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

[thrasymachus]

Atla wrote
Dennett seems to be saying that all quale are illusions, which may be one of the (if not the) worst philosophical ideas in history.

Quale have no meaning however. Meaning itself is another qualia.

It doesn't get interesting until you analyze why it is a bad concept. It is because when you make an attempt to observe a thing, any thing at all, absract or otherwise, you cannot extract the thing from the ideas that define it, give it context. There can be no "naked eye" because to observe at all is to do so with an already established set interpretative categories. You're not really ever "seeing" an object for what it is. You are seeing it "as" what you experiences, your science and so forth tell you.

So this idea of qualia would have to be observation minus interpretation, and the nearest we can think of for this would be an infant in crib.
The question it ethics is not about something being free of interpretation for interpretation is always there. It is about if something that is being interpreted has a nature that exceeds the limits of what interpretation imposes. Value experiences are like this. A needle driven into your hand, e.g., has this "presence qua presence" that is a there-for-interpretation prior to interpretation and it is not simply theoretically understood, as the color yellow wouldl be. Note when you observe the color yellow, you "know" it as yellow, but the knowledge is a body of past experiences brought to bear on it that give you the language and the many contexts of discussion.

But also, it is all too clear that what you are facing as you observe is not a particle of language. It is entirely other than what can be said. Hence, the impossibility of qualia. What is "there", the moment it is taken up as a knowledge claim, is already categorially contained, but the intuition, what Kant called long ago, sensory intuitions" are these weird, stand alone presences or actualities that will not yield what they are.

Ths is what Husserl called the transcendental horizon of intuition.

Ethics is not like yellow in that the value that constitutes it is an intuitive presence that has a nature, that is, in the presence qua presence of, say, terrible pain, there is the ethical dimension. Ouch! is very distinct. you don't find this in yellow qua yellow. It is sui generis, and at the basis of the thesis called moral realism.

Good luck with that Atla. There are few here that see it like this, but frankly, this is because they really don't understand it. Before you exercise your default, reflexive objection, at least think it through.

[Atla]

Atla wrote
Dennett seems to be saying that all quale are illusions, which may be one of the (if not the) worst philosophical ideas in history.

Quale have no meaning however. Meaning itself is another qualia.

It doesn't get interesting until you analyze why it is a bad concept. It is because when you make an attempt to observe a thing, any thing at all, absract or otherwise, you cannot extract the thing from the ideas that define it, give it context. There can be no "naked eye" because to observe at all is to do so with an already established set interpretative categories. You're not really ever "seeing" an object for what it is. You are seeing it "as" what you experiences, your science and so forth tell you.

So this idea of qualia would have to be observation minus interpretation, and the nearest we can think of for this would be an infant in crib.
The question it ethics is not about something being free of interpretation for interpretation is always there. It is about if something that is being interpreted has a nature that exceeds the limits of what interpretation imposes. Value experiences are like this. A needle driven into your hand, e.g., has this "presence qua presence" that is a there-for-interpretation prior to interpretation and it is not simply theoretically understood, as the color yellow wouldl be. Note when you observe the color yellow, you "know" it as yellow, but the knowledge is a body of past experiences brought to bear on it that give you the language and the many contexts of discussion.

But also, it is all too clear that what you are facing as you observe is not a particle of language. It is entirely other than what can be said. Hence, the impossibility of qualia. What is "there", the moment it is taken up as a knowledge claim, is already categorially contained, but the intuition, what Kant called long ago, sensory intuitions" are these weird, stand alone presences or actualities that will not yield what they are.

Ths is what Husserl called the transcendental horizon of intuition.

Ethics is not like yellow in that the value that constitutes it is an intuitive presence that has a nature, that is, in the presence qua presence of, say, terrible pain, there is the ethical dimension. Ouch! is very distinct. you don't find this in yellow qua yellow. It is sui generis, and at the basis of the thesis called moral realism.

Good luck with that Atla. There are few here that see it like this, but frankly, this is because they really don't understand it. Before you exercise your default, reflexive objection, at least think it through.

And I think you're simply wrong, you're the one not thinking this through. ALL quale are givennesses that can't be fully theorethically understood, if at all, including yellow, obviously.
That's why, again, pain has no special status and the world has no ethical givenness. "Phenomenology" goes deeper than what you claim, but it's also simpler than what you claim because all quale seem to be in the same category.

[thrasymachus]

Atla wrote
And I think you're simply wrong, you're the one not thinking this through. ALL quale are givennesses that can't be fully theorethically understood, if at all, including yellow, obviously.
That's why, again, pain has no special status and the world has no ethical givenness. "Phenomenology" goes deeper than what you claim, but it's also simpler than what you claim because all quale seem to be in the same category.

It is an odd admission: ALL quale are givennesses that can't be fully theorethically understood, if at all, including yellow, obviously. If at all? You seem to be saying thought and actuality really do have this unbridgeable chasm between them. Science generally does not think like this. It thinks it has a grasp on what the world is. To talk alike you suggests idealism.

But regarding ethics, I leave it up to you. Tell me, what do you think is the distinction between being appeared to yellowly and a tooth ache? This is a question of simple analysis. There is the one, there is the other, and the peripheral accounts of, say, anatomical events, are off the table. As they appear, what kind of descriptive language is there sets them apart? (Assuming there is in fact a difference to register. If you say there is no difference, then I'm afraid our conversation would simple end there, because, as I said, that would be disingenuous and such things need to proceed in good faith.

[Atla]

It is an odd admission: ALL quale are givennesses that can't be fully theorethically understood, if at all, including yellow, obviously. If at all? You seem to be saying thought and actuality really do have this unbridgeable chasm between them. Science generally does not think like this. It thinks it has a grasp on what the world is. To talk alike you suggests idealism.

?? It's called the Hard problem of consciousness, or the Explanatory gap. It's like the central problem in today's Western philosophy, the fact that science is qualia blind. Are you unaware of this?

But regarding ethics, I leave it up to you. Tell me, what do you think is the distinction between being appeared to yellowly and a tooth ache? This is a question of simple analysis. There is the one, there is the other, and the peripheral accounts of, say, anatomical events, are off the table. As they appear, what kind of descriptive language is there sets them apart? (Assuming there is in fact a difference to register. If you say there is no difference, then I'm afraid our conversation would simple end there, because, as I said, that would be disingenuous and such things need to proceed in good faith.

For the 10th time or so: yellow doesn't hurt and pain isn't yellow, we are organisms so pain is central to our existence while yellow not really, but otherwise they are qualia A and qualia B. That's all the difference I'm seeing.

It's YOUR job to show that pain is in a whole different category than yellow. That's one hell of a claim with universal implications, but simply stating it over and over is not enough. Kant or Kant's followers stating it is not enough. You have to show why it is true, make a case for it.

[thrasymachus]

Atla wrote
It's called the Hard problem of consciousness, or the Explanatory gap. It's like the central problem in today's Western philosophy, the fact that science is qualia blind. Are you unaware of this?

That is a name. You have to realize that this hard problem as stated is simply dismissive, It has to understood. The difficulty of the problem lies with the "gap" between explanatory possibilities and the actualities they are "about". To bridge this gap you have to explain how concepts are related to their intended object, and this has a very long history starting with Kant: Concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind. the only logical result of this is that objects are not clear of either one. An object's ontology IS its concept as well as its intuition (qualia, if you like).

This puts the nature of the object clearly within the scope of idealism, for objective reality is now ideality as well, and, of course, the sensory, intuitive, qualia that is supposed to to issue from the outer world is now denied its objectivity in understanding because it is the concepts that do the understanding. In short, you find yourself knee deep in idealism.

For the 10th time or so: yellow doesn't hurt and pain isn't yellow, we are organisms so pain is central to our existence while yellow not really, but otherwise they are qualia A and qualia B. That's all the difference I'm seeing.

It's YOUR job to show that pain is in a whole different category than yellow. That's one hell of a claim with universal implications, but simply stating it over and over is not enough. Kant or Kant's followers stating it is not enough. You have to show why it is true, make a case for it.

No, it's not about Kant at all. It is simply a question about the descriptive qualities that stand before you. Of course, yellow doesn't hurt. That would be enough. This is the phenomenological residuum that exceed the unremarkable presence of qualia. Qualia is not a hard problem; it is not a problem at all. It is simply the intuitive horizon of human affairs, and is not analyzable as such.

So, the question turns to the "hurting". And of course, to value experiences in general, which is really a redundancy because all experience is valuative (see, e.g., Dewey's Art as Experience: to think, experience in inherently aesthetic). Strong examples are the best, most poignant. Put a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds. What can one say about this experience in terms of its ethical/valuative dimension?

[Atla]

That is a name. You have to realize that this hard problem as stated is simply dismissive, It has to understood. The difficulty of the problem lies with the "gap" between explanatory possibilities and the actualities they are "about". To bridge this gap you have to explain how concepts are related to their intended object, and this has a very long history starting with Kant: Concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind. the only logical result of this is that objects are not clear of either one. An object's ontology IS its concept as well as its intuition (qualia, if you like).

This puts the nature of the object clearly within the scope of idealism, for objective reality is now ideality as well, and, of course, the sensory, intuitive, qualia that is supposed to to issue from the outer world is now denied its objectivity in understanding because it is the concepts that do the understanding. In short, you find yourself knee deep in idealism.

Qualia is the actuality itself. The sheer, raw qualitative "what its's like" experience, like pain or yellow. The problem is deeper than how objects, intuitions, concepts etc. are related to the actuality. The problem is that science arguably doesn't see the actualities at all.

I'm neither idealist nor materialist by the way, those are two sides of the same coin, I'm something like an "Eastern" nondualist.

No, it's not about Kant at all. It is simply a question about the descriptive qualities that stand before you. Of course, yellow doesn't hurt. That would be enough. This is the phenomenological residuum that exceed the unremarkable presence of qualia. Qualia is not a hard problem; it is not a problem at all. It is simply the intuitive horizon of human affairs, and is not analyzable as such.

So, the question turns to the "hurting". And of course, to value experiences in general, which is really a redundancy because all experience is valuative (see, e.g., Dewey's Art as Experience: to think, experience in inherently aesthetic). Strong examples are the best, most poignant. Put a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds. What can one say about this experience in terms of its ethical/valuative dimension?

Seems to me that it's about the Kantian school, I haven't seen this insistence elsewhere that all experience is valuative. Again, that's one hell of a claim with universal implications, that can't just be stated over and over again, it needs to be justified. It's not that people don't understand what you say, but they just don't see the justification for it.

I see no value in pain as such, only a value to the organism. A value to the organism is not an absolute value. And when I go to the beach with billions of grains of sand, and I look at the locations of two random grains of sand, then that experience usually doesn't even have any value to me. I may choose to apply some slight positive or negative value to it just because I can.

Even if we say that all thinking is inherently aesthetic, in other words healthy humans can't ever not use the valuative parts of their brains/minds, it still does NOT follow that therefore the world has an aesthetic givenness. Only human thinking has it.

I'm really only seeing the usual smug Kantian self-importance in this. It's subtle but present in just about everything he said, I think that's the main reason why so many people have turned away from "continental"' philosophy. This inability to just get over yourself and be truly impartial, no, everything has to be about me me me, in a very subtle way.