quote:Before I do that, I'm curious what you "plainly see" that Dennett does not plainly see.
I experience qualia every day. Dennett argues that it doesn't exist. It is tough for Dennett to establish that because he would have to start with all premises that seem even more definite to me than the existance of qualia.
In the argument I know of, Dennett overstated #4 - he claims that to experience a quale is to know "everything" about that quale. He shows that it conflicts with other parts of his definition. Thus I'd reject that part of #4, especially in the light of his argument. And I'd conclude that rather than disproving the existence of qualia, he mainly just showed that qualia can't be defined in exactly the way he defined it.
quote:I can "plainly see" that qualia don't exist.
If that were true then you shouldn't believe in qualia.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:I can "plainly see" that qualia don't exist.
If that were true then you shouldn't believe in qualia.
Apparently you failed to experience the winky in my post. I am qualia-agnostic, being unconvinced of both their existence and their nonexistence.
My point was to show that simply repeating "I experience qualia every day" or "I can plainly see that qualia exist," which is basically what you've been doing, is not an argument. It's utterly useless if you're trying to convince someone else that a particular worldview is "self-evidently" wrong. Consider the following hypothetical conversation:
quote:He makes the devastating point that consciousness is soluble in anesthetic or even water.
woah.
I'm just getting to those links of yours orlox, but I do have the 'Secrets of the Mind' show on my pc and it was fascinating. I use examples from that film in conversation all the time. I'm going to have some fun playing around on that site.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:My point was to show that simply repeating "I experience qualia every day" or "I can plainly see that qualia exist," which is basically what you've been doing, is not an argument. It's utterly useless if you're trying to convince someone else that a particular worldview is "self-evidently" wrong.
You are correct in that I don't expect that to convince anyone. But what do you expect me to say when you ask me to prove why I think my claim is self-evident? There is no proof, other than the observation itself. That's what it means to be self-evident, isn't it? If you ask me why I believe what I do, I'm going to be honest - and that means telling you that it all rests on an observation I make.
My hope is that by making some analogies, and giving some related argument, other people will realize they are experiencing qualia too. I know that there was originally a point where I thought qualia was a crazy idea, and didn't buy it. It was only after a good bit of thinking that I eventually realized what it was referring to, and saw that I was having qualia after all. At one point, I was trying to figure out a philosophy paper, and there happened to be a bright orange sunset outside my window. I tried to figure out whether or not I really was experiencing that sunset, or if my brain was only telling itself that I was experiencing it. After a while, I got it straight and changed my mind. The experience of seeing a sunset is an example of experiencing qualia. It just didn't make sense any other way, without denying what I was seeing.
quote:Life is beautiful.
Only as long as beauty exists - but it is yet another thing that I don't think can be constructed out of particles.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:I'm going to be honest - and that means telling you that it all rests on an observation I make.
But your observation is that things are red. I make the same actual observation, and yet don't believe in non-material qualia. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't see how there are any non-physical experiences. Red is a wavelength of light. It excites particular receptors in the eye, which send a particular signal to your brain, which you understand as the color red. There is nothing magical or non-physical going on here.
You cannot give an example of any experience which is not the result of a physical and electrical change within your brain. Everything you perceive or experience happens in your brain.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:You cannot give an example of any experience which is not the result of a physical and electrical change within your brain. Everything you perceive or experience happens in your brain.
This last is an assumption, not a proven fact. There is nothing that rules out aspects of experience occuring through some extra-brainal system. There is nothing that limits perception to only what happens in the brain.
Or perhaps you can show me why this is wrong?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
There is no reason to account for 'extra-brainal' activity for which there is no evidence. Find the evidence and we will have to account for it.
Absent that, there is no way to prove the existence or non-existence of something there is no evidence for. Other than assuming that if there is no evidence for something, it probably doesn't exist.
Posts: 675 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I didn't say anything about accounting for it. I said you couldn't rule it out. The statement that "Everything you perceive or experience happens in your brain." is an assumption, not a proven fact.
Also, it's not a matter of there isn't evidence. It's that the things we are talking about are not capturable in evidence. They fall outside the scope of scientific investigation.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:My point was to show that simply repeating "I experience qualia every day" or "I can plainly see that qualia exist," which is basically what you've been doing, is not an argument. It's utterly useless if you're trying to convince someone else that a particular worldview is "self-evidently" wrong.
You are correct in that I don't expect that to convince anyone. But what do you expect me to say when you ask me to prove why I think my claim is self-evident?
I haven't asked for proof. I haven't even asked for evidence. I've simply asked you to acknowledge the possibility that strict materialism is true.
"I reject strict materialism because I believe I have observed qualia" is not the same as "strict materialism is self-evidently wrong."
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:How do you know that your red is the same as his red?
Assuming he's capable of identifying the right wavelength of light, all I "know" is that my "red" and his "red" are roughly the same wavelength. I do NOT know how the mechanisms of his brain filter and interpret his perceptions of that same wavelength -- but that experience is still a physical experience, even if I can't replicate it without having the same brain.
The argument for qualia is like saying that batter poured through a sieve should always land in the same pattern, even if you're dealing with different sieves, different types of batter, different griddles, and different angles at which the batter is being poured. If it were possible to keep all those variables equal, it might be reasonable to assume the same final pattern; it's not particularly possible, but that's actually the sort of problem that, say, engineers specializing in liquid dynamics (and neurosurgeons) work on every day.
But that doesn't mean that the batter is not physical. It's not some spiritual hypothetical just because we can't satisfactorily control the variables that go into shaping its result.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:I do NOT know how the mechanisms of his brain filter and interpret his perceptions of that same wavelength -- but that experience is still a physical experience
Again, the assumption that this is only a physical experience is just that, an assumption. You have no reason saying that it must be so. You do not have access to the subjective experience that Tres or anyone else besides yourself is having.
Or perhaps you can actually offer a reason for this instead of just constantly stating it.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
It seems to me that the evidence is rather trivial : If you rearrange the brain, your experience changes; if you rearrange it sufficiently, the experience ceases. There's absolutely no reason to postulate some kind of ghost in the machine, when we can see that without the machine, there ain't no ghost.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Again, the assumption that this is only a physical experience is just that, an assumption.
Even leaving aside the fairly ample body of evidence for the effect of abnormal neurological structures on perception, memory, and thought, it's worth noting that Occam's Razor nicely does away with qualia in one fell swoop.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Occam's Razor is not proof of anything. Not unless, and until, you can prove that the universe actually favors the simplest answer.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Occam's Razor is never proof. It is, however, a logical way to choose between two alternatives when the unknown variables are themselves unknown.
If one option requires that previously observed physical mechanisms are working in a way not yet entirely understood to produce thought, and the other requires that an entire parallel "universe" of spirituality exists in addition to the aforementioned mechanisms, the former option is simply the more "correct" until such time as other variables are discovered which make the first option impossible.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:I haven't asked for proof. I haven't even asked for evidence. I've simply asked you to acknowledge the possibility that strict materialism is true.
But if I can observe that a nonphysical thing exists, how could strict materialism possibly be true - unless that initial observation itself is wrong. That is possible of course (pretty much any belief about anything COULD be wrong), but to think it is wrong seems nonsensical to me in the same way that it seems nonsensical to me to believe that apples might be identical to oranges.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Occam's Razor is never proof. It is, however, a logical way to choose between two alternatives when the unknown variables are themselves unknown.
Tom, if you want to use Occam's Razor, become a solipsist or a metaphysical idealist. It is far far simpler to accept that the universe exists as ONLY mental experiences in your mind, rather than posit the existence of an elaborate, gigantic physical world consisting of trillions and trillions of particles. (See George Berkeley for someone who argued strongly for this sort of approach, although he was not a solipsist. Matter is an unnecessary abstration, according to Berekley - we only need posit the existence of sensations and ideas.)
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Occam's Razor is never proof. It is, however, a logical way to choose between two alternatives when the unknown variables are themselves unknown.
Meh. I've never found it particularly useful.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:It is far far simpler to accept that the universe exists as ONLY mental experiences in your mind, rather than posit the existence of an elaborate, gigantic physical world consisting of trillions and trillions of particles.
No, not really. Not only does this still open you up to the whole Prime Mover question -- "When did my brain start thinking? Did I invent the whole sweep of human history? Is my subconscious really creating all the bits of the world around me, even the bits that catch my conscious self by inconvenient and/or painful surprise?" -- but that sort of solipsistic approach ultimately defeats itself.
I may be a butterfly dreaming I'm a man. But I cannot behave as if I am, and obtain no measurable benefit from doing so, unless there is a measurable difference between knowing I'm a butterfly and believing I'm a man. This is also one enormous problem with the whole "qualia" argument, too; it's ultimately useless.
quote:Meh. I've never found it particularly useful.
When has it failed you?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:How do you know that your red is the same as his red?
Assuming he's capable of identifying the right wavelength of light, all I "know" is that my "red" and his "red" are roughly the same wavelength. I do NOT know how the mechanisms of his brain filter and interpret his perceptions of that same wavelength -- but that experience is still a physical experience, even if I can't replicate it without having the same brain.
The argument for qualia is like saying that batter poured through a sieve should always land in the same pattern, even if you're dealing with different sieves, different types of batter, different griddles, and different angles at which the batter is being poured. If it were possible to keep all those variables equal, it might be reasonable to assume the same final pattern; it's not particularly possible, but that's actually the sort of problem that, say, engineers specializing in liquid dynamics (and neurosurgeons) work on every day.
But that doesn't mean that the batter is not physical. It's not some spiritual hypothetical just because we can't satisfactorily control the variables that go into shaping its result.
quote:Originally posted by orlox: From Wiki:
Metaphysical naturalism is any worldview in which nature is all there is and nothing supernatural exists. It is often simply referred to as naturalism, and occasionally as philosophical naturalism or ontological naturalism, though all those terms have other meanings as well, with naturalism often referring to methodological naturalism.
Also Wiki:
Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that do not distinguish the supernatural from nature. Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.
For clarity, stick me in the metaphysical naturalist camp, just like KoM.
Posts: 675 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have tried very, very hard to avoid using jargon in this thread, and resent your continued attempts to drag it, kicking and screaming, into it. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Still, I am not so quick to dismiss the problems with redness. Ultimately, I bow to Ramachandran as quoted earlier:
"The question is how does the flux of ions in little bits of jelly in my brain give rise to the redness of red, the flavour of marmite or mattar paneer, or wine. Matter and mind seem so utterly unlike each other. Well one way out of this dilemma is to think of them really as two different ways of describing the world, each of which is complete in itself. Just as we can describe light as made up of particles or waves - and there's no point in asking which is correct, because they're both correct and yet utterly unlike each other. And the same may be true of mental events and physical events in the brain."
Posts: 675 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Why imagine some non-physical thing that does your experiencing for you? If you're just going to make things up, you may as well say that you're a puppet of a flying unicorn, who does your perceiving for you. No? How about your perception is contained in germs that live beneath your toenail, which just grow a brain in your head for a hobby.
I can't prove that you don't use non-physical mumbojumbo to perceive things, but there's no logical reason to assume that you do.
Assuming, for a moment, that there is some non-physical YOU, apart from your body. How does it interact with the physical body? How does a non-physical thing act on a physical thing?
If a non-physical YOU can act on your physical body, then non-physical qualia (which I don't believe in) can act on the physical body as well. There's no need for a non-physical YOU to experience these qualia.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:But if I can observe that a nonphysical thing exists, how could strict materialism possibly be true - unless that initial observation itself is wrong.
Your interpretation of the observation could also be wrong.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:This is also one enormous problem with the whole "qualia" argument, too; it's ultimately useless.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Without the "qualia" aspect of experience, the world as we know it would not exist, and life would be utterly meaningless. This is because all objects are only meaningful to us in the way through which we can experience them.
Consider a tree. When you think about a tree you don't think of a bunch of atoms. You think of it as a thing with rough brown bark that looks a certain way and feels a certain way. You think of it as having bright green leaves that look a certain way, which look a different way in the fall. You think of the way you can perceive the leaves moving if the wind were to blow. You might imagine how it would look at different points across time, growing larger. The idea of the tree in your mind is constructed through all of these experiences. A tree is only meaningful to you in this way.
Now, if you want you can imagine a tree as a set of atoms, but atoms in themselves mean nothing. They don't look like anything, they don't feel like anything, etc. You can't conceive of an atom in any true sense. Similarly, a bunch of atoms is equally meaningless. They only become meaningful indirectly, if they are grouped together in ways that produce qualia in our minds.
A world in which there was no such qualia would be, in essence, like the Matrix when seen as only 1's and 0's. Atoms are to our physical world like those digits are to the Matrix. Seeing lines and lines of 1's and 0's means nothing to anyone, unless you can translate those 1's and 0's into some sort of experience.
Thus the world, as we know it, would literally not exist if it were not for qualia. This is a big reason why it is so absurd to me to deny the existence of qualia - it is the equivalent of saying the world I know doesn't exist, and instead suggesting that the only world that does exist is an meaningless code of atoms.
Furthermore, good and bad would not exist either. Or, at least, pleasure and pain would not. That is because pleasure and pain are both experiences themselves. Pain is only bad because we experience it as bad. Pleasure is only good because we experience it as good. We can't deconstruct pleasure and pain, and we cannot build them out of atoms. The same goes for joy, love, etc. Without qualia, there would be nothing that is good and nothing bad in the world - and thus nothing to guide our decisions.
So, deny qualia if you wish, but at the very least you will still have to ACT as if qualia exists - you will have to act as if you actually feel pleasure and pain, and as if the world actually means something to you. That is why this is an important matter.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
As a side note, I don't really know anyone who doesn't believe in experience. Lots of people just think experience is physical - which is not the end of the world, because they still at least believe they can feel pleasure and pain, see trees for what they mean to us, and generally find meaning in the atoms of the world.
But the trouble arises when they go looking to understand experience in the wrong places. They think it is physical, so they think answers to questions of "good" and "bad" can be found by examining only the physical through science. This inevitably leads to mistaken answers. One mistake, given by KoM earlier in this thread, is that there is no such thing as good and bad. Another mistake is concluding that good and bad is simply doing whatever our body wants. Another mistake is concluding that good and bad is determined by evolution - that our purpose is to be the fittest. These mistakes arise from looking for meaning in the wrong places.
These mistaken beliefs have a very real impact on our society too. The "tyranny of relativism" described by the Pope can be traced back to these mistakes. It stems from our inability to find a way to meaningfully understand what is or is not right and wrong. A significant chunk of what is wrong with our pop culture society can be traced back to our belief in materialism, and its implications on how we think about meaning, and how we go about distinguishing good from bad.
So, while thinking experience is physical is not as bad as denying the existence of experience altogether, it is still a major problem.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Which question? I don't know how to define "thing", as I said. I observe nonphysical experience because that's just how experience works - it is directly observable to the person who is having the experience. That is a fundamental property of experience.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
So experience is by definition "observable," but it's impossible to identify the means by which all experiences are observed?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
qualia doesnt make the tree exist. Atoms are still physical things, they just are beyond the range of human eyesight. A tree compsed of atoms is a mass of these physical things and we get the experiences of touch, taste, smell, sight from these mass of atoms. Just because we cannot see the atoms that make up the substance does not make qualia exist.
Posts: 467 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Consider a tree. When you think about a tree you don't think of a bunch of atoms. You think of it as a thing with rough brown bark that looks a certain way and feels a certain way. You think of it as having bright green leaves that look a certain way, which look a different way in the fall. You think of the way you can perceive the leaves moving if the wind were to blow. You might imagine how it would look at different points across time, growing larger. The idea of the tree in your mind is constructed through all of these experiences. A tree is only meaningful to you in this way.
Qualia are not required in order to do this. You're talking about a combination of memory and imagination; it is not self-evident that these are not purely electrical and chemical processes.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
The real reason I'm asking you to define "thing" has a lot to do with the way you're defining "tree." Yes, a tree is made of atoms, which in turn make up molecules, which make up compounds, which make up bits of the tree as diverse as bark and leaves and sap and pith. And one moment we can point to a leaf and say "look at that leaf!" and the next moment point to the tree it's on and say "look at that tree," having forgotten almost entirely that any one individual leaf was a matter of concern even a second ago.
In the same way, people are made of skin and brain and blood and bones and arms and hair and literally hundreds of thousands of conceptual subunits. But the fact that we can create convenient subcategories to address smaller components of something that can also be considered part of a greater whole does not mean that it's necessary for that greater whole to be what you mean by "qualia." Conceptual frameworks aren't spiritual entities.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:So experience is by definition "observable," but it's impossible to identify the means by which all experiences are observed?
I'm not sure it even makes sense to talk about a "means" by which experience is observed by the person having it. The experience is simply observed by the fact that it exists - otherwise there'd be no experience.
quote:qualia doesnt make the tree exist. Atoms are still physical things, they just are beyond the range of human eyesight. A tree compsed of atoms is a mass of these physical things and we get the experiences of touch, taste, smell, sight from these mass of atoms. Just because we cannot see the atoms that make up the substance does not make qualia exist.
Yes, you are right that the "tree" still exists. It just wouldn't exist as what we normally think of as a tree - the colors, shape, etc. Instead it would just be a collection of particles with no real significance, except insofar as how they influence other particles.
quote:Qualia are not required in order to do this. You're talking about a combination of memory and imagination; it is not self-evident that these are not purely electrical and chemical processes.
Memory and imagination would only do this insofar as they point to experiences. When I remember a tree, I am reminded of my experiences with the tree. If those experiences aren't there, I don't really have a concept of a tree, beyond it being a set of atoms that behave in a certain predictable fashion.
quote:In the same way, people are made of skin and brain and blood and bones and arms and hair and literally hundreds of thousands of conceptual subunits. But the fact that we can create convenient subcategories to address smaller components of something that can also be considered part of a greater whole does not mean that it's necessary for that greater whole to be what you mean by "qualia."
Yes, but I was not suggesting that line of argument. I was suggesting that the only parts of any given thing that have any meaning to us are experiential.
Like Berkeley argues, matter is a sort of useful abstraction that means nothing except for what it represents to us. But if everything is matter, then there is nothing for the abstraction to represent.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Memory and imagination would only do this insofar as they point to experiences. When I remember a tree, I am reminded of my experiences with the tree.
Isn't that pretty much what it means to remember something? Your past encounters with trees, depictions of trees, and descriptions of trees all blend together in your memory so that when you see a tree, your perception is influenced by your memories.
It's possible that the following is true: an experience occurs by a physical process (e.g. external event->sensory perception->brain interpretation), is stored in memory by a physical process (electrical and chemical brain state, formation of synapses), and is applied to future experiences by a physical process (same). "Quale," then, would just be a fancy word for what happens in the brain when sensory data are interpreted.
Incidentally, the Google Ad I'm seeing at the bottom of the page is for Soaps.com, which purports to be a treasure trove of information about General Hospital. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:It's possible that the following is true: an experience occurs by a physical process (e.g. external event->sensory perception->brain interpretation), is stored in memory by a physical process (electrical and chemical brain state, formation of synapses), and is applied to future experiences by a physical process (same). "Quale," then, would just be a fancy word for what happens in the brain when sensory data are interpreted.
If you redefine "quale" in that way, you are really saying the qualia I'm talking about and that I observe in my experiences doesn't exist. But I observe it does exist - which is why your explanation is still not convincing me. Why should I doubt what I think I have clearly observed in order to allow the possibility of a model of the universe which I have been given no reason to think is true, other than a vague appeal to Occam's Razor?
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:If you redefine "quale" in that way, you are really saying the qualia I'm talking about and that I observe in my experiences doesn't exist.
I'm saying you wouldn't necessarily know the difference, which I suppose amounts to the same thing from your perspective. Of course, I still find your perspective baffling.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Why should I doubt what I think I have clearly observed...
Except I'm not at all clear how or why you think you have "clearly observed" anything of the kind, Tres.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:I'm saying you wouldn't necessarily know the difference, which I suppose amounts to the same thing from your perspective.
I originally thought that too, when I heard about qualia. But eventually I concluded that if there were no qualia then I'd have no perspective. If there were no qualia, then I wouldn't be able to even conceive of the concept of qualia.
It is sort of like thinking. I think that I am thinking right now. Could I be wrong that I am thinking? If I were wrong, then how could I even be thinking that I was thinking? It would seem to be a paradox - so I can conclude that I must be correct when I think I am thinking.
In the same fashion, I experience having experience. Could I be wrong in thinking that the thing I am experiencing is experience? If it weren't experience, how could I be experiencing it? That's a similar sort of paradox - which is why I have great difficulty even comprehending what it would mean for me to not really be experiencing experience in the way I think I do.
quote:Except I'm not at all clear how or why you think you have "clearly observed" anything of the kind, Tres.
How or why do you think that you've observed that 2 is a number? You think that, right?
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:How or why do you think that you've observed that 2 is a number? You think that, right?
I think two is a number. I have not observed, however, that 2 is a number any more than I have observed that happiness is an emotion. I have observed happiness, and I have observed pairs of things, but the classification process happens independently of observation (although it can of course be informed by observational detail.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
I am qualia-agnostic, being unconvinced of both their existence and their nonexistence. ![[Evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
