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

[Atla]

But it does. Qualia is not nothing, and this "something" can't be explained by current science.

An assertion not based on any facts or evidence, but merely ideology. That's why I reject it as occult nonsense.

You mean we can't directly measure it with instruments, and we never will be able to. But it's a fact that it's happening, so we always have evidence for it.

One day it might hit you just how backwards you had everything. In fact everything you know about science and scientific evidence, appears to you as qualia. That's the most ironic part of it imo.

And he calls the one thing that can't be denied "occult nonsense".

[Gertie]

Why do you find it more satisfying than Chalmers' approach which identifies similar problems with formulating a Theory of Consciousness, but says in essence this means we have to look deeper, rather than 'explain away' phenomenal experience?

Chalmer's approach is fundamentally anti-scientific and purely ideological in my opinion. That he is taken as seriously as he is, particularly the ridiculous zombie argument upon which his entire conception of the hard problem depends, tells me more about the current poverty in philosophy of mind than anything else.

I don't generally get on with ''possible worlds'' type arguments, unless I'm led by the hand back to the relevance to this world, and the zombie argument doesn't click with me. It might or might not work on its own terms, but meh.

But I doubt many people centre their thinking around consciousness based on that.

It's of course the particular nature of phenomenal experience, which means it's not directly amenable to our current scientific method, which makes it The Hard Problem.

That's not 'anti-science', it's simply acknowledging reality. Dennet chooses to rhetorically erase the awkward parts of that reality out of existence, so as to maintain the sanctity of scientific materialism - now that's what I call being ideologically motivated. This has its appeal, but I liken it to forcing a square peg into a comfortably familiar round hole, by pretending the corners aren't real.

[Terrapin Station]

I wasn't following every post in the conversation. Just curious if you basically agree with Dennett's view, so that you would say that there are no qualia.

Yes. Either that, or that qualia exist but not in the form many philosophers believe. I can go either way as either approach amounts to the same thing.

I agree that there are qualia in this sense given by the Stanford Encyclopedia: "I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives."

Another way to put it is that qualia are simply the properties--the (qualitative) characteristics--of experiences. To me it seems like it would be difficult to deny either subjective experiences or to deny that they have properties, that they have qualitative characteristics.

[Faustus5]

You mean we can't directly measure it with instruments, and we never will be able to. /quote]

Again, a purely ideological statement.

[Atla]

Trying to directly measure qualia is like trying to bite your own teeth, like trying to touch the tip of your finger with the tip of that finger, like trying to measure a ruler with that ruler.

It can't be done, trying to measure X with X is merely a confusion of thinking, nothing more.

And in waltzes Dennett and proclaims that therefore X doesn't exist, there is only the description of X.

Only the description is real, so it's therefore not a description at all, it's what reality actually is. And people who think otherwise are occultists.

So there never was any problem to solve to begin with. He explained everything well enough, did away with the occultists and saved humanity, good man.

And even though the "illusion" of qualia somehow still persists (why won't this damn "seeming" just go away?), we now know better than to be fooled by it.

[Faustus5]

It's of course the particular nature of phenomenal experience, which means it's not directly amenable to our current scientific method, which makes it The Hard Problem.

That's not 'anti-science', it's simply acknowledging reality.

To repeat myself, I don't think this is reality. I think it is an ideological stance which I disagree with. I do not think there is any aspect of consciousness that is not amenable to the scientific method.

[Consul]

By the way, the idea that the brain (rather than e.g. the heart) is the organ of mind and consciousness is very old:

QUOTE>
"The Alcmaeon-Hippocratic-Alexandrian Encephalocentric View

The explicit belief that the brain controlled sensation, cognition, and movement arose among the pre-Socratic philosopher-physicians of the fifth century bce. The first of these was Alcmaeon of Croton (ca. 450 BCE) who is said to have been the first to dissect as an intellectual inquiry, to have described the optic nerves, and to have written:
—
The seat of sensations is in the brain. This contains the governing faculty. All the senses are connected in some way with the brain; consequently they are incapable of action if the brain is disturbed or shifts its position, for this stops up the passages through which senses act. This power of the brain to synthesize sensations makes it also the seat of thought: the storing up of perceptions gives memory and belief, and when these are stabilized you get knowledge.
—
At about the same time we find the following famous paean to the importance of the brain in the Hippocratic treatise (ca. 425 BCE) On the Sacred Disease,
—
It ought to be generally known that the source of our pleasure, merriment, laughter, and amusement, as of our grief, pain, anxiety, and tears, is none other than the brain. It is specially the organ which enables us to think, see, and hear, and to distinguish the ugly and the beautiful, the bad and the good, pleasant and unpleasant. …It is the brain too which is the seat of madness and delirium, of the fears and frights which assail us, often by night, but sometimes even by day; it is there where lies the cause of insomnia and sleep-walking, of thoughts that will not come, forgotten duties, and eccentricities.
—
The emphasis on the brain in sensation and thought was further developed by the Alexandrian anatomists Herophilus and Erasistratus (3rd C. BCE) who carried out the first systematic and detailed studies on the anatomy of the brain including of humans, probably some of them still alive. Herophilus and Erasistratus worked at The Museum in Alexandria founded by Ptolemy I (367–283 BCE), Alexander’s friend and general and the first Greek ruler of Egypt, who, as a young man, had been tutored, along with Alexander, by Aristotle.

Aristotle’s Cardiocentric View

The idea that the brain is central for sensation, movement, and mentation was a dominant tradition in Greek medicine from Alcmaeon through the Hippocratics and Alexandrians to Galen. However there was an opposing tradition in Greek philosophy, beginning with Aristotle, that held that the heart—not the brain—was the ‘command center’ (hegemonikon) of the soul, the center of sensation, movement, and cognition.…"

(Gross, Charles G. A Hole in the Head: More Tales in the History of Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. pp. 26-7)
<QUOTE

[Faustus5]

I agree that there are qualia in this sense given by the Stanford Encyclopedia: "I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives."

I'm totally cool with that version of qualia. Where I part company with the qualiafiles is the moment they try to spin the concept so that it is somehow immune to scientific scrutiny.

[Terrapin Station]

I agree that there are qualia in this sense given by the Stanford Encyclopedia: "I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives."

I'm totally cool with that version of qualia. Where I part company with the qualiafiles is the moment they try to spin the concept so that it is somehow immune to scientific scrutiny.

In principle I agree with you on that.

[Terrapin Station]

Trying to directly measure qualia is like trying to bite your own teeth, like trying to touch the tip of your finger with the tip of that finger, like trying to measure a ruler with that ruler.

Trying to measure what about qualia, though?

It seems like you're thinking that what it would be to measure S's qualia (whatever we're measuring about them) would necessarily be for S to have the same qualia. But I don't know why that would be what measuring qualia would amount to.

[Consul]

He insists that there is nothing antiscientific about his naturalistic dualism: QUOTE>…<QUOTE

Yep, I've read his book cover to cover, I know very well what he insists upon, I just think it is BS.

Then it's up to you to explain what's antiscientific about his naturalistic property dualism (NPD)! Of course, if being scientific entails accepting eliminative or reductive physicalism about experiential/phenomenal qualities (qualia), then it is antiscientific, since NPD entails the rejection of reductive physicalism about qualia.

[Terrapin Station]

Yep, I've read his book cover to cover, I know very well what he insists upon, I just think it is BS.

Then it's up to you to explain what's antiscientific about his naturalistic property dualism (NPD)! Of course, if being scientific entails accepting eliminative or reductive physicalism about experiential/phenomenal qualities (qualia), then it is antiscientific, since NPD entails the rejection of reductive physicalism about qualia.

So, for one, what exactly are we observing on the nonphysical side? How are we observing it? How are we proceeding to perform experiments on what we're observing in order to test our hypotheses about it?

If we can't answer those questions about the supposedly nonphysical aspects, then how would those aspects be scientific?

[Gertie]

It's of course the particular nature of phenomenal experience, which means it's not directly amenable to our current scientific method, which makes it The Hard Problem.

That's not 'anti-science', it's simply acknowledging reality.

To repeat myself, I don't think this is reality. I think it is an ideological stance which I disagree with. I do not think there is any aspect of consciousness that is not amenable to the scientific method.

Because you believe the physical firing of C-fibres is exactly the same thing as feeling pain, scientifically study the C-fibres and you understand 'what it is like' to feel pain too?

Or because you believe that the 'what it is like' experience of feeling pain doesn't exist? We just talk about experiencing it, we don't really have the experience itself? Or what exactly?

[Terrapin Station]

To repeat myself, I don't think this is reality. I think it is an ideological stance which I disagree with. I do not think there is any aspect of consciousness that is not amenable to the scientific method.

Because you believe the physical firing of C-fibres is exactly the same thing as feeling pain, scientifically study the C-fibres and you understand 'what it is like' to feel pain too?

Or because you believe that the 'what it is like' experience of feeling pain doesn't exist? We just talk about experiencing it, we don't really have the experience itself? Or what exactly?

Nothing is the same when it's observed from afar as when it's observed from being immersed in it. That doesn't suggest that there's anything mysterious about all of those other things. Why would it suggest that there's something mysterious about brains-functioning-mentally?

[Consul]

You are certainly having a conscious experience, but I would deny that it has the properties philosophers who believe in qualia say it has.

But it does. Qualia is not nothing, and this "something" can't be explained by current science. (According to some people, it can't even be explained in principle by any instrumentalist approach.)

As for the psychological concept of qualia, there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding, especially when it's unclear what the bearers or havers of qualia are: What or who has qualia?
For example, Nagel defines "qualia" as "the subjective qualities of conscious experience", and Michael Tye asks (in the SEP entry) "Which mental states possess qualia?", which presupposes that qualia are qualities of mental states.

Most philosophers and psychologists regard qualia as qualities of certain kinds of mental occurrences or occurrents, with "occurrence"/"occurrent" used as an umbrella term for facts/states/events/processes. But some disagree (e.g. Philip Goff, Harold Langsam, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Jeff Speaks, Peter Unger), because they regard qualia not as qualities of subjective experiences but of subjects of experiences, such that the bearers/havers (possessors/exemplifiers/instantiators) of qualia aren't occurrences/occurrents but substances or continuants. (I side with these guys.)

The moral of the story is that to deny the existence of qualia as special qualities of experiences is not necessarily to deny their existence as special qualities of experienceRs, of subjects of experience.