantly fight against other organisms who try to squat inside our body. I conclude that there are many biological foundations for the sense of self, that such a sense is necessary for self preservation, self affirmation and self reproduction, which are characteristics of life.

Symbols? Sentences? Images? — bongo fury

Of course! Also humor, dreams, ideas and music. You don't have those?

What ARE mental states? — schopenhauer1

What IS matter?

What IS time?

What IS space?

This sort of questions is above our pay grade. We cannot know the noumenal. It's been known for a while.

Best to focus on questions which we can possibly answer, in my view.