Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sculptor1]

You wrote yesterday that Dennett "does away with experience". That's what I was responding to, so if dragging "experience" into the discussion is "bending the issue", maybe you shouldn't have used that phrase in the first place.

Of course I agree that he does away with qualia. Where I believe we differ is that I see this as a wise move because qualia is philosophical BS.

Thanks for admitting it. Too bad that the existence of qualia can't be doubted.
At this point I usually ask you eliminativists, to explain what magenta is, and how science detects it, or infers its existence from the behaviour of other things. After all, if science can't do that, then magenta is made-up, right, or some sort of 'illusion'? Would be too much off topic though so maybe we'll have that fun another time.

Neither of you seem to appreciate what is meant by qualia. And of you think Dennett has dismissed the idea then he is also clueless.

[Faustus5]

The soundbite would be "representational states of the nervous system".

And are these representational states of the nervous system phenomenally experienced by the nervous system, or are they themselves the phenomenal experience, or...?

B.

[Faustus5]

Thanks for admitting it. Too bad that the existence of qualia can't be doubted.[/quote]
If that were actually true, then you wouldn't have smart, well studied philosophers doubting that qualia exist. The existence of qualia appears to me to be a matter of religious faith among philosophers. And like "god" it apparently is so incoherent that even true believers can't seem to agree on what exactly they mean by using the term.

[Faustus5]

Too bad that the existence of qualia can't be doubted.

Okay, I'll try this again. Really wish this forum had the ability to edit or delete posts when I make stupid formatting mistakes.

The fact of the matter is that there have been smart thinkers who have denied qualia in some form or another for decades, so this claim of yours is just wrong as matter of absolute fact. You may be correct in the end that qualia exist, but that position is still being actively debated and you're in denial if you don't admit this.

The existence of qualia seems to be to be a sort of religious article of faith among some in the philosophical community. As with "God", even the true believers can't seem to agree with one another one what the term is supposed to mean.

[GE Morton]

Of course I agree that he does away with qualia. Where I believe we differ is that I see this as a wise move because qualia is philosophical BS.

At this point I usually ask you eliminativists, to explain what magenta is, and how science detects it, or infers its existence from the behaviour of other things. After all, if science can't do that, then magenta is made-up, right, or some sort of 'illusion'? Would be too much off topic though so maybe we'll have that fun another time.

That qualia is not reducible to brain states or otherwise explicable in scientific terms does not relegate it to "philosophical BS." The term is reasonably well-defined and descriptively useful. But the existence of qualia doesn't imply dualism either. The challenge is to explain WHY it is not reducible. (Good explanation of reductionism earlier, Faustus).

There is no explanation of "what magenta is" to be had, Alta, via science or any other methodology. But since we can use that and other qualia terms to communicate actionable information it exists --- which is the only criterion for the existence of anything.

[Terrapin Station]

You wrote yesterday that Dennett "does away with experience". That's what I was responding to, so if dragging "experience" into the discussion is "bending the issue", maybe you shouldn't have used that phrase in the first place.

Of course I agree that he does away with qualia. Where I believe we differ is that I see this as a wise move because qualia is philosophical BS.

Thanks for admitting it. Too bad that the existence of qualia can't be doubted.
At this point I usually ask you eliminativists, to explain what magenta is, and how science detects it, or infers its existence from the behaviour of other things. After all, if science can't do that, then magenta is made-up, right, or some sort of 'illusion'? Would be too much off topic though so maybe we'll have that fun another time.

But I already explained how we explain what magenta is and how we detect it. It's no big mystery. Your objection was that it was somehow illegitimate to talk about something that's not a "single" phenomenon--in other words, magenta obtains via a combination of EM wavelengths (or we could talk about combinations of pigments that give off the combination of wavelengths, etc.)

[Atla]

Thanks for admitting it. Too bad that the existence of qualia can't be doubted.
At this point I usually ask you eliminativists, to explain what magenta is, and how science detects it, or infers its existence from the behaviour of other things. After all, if science can't do that, then magenta is made-up, right, or some sort of 'illusion'? Would be too much off topic though so maybe we'll have that fun another time.

But I already explained how we explain what magenta is and how we detect it. It's no big mystery. Your objection was that it was somehow illegitimate to talk about something that's not a "single" phenomenon--in other words, magenta obtains via a combination of EM wavelengths (or we could talk about combinations of pigments that give off the combination of wavelengths, etc.)

And I told you to prove your idea via science, which of course you couldn't.

[Terrapin Station]

Too bad that the existence of qualia can't be doubted.

Okay, I'll try this again. Really wish this forum had the ability to edit or delete posts when I make stupid formatting mistakes.

The fact of the matter is that there have been smart thinkers who have denied qualia in some form or another for decades, so this claim of yours is just wrong as matter of absolute fact. You may be correct in the end that qualia exist, but that position is still being actively debated and you're in denial if you don't admit this.

The existence of qualia seems to be to be a sort of religious article of faith among some in the philosophical community. As with "God", even the true believers can't seem to agree with one another one what the term is supposed to mean.

I don't know if we talked about this before. I buy that there are qualia, and I've always found the rejection of qualia curious. There's nothing mysterious about qualia. Qualia are simply the qualitative properties of mental brain states, from the perspective of those mental brain states. When the brain states are perceptual states, there's often no good reason to believe that the qualitative properties of the correlative brain states are much different, qualitatively, than the qualitative properties of the objective materials/relations/processes that we're perceiving. (Sometimes there are reasons to believe that there would be a difference, but we need good evidence for that, and it requires that we're able to tell what the externals are really like contra the perceptual content.)

All materials/relations/processes "have" qualities, of course--qualities simply being properties or characteristics of existents (including in whatever dynamic or relational state they're in). "Qualia" is simply the term for these properties when we're talking about mental brain states, from the perspective of those mental brain states. It wouldn't make any sense to say that mental brain states (or anything else for that matter) have no properties.

[Terrapin Station]

But I already explained how we explain what magenta is and how we detect it. It's no big mystery. Your objection was that it was somehow illegitimate to talk about something that's not a "single" phenomenon--in other words, magenta obtains via a combination of EM wavelengths (or we could talk about combinations of pigments that give off the combination of wavelengths, etc.)

And I told you to prove your idea via science, which of course you couldn't.

No empirical claim is provable. If you want reasons to believe it, which is different than a proof, then that's simple enough. Reasons to believe it include (a) the definition of "magenta," (b) knowledge that colors obtain via wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (and subjectively, what the perception of those wavelengths is like from the perspective of being the brain states in question), (c) knowledge that some colors are the result of additive properties of electromagnetic waves, sometimes at different intensities, etc., (d) knowledge of how materials reflect electromagnetic radiation--materials such as pigments in paints or pixels on a computer screen, etc. What's supposed to be the big mystery there?

[Atla]

And I told you to prove your idea via science, which of course you couldn't.

No empirical claim is provable. If you want reasons to believe it, which is different than a proof, then that's simple enough. Reasons to believe it include (a) the definition of "magenta," (b) knowledge that colors obtain via wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (and subjectively, what the perception of those wavelengths is like from the perspective of being the brain states in question), (c) knowledge that some colors are the result of additive properties of electromagnetic waves, sometimes at different intensities, etc., (d) knowledge of how materials reflect electromagnetic radiation--materials such as pigments in paints or pixels on a computer screen, etc. What's supposed to be the big mystery there?

The mistery here is why you are so ignorant about both science and philosohy. You don't even understand the problem. Again, (b) and (c) are your guesses but you can't show them via science. That's why I told you to prove them if you can.

(Evasion tactics about how you can't interpret 'proof' in a scientific context, does not solve the issue by the way.)

[Gertie]

And are these representational states of the nervous system phenomenally experienced by the nervous system, or are they themselves the phenomenal experience, or...?

B.

So the claim is that that qualia are phenomenal experience, and a property of brain processes? That's a pretty mainstream idea.

Isn't the reduction then simply a framing which says it's not qualia doing the representing of a blue sky, it's the configurations of and interactions of the nervous system in response to external stimuli? And the phenomenal experience is just a property of how those particular processes manifest?

I don't see that as reduction, or particularly significant, more a shift in identifying where the representational function in the process happens.

I don't see how it makes qualia somehow illusory either?

[GE Morton]

Read this to clarify (intended for TS)

Well, that response illustrates the problem. Phrases such as "being in the foundational sense," "being as such," and "eternal essences of all things" are meaningless phrases. The word "being" has two uses in English --- it is a noun denoting an existent, especially a living creature, and as a verb, the present participle of to be (to exist). There is no sense to "being as such" --- the term is only meaningful with reference to some particular existent. It does not denote some inchoate, mystical substance, some "essence," that permeates all tangible, perceptible things. Nor can any such mystical substances supply a foundation for any useful ontology. Speaking of "being" in that way does not constitute some revolutionary insight; it is merely a linguistic corruption contrived in an attempt to describe an incoherent idea.

That's what Heidegger said (as well as Husserl. A thing is an "predicatively formed affair of actuality"). He takes Being as such as a badly misunderstood concept. These mysterious intuitions, he said, one might have of Being are what he is trying to give some articulation to. He thinks we have to to understand Being as a foundational concept in an analytic of Time: I approach a thing, it IS there. What is it that constitutes this awareness of the thing before me? It is not some pure intimation of Being, for, as you say above, no sense can be made of this. He sees that before I even approach the thing, I am equipped with the ability to acknowledge it AS something, some reference to language, a foreknowledge of what couches and chairs ARE before we can analyze what it means that things ARE. The areness, if you will, is bound, in every case, always, already, bound to the pre understanding, so the question of what it means for something to be is analyzable to the temporal conditions that are in place in order for a "there is" or a "I am" to occur at all. this is why Heidegger's ontology is as foundational as it can get: wher a scientific account is about planets and chromosomes, the phenomenological ontology is about what it is for a thing to be at all, so that when you approach the microscope, there is a constitution, if you like, a paradigmatically informed apperceptive constitution that makes encounters at all maningful, and thus,the scientist's work meaningful.

That is supposed to "clarify" the meaning of "Being as such"? You seem to be agreeing that "no sense can be made" of that, then proceed to divert to a discussion of the ability we have to perceive or recognize things --- neither of which has anything to do with "being," as that term is normally understood. From there we get:

"The areness, if you will, is bound, in every case, always, already, bound to the pre understanding, so the question of what it means for something to be is analyzable to the temporal conditions that are in place in order for a "there is" or a "I am" to occur at all."

"Areness"? Is that some sort of synonym for "being as such"? You're just piling more gobbledygook on top of the previous gobbledygook. What it "means to be" is not "analyzable" at all; no analysis of that concept is necessary. It is a simple term, used to distinguish perceptible, tangible, cognizable denotata of terms from imaginary, fictitious, hypothetical, etc., ones. It is among the simplest, least problematic terms in the English lexicon.

"Analyzable to the temporal conditions that are in place"? Are you stating or implying that whatever exists, exists in some time and place? That is not true. Many things exist which have no spatio-temporal coordinates, e.g., numbers, love, beauty --- the things denoted by most other abstract terms. They exist if the terms denoting them have descriptive, explanatory, communicative utility.

You're trying to "reify" a verb used to mark a simple distinction into some sort of ethereal, mysterious substance --- conjuring up a problem where there is none.

[Terrapin Station]

No empirical claim is provable. If you want reasons to believe it, which is different than a proof, then that's simple enough. Reasons to believe it include (a) the definition of "magenta," (b) knowledge that colors obtain via wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (and subjectively, what the perception of those wavelengths is like from the perspective of being the brain states in question), (c) knowledge that some colors are the result of additive properties of electromagnetic waves, sometimes at different intensities, etc., (d) knowledge of how materials reflect electromagnetic radiation--materials such as pigments in paints or pixels on a computer screen, etc. What's supposed to be the big mystery there?

The mistery here is why you are so ignorant about both science and philosohy. You don't even understand the problem. Again, (b) and (c) are your guesses but you can't show them via science. That's why I told you to prove them if you can.

(Evasion tactics about how you can't interpret 'proof' in a scientific context, does not solve the issue by the way.)

Again (and again and again and again . . . ) no one can prove any empirical claim, period. For any empirical claim, the contradictory empirical claim is always a possibility. What you should focus on instead are reasons to believe one possibility over another.

(b) is very easy to show re having a good reason to believe it. For one, we can produce different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, expose people to them, and very predictably receive responses about what color the person is being exposed to.

Re (c) we do this all the time when we mix paints, for example. We can easily use a spectrometer to show what EM frequencies a particular paint blob is giving off. We can easily see what color the paint blob is. And then we very reliably know what colors we'll get when we mix different paints, and we can use spectrometers on those too.

It's ridiculous that I have to explain any of this to you, and it's typical that rather than offer any sorts of counterargument whatsoever, rather than attempting to explain what's supposed to be so mysterious about something like magenta, you resort to stupid insults. That's all you're really capable of. Because you're an insecure moron.

[Terrapin Station]

Re magenta, by the way, what the hell are you even thinking? That it's just some random quale that people have that's otherwise inexplicable? Are you not thinking that it's reliably in response to objective facts? That it's not a reliable perception of objective properties? How would you explain being able to reliably print things (for example) that people perceive as magenta? Seriously, it seems like I'd be talking to a retard to have to even explain this.

[Atla]

The mistery here is why you are so ignorant about both science and philosohy. You don't even understand the problem. Again, (b) and (c) are your guesses but you can't show them via science. That's why I told you to prove them if you can.

(Evasion tactics about how you can't interpret 'proof' in a scientific context, does not solve the issue by the way.)

Again (and again and again and again . . . ) no one can prove any empirical claim, period. For any empirical claim, the contradictory empirical claim is always a possibility. What you should focus on instead are reasons to believe one possibility over another.

(b) is very easy to show re having a good reason to believe it. For one, we can produce different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, expose people to them, and very predictably receive responses about what color the person is being exposed to.

Re (c) we do this all the time when we mix paints, for example. We can easily use a spectrometer to show what EM frequencies a particular paint blob is giving off. We can easily see what color the paint blob is. And then we very reliably know what colors we'll get when we mix different paints, and we can use spectrometers on those too.

It's ridiculous that I have to explain any of this to you, and it's typical that rather than offer any sorts of counterargument whatsoever, rather than attempting to explain what's supposed to be so mysterious about something like magenta, you resort to stupid insults. That's all you're really capable of. Because you're an insecure moron.

Scientific proof doesn't work via 'what people say', it works by objective observation, measurement. As a physicalist, have you never heard of physics before?