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

[Faustus5]

Do your own reading.
Like I said above. Educate yourself,

I did, and this just confirmed all of my suspicions that you were largely making things up.

Yeah, science was his day job. But we don't know about him for anything he did as a scientist, because nothing he did in that line of work was ever significant. We know him for his work in other fields, primarily in philosophy. This is why he is now and always has been known as a philosopher.

And no, you don't get to call "qualia" a scientific concept just because the guy who first threw the term around did science from 9 to 5 to pay rent and buy food. It was purely a creation of his work in philosophy, end of story.

I stand vindicated, and thanks for the opportunity.

[GE Morton]

If qualia are physical, which is what my side is proposing, then in absence of experiencing color qualia, it's necessarily not the case that one has all the physical information there is to obtain, or that one has all the physical information concerning human color vision.

If qualia are physical, "as your side is proposing," then it is true that Mary does not have all the available physical information about them, since she's never experienced the qualia for colors. But whether they are "physical" is what is in question. Hence your complaint begs the question.

And, of course, qualia are not physical in the everyday sense of that term. Nor are they physical in the "philosophical" sense, not being derivable from or explicable via the laws of physics.

[Terrapin Station]

If qualia are physical, "as your side is proposing," then it is true that Mary does not have all the available physical information about them, since she's never experienced the qualia for colors. But whether they are "physical" is what is in question. Hence your complaint begs the question.

"She has all of the physical information, but the qualia is new information" is no less question-begging, because it assumes that qualia aren't physical. If we don't assume that, we can't come to the conclusion that the experience of qualia is new information despite the fact that she has all physical information.

Again, the thought experiment is stupid because of this.

And, of course, qualia are not physical in the everyday sense of that term. Nor are they physical in the "philosophical" sense, not being derivable from or explicable via the laws of physics.

The philosophical sense is not "derivable from or explicable via the laws of physics." Philosophical physicalism is in no way dependent on the scientific discipline of physics.

[Sculptor1]

Do your own reading.
Like I said above. Educate yourself,

I did, and this just confirmed all of my suspicions that you were largely making things up.

Yeah, science was his day job

It's worse than I thought. You might need to go back and get some remedial reading classes, first

[Sculptor1]

If qualia are physical, "as your side is proposing," then it is true that Mary does not have all the available physical information about them, since she's never experienced the qualia for colors. But whether they are "physical" is what is in question. Hence your complaint begs the question.

"She has all of the physical information, but the qualia is new information" is no less question-begging, because it assumes that qualia aren't physical. If we don't assume that, we can't come to the conclusion that the experience of qualia is new information despite the fact that she has all physical information.

Again, the thought experiment is stupid because of this.

And, of course, qualia are not physical in the everyday sense of that term. Nor are they physical in the "philosophical" sense, not being derivable from or explicable via the laws of physics.

The philosophical sense is not "derivable from or explicable via the laws of physics." Philosophical physicalism is in no way dependent on the scientific discipline of physics.

Qualia are physical. The thought experiment does not address that in any sense. Nor was it designed to.
It draws a distinction between what is experienced by FLESH and blood, and what can be learned by science.
Mary knows that red is light of x wavelength range, but she cannot know the which ball is blue and which ball is red with her eyes until someone tells her.
If nothing else it demonstrates the colour is not "out there" but internal.
Nothing can be advanced to say that the experience is no physical. Everything points to the fact that it is.

[Terrapin Station]

Qualia are physical. The thought experiment does not address that in any sense. Nor was it designed to.

"The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

"The knowledge argument is one of the main challenges to physicalism, the doctrine that the world is entirely physical."
https://iep.utm.edu/know-arg/

"In philosophy of mind, Mary’s Room is a thought experiment meant to demonstrate the non-physical nature of mental states. It is an example meant to highlight the knowledge argument against physicalism."
http://www.philosophy-index.com/jackson/marys-room/

"What has become known as Mary’s Room is an allegory devised by Frank Jackson to represent the Knowledge Argument against physicalism."
http://www.philosopher.eu/others-writin ... arys-room/

"The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986). The experiment is intended to argue against physicalism—the view that the universe, including all that is mental, is entirely physical."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

[Sculptor1]

Qualia are physical. The thought experiment does not address that in any sense. Nor was it designed to.

"The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

"The knowledge argument is one of the main challenges to physicalism, the doctrine that the world is entirely physical."
https://iep.utm.edu/know-arg/

"In philosophy of mind, Mary’s Room is a thought experiment meant to demonstrate the non-physical nature of mental states. It is an example meant to highlight the knowledge argument against physicalism."
http://www.philosophy-index.com/jackson/marys-room/

"What has become known as Mary’s Room is an allegory devised by Frank Jackson to represent the Knowledge Argument against physicalism."
http://www.philosopher.eu/others-writin ... arys-room/

"The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986). The experiment is intended to argue against physicalism—the view that the universe, including all that is mental, is entirely physical."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

Okay. I take back "nor was it designed to".
I do not care who first thought the experiment, nor is it necessary
I do not see how this points to a non physical element.
|What it points to is the simple fact that is obvious. Sensory experience cannot be fully described by EXTERNAL evidence. This does not point to any thing non-physical in any sense.
As your first article points out.
It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being.

This is about the derivation of "knowledge" concerning the physical experience of physical phenomena.
You have to know what a burn feels like, or the taste of an orange, to "know" what it feels like.
Where does the incorporeal enter the discussion?

[GE Morton]

Qualia are physical. The thought experiment does not address that in any sense. Nor was it designed to.

"The knowledge argument aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

"The knowledge argument is one of the main challenges to physicalism, the doctrine that the world is entirely physical."
https://iep.utm.edu/know-arg/

Etc.

Whether qualia are "physical" depends upon how you define that word.

If "physical" means "tangible, detectable by the senses, having a particular spatio-temporal location," then qualia are not physical.

If "physical" means "consistent with, analyzable via and predictable from the laws of physics," then qualia are not physical either.

But if you add "or produced by such systems or entities" to the second definition, then qualia are physical.

Qualia are products of, and only of (as far as we know) physical systems. That gives us some justification for considering them "physical" effects. We may even, at some point, be able to predict, in detail, just what kinds of systems produce those effects. But we will not be able to predict just how those effects will be experienced by the conscious entity that reports them (and, yes, any system that experiences those effects will be a "conscious system").

Mary will not know what red "looks like" to her until she sees something reflecting those wavelengths. She cannot predict that from the laws of physics, nor can anyone describe that to her. But it is presumptuous, and indicative of a mistaken ontology, to suppose those facts entail dualism.

[GE Morton]

Mary will not know what red "looks like" to her until she sees something reflecting those wavelengths. She cannot predict that from the laws of physics, nor can anyone describe that to her. But it is presumptuous, and indicative of a mistaken ontology, to suppose those facts entail dualism.

Moreover, if those facts don't entail dualism then there is no need for flailing attempts to establish "identity" between mental events and brain states.

[Atla]

Luckily, free thinkers don't have to be as inept as Kant and his followers.

There is no fundamental divide between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world.

You might explain how you understand the term "fundamental" (which term you also use problematically in the quote below). You probably also don't understand what the "noumenal" world is (it is not the external, physical world described by science).

The term "fundamental" is usually meant to denote something irreducible to anything simpler. But the phenomenal world is not reducible to the noumenal "world," even in principle --- because we have no knowledge whasoever of that "world" ("realm" is a better term for the noumena; "world" has misleading connotations). Hence we can't derive any phenomena we might experience from it, or equate them with it.

Meaning that the phenomenal world is a model of the external noumenal world, and also one with it (continuous with it), at the same time.

That is incoherent. If it is distinguishable from it then it cannot be "at one with it at the same time." Nor can we say that it is "continuous" with the noumenal realm, since we don't know the extent of that realm. And, again, you seem to be confusing the "noumenal world" with the external, physical world described by science. You might try reading Kant more carefully.

The phenomenal world is already direct experience, it's a bit of the 'absolute reality'.

Yes, the phenomenal world is the world we perceive, experience. The noumeal realm is a realm of existence we hypothesize to exist to explain, supply a cause for, our percepts and other experiences --- no cause for them, or even for our very existence, being apparent within experience.

As for the Hard problem, you have to turn it inside out to 'resolve' it. They always try to figure out how experience arises from something as fundamental as physical stuff. But it's experience that's fundamental, and the idea of physical stuff occurs within it. Our idea of physical stuff is also a qualia, an experience.

Yes, experience is fundamental (as above defined), but it still requires an explanation --- some cause for it. Else we are trapped in solipsism. But you make a sound point with, "idea of physical stuff occurs within it. Our idea of physical stuff is also a qualia, an experience." "Physical stuff" is indeed itself a conceptual construct. So we're trying to use mental constructs to explain themselves. Not a promising endeavor.

BTW, I myself used the term "conceptual model" in a misleading way in the quote above. A "conceptual model" is one consciously, deliberately constructed by us. The world described by science is a conceptual model. The model I described earlier is not a conceptual model; it is created subconsciously by our brains, becoming coherent in the first few months of life, and presented to us automatically. It becomes the world as we know it. Perhaps we can call it a "cognitive model."

Also, the term "qualia" is used by most (though perhaps not all) to refer only to the distinctive, singular sensations elicited by sensory inputs, which allow us to distinguish among them (colors, odors, flavors, sounds, etc.). Other mental phenomena, such as thoughts, knowledge, ideas, memories, etc., while raising many of the same issues as qualia, are not qualia.

Physical stuff is simply a cognitive overlay, a map consisting of 'things', like protons and fields. We use this map to talk about the terrain. But the terrain is actually void of 'things', 'thing'-ness is a feature of human thinking.

Well, your "terrain" there sounds much like Kant's noumenon. But we can't say anything about that "terrain," not even that it is "devoid of things."

Imo physical stuff is maybe best thought of as a structural description of the world. But a structural description of the world is not the world itself, that's why the Hard problem is kinda silly. Also, that's why it's insufficient to simply say that the spatio-temporal coordinates are different, when trying to solve the Hard problem.

The Hard Problem is hard when addressing it scientifically, because scientific methods presuppose, and were developed to investigate, objective, public phenomena. But qualia and other mental phenomena are intractably private, and not accessible to empirical methods. They are beyond their reach.

Read again what I wrote. By 'noumenal world', I did mean the hypothetical world inferred from the contents of our experiences.

[Atla]

Atla

As for the Hard problem, you have to turn it inside out to 'resolve' it. They always try to figure out how experience arises from something as fundamental as physical stuff. But it's experience that's fundamental, and the idea of physical stuff occurs within it. Our idea of physical stuff is also a qualia, an experience.

Right, if experience is fundamental, how it is explained ends there.

Physical stuff is simply a cognitive overlay, a map consisting of 'things', like protons and fields. We use this map to talk about the terrain. But the terrain is actually void of 'things', 'thing'-ness is a feature of human thinking.

Imo physical stuff is maybe best thought of as a structural description of the world. But a structural description of the world is not the world itself, that's why the Hard problem is kinda silly. Also, that's why it's insufficient to simply say that the spatio-temporal coordinates are different, when trying to solve the Hard problem.

I agree that gets us out of the Hard Problem as we talk about it, and is a coherent hypothesis.

The problem I think it presents, is that everything we claim to be able to know inter-subjectively (which gets us out of solipsism), is rooted in treating the physical map as the territory. The model of the material world (which we know is at best flawed and limited) is the context where we can meet and talk and compare notes about what it's like to see a red apple and so on.

And I don't see a route to being able to know if the explanation that all that exists is this 'field of experience' (as I imagine it) is correct? Maybe IIT can discover the mathematical dimension where it exists, or QM come up with something... I don't think meditation or self-reflection is reliable evidence that only experience exists, because those can always (I think) be correlated with brain states - if some eperiential state definitively can't, then that's whole new ball game.

It's the same old prob imo - how can we know?

Not sure what you mean. It's impossible to get behind the appearances and 'prove' any worldview.
Nondualism is simply the only available hypothetical worldview that consistently explains everything, and is also the Occam's razor's choice.

[Terrapin Station]

It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being.

This is about the derivation of "knowledge" concerning the physical experience of physical phenomena.
You have to know what a burn feels like, or the taste of an orange, to "know" what it feels like.
Where does the incorporeal enter the discussion?

I agree with you that the thought experiment doesn't work, but the reason some people take it to work is that they agree that

(a) you could have COMPLETE physical knowledge of x
yet
(b) not know what x is like in terms of qualia, or experientially

Obviously, for those of us who are arguing that qualia or experience (from a subjective point of view) is physical would say, "Hold on a minute--you can't have complete physical knowledge of x if you don't know what x is like in terms of qualia or experientially, because that is physical knowledge."

The argument winds up being a "preaching to the choir" for folks who believe that qualia/experience isn't physical.

[Terrapin Station]

Whether qualia are "physical" depends upon how you define that word.

If "physical" means "tangible, detectable by the senses, having a particular spatio-temporal location," then qualia are not physical.

If "physical" means "consistent with, analyzable via and predictable from the laws of physics," then qualia are not physical either.

Physical, on my account, as I've probably written at least 20 times or so here over the years refers to materials, relations of materials and processes (dynamic relations) of materials. Those three things do not seem to be separable in reality, just conceptually. They all amount to properties, too. Or in other words, properties are just another way of talking about materials, relations and processes.

Qualia are not going to be merely "produced" by physical things, where qualia are not identical to physical things.

"Physical" in philosophy, is obviously not going to amount to " analyzable via and predictable from the laws of physics as they're presently instantiated in the science of physics" because it's not as if we're wondering if qualia is something that's covered or at all near being covered in physics textbooks. We could just look at a physics textbook and check, obviously. Likewise, we're not wondering if anatomy is at all covered or near being covered in physics textbooks, but there's no doubt that anatomy is physical. Furthermore, one does not need to be a realist on physical laws to be a physicalist.

And "physical" is obviously not going to refer to some colloquial nonsense of whether we can "touch" something, or see it with our naked eyes, etc.

[Sculptor1]

It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being.

This is about the derivation of "knowledge" concerning the physical experience of physical phenomena.
You have to know what a burn feels like, or the taste of an orange, to "know" what it feels like.
Where does the incorporeal enter the discussion?

I agree with you that the thought experiment doesn't work, but the reason some people take it to work is that they agree that

(a) you could have COMPLETE physical knowledge of x
yet
(b) not know what x is like in terms of qualia, or experientially

Obviously, for those of us who are arguing that qualia or experience (from a subjective point of view) is physical would say, "Hold on a minute--you can't have complete physical knowledge of x if you don't know what x is like in terms of qualia or experientially, because that is physical knowledge."

The argument winds up being a "preaching to the choir" for folks who believe that qualia/experience isn't physical.

I think what is missed is that feelings are incomplete without physicality so why would it ever involve the incorporeal.
If full knowledge of experience requires physical interaction then why would it need anything else. A blind man is never going to be able to imagine sight, and a "soul" aint gonna help

[Gertie]

GE

In one of her recent posts on this subject Gertie wrote, "To me the two most obvious ways of accounting for phenomenal experience is that it's somehow reducible to fundamental material stuff, or it's fundamental itself."

That leads her to consider panpsychism. I think the insistence on mind/brain identity is motivated by the same dilemma --- either mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena, or we're forced to dualism (of which panpsychism is one offshoot). Identity seems a way to escape that dilemma.

We need to get "outside that box" and rethink the issue afresh, beginning with 4 postulates:

1. Mental phenomena are not reducible to physical phenomena, though there is a causal relation between them.

To take the steam train analogy. If you're suggesting here that because a train produces steam, that steam isn't reducible to what the stuff of the train is doing, then you're suggesting steam is a fundamentally different type of stuff. Likewise brains and mental experience.


Or if you're suggesting brains and mental experience are made of the same type of material stuff, then you face the Hard Problem.

Your hypothesis that mental experience is generated by brain processes, rather than is brain processes doesn't escape this dilemma as far as I can see.