/lit/ - Literature

that first-person phenomenology is irreducible to rational constructs and that the east was right about everything

quality can never be reduced to quantity

>>11788525
the red-ness of red is only explicable within ideality

What if one man's red color is another one man's blue color? Like if the image in the pic was reversed for me or you. In other words, we need to unambiguously prove red and blue are red and blue without any ambiguities like how the Wu experiment did with left and right. So, maybe science can do this through math or some experiment.

>>11788541
B...bu...but mah Hegel

>>11788567
But hegel doesn't say anything like that

>>11788562
it doesn't matter, what they're seeing still has irreducible phenomenological qualities regardless of what we call it

>>11788525
>what does it reveal about consciousness that there cannot be a theoretical language to describe color?
??????????

What kind of pseudery is this?

>>11788606
autism

>>11788562
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-inverted/

>>11788606
it's late 2018, these kinds of baits are not funny anymore

>>11788618
>muh qualia

This is why no one takes you faggots seriously. There's hundreds of years of research into how humans (and other creatures) perceive color but you handwave it all away so you can feel like your perception is a special snowflake that can't be replicated by anyone else.

>>11788624
>he thinks color-blindness refutes qualia

dennett and his cargo cult of p-zombies need to be euthanized

>>11788629
>implying I need to read the functional equivalent of Bill Nye the Science Guy of philosophy to know qualia is bullshit

If there is no qualitative or quantitative difference in two differing perceptions, it may as well not exist. Your perception isn't special, your philosophy degree is also functionally equivalent to a roll of toilet paper.

>>11788624
>red looks like a 700 nm wave packet
go away you utter moron

>>11788638
no, there clearly is a qualitative difference between all those perceptions you posted, the fact that the hardware interprets the data differently does not mean the output is reducible to hardware.

you are not conscious.

>>11788640
>theoretical language
>durr why doesn't it sound like a natural language?

>>11788525
Well, this >>11788606
As far as 'but the experience doooood' goes, you're left with the same problem for pretty much anything that is/can be experienced.

>>11788643
>retard spewing gibberish
oh yea qualia refuted

>>11788643
map is not the territory you utter brainlet

>>11788642
>unironically using the NPC meme
>>>/reddit/

You just said that colorblindness is not qualia. The different types of perception that have been experimentally measured to have qualitative differences are those I've listed (and a few more, like tetrachromats). Same goes with other weirdness like synaesthetics.

Anything that doesn't have a qualitative, measurable difference might as well not exist. Dyslexia exists, muh red is blue and blue is red is stupid and pointless.

>>11788655
listen you're an unthinking dumbass that rote memorized a few science results and buzzwords and it's as clear as day to everyone but you

>>11788655
jesus Christ it's like pulling teeth, you have no idea what I'm saying do you, you think a qualitative difference between two people's perceptions of the same object somehow refutes the individual qualia they perceive.

you are not conscious. you were rolled off an assembly line. your dad was a blueprint and your mom was a robot arm.

>>11788662
>pulling teeth
I could be saying the same thing about you fucking retard.

What is the point of saying "this person perceives A slightly differently than this other person does?" Like, seriously. Explain to me why this fucking matters. Will this affect their everyday life? Will this affect their judgment of a situation? If so, then it should be able to be measured experimentally. If not, then FUNCTIONALLY it might as well not exist.

Are you all lukewarm IQ brainlets or something?

I am another poster and can confirm >>11788659 is right. You’re missing a fundamental point, you haven’t addressed it by making fun of it saying “muh qualia” and saying “we’re doing research into how the brain works we’ll figure it out.” Try to comprehend that if you can (I know it’s hard when you’re missing a piece of your soul and are mostly an automaton, believe me, I understand you’re struggling). You’re actually not making an argument.

>>11788674
I know what qualia is jackass and it's modern day pseudery. Like claiming mind-body duality. You can't disprove it, but it also doesn't have a functional effect on anything. So it's basically pointless.

>>11788659
I agree with him, and you're not refuting him very well (read: at all).

>>11788673
>What is the point of saying "this person perceives A slightly differently than this other person does?"

it's just really incredible how much trouble you're having with this.

the existence of qualia is NOT the assertion that the physical state that corresponds to the phenomenal experience of blue-ness will always produce blue-ness, but that blue-ness in and of itself is irreducible to that physical state, whatever that may be (in the case of color blindness)

if you still don't get it you might just be barely sentient algorithm

While qualia is certainly an interesting hypothesis stemming from the realisation that indeed we weren't built for perfect reasoning and absolute perception, I wish lazy cunts didn't use it to justify their inability to pursue known and knowable unknowns because of their lack of intellect and rigour, while accusing those who do of being whatever acronyms and soulless automatons. You're acting like children.

>>11788696
NPC blockchain mining reality

>>11788620
>Plato has an entire subdomain for things he's not even mentioned in on the stanford site
cool

>>11788688
> but that blue-ness in and of itself is irreducible to that physical state, whatever that may be

Like I said, this is some mysticism bullshit. Look at our attempts at creating visual recognition in AI. You can train a neural network to recognize dogs in pictures. From that point onwards, it will have a bias towards seeing dog faces in everything, to the point it will perceive random noise as a dog face. Humans do the same thing (in a less extreme manner) with human faces.

Underneath it all is just a series of matrices, confidence thresholds, and smoothing functions. A dog's face, a color, etc, to such a network is nothing more than the sum total of the above three. Though humans are obviously more complex than neural networks, it's fair to say that our experience of "blue" is not dissimilar from how a neural network classifies it.

To claim that "blueness" is something in itself that has a reality independent of its physical state is like saying the number 2 has a reality independent of its physical state. It's a Platonic argument that adds nothing.

Like I said before, what is the fucking point of qualia if it leads to no qualitative, measurable differences in perception?

>>11788701
Why are you so upset brainlet? Yes, qualia-onlyism might be true and yes, our language games and reasoning might forever be limited. Go do some actual work.

>>11788673
Inverted qualia is a simple thought experiment which sent you into a fit of autism but it's designed to show in one of countless ways that there is no logical relationship between a pic or a conformation of a photopsin or a neuronal activation pattern, and qualia. Qualia which includes pleasure and pain, two things people are VERY interested in, and everything else we experience - some of which also has a quantitative dimension. Experience is everything that actually matters, FUNCTIONALLY the entire universe of observable matter doesn't mean a thing to anyone without experience, it's just some shit moving around, it might as well be an inaccessible parallel universe without qualia.
So it's accumulating data on itself in your retarded mechanistic representation, so what? That might as well be thoughts in the mind of a remote God it's so remote from what's important, experience, which you want to hand wave away for the sake of your aspergal need for the systematic closure of scientific knowledge.

>>11788707
no, in each case there is something "that it is like" for whatever properties we're training an AI to recognize to conform to these "series of matrices, confidence thresholds, and smoothing functions". pattern recognition is not qualia.

>>11788725
>pattern recognition is not qualia
Why not? Humans are, for the most part, just pattern recognition machines. The ability to quickly identify patterns is associated with intelligence (hence IQ and g) and the inability to do so is equated with mental retardation. Humans are, if nothing else, pattern finders.

>>11788725
how the fuck don't they get it lmao
they just can't apperceive or something
we must study them because they for sure as shit are studying us

>>11788707
The point is to make esoteric and dubious metaphysical distinctions which can pave a new path to knowledge, because empricism doesn't comform well enough to their romantic (psychologically comforting) notions.

>>11788738
precisely because the AI that is trained for rote pattern recognition starts seeing dog faces everywhere. humans do this at such a level of complexity that it begins to gradate into phenomenal properties. the phenomenal 'suchness' of the piece of rope I mistook for a snake is not invalidated in and of itself by it being a mistake of hardware processing, except maybe only functionally

>>11788743
That would imply possessing the rigour and discipline to engage with the scientific method which you clearly think is a cardinal sin only attributable to NPSTCIMS

>>11788638
>qualia is bullshit

>>11788738
what kind of life have you had if you think it's just finding patterns like you're doing Raven's matrices all day? Do you just never stop coding?
Would you say you have high or low empathy?
Please answer truthfully, this is for science anon.

>>11788744
empiricism can't account for apperception.

your fetishization of disenchantment means you've fallen for the same psychological trap, just from the other side.

>>11788715
>experience matters
>muh lived experience

Atoms don't exist because I can't perceive them. Infinity doesn't exist because I can't see it.

There's a huge difference between things that exist outside our perception but have a tangible reality (due to their effects or measurability on things we CAN see) and things that exist outside of our perception and cannot ever be measured.

The latter (where qualia sits) is like arguing about the existence of God. I can never disprove it, so what's the point of discussing it? It also will never have an effect on my life.

>>11788743
idk dude but these threads have an almost anthropological interest for me at this point

>>11788754
Bollocks. I unironically love science. I read 10x more arxiv than philosophy. Consciousness denial is a profoundly dangerous trend though and its dumb fucking promulgators don't know what they're doing.

>>11788762
>he thinks qualia are mystical noumenal properties existing outside of experience

maybe in a platonic rendering. but no dude. you do not understand qualia. you are a semi-sentient fungus. this is just breathtaking

>>11788762
>you're a lefty cos i don't get it
You dipshit, you're the one coming off like a Marxist materialist, which also claimed to be a fully scientific empirically based doctrine.

>>11788758
INFP, I graduated with an English major, but I do software development now.

High empathy, low tolerance for bullshit, esp now that I'm a thirty year old boomer. Qualia is the argument I used to make when I was a retarded teenager just getting into philosophy. Dennett and the others have the right idea in writing it off. It's pointless and adds nothing to the progress of human though.

A more interesting argument, which this discussion has led to, is the Chinese Room paradox. Is there a qualitative difference between human consciousness and a giant lookup table? I'd argue yes, understanding a language is qualitatively different because humans seem to be wired for it via universal grammar.

>>11788768
The boy you are all riling up against is clearly an autist who doesn't possess the language to discuss this. He's not denying consciousness. He's merely trying to say that while the hard problem of consciousness (ie: that it is like something be what you are) and its contents (that it is like something to experience things) and the whole qualia-onlyism that derives from the latter are indeed problems, but we need not bother with them as we don't have the language to do so. That's all.

>>11788525
The answer is in Wittgensteins discussion of private language and internal states. Science and explanation is communication.

>>11788788
no he's clearly denying the utility of some very fundamental questions and as such dismissing them outright.

>>11788759
Really, do you even have a potential pathway to explaining apperception, or must it be treated as yet another off-limits 'uknowable thing-in-itself'?

At least neuroscience is exploring the mechanisms of brain function like memory, sensory processing and imagination -- the integration of which seems like a likely candidate for explaining apperception.

I'm not fetishizing anything. I don't need to mysticize the universe to wonder at its complexity and find it beautiful.

>>11788784
Thanks for answering anon I'll try stop being so rude.

But you've got it backwards, qualia is legit. Chine Room is dumb because the understanding would be in the system of relations not necessarily in the mind of the operator, it's only good as another simple way to induce qualia intuition in stubborn fucks. Dennett is a complete hack, it's stunning he's so influential.

>>11788798
No, he's simply saying that if we are to get to the bottom of them, if ever possible, you people are certainly not the ones equipped to do it and it is more likely that his NPRTMSA automaton self is more likely to stumble upon answers. And he's right. You lot are just lazy onanists.

>>11788674
But how is this problem solvable when qualia is functionally redundant.

>>11788818
Nah

>>11788811
>Really, do you even have a potential pathway to explaining apperception, or must it be treated as yet another off-limits 'uknowable thing-in-itself'?

the more and more you dismiss the self as an illusion (which it is, to a degree), the more inexplicable the question of what it is that registers the illusion in the first place. simple as that.

>>11788821
it isn't yet

>>11788812
Chinese room can be explained without qualia, but he did point out a fundamental problem in bridging the divide between machine and human intelligence. Human conversation, which works largely in approximations and shared understanding, cannot be emulated with a giant lookup table. There are too many ambiguous statements with multiple interpretations for such a mapping to work. If you were to try and tackle the language problem the same way IBM did with chess, the lookup table would be astronomical. There are just too many possible states for language to be a mere lookup table. Not to mention how language can change and evolve through use, completely shifting the lookup table.

Qualia is the shallow interpretation of the Chinese Room. When you talk to a cs guy about it, the last thing they will bring up is qualia because it's much more relevant to the process of trying to replicate human consciousness via data structures and functions.

>>11788821
Given a perfect, almost "meta-linguistic" understanding of my brain and the way it processes experience and how I recursively relate to and self-model based on that experience, etc. then everything about my experience becomes redundant except for its first-person internality - and this is precisely the point where a bona fide mystical praxis takes over.

>>11788715
And "experience" doesn't mean a thing without function...

Yes, you have your inverted qualia argument, but what about the argument that a person/p-zombie would claim to have qualia regardless of whether they had it or not. If you are caused to have these "experiences" and make these claims purely by the functional grace of your nervous system, and you would have done so too as a p-zombie, then how can you be sure of the substance of what you are saying?

>>11788811
What people are afraid of is shit like Elon's neural mesh or other near-mid future tech warping the irreducibly subjective aspects of our experience in completely unpredictable ways, justified on specious neural correlates while claiming, like you, that there isn't even any problem to begin with, that it's a theological pseudo-problem because it can't be submitted to physical measurement.
Qualia doesn't commit you to a dualistic Platonism, I suspect it's dogmatic antitheist metaphysical naturalists like Dennett who feel like it might lead people that way and so to him maybe he's doing the right thing by confusing people with his popsci sophistry.

>>11788835
This is just tactical skepticism, it's no more legitimate than arbitrarily stopping anywhere on the Cartestian hyperbolic doubt train up to full solipsism and beyond. A p-zombie is a hypothetical construction that is MISTAKEN about itself actually having qualia, I can equally charge you are only saying this due to a mistake in your underlying rationality, which is what I strongly suggest is the case, so it's a stalemate.

>>11788825
I disagree. If we are not hung up on the probable illusion of a metaphysical self, we are less hostile towards exploring the possibility of awareness emerging from the integration of complex brain processes. We are declaring consciousness a 'hard problem' while neuroscience has not even matured as a field.

>>11788834
>then everything about my experience becomes redundant except for its first-person internality

Why?

>>11788852
You fundamentally don't understand the argument. The more consciousness is reduced, the more the onus is on you to explain what it is responsible for the recognition of this illusion. Your argument is a scientist of the gaps - sooner or later we'll solve the problem, heh, just wait, it's still a young field, j-just wait I said...

>>11788562
take the color spectrum, ROYGBIV, and assuming my perspective has colors randomly rearranged (I see blue instead of your red, for example), rearrange the letters randomly. GBIRYOV for example. The way these colors would interact and mix together on a spectrum like >>11788606 has would not produce the wide range of colors we experience, but instead varying shades of brown with distinct similarities. which colors, to you, hold distinct similarities, capable of being a lighter or darker shade of another? none.

there can also be no argument that we all experience completely different colors altogether (AKA, my red does not even exist to you. your red is a completely different, unfathomable, unseen color) because we have the same color cones in our eyes.

>>11788873
well nevermind, the last sentence is retarded, since the processing of different colors could take place in the brain and not necessarily the eyes.

>>11788859
Well if you had scientists with this knowledge in a room opposite a cinema where I'm watching a film, any film, they will tell me exactly how and why I will react to the scenes that I do, the impression that an actress' face makes on me, how she delivers that one line, why its cadence had such an effect on me, and arguably my description of the film after the fact will be rendered redundant BUT my internality, my actually having been there, my being the witnessing center that was present at the time to actually see the film.

Assuming this level of knowledge is possible. In a way, these reductionists are both right and so very, very wrong.

>>11788870
Yeah, except I'm arguing that there is no homunculus regression. You're assuming the metaphysical self, I am not.

>>11788893
Then if apperception is "just" x, y, and z, how does this misrecognition occur? You're twisting yourself into pretzels trying to deny the very field to which your findings about this field will always be disclosed.

>>11788845
You don't get what im saying about the p-zombie. The idea of truth or being "mistaken" is irrelevant. Its a question about the causal chain of events in terms of brain dynamics and neurophysiology being identical in both the p-zombie and the human.

You can tell me I am making a mistake due to my rationality, but then again, the brain states of me being mistaken and right (in your opinion) are different. In the p-zombie, they are the same.

If you agree that the brain and its neurophysiology is the real driving cause of experiences and behaviour then this is a problem for your claims about qualia since they are independent of whether qualia actually exists or not. You would say it anyway.

Its not skepticism. Its highlighting a problem, just like your inverted spectrum experiment.

>>11788883
Im saying almost the opposite of this actually.

We use speech/writing to communicate thoughtforms, and speech/writing do not have color.

>>11788830
>cannot be emulated with a giant lookup table

I naturally agree. But is the Chinese Room a giant lookup table or not? It seems to give the impression that it is, but then Searle seems to imply that it should be capable of having the powers of a running Turing Machine.

>>11788525
the absolute state of thinking this is profound

>>11788835
Also how are you defining "function", are you suggesting that there's teleology in mainstream evolutionism?
>>11788873
They could easily mix just as congruently, you're thinking of the color wheel.
There's absolutely no relationship between cones and the color sensation as it appears itself though.
There seems to be no way to ever accomplish this with formal mathematical or logical manipulations of the raw data or dynamical model.
>>11788904
What I'm saying is the p-zombie is in fact incorrect. It's laboring under an illusion and will self report that it has qualia, when it doesn't. The human is however more or less correct in asserting this. The human is being rational, and the p-zombie is irrationally asserting the existence of a mythological non-entity. There is a distinct logical difference. We can't say whether or not the neurophysiology would be identical, so either way it amounts to begging the question.
>>11788944
Name one thing you think is profound.

>ctrl+f
>no "interaction problem"
Gentlemen, the interaction problem.

There, I just disproved qualia.

>>11788899
You're not aware of the goings-on in the brain that precede your thoughts. You're not aware of the functioning of your liver, thyroid gland etc. (which could also lead to thoughts). Then is it really so crazy to suppose that we might intuit our limited awareness to be a generalized, nebulous 'self'? Like all illusions, it is a result of limited perception.

Sure, you can go off skeptical deep-end with our limited perception, but neuroscience has predictive power and your metaphysical notions do not.

>>11788873
>there can also be no argument that we all experience completely different colors altogether (AKA, my red does not even exist to you. your red is a completely different, unfathomable, unseen color) because we have the same color cones in our eyes.

Ok, you have confirmed you are brainlet. We can move on now. Even to a material reductionist this should come off as completely naive.

I have an alien that has no vocal chords and only communicates through emitting light from its body. Do you know what it does when I ask what red looks like to it? It emits red light. This alien does not have a concept of "the qualia of red" because it does not have to convert the sense information of red into another form before being able to communicate it. It just emits the same light as it just perceived because it has specialized in doing so.

>>11788951
No im not suggesting any teleology. Function like functionalism. When you define things in terms of their relations.

But if the p-zombie is physically identical to a human, then what is causing this illusion. Under your interpretation, you have to have an additional causal aspect as to why the p-zombie is having this illusion.

How can the human be rational and the p-zombie not be, when they are going through the exact brain states.

The whole point of p-zombies are that neurophysiology is identical...

>>11788966
>what does red look like
>this
smart guy, eh

>>11788944
Actually imagine being this retarded that you can't even grasp one of the most obvious philosophical puzzles

>>11788951
And just in addition, if youre using inverted spectrum arguments to claim there is no logical relationship between colour and cones then I think these arguments about p-zombies with identical physiology are just as valid.

>>11788925
Speech/writing do not have geometry either.
>>11788952
This wasn't even a good objection to Descartes. "They seem too different to be able to have much to do with eachother" is just a metaphysical assertion about alteration of substantial likenesses.
>>11788966
lmao what?

>>11788978
The issue of qualia is whether or not the feeling of an experience can be communicated. Why is this alien's way of communicating any less valid than our own?

>>11788989
If qualia is not physical, then how does it interact with the physical?

>>11788977
The causal aspect could be the cultural or biological advantage of this delusionary thought process, the "folk psychology" as some put it.
I don't like zombie arguments because they don't tend to go anywhere that's not just a reassertion of the original opposing viewpoints in different words.
The point of the neurophysiology being identical in this exercise is to show the lack of a plausible way to identify a logical relationship between qualia's qualitativeness and any particular cognition, even linguistic-thinking type cognitions about qualia itself. You've taken it to be showing that there is no problem, even though science itself is a very long way from demonstrating such a conjectured creature could exist, so it doesn't help your case.

>>11789005
it's a perfectly valid way of communicating but OP's question was about what specific feature of consciousness is it that prevents describing colors to those who may have never seen it before. For example you could describe a car to someone who had never seen a car, but you cannot do that with color. With respect to your alien, he either already has the concept of red, or you're conflating the behavioral feature of the mind with the phenomenal. Of course you can say to a programmed machine "show me red" and through a system of commands it can emit red light, but in no way can this machine describe to you what red *is*.

>>11789025
If time is not space, how does spacetime?
Basically "the physical" just means within a reasonable ballpark of the accepted results of physics (and even this is blurred into pure mathematics and an ontological mess at certain limits), whereas you're hypostatizing it as a substance and further asserting only like substances can interact, or only the One substance can interact with itself, which is an old Aristotle type of speculation.

>>11789048
If you had two of those aliens and one had never seen red before, the other could communicate red to the other one.

>>11789061
>schizophrenic ramble instead of answering the question
lmao, every time. Qualiafags are so full of shit.

>>11789064
describing and naming are different things pal

>>11789025
Qualia is not something 'outside' the chain of physical cause and effect that happens to interact with it, as if it were some spiritual substance, distinct from the physical. It is a fundamental part of the nature of what is, but which, as far as we know, cannot simply be described in terms of the *abstractions* we use to describe physical structure, and which we experience as mental objects. This doesn't mean we can't, in principal examine the neural causes that might sustain qualia, but there is good reason to believe that however qualia and structure relate, their relation will be described theoretically in terms of metaphysics of structure/qualia, as opposed to physics (which describes mathematical relationships that happen to occur in this universe between what can be described 'objectively').

>>11789068
Why can't you understand what he's saying? Are you that much of a brainlet anon?

>>11789086
So it's physical but it can't be described by physics? Sounds more like people don't know what they are perceiving, but act like they know anyway.

>>11789029
>the cultural or biological advantage of this delusionary thought process, the "folk psychology" as some put it.
The way you say that suggests that you're saying our own current thought process now is delusional. I don't see how the point is relevant anyway; its still neurophysiology (and regardless of the fact my intuition doesn't completely agree).

Im not sure you need a p-zombie to make the point. As long as causal primacy is with neurophysiology and the brain.

I also think the inability to find a logical relationship is necessarily anything to do with an ontological problem. Especially as you can't even define what experience is properly.

>>11789086
Its synonymous with physical structures.

Reminder that colors are also linguistic, and there is no evidence that cultures without a word or signifier for “blue” actually experience the color blue like we do

>>11789174
Im pretty sure they do, they just categorise it differently.

>>11789068
Oh I'm sorry i thought you'd read a book.
I was showing the question isn't as simple or meaningful as you think, and you're relying on some ancient metaphysical assumptions that have little to do with science directly.
Another way to say is why should it even be a problem? Actually think about it this time.
>>11789143
The zombie would be delusional. He'd be referring to a construct that was a trick of language or a self-representation but did not have anything more to it.
The point of qualia is it is supposed to be something like a basic atom of experience that can't be defined as what it is by referring to any other simpler experiences. It's a bit of a confused concept as presented though, because sometimes the lines aren't exactly clear.
The broken logical (or causal) relationship is the onto-logical problem.
>>11789158
Prove it.

>>11788873
>>11788606
these posts are an example of what happens when /sci/entists can't into philosophy
you are completely missing the point that the perception of color on the lowest level is something that cannot be described or measured

>>11789206
>is something that cannot be described or measured
That's contradicted by the fact that we are having this discussion right now.

>>11789174
Look this up. blue-green differentiation tends to come later in a culture, in Japan with midori and ao. Pretty fascinating

>>11789211
The wavelength is being measured, not the aesthetic essence of the color

>>11789226
How can we talk about something that we haven't measured?

>>11789230
We don't know. If we did we'd be well on our way to solving the hard problem. How can we talk about things we HAVE measured anyway and what is the distinction you would propose?

Okay STEMtards,
Imagine two people meeting. One sees color like you do, and the other sees all colors as inverted (black is white, green is red, orange is blue, etc)
Write out a description of how these two people could ever find a discrepancy between their two subjective interpretations of the world.
Keep in mind that the only reason we can identify colorblindness is because it necessarily entails an inability to differentiate between colors others can, allowing quantitative objectivity in a colorblindness test.

>>11789230
We’re muddying the definition of “measured” here. “Measurement” has a scientific connotation of objectivity/replicability across individuals, with the solipsistic nature of the question at hand renders useless

>>11789217
Welsh doesnt have a word for brown.

>>11789205
>He'd be referring to a construct that was a trick of language or a self-representation but did not have anything more to it.
But brainstate would be the same as a human so it can't be a delusion. Its as much a delusion as it is to a human.

And yeah, the concept of qualia is like chemistry in the 17th century. Its impossible to reconcile. And furthermore I don't think qualia has to correspond to our human-constructed functionalist ideas of the physical world. I think the whole idea of ontology is illusory. We readily confuse knowledge and reality.

>>11789244
>dude the sky is really dark tonight
>wtf are you talking about, its white and bright as fuck

>>11789244
Is there any other good examples apart from colour which is memed to hell?

>>11789624
>confuses hue and luminance
>>11789646
>can't think of any other senses

>>11789624
But anon, they would share the same language for it, it's just that one of them while calling it black would experience it as the other's white.

>>11789671
you seem to be retarded. I hope you're not the one who posited the question of experience of inverted colours as you don't even seem to understand its premise

>>11788707
Consider Mary. She lives in a room that has no colour red. She is a leading neuroscientist who fully understands all there is to know about brainstates and wavelengths, ect. she understands everything about the brain seeing and understanding red, but she herself has never seen the colour. The next day they bring in an apple and for the first time her life she sees this new colour. Did she learn anything new about the colour red?

>>11789738
If the premise of her knowing everything about red is true, then she won't learn anything. If she does learn anything, then the premise was false to begin with.

>>11789671
Give me some examples then. Colour isnt a sense. Give me more examples in vision if you like.

I just dont find it intuitive that qualic arguments like that often hinge on a small group of examples.

>>11789758
knows everthing scientific about red, regarding brainstates and wavelengths. this is whats at stake, does the reductive approach to qualia miss some phenomenal understanding, you can't just say "a perfect scientist would know", that's retarded. the premise was never "knowing everything about red" so take your Dennett rhetoric and put it on the shelf

>>11789781
Nope, humans just lack the ability to parse that information completely. If you put one of my aliens in the same situation as Mary, it would be able to learn about red without ever having come into direct contact with it. Its strong senses and comprehension allow it to extrapolate all colors from any sample of light.

>>11789777
All of it is qualitatively irreducible. Just some of it has a quantitative aspect as well.
Movement in vision is also basic. All the other modalities can't be reduced to eachother or anything else. You can differentiate sounds by direction or pitch but hearing itself is not reducible.

>>11789794
But it'd still be needing to extrapolate these colors and see red to gain the knowledge of seeing red you goober manchild mongoloid fungus

>>11789805
My alien perceives light waves as shapes. Are you telling me shapes are subjective too?

>>11789794
To start, you miss the point completely with the alien example. If the alien comunicates through lights and colours, obviously it would understand what red looks like. You might as well say "if Mary had a red coat on she would know what red looks like". would the alien, having never tasted anything sour, but knowing all there is to know about tastebuds and chemistry, learn anything new upon eating a lemon? ps, not aloud to say he communicates through taste.

>>11788525
doesn’t matter as long as there is a physical language of biological systems and chemistry to create the sensation of colour. also my red is your red because of said systems.

>>11789823
How would shapes convey red-ness?

>>11789841
they are synaesthetes

>>11789794
>still thinks the red is inside the photons

>>11789857
it’s the wavelength hitting an instrument that elicits the red response

>>11789830
>he believes "muh systems" to be an argument

>>11789856
No, synaesthetes are just people who might associate redness with a particular sound because they see red when that sound is heard, the sound in and of itself isn't phenomenal redness or they wouldn't be distinct in the first place

>>11789825
This is a different, more advanced alien. The reductionist alien can grow any sensory apparatus it wants to and is capable of simulating the signals they would produce under any condition.

>>11789871
It would still need to simulate the signals to see redness. Am I the only sane person in this thread jesus mary and joseph

>>11789856
do you even google this shit or do you just hope no one cares to try and fact check you

>>11789860
prove it

>>11789871
ok I imagine an alien that knows more stuff than God and can beat him in a chess match, checkmate

>>11789863
>>11789872
>>11789873
>>11789877
the absolute state of magical thinkers. brb, gotta deny the whole science of biology

>>11789872
And how is that not a fair solution? You'll never say that it knows what redness is if it doesn't simulate the signal. Are you just trying to use circular logic?
>Prove that you can understand red without seeing it.
>I also define any method that lets you understand red as seeing it.

>>11789871
how does this solve Mary's room, though? I'm so lost here. If Mary could produce any signals and sensory effects she wanted she could see red without leaving the room, but does that include with it a factor of knowledge that non mutant mary would be without? if so, it's not 100% reduceable

>>11789825
Yes, the alien would experience sourness. Knowing everything about chemistry/tastebuds & neurophysiology though, it would understand the processes which prefigured that experience, and would also know that experiences of stimuli will differ since biological states differ. It would expect to find that similarity and dissimilarity of the experience would relate to similarity/dissimilarity of biological state. This expectation does seem to match up with what science tells us... Why does qualia have to enter into it?

>>11789896
whoops I guess phenomenal knowledge of red is based on phenomenal knowledge of red who woulda thunk

>>11789895
synaesthetes still see red, they just associate it with other sensations as well. this isn't an argument against anything

>>11789895
god damn, how are so many stemtards such fucking brainlets
this shit proves it, they can't help themselves
at least you can do integrals by hand, gradually
you're almost as clever as a graphics calculator

>>11789867
Synesthete here. It's more complicated than that, and I'd actually say it's closer to what you say it isn't that what you say it is. (at least in my case)
When I hear a particular instrument or see a particular number, I don't "see" color, I feel it. My field of vision isn't changed or obscured, I feel an unmistakable "aura" of color, which usually manifests as a kind of internal portrait or colorscape (for instance, the sound of a voice on a telephone has always "felt" like an orange, buzzing form surrounded in pitch blackness, all years starting with 19XX "feel" like a menagerie yellow and white, and all years starting with 20XX "feel" like a plane of deep blue)

>>11789899
Because the alien reads all the physics books about light and is able to understand what red is as a result of that, without ever being exposed to red light in the first place. The alien is able to understand the material better than Mary.

>>11789902
>It would expect to find that similarity and dissimilarity of the experience would relate to similarity/dissimilarity of biological state.
yes, you would know they produce different states but is that different that experiencing those states? Because if so, the alien shouldn't even need taste buds to taste a lemon, just need enough textbooks

>>11789907
kek

>>11789738
Yes, she knows what she sees when she sees it

>>11789913
what you think about that one poem by rimbaud

>>11789915
I thought the alien communicated through light, why would it ever need to read a book to know what red looks like? the hypothetical might as well be 'would a baby born with an inate knowledge of red have an inate knowledge of red?"

>>11789936
what did he mean by this?

>>11789941
His color-letter associations are different than mine, but it does capture the cloud of associations that hang around every letter, number, and sound for me (used to have it for smell as well but that ended with puberty)

My associations for the vowels are A: bright red, E: wheat-yellow, I: cool white, O: deep maroon, U: purple-black.

>>11789942
This is a different, more advanced alien. This reductionist alien has no innate understanding of red or sour. It can read about those things though and create sensory organs capable of experiencing those things. It won't experience anything new after having actually come into contact with red or sour because it already knows what signals those things produce because it used its understanding of those things to wire the sensory organs that sense them.

>>11789947
She wouldn't have known what she would see if she were to see red. After seeing red, she now knows what she sees when she sees red.

Just like how you probably don't have any trouble imagining the existence of ultraviolet light, but don't know what you would see if you were able to see it

>>11789962
then you're asking if platonic knowledge of red qualifies as knowledge of redness, and it would, that's why it's platonic knowledge

its baffling to me how this is so difficult to you. it's like watching someone caught in an abstract finger trap

>>11789921
Is there a difference between understanding the processes and experiencing them? Of course... We experience things all the time without understanding the mechanisms behind those experiences. The fact that people experience things differently -- or that you can't experience something just by reading about it -- doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that there's a metaphysical aspect to experiences.

>>11789962
I don't understand how a creature that literally creates sense organs at will is in anyway reductionist. if it can have knowledge of sensory organs, why does it need the organs as well? there is no need for sensory organs if phenomena is reducible to knowledge about biochemistry, it might as well be a very intelligent and very inert lump of clay.

>>11789954
have you ever written something around your associations?
also thanks for the reply i wasn't expecting it

>>11789978
>Is there a difference between understanding the processes and experiencing them? Of course
then qualia exists, that is literally all it means

>>11789984
I actually learned I had it by trying to describe my favorite smells with colors in a writing assignment in 3rd grade. The teacher fortunately knew what synesthesia was and pulled me aside to let me know why my descriptions weren't making sense to anyone
Since then though, I haven't written anything. I constantly forget that I even have it, until it'll suddenly hit me that something I've taken for granted my whole life isn't normal (like realizing it's abnormal to categorize decades and centuries by color)
Maybe I'll give it a shot!

>>11789983
Creating the sensory organs is just to demonstrate that it doesn't not acquire any new information about red when it sees red for the first time.

>>11789987
Fair enough, but then qualia is probably reducible to biological states and properties of stimuli. There is nothing non-phsycial going on... A book about sourness simply doesn't produce the same effects on your physiology as a lemon.

>>11790020
how does that demonstrate anything though? this has turned from a thought experiment to a creative writing assignment
>my alien knows about red and I prove this by saying it can grow eyes and not learn anything new

>>11789977
The alien is meant to disprove the connection between Mary's room and qualia, not disprove qualia.

>>11790020
so it confirms it doesn't acquire any new knowledge by re-creating its conditions like a god, gotcha

>>11790013
hope that goes well, if it goes somewhere. post it on one of the critique threads if it ever crystallizes and you feel comfortable doing so
again, thanks for reply, you're polite, that's rare

>>11788951
l o l no buttblasted boy

>>11788983
i know right. y’all niggas need some Zhuangzi

>>11790048
No problem man, thanks for taking an interest in my diaryposting
I'll definitely post something if I get around to writing about it

>>11790035
you're making the same mistake, if you concede qualia then you concede a status to first-person experience that is distinct from its causal ground, if anything saying consciousness is just matter is matter is conscious, and that doesn't say anything

>>11790062
Well then, I don't conede qualia. There's no non-physical gap. Reading abstractions about something is not the same as replicating the actual causal ground for the experience of it.

>>11790090
>being so confused about the concept you're using the argument for it to try and refute it

stemtards are brain ded

>>11790090
What you don't get is you can in principle understand everything else there is to say about the informational state of any arbitrary electro/chemical/mechanical system, the only barrier being complexity. You're just committed to this childish idea of physics vs magic when the reality is no one on the planet has a clue.

>>11790062
You don't need to make this leap at all, read Searle
>>11790090
He's gatekeeping, all qualia means is "individual instances of subjective, conscious experience"

>>11788703
these are all footnotes to his works

all retarded stemlords itt are advised to read https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45941139

>>11789799
Consciousness isn't reducible because if it was doing its fucking job it wouldn't be. The fucking brain's job is to be a simulator of the physical world informed through sensory inputs. It would make no fucking sense if consciousness was reducible otherwise the brain wouldn't be doing its fucking job. The reason why consciousness isnt reducible to the neurophysiology driving it is because if it was, it wouldn't be doing its fucking job. Consciousness has a fucking job representing real objects. If you could deduce neurons out of it, it wouldn't be doing its fucking job.

If the hard problem ever gets solved, it means the brain fucked up big time. The brain works as a complete functionalistic unit. Given that, consciousness has no business being reduced to physical systems.

>>11790189
based fuck poster

>>11790189
You seem to be overestimating how much consciousness the human brain actually has. What if it has this vast array of other systems just to support a tiny bit of consciousness?

>>11790189
Some kind of a 'physicalist' reduction is only one of the possible solutions to the hard problem. Or maybe not even "possible", because the problem has been posed precisely because that reduction seems impossible. So solving the problem would involve the opposite of "reducing consciousness to physical systems".

>>11790207
What is the meaningful difference between varying "amounts" of consciousness?

>>11788638
>If there is no qualitative or quantitative difference in two differing perceptions, it may as well not exist
How do you know?

>>11790108
If you agree that qualia is just shorthand for the physiological state of the subject when experiencing a stimulus, then I'm not refuting it. Reading about something can't produce the same physiological responses as experiencing it, sure. If you could tweak your own neurophysiology just so, then you could experience 'red' without having seen it before.

>>11790215
That's currently an area of speculation, but I believe the fact that it's uncertain supports that idea that we have so little of it. That is, the reason why we can't confidently say what consciousness does is because it's so weak in humans. One good theory is that it's a sort of "awareness of the unknown". A lot of the things humans do can be found to some degree in animals, but there is one thing we have never seen an animal do: ask a question.

>>11790239
that parrot supposedly asked what color it was

>>11788525
Some philosophy group should try fund an experiment where they get a colourblind person and give them gene therapy. If they can do it on monkeys, fuck it pay some homeless guy to do it.

>>11790238
>If you could tweak your own neurophysiology just so, then you could experience 'red' without having seen it before.

this is not what the question about qualia is even asking

>>11790238
You're just dogmatically re-asserting the exact identity of physiology and qualia, which doesn't address the problem and is nonsensical because qualia isn't anything like a region of a phase space. All we know so far is it seems to be dependent on particular brain structures, which is not the same as identity.

>>11788659
Correct post

>>11790273
The point is that if experience is a biological state, there is no need to introduce this metaphysical notion of a 'quality of an experience'. Experience is intrinsically quantitative, just complex.

>>11790278
Metaphysical babbling. You are lost in a semantical jungle.

>>11790207
I'm not overestimating anything. What systems are you talking about?

>>11790214
I don't see the opposite being helpful unless you have suggestions.

>>11790311
no it's not you fucking retard if you have to make the distinction jesus christ

>>11788624
Why does normal and tritanopia look the same? Am i missing something.
>>11788525
Language it self is subjective. It is just a construct used to express our consciousness and complex idea's. It is therefore impossible to try and explain with language any subjective object( colour as it is perceived differently by individuals) which they have no comprehension off it ( i.e the blind). It is fact impossible to try and explain any mode of perception to someone if they cant comprehend it sound to a deaf person or smell to an anosmic. Its like explaining the number one to someone who cant understand numbers. Perhaps it would suggest either our system of communcation is flawed and not perfected as it cannot express certain things or it would suggest that our consciousness ( or we ourselves biologically) are flawed.

>>11790311
I really couldn't have broken it down any simpler you insufferable faggot. It's funny just how badly you need to reject "metaphysics" without any real thought, almost like it's irrational and clouding your judgement.
Now you've decided it's just really complex and that's why. Where's the complexity threshold for experience, how do you quantify that in principle?

>>11790354
>Am i missing something
probably a diagnosis

Qualia is bullshit and experience isn't bullshit. Qualia is equivalent to aether theory--a claimed substance that never can be detected. It might as well not exist.

>>11790354
You have tritanopia. They look very different to me.

>>11790354
>Am i missing something.
Yeah, you're colorblind
Don't freak out though. You made it this far without knowing. I just hope you weren't planning on becoming a pilot

>>11788624
>>11789244

>>11788525
It just means colour is irrelevant to the dialectical process of the logos and thus metaphysics in general

>>11790368
who is claiming qualia is it's own substance? Plenty of people accept both materialism and qualia. a quale is simply a state of experience.

>>11790354
It is more than just a construct to explain since we can reason with others within the same system.

>>11790395
Substance was a bad word. I meant to refer to the state of existence. Whether if it was real or not. However, the definition of Qualia has undetectable baked in.

>>11790408
surely you detect your own qualia though? you detect when you are sad, right? or hungry? you do feel feelings, don't you?

>>11790423
No, that's my experience.

>>11790427
Qualia is the basis of experiance

>>11790427
Qualia is the 'what' you are experiencing

>>11790430
>>11790444
Prove that it is necessary to have qualia to have experience.

>>11790444
No, it is experience. You're introducing a dubious gap between stimuli and experience.

>>11790464
>you are introducing a dubious gap between a knife and pain
this is your brain on reductivism
>>11790460
Qualia literally means states of experience. The word experience implies qualia. Let's turn it around though, prove you can see the colour red without having the qualitative experience of seeing red.

>>11790354
Tell me the 5 colours in the normal picture.

>>11790491
You can poke fun all you want, but 'qualia' implies a non-quantitative aspect to experience... Which there isn't evidence for. So far, neuroscience is demonstrating a quantitative basis for experience.

>>11790549
Answer the question.

>>11790549
isn't it humiliating that you still can't understand the most basic arguments given here after being spoon fed them all with your hand held?

>>11790363
>>11790372
>>11790374
>>11790515
Are you guys sure you're not trolling? the only difference is the greens are a bit more faded in bottom right or that might be a placebo because i feel like their has to be a diffrence.
The five colours are : orange, green,red,yellow,purple and orange. Guess im fine i got all the colours' why then do they look the same.
>>11790402
It is a construct it is made; it is not innate to out nature and differs between people. It is,however, necessary to allow for more complex thoughts. Just because you can use it to reason to some extent doesn't mean it is absolute and can extend to reason everything.

>>11790549
What's the quantitative aspect?

>>11790549
neuroscience doesn't claim to fully understand consiousness, don't appeal to authority. most everyone understands experience to be qualitative as well, so I think you crossed some semantic wires here. I personally stick to the Kantian quantity/intensity distinction so it really doesnt pose an issue for qualia to be non-quantifiable; heat isn't strictly quanitfiable either.

>>11790616
maybe he is genuinely an automaton

>>11790629
There are no greens in the bottom right.

>>11790629
No, we're not fucking with you. Get photoshop or something and check the RGB values yourself
The upper left image shows the true colors: red, orange, brown, green, and yellow.
The lower right image shows red, pink, lighter pink, baby blue, and brown.

>>11790652
No yellow actually

>>11790638
Kunt was a no good neo-berkelian shill.

>>11790629
Sorry I repeated orange twice i'm a bit stressed.
>>11790652
>>11790674
Well there are both yellow and green in the bottom right; they are quite distinct as well, only difference is green is slightly faded. does that make me or you colourblind?

>>11790720
Check
>>11790673

>>11790720
it's you, anon.
assuming it's not you who's baiting, it really isn't a troll. ask someone irl or something.
sorry

>>11790720
Well all of the pictures are different to me so im not.

>>11790673
>>11790728
>>11790730
>>11790743
It's okay anon's i did a online test and it said i have tritanopia. Fuck i had an inkling i was some sort of colour blind because this conversation came up between me and my friends and i had to deny my way through being colourblind.I don't have photoshop or anything only paint but i trust you guys now. At least i don't want to become a pilot( aspiration is to become a surgeon) so it's all good.

>>11790720
Again dude, this isn't something to worry about. You've made it this far without it once making enough of a difference in your life to notice. Hummingbirds and 14% of women can see UV while I can't, and mantis shrimp can see fucking millions of colors that none of us can, but that doesn't mean I should sit and pout about it

>>11790318
>I don't see the opposite being helpful unless you have suggestions.
dualism, panpsychism, idealism

Im always glad when one of my threads that I predicted to be a shit show becomes one

>>11790637
>>11790638
The quantative nature is the biological state. I agree, neuroscience doesn't fully understand consciousness, yet there is no other pathway to understanding it (so far) that demonstrates predictive power. I am not introducing dubious distinctions, I'm making fairly probable assumptions given our current knowledge.

>>11790769
what a way to find out

>>11790779
Thank you for the encouragement it does make sense in what you are saying. However, it still feels like a tiny chip fractured off myself and returns to the void ; maybe it was just my pride. It feels I lost something..
>>11790851
Guess at least i know now.

>>11790616
Perhaps your arguments are too basic, anon. As in oversimplified appeals to 'essence' because you can't comprehend complex integrations.

For all the bluster you guys still haven't specifically outlined how qualia is different from experience itself. If it isn't, then the question becomes 'is there a non-quantitative aspect to experience'. If not, the implications of the term 'qualia' is suspect. If all you mean is a subjective experience which could be explained by biological quanta, then fine... But that seems to be a conclusion which those advocating for qualia are keen to avoid.

>>11790908
>subjective experience which could be explained by biological quanta,
but how?

>>11790908
I don't conclude that you're a fucking idiot

>>11790842
>science doesn't know everything
>science can't yet explain qualia
>qualia doesn't exist
see if you can find the nonsequiter

>>11790894

>>11790909
Why does probing a person's brain while their conscious induce experiences, like the smell of burnt toast? I don't know exactly how, and I don't pretend to... But there is a clear quantitative pathway and nobody hear can propose an alternative that's made similar headway.

>>11790929
Damn, tritanopia is a pretty pleasing color palette

Hey, has any research been done into attitudes and personality in colorblind people?

>>11790917
Yes, I can admit that science doesn't have all the answers. Can you admit that 'qualia' is a distinction with even less foundation? If you're merely undecided, I can respect that. But then it shouldn't be so unreasonable for me to suggest that 'qualia' is likely a placeholder for knowledge yet to come.

>>11790842
Lets all be honest. Science and neuroscience will discover everything necessary to be known about consciousness. We can all sit and whine about all this woo woo but its not informative about anything. Its illusory to think that theres anything more constructive to offer about experience.

>>11790951
I have direct phenomenal experience of qualia each and every single day, I have more direct experiance with qualia than anything else in the world. Why would I start to doubt it based on sciences lack of evidence?

>>11790894
Kind of weird. When you said there was green in the bottom right... your definition of green must be completely different to how i see green because for me, that is not green in the bottom right at all.

>>11790973
because colour blind people are told grass is green, therefore green is what they see grass as. they don't say "that's not green", because how would you know?

>>11790955
>Science and neuroscience will discover everything necessary to be known about consciousness
Not impossible but this is a retarded claim. I thought Godel knocked this spirit out of the scientific community once and for all

>>11790955
I agree, that is more than likely the case. I just don't like pseuds trying to pass off metaphysical distinctions like 'qualia' as anything more than undemonstrated concepts.

>>11790972
You have phenomenal experience. There is no logical reasoning for adding in extra steps. Since your experience is phenomenal and therefore not necessarily a complete apprehension of the world, you can't be certain that this experience isn't reducible to biological quanta (which is where science is pointing us). You should have more respect for science, as I am quite certain that you rely on knowledge which demonstrates predictive power every day of your life.

>>11790935
the quantitative pathway is not in question, it's that there is an experience for there to be a quantitative pathway for

>>11791103
>(which is where science is pointing us)
This is news to me, anon
Science, the study of the physical world, is pointing us to physicalism?

>>11791103
>You have phenomenal experience.
This is all you need to have qualia. Listen to Dennett, he literally thinks our sensations are illusions. There is no extra metaphysical baggage in qualia. I think you should actually read some philosophers of mind (Searle, Nagel, even Dennett); it might help straighten things out for you.
>Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem.

>>11790988
yeah, exactly. its just interesting. Its really fucked up in a way.

>>11790988
Just a shame blind man will never see the vibrancy of the normal picture. Thats why. Unless he gets gene therapy. He can be our Mary.

>>11791007
Only science and neuroscience can discover*

As opposed to this Qualia bullshit philosophizing.

The emotional flavor of that shade is hot and bright. (Red)

>>11790354
>he has never seen green
>all other forms of colorblindness can still see green
genuinely sad.

The emotional flavor of that shade is cool and mellow (blue)

The emotional flavor of that shade is fresh and thriving (Green)

>>11791190
at least he's got some nice instagram filter eyes

>>11791124
But they are illusion. Its undefined metaphysical baggage. Our claims and beliefs in these experiences are completely causally specified by our neurophysiology and neurophysiology is both necessary and sufficient for them. It is reducible to biology and you would be claiming the same things whether you had qualia or not. Whether you were you now as a human, or a simulation inside a computer. The only plausible outcome is that qualia is epiphenomenal which is just absurd.

>>11788525
What the fuck is a "theoretical language?" Don't you just mean "language?" Learn the meaning of the word 'windbag' and stop being that. As for your question, it reveals the variable modalities of phenomenological existence—nothing more. So please refer to your great uncle Wittgenstein for more and be on your way.

Current science is a dead end when it comes to explaining phenomenal consciousness. That's why the new generation of philosophers of mind is rejecting physicalism. I feel sorry for the previous generation that wasted so much effort for nothing.

>>11791190
I think he's refuted the inverted spectrum argument too.

>>11790720
There's no green on the bottom right.

Can you post some color spectrum with the color green circled? That would be interesting.

>>11790629
Language is innate to our nature, but not just a specific language. Languages are constructed, yes, but they are not as arbitrary as it seems you suggest by saying they are 'subjective'. Languages are not personal. The ability to speak and reason with others (also called language) is a quality of humanity. I would never make the claim that because it is used to reason that it is absolute and can extend to reason everything, and I don't believe I have suggested that at all. But that's the thing I guess -- we cannot dominate or control language, to express in a pure way our consciousness or complex ideas. But the ability to communicate within a shared system -- and this is the nature of language itself: is to reason outside of personal interpretations or 'subjective languages' to arrive at some sort of definition or quality outside of the words themselves, outside of nouns, etc., to describe. It is a mistake to believe that this process can reason everything, as is the case with the relationship between speech, truth, being, presence, etc., but by the same token there is a mistake made in assuming that language proceeds from the subject, which itself results (by a logocentric movement) in the thinking that reason can extend beyond language.

>>11791212
patricia churchlands abit of a fitty aint she.

>>11791197
>Its undefined metaphysical baggage
the comment you replied to had a nonmetaphysical definition attached to it. I don't think you are arguing in good faith, anon.

>>11791286
It would be the same as what you would circle though.

>>11791191
If you had no knowledge of plants or nature, or the connotations of the words in your description, but still knew what all those words meant, you would not be able yo get "green" from that description

>>11791407
And I can't get a chair out of the word chair.

>>11791197
>you would be claiming the same things whether you had qualia or not
by definition you wouldn't though. There are people without the sensation of pain, and they say as much. They don't pretend to feel pain or even act as if they do. They could put their hand on a Harris stove and burn it to the bone without feeling a thing. Not feeling pain means you cannot describe the phenomena of pain, what it actually feels like (i.e. the quale).

>>11791187
kek

>>11791354
The comment was talking about dennet but if you follow the convo, that anon is a woo woo fag. He was actually retorting to a physical fag. But you'll have to follow the convo back up to see.

>>11791523
Yes, they don't feel it for neuro-anatomo-physiological reasons though and its entirely specified by those neurophysiological reasons. Qualia is redundant. Even in your discussions of it.

>>11791726
phenomena isn't woo woo you literal p-zomboe

>>11791738
qualia is innately attached to it. Ironically you are the one metaphysicalizing this whole discussion. all qualia could be the result of neuro-anatomo-physiological reason, there is nothing about that which contradicts the idea of qualia

>>11791756
Yes but the correct outcome is physicalism.

Even if innately attached, the causal primacy is with the physical. It is causally reducible to the physical.

physiocalism via occams razor

>>11788525
That (un)consciousness is indifferent about such things.

>>11791791
still doesn't rule out qualia, read Searle.

This book sucks

>>11791903
physicalism bro. dont be scared, i aint goin for no panpsychist weak shit.

>>11791965
holy shit, literal NPC tier conversation here.
physicalism DOES NOT rule out qualia. Searle is one of the great philosophers of our time, believes in qualia, and is a card carrying materialist. seriously, just read him.
>Beyond this distinction, Searle thinks there are certain phenomena (including all conscious experiences) that are ontologically subjective, i.e. can only exist as subjective experience. For example, although it might be subjective or objective in the epistemic sense, a doctor's note that a patient suffers from back pain is an ontologically objective claim: it counts as a medical diagnosis only because the existence of back pain is "an objective fact of medical science". The pain itself, however, is ontologically subjective: it is only experienced by the person having it.

>>11791982
Searles said several shitty arguments tbf. Not sure i like this example. But okay experience is experienced.

>>11791982
And some great philosophers rule out Qualia, so what.

>denying qualia

How can you do this without simultaneously denying that you have emotional states?

>>11791982
But all 'subjective' describes is objective differences between subjects. So what's the real distinction? The term subjective is fine as shorthand I guess, but it tends to attract certain assumptions/implications like the term 'qualia' does.

>>11790929
Imagine being a racist with tritanopia. Just think everyone is white and getting into weird arguments.

>>11793164
Explain your definition. Explain these... "differences" you claim.

>>11793237
Obviously there are objective differences between the biological states of different beings, and within the same individual from moment to moment. This accounts for the subjective effect, yet I find this is never what interlocutors have in mind when invoking the term 'subjective'.

>>11793279
This doesn't really account for subjectivity. If you define it like that then you could look at subjectivity in terms of two chairs being different. or two ponds of water.

Subjectivity i'd say is descriptions of reality that have a reference frame of existence rooted in the self in which to interpret existence and it involves agency.

>>11792896
>One of the strangest things the Deniers say is that although it seems that there is conscious experience, there isn’t really any conscious experience: the seeming is, in fact, an illusion. The trouble with this is that any such illusion is already and necessarily an actual instance of the thing said to be an illusion. Suppose you’re hypnotized to feel intense pain. Someone may say that you’re not really in pain, that the pain is illusory, because you haven’t really suffered any bodily damage. But to seem to feel pain is to be in pain. It’s not possible here to open up a gap between appearance and reality, between what is and what seems.

>>11788525
>My attitude is not that some vocabularies are "illegitimate," but rather we should let a thousand vocabularies bloom and then see which survive. The materialist predicts that the neurological vocabulary will triumph.

>>11793414
elaborate.

>>11793449
It's from Rorty's "In Defense of Eliminative Materialism" article.

He summarises his opponents (Cornman and Bernstein) as evoking this principle:

>(T) If a theory-laden term takes on the reporting role of a non-theory laden term, then statements using the latter term are entailed by ("express what is expressed by") statements using the former, whereas if a theory-laden term takes on the reporting role of another theory-laden term, this is not the case.

>>11793315
You're in need of a trim, old chap.

>>11793529
How so?

>>11793524
The illusion counterargument you said?

>>11789624
the word for dark would mean for one the inverted perception of the other. Bright for one would mean 'dark' for the other, however they would use the same word to describe different phenomena.

>>11793537
What is 'self'? What is the nature of this interpretation? What is 'agency'? Doesn't this explanation relying on some nebulous relation between assumed concepts seem rather convoluted (and not even partially demonstrated), when compared to objective variance in biological quanta producing the subjective effect?

>>11793524
So what does the article conclude?

>>11793529
Occam's razor only applies when two competing theories can account for the same amount of observable phenomena. Something that denies the existence of subjective experience obviously accounts for less observable phenomena than something that doesn't, since subjective experience is the most evident and important of all observable phenomena.

>>11793563
It's a bit meandering, because he was responding to two critics. Here's the last page.

>>11788525
Nothing, this is just a mathematical statement.
Language is countable, and since colour can be described by frequency it has a bijective correspondence with a subset of the positive real numbers (connected or disconnected depends on whether we're in the quantum or classical regime. The connected/classical case is obvious but you can iron out the details in the disconnected/quantum case easily enough).
Then it's just the statement that the real numbers are uncountable. Hence language can't fully describe colour and no profundity or mysticism was required.

>>11793560
>>11793560
I guess subjectivity is difficult (maybe even impossible) to logically describe or define in much the same way qualia is. Because, i think, its private. Its "what its like". Qualia is intrinsically linked to it i think - experience is subjective and subjectivity is experience.

I do think the descriptions I used are valid though and I'm confident though that agency, self and your question about interpretation can be answered in an objective sense through neuroscience though.

One argument against you that even though you say that subjectivity is badly defined, your arguments still rely on some concept of subjectivity.

"when compared to objective variance in biological quanta producing the subjective effect?"
You're comparing the biological stuff to something. And furthermore, its something which isn't directly inferrable from the biological states themselves. I highly doubt that we would conceptualise the brain in the same way if we didn't have subjective experiences. We wouldn't explain brain functions in terms of mental states but something far more abstract.

>>11793570
No one is denying the existence of subjective experience, I am simply saying that it is an effect produced by objective quanta. The post I was replying to >>11793315
is trying to maintain that there is something non quantitative about experience by means of many assumptions, none of which have been even partially demonstrated.

>>11793641
The problem with this though is that experience doesn't readily reduce to the brain. I do think it is qualitatively different.

Systems of many separate cells versus these holistic experiences.

Which came first, the object or the subject.

>>11793676
>objects exist

>>11793641
why should anyone believe it's quantitative? all the experiencing subject can feel is quality, so adding quantity on top of it seems like something that itself goes against occam's razor.

>>11793676
Both. Every material object has experientiality.

>>11793695
Stupid incel.

>>11788525
i bet you thought this sounded deep

>occam's razor
>muh metaphysical baggage
>>11793582
>terrible argument

>>11793813
It's funny to me that subjectivists often invoke the phenomenal aspect of experience to support their arguments, but then fail to connect the dots and realize that this precludes them from knowing the nature of their experience on the basis of their experience. You don't know that you're feeling 'quality', you don't know that your experience isn't actually physical quanta (even if it's some funky quantum field -- still in the realm of physics). So in the absence of intuitive certainty, we go with models which demonstrate predictive power if we want to make headway. You can induce experiences in a person just by probing their brain. Both exogenous and endogenous chemicals can radically alter experience. Aging, deep sleep, brain damage and genetic conditions all have major impacts on experience. No, we don't know everything about how awareness arises, but there is a pathway via physicalism which is providing specific, testable insights into experience, and there is nothing analagous to this in the metaphysical camp.

>>11793855
>no argument

>>11793940
it's another "I'll shout materialism and hope that helps" episode
do any of you retards have any intrest in what qualia actually is? all experience could be a product of brain chemistry and qualia could still exist; materialism and qualia are not mutually exclusive. ffs they are not metaphysical or indefinable, you stemfags make it sound like qualia means soul or something

>>11793940
Yeah but it doesnt help answer ontological questions. Physics causing experience isn't the same as being identitical.

>>11793986
Tbh I think qualia is pretty much undefinable without being circular.

>>11794004
qualia are states of subjective experience, nothing circular at all in that definition.

>>11794018
That is pretty much circular.

>>11793986
Well then, what is the 'quality of an experience' smart guy? What separates it from the quanta of an experience? If experience could be nothing but physical quanta, then why don't we use a term which doesn't have the implication of ephemeral 'quality' or 'essence' built into it?

Also, you must see you're in the minority here. Most of the qualia advocates here are trying to associate it with a hard dualism or metaphysical self. So you're being kind of disingenous to heap all your scorn on us. physicalism-phags.

>>11794046
do you know what circular arguments even are? If I were to say "qualia exists because experience exists", that would be circular (because, I don't think most of you understand this, qualia and experience are more or less synonymous). simply defining qualia as states of subjective experiance is simply giving an accurate discription of what philosophers mean when they say the word. Or do you think all definitions are circular because simply because they discribe the object in question?

>>11794071
>a term which doesn't have the implication of ephemeral 'quality' or 'essence' built into it?
no one in philosophy of mind uses the term qualia to mean essence, you are arguing against platonic forms or something. this is total straw. also, I agree, bith sides of the discussion here have no idea what they are talking about, reducing the debate to monism vs. dualism misses the point, and anyone who has studied phil of mind would recognize that.

>>11793940
I have to ask, what you people's actual motivation is here. Don't give me some platitudes, if you really care about the truth try be straight.
Is it that you think if you let the "subjectivists" win too many arguments they'll step defund/ ban neuroscientific research? That's obviously not going to happen.
We just want you autistic faggots to wake up to what's at stake here and take it as seriously as it warrants. It's disturbing, and disgusting really, that you won't or can't and refuse to.

>>11794073
i dont think you know what circular is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_definition

your definition is circular precisely because qualia and experience are synonymous. Its not giving any sort of description because its presupposing you know/have already defined what qualia and experience both are. It adds no description. Defining a chair as a chair is not a description. It adds no new information or any testable parameters.

>>11794120
luckily I didn't say "qualia means experience" or you might be right (although as I hinted at, they are not precisely synonymous). I defined qualia as "states of subjective experience", which is a perfectly valid definition. Please read a book on this stuff, it's actually pretty interesting amd you might like it.

>>11794071
>quanta of an experience
you people are just fucking idiots honestly. you think Plato is some final end boss (while practicing crypto pythagoreanism). It's asinine, and your arguments are unintelligible.

While neuroscience can and has for decades studied the neural correlates of determinate changes in subjective experience (which no one here denies even though you seem to have to pretend they have been) it says nothing about how experience in itself derives from brain activity. Period, end of story.

If you could show this you'd have referenced the paper. You can't, because it would be nothing short of the scientific breakthrough of the century.

>>11793997
Sure, well no individual part of a car makes it go. You need all the essential parts + gas, and their combined functioning result in vehicular travel. It is premature to assume though, that the supervenient effect of vehicular travel is actually a new entity as opposed to a convenient abstraction describing a set of combined functions.

>>11794139
>qualia are states of subjective experience, nothing circular at all in that definition.

you gave me what you described as a definition. qualia = subjective experience.
that is circular. no they arent precisely synonymous which is why i said "pretty much circular" but they are very close. experience is definitely close and even if they arent precisely synonymous. you cant even give me a good definition of subjective experience i guess. maybe thats the more important point. youre defining your term with another term which is just as difficult to describe and vague. - the term experience especially.

you;re a fucking moron.

>>11794152
STATES of subjective experience. holy lord if a 3 word, highly reductive definition is too much for you to follow I have no idea why I am even trying.
>ice and water are h2o
>calling ice frozen water is circular

>>11794149
yes but the properties of qualia arent the same as the neurons.

Cars are made of many parts and readily broken down into those parts. All of those parts are salient even when part of the finished vehicle. Consciousness isnt clearly like that with neurons. It isnt reducible to that. Consciousness is about representations of the outside world and not the neurons that it consists of. It is a bundle of representations, not neurons.

And i dont think anyone in this thread is denying experience is caused by brain activity.

>>11794167
It isn't circular because its introducing new information or properties into the definition.

"A chair is wood that you can sit on" isn't circular.

What do you mean, states? How the fuck does that change anything.

Just stop man, its clear you have no clue.

>>11794178
>what do you mean states
modes? Or do you not understand what that means either? I don't know how to talk to philosophylets tbqhwyf

>>11794190
But you didn't explain anything.. you didn't explain how that helps.

>>11794167
>qualia are states of subjective experience,
>highly reductive definition

and by the way, what exactly is being reduced in that definition?

>>11794201
>>11794190
please, for the love of God, buy a book on philosophy of mind. I can't dumb it down any more for you, I'm too tired. you can try and debate real philosophers, I try and simplify it to help you but that just ends up with you strawmanning a strawman

>>11794215
Im not strawmanning anything. Im just teling you that i dont think experience or qualia doesnt have a good functional definition.

I think youre strawmaning me by trying to draw attention away from the fact you don't know what you're talking about and you don't know what a circular or a good definition is.

I would accept a good definition if you gave it to me. But i haven't had one that is useful or pragmatic or can be used scientifically.

>>11794093
Fair enough, I accept a non-assumptive use of the term 'qualia'. I'd just like to stress that qualia is a useful concept and not a known entity. We shouldn't act like we know that there is a real, concrete distinction between the 'qualitative' and the quantitative, nor the between the physical and the 'metaphysical'.

>>11794109
It's simply that -- I do care about the truth. I think there is value in at least the intellectuals being able to rally around common standards and agree on how things probably work (without surrendering curiosity and reasonable skepticism, of course). If I were talking to normies, I wouldn't really have a problem with them believing a fiction if it was healthy for them. I hold intellectuals (or aspiring ones) to a standard of intellectual honesty -- I think that is their responsibility.

>>11794141
>hurr durr incomplete knowledge therefor u no nothing
So me pressing on your brain and you smelling burnt toast is nothing but a correlate huh? You sure about that? What is your alternative hypothesis that is providing specific insights into the nature of experience? That would be pretty big news too.

>>11794171
You're assuming an entities -- 'qualia' and 'consciousness' -- without probable cause. How can those things have properties if they are just concepts? If they exist concretely, you should be able to define them likewise. You don't know that your representations aren't the integration of combined mechanisms you aren't aware of. Yes, there is much more to know... But it is fair to say that there has been some reduction in course of understanding various brain functions, so it isn't crazy to think that more reduction can occur.

>>11794309
But they aren't just concepts, they're the intrinsic part of our being? Empiricism or science wouldn't even be possible if we didn't have experience.

Its easy to demonstrate the properties through your own introception. What you feel and see has nothing logically connected with neurons or groups of neurons.

One example maybe with water. you have a water molecule then you put them together and you get water with its own behaviours and properties. But its still reducible to the individual water molecules because thats what its constructed of. A new distinct thing that isnt divisible into water molecules doesnt just emerge from it. And you can say consciousness reflects the latter because the structure of consciousness reflects the outside world and not the internal structure of the brain like how water reflects the the population of water molecules within it.


And im not making any real statements about existence, im showing a gap that can't be ignored and can't be solved just through neuroscience.

>>11794360
You're not showing a gap, you're assuming one.

The fact that your experience is phenomenal means that you can't make assumptions about the nature of your experience based upon your experience of experience (it's all sense impression, which as you say is suspect). So what hypotheses should we favour in the abscence of inutitive certainty? The ones with predictive power, of course.

>>11794627
I dont think im making any big assumptions other than the fact that phenomena isnt readily reducible to physical properties which has been reiterated many times in this thread with well known arguments.

As an add on, I think discussions about sense impressions are different as they are about things outside of your consciousness, not the structure of conscious itself.
I accept that you can't really introspect well about the nature of ones own consciousness. It is clearly driven by processes under the hood which we aren't perceptible.
But I think its clear what conscious is trying to do. Create a simulation of the world. And I think the fact that the structure of experience is centred around a coherent simulation of the outside world and not the neuronal processes that drive it is just an obvious example of how it has different properties. The manner in which consciousness appears in terms of coherent irreducible percepts I think also clashes with the fact that in the physical world, even though populations of molecules or atoms can have macroscopic and measurable effects e.g. water, its still in terms of something reducible. This infact should be the case for the brain made up of spatially separable cells. But that simply doesn't seem the case in consciousness.

Predictive power doesn't apply here in these types of arguments. You cant really have metaphysical predictions.