Terrapin Station wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 8:41 amRe "intensity of qualia" I'm not sure how we'd measure that because I'm not even sure what it's referring to. I don't at all deny qualia, but subjectively, I don't experience or think about qualia in a way related to "intensity." For example, I know what the "(tactile) fuzziness" of velvet is like to me subjectively, so I know the quale of "(tactile) fuzziness" re velvet, but it doesn't make sense to me to apply an "intensity" rating to that quale. There might be more or less "plush" velvet, but those are different qualia in that case in my view, not the same quale with a different "intensity."
As far as sensations are concerned, a change of intensity isn't necessarily a change of quality. For example, bodily sensations such as pains, tickles, and itches do come in different intensities; and so do e.g. auditory sensations and olfactory ones.
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"A sensation is a simple conscious process standing in a relation of dependency to particular nervous organs, peripheral and central. But despite its qualitative simplicity, a sensation may be compared with other sensations in respect of certain
attributes which attach to it. A given pressure sensation, for instance, may be more vivid, more lasting, and more extended, than another, though it is of the same kind or quality. These attributes are characterised (i) by their inseparability from the sensation. Every sensation of pressure possesses, over and above its specific content, a certain strength and a certain temporal and spatial character. We need not necessarily pay particular attention to all the attributes in all cases; but they are never absent and can be noted and determined as circumstances require. (2) Further, the nullification of any of the attributes involves the disappearance or cessation of the entire sensation. A pressure sensation which is unextended, whose duration or intensity is zero, or from which the quality is abstracted, simply ceases to be a pressure sensation. Sensation, that is, is not something to which attributes are added; it does not imply a substrate or substantial nucleus, upon or around which they are grouped. It follows, accordingly, that a complete description of the attributes of sensation is equivalent to a complete description of sensation.
Applying this criterion to sensation, we have to predicate of it four attributes: quality, intensity, duration, and extension.
Quality is the property which characterises the simple conscious process as such, and in this sense may be regarded as the most fundamental of all. It distinguishes 'blue' from 'red', 'sweet' from 'bitter', 'warm' from 'cold'. The other attributes all refer to it; intensity is the intensity of a certain quality, and so on.
Intensity itself is the property of sensation which enables us to compare it with others in respect of vividness; and
duration and [/i]extension[/i] designate respectively its elementary temporal and spatial character. Thus a taste may be 'very sweet' or only 'sweet'; a sensation of warmth may be of greater or less duration; a 'blue' may be a blue of greater or less extension. In general, it may be said that all four attributes admit of isolated variation, so that we can formulate their laws independently. Quality, however, is peculiar in this respect. For alteration in quality means transition to new sensations; while if quality is left intact, and the other attributes are altered, the sensation appears to remain the same. This is another proof that quality is of the very essence of sensation. It represents the solid foundation, so to speak, which underlies the variability of the other properties. When we come to ask how many sensations a sense-organ mediates, therefore, we shall simply inquire as to the number of qualitatively different sensations.
Not every sensation possesses all four attributes. Quality, of course, attaches to all alike; and duration, too, may be predicated of all. But extension belongs only to the visual and cutaneous sensations. If we speak of the 'extension' of tones, scents, or tastes, we are either using the term allegorically, to express the magnitude of the effect which they have upon us, or employing it in a secondary sense, to indicate the spatial character of the objective conditions of the sensations, or that of other sensations or ideas, visual or cutaneous, which we associate with them. And intensity cannot be ascribed to sensations of sight, since any alteration or modification, whether of the intensity of the physical stimulus or of any other of the elements in the determination of sensible intensity, brings with it an alteration in quality, i.e., a transition to new sensations. The proof of this must come later; here we can do no more than note the fact. There is naturally no reason a priori why all the three attributes should attach to every sensation, over and above its essential and characteristic quality. We must appeal to experience, to discover whether variations in intensity, duration, and extension, occur in a particular case."
(Külpe, Oswald.
Outlines of Psychology. Translated by E. B. Titchener. New York: Macmillan, 1901. pp. 29-30)
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