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

[Steve3007]

I just want to know the fat man's back-story, leading to that point, now. Tiny insights into people's lives can be very frustrating.

[Atla]

Atla, I picture you frequently acting like this when you post here:

Hehe well I'm just here for fun, I'm not taking it seriously, as you imagine. But it's true that the depth of stupidity I encounter sometimes surprises me.

[Atla]

You're the one who claims to be a physicalist, and that everything nonphysical is incoherent.

If you subscribe to physicalism as a philophy, maybe you should have some vague idea about what it actually is.

What if definitely is NOT is being a cheerleader for (the conventional wisdom of) physics.

So the relevance is your ridiculous misunderstanding of what physicalism is.

So you're a physicalist, just minus the physics part. Got it.

[Atla]

Indeed a good example. People who CAN read and think, understand the difference between 'is' and 'associated with'.

Associated with rather than is because you could be colorblind, for example.

We're not going to say that something is the perception of x regardless of what you perceive, because various things can affect or go wrong with perception.

See, now you are again making up a random story, after being called out on your latest lie.

Well this one's got nothing to do with 'special cases' like color blindness, and if you had read Wikipedia pages before, you would know that.

[Terrapin Station]

What if definitely is NOT is being a cheerleader for (the conventional wisdom of) physics.

So the relevance is your ridiculous misunderstanding of what physicalism is.

So you're a physicalist, just minus the physics part. Got it.

It has nothing to do with being devoted to, subservient to, etc. physics. Thinking that is as ridiculous as thinking that a musician is going to believe in muses, or thinking that a concierge is probably a prison warden.

[Atla]

So you're a physicalist, just minus the physics part. Got it.

It has nothing to do with being devoted to, subservient to, etc. physics. Thinking that is as ridiculous as thinking that a musician is going to believe in muses, or thinking that a concierge is probably a prison warden.

Subservience lol okay whatever you say. I'll leave you to it.

[Terrapin Station]

Associated with rather than is because you could be colorblind, for example.

We're not going to say that something is the perception of x regardless of what you perceive, because various things can affect or go wrong with perception.

See, now you are again making up a random story, after being called out on your latest lie.

Well this one's got nothing to do with 'special cases' like color blindness, and if you had read Wikipedia pages before, you would know that.

Here he goes knocking the table over again . . .

You're thinking that "associated with" rather than "is" is an allusion to qualia where qualia are supposedly something different than a property of (perceptual) brain states?

If so, what are you using as textual support of that conclusion?

[Terrapin Station]

Here's another simple explanation of how to get magenta light:

https://maggiesscienceconnection.weebly ... color.html

[Sculptor1]

Of course it makes a difference, regardless of the universality of physical law. In fact the universality of physical law demands that a point of view gets different results.
You are just confused. Looking at a thing is not the same as a thing.
No one but me can say how much my headache hurts me. You will never know how much I mentally head-slap every time I read your posts. My internal dialogue and experience cannot be known by another. Being universal that means that nothing science can look at can be the same as the thing in itself.

Ffs, quote the part of the Standard Model then which explains the difference between physical properties and qualia properties.

Why?
Don't you know?

[Terrapin Station]

Quote the part of the standard model which explains swimming pool maintenance.

[Sculptor1]

Here's another simple explanation of how to get magenta light:

https://maggiesscienceconnection.weebly ... color.html

Surprising, isn't it, that at times some of us feel it necessary to offer high school explanations to people who do not understand the basics.

The two elements of colour mixing were explained to me by the time I was 14. The subtractive by the art teacher, and the additive by the physics teacher, both knew the theory of the other.
What they both understood is that colour only happens inside the brain; the physics teacher thought this was really interesting the art teacher not so much.

Why is this simple set of ideas so poorly understood?

[Atla]

I bet these people don't even know that if we "average" the wavelengths of red and blue light, we get green wavelength light.

And that's just one of the two issues. No matter. You can't argue with stupid.

[Gertie]

When Dennett says blue is represented by my brain, all I think he's saying is that the the neural interactions resulting from patterns of photons (which we call blue) are the ''representation'' of blue.

So blue is represented by different neurons firing to those that fire for red, or an itchy toe, etc.

I think he's just saying the physical processes are what's doing the ''representaion'' function.

He's not talking about the experience of seeing blue, only to say he doesn't label the experiencing part the representational part (as some do). He labels the physical processes the functional representation process.

It's not saying much imo. And the interviewer didn't help clarify that. But I could have misunderstood.

Thank you - that is pretty much what TerSta said too.
So I shall also present you with the same follow up.


That aside, how does this statement invalidate the idea of qualia as some on the thread claim is Dennett's belief?
I'd agree that our perceptions represent the outside world. No problem. But my experience of colour and pain are not simple representations of the world. They are only to be understood by the experiencing of them, and may be different for each of us.

I haven't gotten to the bottom of Dennett's view of qualia myself, it's confusing. But this specific point about the representational function occuring as a physical process rather than an experiential mental one doesn't specifically address the existence of the experience of seeing blue (qualia ) either way imo.

But the interviewer then asked what he called ''the big question'' - how do you get from the physical brain processes to the experience of seeing the blue door? (This is what Levine calls the Explanatory Gap, because there is no apparent physical explanation for how physical processes result in mental experience. Significantly not just how physics explains it, how it even could explain it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_gap ).

Dennett doesn't directly answer. He said you have to address this functionally. He ended up saying science will one day be able to give a full third person (objective, observable) account of You, explain everything about you functionally in terms specific brain processes.

This account won't include first person mental experience (qualia), the 'what it's like' to see a blue door, , the ''what it's like'' aspect of being You at all. Qualia don't need to exist in that functional account of your life - what you do, say and why can all be explained by physical processes. Mental sensory perceptions, their meaning to you, desires, reasoned decisions, etc, are irrelevant from that functional third person perspective. (Effectively dismissing free will).

Then he says - And qualia don't exist in any other way either. (around 17.30) Ie if the brain is doing all the third person person observable functional work, not only is free will an illusion, but the existence of phenomenal experience is an illusion.

That's my take.

But at other times he will say phenomenal mental experience does exist, and the illusion is that it isn't what we think it is. If we take into account what he says here, then the implication (well my guess) is it only exists as physical brain processes. What that would actually mean to him, I can't make out.

[GE Morton]

That aside, how does this statement invalidate the idea of qualia as some on the thread claim is Dennett's belief?
I'd agree that our perceptions represent the outside world. No problem. But my experience of colour and pain are not simple representations of the world. They are only to be understood by the experiencing of them, and may be different for each of us.

It's important to keep in mind that a representation doesn't imply a resemblance. Anything can represent anything else. All that is needed is some understood or accepted correlation between them. E.g., the capital letter C can represent the speed of light, but it bears no resemblance to that physical constant. A dot on map can represent a town, but it bears no resemblance to that town.

A quale represents, in the conscious mind, a brain state, but does not resemble it. That brain state, in turn, represents some (presumed) external state of affairs, but --- probably --- does not resemble it.

[Sculptor1]

That aside, how does this statement invalidate the idea of qualia as some on the thread claim is Dennett's belief?
I'd agree that our perceptions represent the outside world. No problem. But my experience of colour and pain are not simple representations of the world. They are only to be understood by the experiencing of them, and may be different for each of us.

It's important to keep in mind that a representation doesn't imply a resemblance. Anything can represent anything else. All that is needed is some understood or accepted correlation between them. E.g., the capital letter C can represent the speed of light, but it bears no resemblance to that physical constant. A dot on map can represent a town, but it bears no resemblance to that town.

A quale represents, in the conscious mind, a brain state, but does not resemble it. That brain state, in turn, represents some (presumed) external state of affairs, but --- probably --- does not resemble it.

That being the case. Nothing of our perception resembles what is in the objective world.
Instead we live with a series of representations which approximate the world in ways effective enough to be physically logical.
Is this what you mean?
Or are you drawing too many distinctions. If you say that the quale is a state which in turn represents surely you are just adding another unnecessary layer here? Surely the quale is the experience of the sensory input.