/lit/ - Literature

>>20183562
You should like get some friends or something.

>>20183562
thoughts also must exist, since we are able to compare qualia. And a thinking substance must exist to have thought extension... didn't Spinzoa already do this

>>20183562
Based and Idealismpilled

>>20183562
i don't know what "qualia" is, therefore it isn't real

>>20183774
t. NPC

>>20184034
>The Zombies Among Us

>>20183562
Gonna ask for the umpteenth time:
Can someone give me a layman's explanation of what exactly qualia is.
No commentary, no snide remarks, not unnecessary conceptual backdrop. Just tell me what it is in words that a smoothbrain can understand.

>>20184484
The way it feels to experience something through the senses.

>>20184484
qualia are qualities of experiences
specifically, new experiences. it's trying to put into words why people that are born blind, who the get eye-repairing surgery done are left so traumatized by the sensory stimuli that it can psychologically damage them

>>20184567
How is qualia different from sensation?
>>20184592
this one confuses me more... what do you mean by 'qualities'?
I think the word 'experience' is also confusing me, because as I understand it qualia is mean to be highly atomic, like you can't break it down any further. But when I think of 'experience' it's a cluster of things, like when you 'experience' a gig: there's the lights, the sound, the people, the smell, certain intangibles that are the combination of the sensory experiences like the 'energy' or 'vibe', there might be a conversation, maybe you dance with some people and that's a "lovely moment". To me that's "experience". But here you're both saying the act of 'experiencing' is more basic?

>>20184484
>Can someone give me a layman's explanation of what exactly qualia is.
The conceptualization of the unconceptual. In other words, Aristotelian irreducible substance, the same critique he used against the Pythagorean metaphysics which attempted to reduce everything to mathematical points.

>>20184701
have your (you)

>>20184704
The only bait here is that maybe it is still too complicated an explanation. But it's not that hard to understand.

>>20183611
>thoughts also must exist
theres only the qualia of thoughts. thoughts are a content of epperience
>And a thinking substance must exist to have thought extension
why? we think experience needs an experiencer 8ut thats only 8ecause of faulty analogies where we think of experience as a movie that the experiencer is watching. 8ut this only creates an infinite regress where now theres the experience of the movie in the movie watchers mind and another experiencer is experiencing the experience so another experience is created and so on... 8ut once you accept that all there is is qualia, and that you ARE the experience, that pro8lem is solved. theres just qualia out there, and what we call you is everchanging qualia

>>20184665
>there's the lights, the sound, the people, the smell, certain intangibles that are the combination
those are all qualia. sensation and experience mean the same thing 8ut like consciousness have 8een historically used in different contexts to mean different things whereas qualia has less of that pro8lem

>>20184714
>those are all qualia.
Well that's not helping at all 8oy

>>20184716
I'll try explaining it, hopefully you'll understand. We have many sense-receptors, our eyes, our ears, our nose, our tongue, our nerves. When we get into contact with "stuff" in the world, these receptors "captures" the "sense-data" of the things around us. These things then get "translated" into the visual perception of the computer you're seeing right now, for example. The question here is, how did such translation happen? Is it solely dependent on the brain or is it independent of our brain? Is it made out of immaterial substance? And so on.

>>20184731
Nope... that doesn't help at all.
Look. What is qualia?
Now according to the dictionary, sensation is
>a perception associate with stimulation of a sense organ
or
>the faculty to feel or perceive
or
>a mental process resulting from immediate external stimulation of a sense organ
How is qualia different from sensation?

>>20184736
Honestly it depend on how you use... words. But I think when people refer to sensation, they refer it in purely mechanistic term. While qualia is a mental phenomena that is impossible to be described in purely mechanistic term.

>>20184745
>While qualia is a mental phenomena that is impossible to be described in purely mechanistic term.
Okay, I *think* I get what you mean. But I also don't, is qualia the non-mechanistic aspect of sensation?
In fact, try and dumb it down for me. Repeat exactly what you said except imagine I'm Homer Simpson-level retard.

>>20184736
its not different from 1 and 3.

>>20184757
Yes, the mental aspect of sensation. We make difference between the mental and mechanical here. It would be helpful if you ask more questions instead.

>>20184760
Then why do we have this word?
>>20184763
I'd much prefer it if you just repeated >>20184745 at Homer Simpson level. But also I'll try and ask clarifying questions: I presume that 'qualia' is ostensibly meant to be removed from the cognition and recognition. The 'greenness' of the pool table may be qualia, but not the relative greenness compared to another patch of green, nor the connotations of that, right? Because those enter the realm of cognition. But also, is remembrance qualia - like if have a memory and it conjures sensations, are those sensations qualia or must qualia only come from external and present stimulation? Are phantom phone rings a type of qualia?
Do people who are asleep experience qualia?

Things exist.
I've never been to no philosophy school but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

>>20184484
act of experiencing, image of how we perceive the world.

>>20184784
When you apply heat into iron, it expands because of physics. When you apply heat into a person's hand, he'll scream in pain, can we attribute this screaming in pain to physics the same way we describe the iron expanding? Does the person scream in pain because of I apply fire on his hand or because of he "experienced" some sensation, namely pain.

>cognition and recognition
Honestly this has been bugging me for awhile too. Does the process of thinking involves experience, is that what you're saying? Honestly I don't have a clear answer to this, and I would like to know in the future too.
>memory and remembrance
I cannot say one or the other for sure here. I'm inclined to say it is but I'm not sure. For example, if you conjure in your mind the acidity of a lemon, you most likely will react by producing more saliva than usual. That does imply qualia, but I'm not sure.
>phantom phone rings
I never experience this, so I can't tell.
>asleep
If you're dreaming. I'm pretty sure dreams are qualia, the same way that advanced VR world is qualia, so yes.

>>20184817
>can we attribute this screaming in pain to physics the same way we describe the iron expanding?
Yes because presumably the heat is passing through the skin and the subcutaneous fat which puts pressure on the pain nerve endings which sends a sequence of ionic transmissions up the nerve into the brain, where a much wider and more complex sequence of synaptic and ionic transmissions occur, this also activates the release of hormones and triggers muscles, that cause a neuronal feedback, one of the end results being is the expulsion of air from the lungs, the dropping of the jaw and all the other maneuvers involved in screaming.
I mean if you want to be a pedant, yes, of course you can attribute it to physics since the CNS is material. I'm sure there's many anatomical inaccuracies about my description of the process, but that's less important than it is an anatomical, and therefore a physical process.
>Does the process of thinking involves experience, is that what you're saying?
No... I'm more trying to get at what qualia is similar to but different so I know what it means. Feelings are similar to sensations, but are feelings qualia? Probably not.
Like if I wanted to know what a 'truck' is, I might ask what makes it different from a 'car' or an 'suv'. Basic ontology stuff.

>>20184883
Ahh, now I'm just going to zoom into the "release of hormones", the rest are irrelevant to our understanding of qualia. Between the "releasing of hormones" and "triggering of muscles" there's a bridge, right? The mental sensation of pain. That's qualia. How come, the releasing of hormones makes me feel the sensation of pain? When, say you just can do the hormone stuff and just jump right into the muscle stuff without this pesky intermediary called qualia.

Honestly I don't know regarding the cognition and recognition part. I cannot give you definitive answers.

Space and time both exist.

>>20184938
That's just your intuition bro

>>20184942
They are both distinct representations.

>>20184923
I think this is not the right way to go about doing this, let's forget the physical because as I understand it the process is less like a 'bridge' between point A and B, but the perception of pain is more like a freeway interchange, a very complex circuit of intersecting loops between brain, body, other parts of the brain etc.
It doesn't offer me more Homer Simpson level clarity on what qualia is. Why don't we just say "sensation"? Why do we need the word 'qualia'? What actual purpose does this special word have other than to signify that someone is a 'serious thinker'?

>>20184948
They're just relations between representation of existing thing or things

>>20184960
If you make a robot with a "nervous system" that mimics that of human's, does the robot "experience" anything?

>>20184977
Probably, why wouldn't it? It's capable of apprehending objects, shapes colors, a robot of sufficient sophistication would emulate emotions, maybe even have them. Sure it 'experiences' things. Why wouldn't it? It has all the cognitive apparatuses

>>20184962
t. npc with no representation of either time or space

>>20184731
>visual
What about auditory? Touch? Concepts without images (e.g. the concept of cause or color)

>>20184983
Then you're a physicalist. For people like you, everything can be explained in purely physical terms. Some people, like Kripke disagrees. Honestly if you're attacking the issue at that angle, then qualia is indistinguishable from sensation, the 'experience' is what philosophers call qualia. Philosophers use "fancy" word like qualia to distinguish it from more mundane vocabulary like sensation or experience to not mistake one and the other. Since the big question is, whether or not said 'experience' separate from physical states. You seem to hold the answer "no".

>>20185020
>Honestly if you're attacking the issue at that angle, then qualia is indistinguishable from sensation, the 'experience' is what philosophers call qualia.
Wait wait wait, so "qualia" describes sensation if you believe in a non-physical soul as the seat of consciousness? Holy shit, I think I finally get it! I had no idea where you were taking me with that line of questioning, but I think you've lead me right to understanding.

>>20185005
They too are. No idea about concepts.
>>20185029
I wouldn't use the term "soul", but rather use the term "consciousness".

>>20185042
>but rather use the term "consciousness".
Look, just tell me if it's close enough so I can relax. I'm just chuffed we got this far.

>>20184484
What it's like. Philosophers think its some brilliant insight.

>>20185157
what what's like?

>>20185169
it

>>20184484
>Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like "red", "blue", and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence "The sky is blue". ... What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

The answer is yes. What she learns is the qualia of colors. GG ez get fucked physicalists.

>>20185157
It usually only takes the simplest of insights to destroy entire intellectual regimes, qualia destroying physicalism being one such very succint example. Simplicity is easily a sign of genius.

>>20185055
Close enough, but I won't conceptualize it as if there's "something" sitting on the seat of consciousness, rather consciousness as a whole is made off "mental stuff" as opposed to "physical stuff". Don't know if this further confuses you. I suggest reading more about Descartes and mind-body problem, pretty much this problem starts with Descartes.

Is qualia a materialist thing? In immaterialism you have ideas. Qualia seems like modernist bullshit.

>Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Consequently, the nature and existence of various definitions of qualia remain controversial. While some philosophers of mind like Daniel Dennett argue that qualia do not exist and are incompatible with neuroscience and naturalism,[3][4] some neuroscientists and neurologists like Gerald Edelman, Antonio Damasio, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch and Rodolfo Llinás state that qualia exist and that the desire to eliminate them is based on an erroneous interpretation on the part of some philosophers regarding what constitutes science.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][excessive citations]

tl;dr it means nothing. no one agrees on anything

>>20184592
>are left so traumatized by the sensory stimuli that it can psychologically damage them

Source on this? I've heard the complete opposite, that these people are completly underwhelmed by vision at first, and only later come to learn how to apprehend the sense and perceive objects.

>>20184714
>why? we think experience needs an experiencer 8ut thats only 8ecause of faulty analogies where we think of experience as a movie that the experiencer is watching. 8ut this only creates an infinite regress where now theres the experience of the movie in the movie watchers mind and another experiencer is experiencing the experience so another experience is created and so on
That's incorrect. There is only an infinite regress if the watcher of the qualia has no access to its own awareness. If however, as in certain models of consciousness, the watcher of qualia has reflexive awareness or pre-reflective self-awareness of itself, then the regress is eliminated because the fact of existing as the watcher discloses the presence of the watcher to itself, and so its existence as the watcher doesn't need to be confirmed or perceived by anything else because its self-awareness of itself *as* the watcher is immediately and intuitively known to the watcher always as a basic feature of its existence. Dan Zahavi and Evan Thompson both present and write about modern western models of consciousness with pre-reflective self-awareness, and you can find the same thing in certain schools of eastern philosophy.
>8ut once you accept that all there is is qualia, and that you ARE the experience, that pro8lem is solved.
This leaves one unable to account for the fact that one's awareness can witness the transition between one qualia and another, we cannot be that qualia, and our awareness cannot be that qualia, because then we wouldn't be able to witness it arising and falling, which requires the witnessing awareness to stand outside the rising and falling.