Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[GE Morton]

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

That would be misleading. Qualia are not properties of brain processes, but products of brain processes.

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?

That is, in my view, the proper way to conceive of qualia --- as the mode by which the brain presents to consciousness information about the wavelengths of light the senses are delivering to it. A quale is an experiential "tag" that allows us to distinguish (say) red light from light with different wavelengths. Each one represents some experiential differertia. We can think of those tags as arbitrary; they bear no predictable or necessary logical or structural relationship to the physical processes that produce them (just as words for things are arbitrary, having no structural or other physical relationships to the things they name). Qualia terms are also unanalyzable and thus ineffable --- they are linguistic primitives, with no simpler parts or distinguishable properties. Hence they cannot be described (description consists in listing the properties of things). They are also intrinsically subjective --- there is no way for me to know whether the sensation you experience when seeing red is the same as mine --- that question doesn't even make sense.

In Frank Jackson's "Mary" thought experiment, Jackson asks whether Mary, who has lived her life in a black-and-white room and never perceived color, but knows all the science there is to know about light, learns anything new when she perceives a red rose for the first time. Yes, she does --- not anything new about the world, but how her brain presents that wavelength information to her consciousness.

Every conscious creature knows that qualia are "real" enough. We just have to accept that, for the reasons above, they are unanalyzable, and, more importantly, that there is no need to analyze them.

[Sculptor1]

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.

Maybe you can answer this.
I'm watching this Dennett video. At 12:40 minutes they get on to "qualia".
To versions of colour perception are set on for blue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSaEjLZIDqc

1 Having a phenomenal quality of blue instantiated in my brain.
and
2 The quality of blue is represented by my brain.

Dennett claims that 1 is wrong and that 2 is correct.

For my money the idea of a qualia seems right. Others on this Forum page have claimed that Dennett has ejected the notion as crap.
SO I have two problems. What is the actual difference between 1 and 2, and does Dennett's acceptance of 2 invalidate the idea of qualia. If so why?

[Atla]

That is, in my view, the proper way to conceive of qualia --- as the mode by which the brain presents to consciousness information about the wavelengths of light the senses are delivering to it. A quale is an experiential "tag" that allows us to distinguish (say) red light from light with different wavelengths. Each one represents some experiential differertia. We can think of those tags as arbitrary; they bear no predictable or necessary logical or structural relationship to the physical processes that produce them (just as words for things are arbitrary, having no structural or other physical relationships to the things they name). Qualia terms are also unanalyzable and thus ineffable --- they are linguistic primitives, with no simpler parts or distinguishable properties. Hence they cannot be described (description consists in listing the properties of things). They are also intrinsically subjective --- there is no way for me to know whether the sensation you experience when seeing red is the same as mine --- that question doesn't even make sense.

In Frank Jackson's "Mary" thought experiment, Jackson asks whether Mary, who has lived her life in a black-and-white room and never perceived color, but knows all the science there is to know about light, learns anything new when she perceives a red rose for the first time. Yes, she does --- not anything new about the world, but how her brain presents that wavelength information to her consciousness.

Every conscious creature knows that qualia are "real" enough. We just have to accept that, for the reasons above, they are unanalyzable, and, more importantly, that there is no need to analyze them.

That's not good enough. If 'magenta' occurs inside brains, then it should occur outside brains as well.

[Sculptor1]

In Frank Jackson's "Mary" thought experiment, Jackson asks whether Mary, who has lived her life in a black-and-white room and never perceived color, but knows all the science there is to know about light, learns anything new when she perceives a red rose for the first time. Yes, she does --- not anything new about the world, but how her brain presents that wavelength information to her consciousness.

Every conscious creature knows that qualia are "real" enough. We just have to accept that, for the reasons above, they are unanalyzable, and, more importantly, that there is no need to analyze them.

Clearly when Mary emerges from her monochrome existence and apprehends a collection of colourful children's building blocks there is no way by basic perception that she has any way of knowing which colour is which. Whatever her brain now "sees" or "produces" in the perceived representation of the colours she now sees for the first time; they are wholly unknowable until someone nominates those colours for her.
It is this new knowledge where the "qualia" exist.
So is there any argument against this?

[Sculptor1]

That is, in my view, the proper way to conceive of qualia --- as the mode by which the brain presents to consciousness information about the wavelengths of light the senses are delivering to it. A quale is an experiential "tag" that allows us to distinguish (say) red light from light with different wavelengths. Each one represents some experiential differertia. We can think of those tags as arbitrary; they bear no predictable or necessary logical or structural relationship to the physical processes that produce them (just as words for things are arbitrary, having no structural or other physical relationships to the things they name). Qualia terms are also unanalyzable and thus ineffable --- they are linguistic primitives, with no simpler parts or distinguishable properties. Hence they cannot be described (description consists in listing the properties of things). They are also intrinsically subjective --- there is no way for me to know whether the sensation you experience when seeing red is the same as mine --- that question doesn't even make sense.

In Frank Jackson's "Mary" thought experiment, Jackson asks whether Mary, who has lived her life in a black-and-white room and never perceived color, but knows all the science there is to know about light, learns anything new when she perceives a red rose for the first time. Yes, she does --- not anything new about the world, but how her brain presents that wavelength information to her consciousness.

Every conscious creature knows that qualia are "real" enough. We just have to accept that, for the reasons above, they are unanalyzable, and, more importantly, that there is no need to analyze them.

That's not good enough. If 'magenta' occurs inside brains, then it should occur outside brains as well.

No.
To a person in the Monochrome room magenta is defined as what happens when you mix pure blue and pure red light. (unlike paint which is subtractive, adding light together is additive).
Unless she has previously seen magenta, the light emitted from a object of that wavelength is just that - light emitted from a wavelength.
Magenta can only happen in representations in the perception.
If you don't understand where this is coming from then you need to look at the thought experiment in detail.

[GE Morton]

That's not good enough. If 'magenta' occurs inside brains, then it should occur outside brains as well.

Magenta (the color) does indeed exist outside brains. But the unique phenomenal experience you have when perceiving it exists only in your brain. The term "qualia" refers to that experience, not a color.

[Sculptor1]

That's not good enough. If 'magenta' occurs inside brains, then it should occur outside brains as well.

Magenta (the color) does indeed exist outside brains. But the unique phenomenal experience you have when perceiving it exists only in your brain. The term "qualia" refers to that experience, not a color.

Colour is only meaningful to and of the subject.
It's like you know the Mary experiment and have not learned its lesson.

[GE Morton]

Clearly when Mary emerges from her monochrome existence and apprehends a collection of colourful children's building blocks there is no way by basic perception that she has any way of knowing which colour is which. Whatever her brain now "sees" or "produces" in the perceived representation of the colours she now sees for the first time; they are wholly unknowable until someone nominates those colours for her.

I agree. She will not know what terms are used for which colors until someone tells her.

[Atla]

That's not good enough. If 'magenta' occurs inside brains, then it should occur outside brains as well.

Magenta (the color) does indeed exist outside brains. But the unique phenomenal experience you have when perceiving it exists only in your brain. The term "qualia" refers to that experience, not a color.

Magenta itself is a qualia too. And science can't detect it for two different reasons, that's why I like to use this example. And the standard view is that if you can't detect it, it doesn't exist.

[GE Morton]

1 Having a phenomenal quality of blue instantiated in my brain.
and
2 The quality of blue is represented by my brain.

Dennett claims that 1 is wrong and that 2 is correct.

For my money the idea of a qualia seems right. Others on this Forum page have claimed that Dennett has ejected the notion as crap.
SO I have two problems. What is the actual difference between 1 and 2, and does Dennett's acceptance of 2 invalidate the idea of qualia. If so why?

#1 seems to presume that there is a "phenomenal quality of blueness" that is somehow independent of the perceiving subject (a la Chalmers).

What Dennett rejects is that understanding of "qualia."

[GE Morton]

Magenta itself is a qualia too.

No, it isn't. "magenta" is a name for a range of wavelengths that produce specific qualia in perceiving subjects.

[Faustus5]

78 user_id=48013]

The term is reasonably well-defined and descriptively useful.

Is it, though?

I remember one hilarious talk Dennett gave where he illustrated change blindness to an audience. (Two images which appear to be identical are flashed repeatedly over and over. There is a change from one to the other but it takes several repetitions before a subject will consciously perceive it. He proceeded until everyone verified they had noticed the change from one slide to the other.)

He asked the audience what (to me, anyway) should have been a simple question for which the answer should be obvious and unanimously reached: "Were your qualia changing during the experiment?" Some people raised their hands, some people didn't.

Seems to me that if qualia were really well defined there should have been no disagreement. I mean after all, if qualia really exist and are the most obvious thing in the world, how could some people think their qualia were changing and others not? This disagreement and confusion pretty clearly indicate to me that qualia are a thoroughly theoretical construct.

78 user_id=48013]The challenge is to explain WHY it is not reducible. (Good explanation of reductionism earlier, Faustus).

Thanks, and I think I have an answer. With reference to the definition of reduction I gave earlier, you can't take the vocabulary of mental state talk and transform its terms into the vocabulary of neurology talk, neither through logical deduction nor through scientific "bridge laws".

This is no big deal and does not call for metaphysical extravagance where we think we need to add phenomenal properties to the list of physical properties found in the natural world.

[Atla]

Magenta itself is a qualia too.

No, it isn't. "magenta" is a name for a range of wavelengths that produce specific qualia in perceiving subjects.

So is this:



just a name?

[Faustus5]

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

Well, I don't want to talk about qualia at all. I want to say that there are brain processes and brain properties and that's it. When we talk about what they are like we use a set of language games that involve reference to mental and phenomenal states when ultimately what we are talking about are brain states, although until recently we didn't know that's what we were doing.

I'm sure almost no one here agrees with me, I'm just outlining the position you get to if you agree with the model of consciousness Dennett has been championing since Consciousness Explained, which I thoroughly do on most points.

One of these days I'm going to start a thread about his concept of heterophenomenology, which I think is in chapter three or four. It's supposed to lay out a supposedly neutral starting point where everyone, believers in qualia or not, should be able to agree upon when gathering the data a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain.

[Faustus5]

SO I have two problems. What is the actual difference between 1 and 2, and does Dennett's acceptance of 2 invalidate the idea of qualia. If so why?

I haven't seen that video in a long time (if I saw it at all), but given what he's said in the past during other presentations which involved the ontology of after-images, if there is no blue colored thing anywhere in your brain, but just a brain state representing the color and shape of a blue object, there is nothing fitting the concept of #1 that exists.

Qualia as many understand them would be in addition to the brain state, something which somehow mysteriously exists, but even though non-physical is still not supposed to suggest dualism.

Another way I like to think about qualia is that if you think a David Chalmers zombie makes sense in any form, what it has are qualia, and if you don't, you don't believe in qualia.