Again, you cannot explain what “red” is to someone who’s never seen a red object. — khaled

I do not see why not...

There are names and descriptions for and/or of unobservables.

Ineffable" denotes that which is unable to be said; that which cannot be spoken. When pretheoretical conscious experience is ineffable, it is unable to be spoken and/or otherwise expressed by the creature having the conscious experience. This makes perfect sense. Some creatures cannot talk about past experience; all the language less ones
— creativesoul

It also makes perfect sense in the case of creatures who can talk about past experience — khaled

I would agree, but when it comes to people who are supposed to be describing their own conscious experience of red cups, saying that that conscious experience is ineffable is considered a flaw, not a defining feature like it is with language less conscious experience of red cups.

But also to say “I do not know what’s in your box” (private) also makes sense. — khaled

Now apply the context...

You do not know what another's conscious experience of red cups consists of. Why do you keep saying that?

You do know that another's conscious experience of red cups consists - in part at least - of red cups. There are red cups in the box.

We're talking about pretheoretical conscious experience...

"Ineffable" denotes that which is unable to be said; that which cannot be spoken. When pretheoretical conscious experience is ineffable, it is unable to be spoken and/or otherwise expressed by the creature having the conscious experience. This makes perfect sense. Some creatures cannot talk about past experience; all the language less ones. A language less creature cannot say anything about their own conscious experience of red cups, for doing so requires talking about what happened and/or is happening, and they've no such ability. Such conscious experience of red cups is ineffable in the sense that it belongs to a creature incapable of speaking.

It only follows that we do sometimes know what others are experiencing
— creativesoul

Not necessarily. Check my discussion with Banno about this. It is possible for us to be having a different experience and to still have no communication problems. — khaled

Irrelevant.

We know that all conscious experience of red cups includes red cups. If you cannot agree, there's not much more to say.

Private: I do not know what you’re experiencing when seeing a red cup. — khaled

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understand...

We all know what red cups look like. We know that each and every experience of seeing a red cup always involves seeing red cups. It only follows that we do sometimes know what others are experiencing when seeing a red cup for we know that the experience - most definitely - includes red cups. Since we know that that much is true, we also know that what you've said here above is not.

The subject perceives the object through a symbolic representation... — Olivier5

And here I thought it was via physiological sensory perception apparatus. Who knew it was through symbols and signs. No perception of objects for those poor language less beasts...

So, I'm asking any of the proponents of Qualia...

What meets these standards? Better yet what could?
— creativesoul

My question would rather be: who gives a flying rat’s ass, and why? — Olivier5

Well, given that it's the proponents of "qualia" who set it, they ought give several rats' asses.

:brow:

Personally I would rather obliterate any and all philosophical notions that lead to widespread confusion and false belief given the sheer power that belief wields in this shared world of ours.

What is a “pretheoretical condition”? — khaled

If you're advocating for qualia, this is pivotal.

It is the requirement that something be able to exist in it's entirety prior to any theoretical considerations, and it serves as the standard to meet in our assessments. For example, most everyone would agree that some conscious experience existed in it's entirety prior to being named and described. Since all theoretical considerations about conscious experience consist of descriptions thereof(in large part at least), and all pretheoretical conscious experiences exist in their entirety prior to theoretical considerations, pre-theoretical conscious experience cannot consist of descriptions thereof.

Proponents of qualia invoked the "pretheoretical" standard. The source concept of subjective conscious experience that "qualia" are supposed to be refinements of(properties thereof), is claimed to have this "pretheoretical" status. In order to qualify(pun intended) as being pre-theoretical, qualia must exist in it's(their) entirety within pretheoretical conscious experience prior to being named and subsequently described. The burden to meet that explicit criterion belongs to those who advocate for it's use. It's quite common to see that burden be shifted to opponents or just simply neglected altogether during debates such as the ones within this thread. In fact, this thread is nearing fifty pages, and I challenge any and all proponents of qualia to clearly set out some conscious experience which actually meets that standard, and requires invoking the idea/notion/conception of "qualia" for doing so.

This is where qualia claims run into very serious problems. It's a 'hard problem'(again pun intended) to sell to someone like me that some property of 'subjective' conscious experience, say the color of the cup, is private, ineffable, and intrinsic if the experience itself consists of, or is existentially dependent upon - in any way - external things like red cups. Our conscious experience of red cups is most certainly existentially dependent upon red cups. In addition, the frequencies of visible light that we've recently discovered to have named "red" long ago were being emitted/reflected by certain external things long before we ever named and described them in color terms, and long before our becoming aware of the role that light and biological machinery plays in conscious experience of red cups.

We need not discuss the role that light and biological machinery plays in conscious experience of red cups in order to have conscious experience of red cups. However, we most certainly need to discuss such things in order to immediately apprehend that conscious experience of red cups comes in different varieties, some of which do indeed satisfy the pretheoretical criterion, but none of those require the idea/notion/concept of "qualia".

What does this mean “talk about experience as a subject matter in its own right”? Does it mean understanding words such as “red” or “bitter” etc? — khaled

"Talk(ing) about experience as a subject matter in it's own right" is not equivalent to understanding words such as "red" or "bitter". Understanding words such as "red" or "bitter" is a necessary prerequisite for subsequently talking about any conscious experience thereof as a subject matter in it's own right, but just using "red" or "bitter" is inadequate for doing so.

Understanding the words is not necessary for seeing red things or tasting bitter red apples. That is because some red things are pretheoretical. Red apples are such things, and the ability to eat them and experience the involuntary autonomous response that bitter apples induce in biological machinery is also pretheoretical. So, conscious experience of eating bitter red apples can happen pretheoretically. That said...

One can also learn how to use the terms "red" and "bitter" to talk about the pretheoretical conscious experience of eating bitter red apples. The learning process itself also counts as pretheoretical conscious experience. Once that process begins to turn inward on itself, and we begin discussing seeing and tasting bitter red apples in terms of our "conscious experience" thereof, we've begun to talk about experience as a subject matter in it's own right.

This thread is a prima facie example of talking about experience as a subject matter in it's own right, whereas a first grader's use of the terms "green" and "red" to pick out different colored apples is not. The grade school experience is a conscious experience of red and green apples that is not talking about the experience itself as a subject matter in it's own right. Rather, it's a conscious experience of talking about the apples. To tease the nuance out, it's a conscious experience of red and green apples that includes language use, but is prior to any theoretical considerations. Thus, some conscious experience of red and green apples consisting of language use counts as pretheoretical as well as all language less conscious experience thereof.

Dennett is attacking the notion/idea of Qualia as (1) ineffable (2) intrinsic (3) private (4) directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness, and he's doing it on several fronts. He's explicitly not denying the reality of consciousness, or that consciousness has properties. He's just denying that consciousness has those aforementioned properties.

from the beginning of the paper...

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, 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...

Moreover, he then goes on to further sharpen his focus...

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.

So, here he talks about the source concept of Qualia, noting the "pretheoretical" condition, which - it seems to me at least - must be met if we are to even attempt to attribute Qualia or conscious experience to language less creatures, or language users who've yet to have the mastery required to talk about conscious experience as a subject matter in it's own right. So, the properties of ineffability, intrinsicality, privacy, and direct or immediate apprehensibility in consciousness are supposed to be further refinements for the criterion of what counts as pre-theoretical.

So, I'm asking any of the proponents of Qualia...

What meets these standards? Better yet what could?

I do not understand it as an answer to your exchange either.

Visual perception of red apples does not guarantee conscious experience of red apples.

Seems to me that that follows from what has suggested.

"The process" of conscious experience...

Perfect!

What does that consist of?

The apple isn't always going to taste the same to everyone. — Marchesk

Without the apple, there is no apple taste for anything or anyone, and yet you wish to claim that the taste of apples is in the perceiver. Yeah...

No.

I don’t know; how does an apple taste to you (or to anyone else)? Can you show me how it tastes to you?What reason is there to assume that how it tastes to you will be identical to how it tastes to me? — Luke

An apple tastes precisely and exactly just like an apple... to all apple eaters. That's how...

If an apple has a taste, then there is a way it tastes. Am I Englishing wrong? — Luke

"A taste"...

There is no experience of qualia beyond the language game of talking about the use of "qualia".

Full circle...

What does "qualia" pick out to the exclusion of all else?

:clap:

Great work down there!!!

There is no sense in which the notion that "the quali could be different" could be meaningful. It cannot have a role in a language game.
— Banno

What cannot have a role in the language game? Qualia? I thought it was the subject of this discussion.

With regards to intuition pump #3, you know what is being indicated by "we experience entirely different subjective colors", don't you? I assume you must, since you asserted in your previous post that we can't "ever determine that".

I take it that you know how pain feels and how the colour red looks to you, even though it is not from your own case that the words "pain" or "red" get their meaning. What is "how pain feels to you" or "how red looks to you" - an illusion? Meaningless gibberish? Can't we talk about how red looks to a colour-blind person or to someone with cerebral achromatopsia? Surely the private language argument excludes something (whatever it may be) from providing the basis for linguistic meaning. — Luke

"Qualia" is the name of all that?

Why 'waste my vote' on Biden when he cannot win my resident state (Georgia)? — 180 Proof

:wink:

I feel that morals are grounded in ethics, — Brett

The distinction between morals and ethics is ill-conceived. They are both one in the same thing.

Are we as a society moving away from morality to ideology?

Are morality and ideology different.

Is the categorical imperative an ideological concept? — Brett

One cannot move away from what counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour, for that standard directly influences one's own thought, belief, and actions, both deliberate and not. All things moral are about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and behavior. Ideology is not always.

Are you ever going to explain what you're talking about? What are you picking out to the exclusion of all else with "conscious sensation"?

The green tea leaves?

Your being a pain in my ass?

Either you can explain what you're referring to when you use "conscious sensations" or you cannot. It's not my job to fill in your blanks. I do not use such language. I'm aware of "conscious sensations" as an utterly inadequate metacognitive notion borne of a gross understanding of thought and belief, and thus conscious experience.

What is it like to have synesthesia? Some people will see number symbols and letters shaded or tinged with color. — Marchesk

:brow:

Why ask if you already know?

You don't shiver conscious sensations? — Marchesk

I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc. — Marchesk

What conscious sensations?

...

Good advice.




Weird that you would say something not yet said. I'm reading the discussion. So far, I've seen no coherent line of inquiry.

No, it's not the notion of categorical imperative I'm discussing.

I'll go back and read...

:up:

Could be fun.

What case? Sorry, want to be sure we're talking about the same scenario... Set it out for me, if you would...

I suggest you re-think this a bit... seriously. You've made several errors here.

You're arguing against The Golden Rule, not the CI. They are not one in the same. They do not mean the same thing to everybody. Some people realize that there's good reason for the two different names! Two different referents. Not really synonyms either.

...conscious sensations of color, sound... — Marchesk

:smirk:

. I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc. — Marchesk

What better reason to throw such empty notions and/or language use aside?

:brow:

I disagree with the semiotic distinction between syntax and semantics when it comes to meaning, but other than that..
— creativesoul

I'm not sure what you mean. — apokrisis

No biggie. I'm stoked to see the genuine agreement between our views regarding conscious experience(consciousness).

Gay men like being fucked.

Straight men don't.

Straight women get fucked.

Gay women get fucked only with devices.

I am sorry to have been forced to be so vulgar. — god must be atheist

...and wrong too!

Not all...

"What if everyone acted like that?"

"If everyone acted like that, would the world be a better place?"




Such questions foster helping, cultivating, encouraging, and developing goodwill towards others. They are easily understood, easily taught, and can be put to immediate good use at an early age.

The categorical imperative, in its simplest expression, says a bible quote, "Do unto others as you wish to be done unto you". — god must be atheist

No it doesn't.

...Consciousness - in that view - is simply what it is like to be in a meaningful and intentional semiotic modelling relation with the world... — apokrisis

Sounds about right to me. Generally I mean. I disagree with the semiotic distinction between syntax and semantics when it comes to meaning, but other than that... Yeah, that sounds about right.

Conscious experience is meaningful to the creature having it.