we experience qualitative sensations inside our head
— Olivier5

...but I would not accept that wording. There's a slide going on here that I would avoid. It starts with the taste of milk and ends in nonsense such as disembodied sense-data... — Banno

You have no sensations? No sense of colour, the food you eat tastes nothing, and music doesn't exist for you? yours must be a rather sad life.

Ok, what are they for you? — bongo fury

Thoughts are information, written down and processed by neurons.

confusing thoughts (neurological events) with pictures (or other symbols) and pictured objects. — bongo fury

I'm certainly not confusing thoughts with neurological events. That would be a category error. And mentalists are people with telepathic capacity, which I don't believe in.

Hopefully, Banno and Dennett mean, merely, external stimulus sets, while you mean, specifically, qualia (or some such) in the head? — bongo fury

What Dennett means remains unclear to me, and I suspect to his proponents as well. Ambiguity has its advantages. As for Banno, he seems to accept that we experience qualitative sensations inside our head, such as colours, or the timbre of a musical instrument (the “sound of trumpet”). He just doesn’t think the word « qualia » adds anything useful to his conceptual tool box.

It's not like if you pile on more physical explanations, "poof" mental states appear. — schopenhauer1

Hence the "hard problem". And yet, mental events must be underwritten by physical events. There’s no information without some material support. Genes need DNA, a poem needs paper.

Make sense thus far? — creativesoul

For me it does.

How is that damaging?

Colours too have their unsayable and illogical dimensions. "Of taste and colours one should not speak". That's no 'dammage' as I understand magritte. It's a territory, with its own rules.

The title has been fixed. Thank you mods!❤️

The Reason for which I was forced to exit this world temporarily

I suspect we agree that the additional philosophical jargon is needless. — Banno

Agreed. We have a number of concepts available already, such as "sense data", "sensations", "perception", and even "apperception" (the perception of perception, aka meta perception).

For any philosophical purpose, eg to establish the specificities and subjectivity of mental phenomena involved in perception, the subjective concept of "color" can suffice, in its relation to more objective light wavelengths. Or the concept of "music" in relation to air pressure modulation. E.g. a machine really enjoying music, or able to feel any easthetic experience is hard to imagine, providing an "intuition pump" about the asserted irreducibility of sensations to physical phenomena.

So I agree: who needs the philosophical term "qualia" when "music" or "colors" or "sensations" exist and can do any philosophical work that "qualia" was made up to do?

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

You say I took the Name in vain
I don't even know the Name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Baby I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
but now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
but all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's no complaint you hear tonight
It's not some pilgrim who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

This may be a tangent, but few people know that colors, and the need to produce them on an industrial scale, were one of the main reasons behind / sources of funding for the growth of chemistry as a science in the 19th and early 20th century. The textile industry in particular needed dyes.

That space of questions is (allegedly) left to the intuition by qualia proponents. — fdrake

Nothing else is available, but you would be surprised how much we know through the scientific recording and analysis of intuitive, or rather introspective data. For instance, any optical illusion plays with some hiatus between our vision of an image, and the real image on paper. Scientists can study these optical illusions by asking people to describe their perception. And what is striking is that typically, everybody seems to see the same illusion. This shows that our visual "qualia" are reproduceable and predictable. It's useful research, and it is based on introspection.

the article is trying to meet you where you're at; appeals to intuition about a largely uncharacterised or unarticulated idea. If they suffice for the qualia advocate, they suffice for Dennett's criticism. If they don't suffice for you, then you should agree with Dennett about the article's method's appropriateness, and should read his intuition pumps in good faith as explicit counter-intuitions regarding qualia. His intuitions simply differ from yours, go read why, he's gone through the trouble of writing them down and analysing them. — fdrake

A lot of them are about highly improbable "what ifs". Like your memory of green changing to red... What do this highly esoteric hypothesis achieves exactly?

Colors have been scientifically studied for quite some time, including their physiological basis. They can be coded in computers, and we know that they can affect our mood. I'm not talking of wavelengths here, but of combinations of wavelengths interpreted by brain processes within a certain environment to appear as colors, shines and hues to a subject.

We kinda know that colors exist. The concept 'works'. The categories (eg green vs blue) vary from one language to the next, and even from one person to the next, but the scheme works.

Of course, anyone can have a field day deconstructing the concept of color, complex and fleeting as they are, to next to nothing, as Dennet tries to do, but then we would miss an important, even vital concept. You can die for confusing a red with a green light...

Can we not try and destroy the concept of color, please, least we want to change all color codings in the world to something else? And least of all, let's not destroy this useful concept by way of highly esoteric thought experiments about brain surgeons able to switch green and red in your mind. It's philosowowoooophying about what would happen if pigs would fly...

He allows that humans see and hear and so forth, but denies that there is any conscious experience associated with those functions. What is taken for conscious experience is the result of something like verbal streams. — frank

That's very generous of him. But how can he speak for other people than himself, though? These things are eminently personal. How does he know that others think the same way as he does?

He may be unconscious of his own sensations out of some sort of personal mental deficiency. At least that's theoretically possible. So how does the first person proposition "I Dennet feel no consciousness" translate into the bold generality that "Nobody can feel consciousness." ???

Honestly, I think grappling with the meaning of that word takes us away from what Dennett wants to say. He's denying that we have experiences of any kind in the way most people think of it. — frank

So how does he account for experience? Does he try to account for it at all?

Looking forward to seeing what I can learn. — Friendly

Learning is illusory, knowledge is nothing.

Just kidding...

If a quale is a note and experience is a cohesive symphony, is it that there is something artificial and partially false about breaking experience apart in that way? As opposed to a rejection of experience altogether? — frank

There's something here. The concept of qualia may idealize sensations, literally. That is to say, it maps sets of sensations (confused, intermingled, fleeting, complex, diverse) into simple and perhaps simplistic idealized primary sensations, similar to Plato's ideals: "the color red", which is in fact a set of many distinguisable colors and nuances, influenced by other colors near it; "the taste of cabbage", which in fact depends on how you cook it and zillions other factors including the drink (beer is recommended); or the "E note", which covers conceptually an infinity of different sounds.

In this sense, the concept of "qualia" is perhaps a useful simplification to bridge the gap between sensations and concepts. It's an illusion (because idealizations are in the final analysis always too simple to be true) but one that helps us describe our sensations. "His face suddenly turned red". "She ended on a high C."

I totally get this, I'm fairly new to this world and still want to retain some humanistic and spiritual depth to my philosophy. Art, music, love, I wont allow those to be broken down I to nihilistic logical arguements! — Friendly

Welcome to TPF. We need more life-affirming philosophers me think. :-)

Perhaps something more like the 'have you considered' game might prevent a defensive response and encourage an open forum for learning. — Friendly

That's good advice, thank you.

As previously mentioned, what is the primary agenda?

Personally, when I point at logical contradictions, it's often because I feel annoyed at a certain facile nihilist approach to philosophy, which consists in disolving a given object of enquiry or concept in the acid of analytical doubt and not building or proposing any other concept in exchange. This approach I call purely destructive analysis, or 'deconstruction without reconstruction'.

Some have called it "to explain something away". Quine is a case at hand I think. Dennet too.

It's one thing when the something being "explained away", or "deconstructed" is not an a priori necessary for any thought or analysis. For instance, one may usefully deconstruct the concept of "race", and propose instead a more useful or precise alternative, such as "ethnicity". Neither race nor ethnicity are a priori concepts necessary for human thought to happen. One can thus analyse them without contradiction.

But concepts such as "language", "truth", "meaning" or "subjectivity" are not easily analysed, because they found the legitimacy of any philosophical analysis. If a philosophy means nothing, has no pretention to truth, and/or is not using language as a means of expression (and therefore trusting language to 'work' somewhat), then... what sort of philosophy is it?

It's a philosophy that destroys any possibility of doing philosophy. A philosophy sawing the branch on which it sits. Hence the term nihilist is apt. The qualifications of "facile" also is apt because any concept can be deconstructed quite easily. What's hard is to construct something, while to deconstruct it is always the easy part.

What is the Gotcha Game really all about? — Hippyhead

Me think we should distinguish between two (or more) forms of gotcha! In one case, the argument still stands after the gotcha, which is just a tactical diversion. In another case, the argument may be logically destroyed by the gotcha.

The first case is when the gotcha pounces on a detail of the opposite argument, eg purely semantic or otherwise shallow, and can be addressed by a mere technical tweak to the argument being 'gotchaed'.

The second, quite different case is when someone asserts something that is logically and fundamentally self-contradictory, and another debater points to the logical contradiction with a simple, short sentence, because no more is required.

For instance: A asserts that: 'There is no such thing as the "meaning" of a sentence.' and then B answers: 'What do you mean by that?' A is put in a double bind: either he admits that he means nothing in particular, in which case his assertion can be discarded as mere noise, or he must admit to the existence of some "meaning". But this double bind is of his own making. Because if there no "meaning" to his words, why in hell is he talking in the first place?

I find myself using the second form quite a lot.

There are many things you can say about red that don't apply to 700 nanometer wavelength electromagnetic waves. — khaled

That's true. We can speak for instance of the gorgeous reds of Georgia O'Keeffe.


Red Canna, 1919

Seems to me that there is nothing that talk of qualia is about. In so far as talk of qualia is usable and useful, it is no different to talk of colours or tastes or what have you. In so far as something is added to the conversation by the addition of qualia, seems to me that Dennett is correct in showing that there is nothing here to see — Banno

Fair enough. Let's talk of colours, smells, feelings, tastes, timbres and tunes then. If that's umweildy, we can use the acronym: CSF3T. As is the case with LGBT, this acronym may evolve, i.e. anyone can add to the set.

Problem solved, at least temporarily.

generally seems to disagree with me — Pfhorrest

I disagree with pan-psychism. I thinks it's like trying to use a sledgehammer to kill a fly. But I will look at the argument that Drake pointed at.

This is why an afterlife is possible — Gregory

An afterlife? Which would come after what life, exactly? The life of nothing? Is the afterlife going to be an eternity of Nothingness, too? I can't wait...

materialism is an illusion.
— Olivier5

Where's your evidence? — Gregory

The evidence lies in the fact that most forms of materialism are self-contradictory. The theory is a construct of the human mind, and yet it denies that this very same mind exists as an effective process doing actual stuff...

There's no such thing as nothing.

There's a very long discussion here which might help a bit. — fdrake

Lots of gotchas in there... :-) Any particular point in that discussion which seemed useful to you?

"water" doesn't exist, only molecules of H20. — Philosophim

That would be molecules of water, which therefore would supposedly exist...

So when you talk of consciousness as a functional process, do you mean it is the result of the functioning of the brain, or something else? — Philosophim

I just mean that consciousness is a functional process. It does something useful, otherwise it probably wouldn't exist.

I think it is a process of putting in the same 'space' a series of perceptions, ideas, memories, etc. for the purpose of comparing and analysing them, and ultimately take a coherent decision. So it's a data fusion process.

(1) It still might be that exploring our phenomenal/experiential states rigorously leads us to doubt the folk theoretic notions we have regarding their elements. — fdrake

'Folks' have no theories. Individuals have theories. And nobody I know spends much time trying to theorize colors or sounds... In this domain, the classic (banal even, and often quite wrong-footed) approach which consists in criticizing the prevalent "common sense" is not doable because there is not much to criticize in terms of "common sense of colors".

(2) It might be that how we categorise experience reflectively/introspectively is different from but related to the categorisation processes in experience — fdrake

It is even quite probable. Memory is always imperfect, we are not fully transparent to ourselves, and any observation of a thing (eg a reflexive observation of how it feels to experience the qualia of a scarlet red) is by nature different from the thing itself (in this case, the qualia themselves). But since introspection is the only tool we have, we cannot but hope that it's by and large correct. There is no alternative, better tool we can use to study mental phenomena. Your hypothesis, if true, provides only a word of caution when using introspection.

one has to use a scientific approach in tandem with the careful analysis of self reports. — fdrake

A careful analysis of self reporting is just as scientific as the careful analysis of any other data. Scientific articles are full of self reporting.

The premises which are provisionally accepted by any account of experience or consciousness deriving from introspection alone, then, might be part of the first word of any such analysis, but it's simply laziness to assume it must be the last. — fdrake

Who said it should be the last? It must be the empirical basis on which we work; it's the data we have; explaining the data is what's needed, not denying its utility or existence.

I've read it as well, and could not for the sake of me understand his logic. One could call the taste of chocolate, the melodies of Vivaldi's Summer and the colors of the rainbow something else than 'qualia' if one finds a better word for such sense data (or just call it sense data). One can consider that the term "qualia" brings nothing useful, or that the way it is conceptualised by X or Y is wrong. But that doesn't make the taste of chocolate or the colors of the rainbow go away...

To me the word qualia simply means that sense data appears to us as in part qualitative. For instance, the quantitatively different wavelengths of visible lights are presented to our consciousness (to mine anyway) in the form of qualitatively different colors. However there is also some quantitative differences in perceptions, eg different intensities of pain, pleasure, light, sound etc. So I guess it could be called qualquantia. Maybe Dennet will like that better?

In any case, if Dennet does not deny our capacity to perceive sense data, and if he doesn't deny that green seem qualitatively different from red, his beef with "qualia" seems to me purely a question of personal dislike for some philosophers who like the concept and use it.

Whether mental states have the content "we feel"/"we expect" them to is roughly what's at stake — fdrake

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.

Consciousness as described by Strawson is magic. — Kenosha Kid

You have a quote that proves that, or is it just something you made up?

Dennet believes consciousness is a result of informational and functional properties. There is no "consciousness" that is independent of this. It is not that Dennet doesn't think we call things pain, pleasure, etc,. What he's saying is these are the results of functional processes. — Philosophim

It may well be that consciousness itself is a functional process. Ever thought of that?

And I agree with him wholeheartedly. Just because we can't explain our own consciousness is no good reason to call it magic.

magical thing — Kenosha Kid

Okay so if Dennet doesn't understand something, it cannot exist. Therefore Dennet's ignorance is magical: if he ignores a phenomenon, the phenomenon disappears by magic.

I'm sort of in the tempest without a boat. — Darkneos

I recommend you to stop doubting and to start swimming.

Interesting how Strawson writes by quotation. The Consciousness Deniers. — Banno

He writes well for a philosopher. I like for instance the argument that "consciousness is not only pizza".

don't think Dennett is defending something rather like "we think we're thinking but we're not". — Srap Tasmaner

That's exactly what he is saying, though. It's an attempt to deny the cogito.

Dennett has done a great service by showing the obvious self-contradiction at the basis of materialism, although he of course won’t see it that way. — Wayfarer

I agree. This idea that consciousness and qualia are illusions is simply absurd.

Rather, materialism is an illusion.