on a related note, dropping this rare banger line from wikipedia:
Some philosophers of mind, like Daniel Dennett, argue that qualia do not exist. Other philosophers, as well as neuroscientists and neurologists, believe qualia exist and that the desire by some philosophers to disregard qualia is based on an erroneous interpretation of what constitutes science.[2]
citation text from the wiki page for reference
Damasio, Antonio R. (2000). The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness. A Harvest book. San Diego, CA: Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-601075-7.
Edelman, Gerald M.; Gally, Joseph A.; Baars, Bernard J. (2011). “Biology of Consciousness”. Frontiers in Psychology. 2 (4): 4. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00004. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 3111444. PMID 21713129.
Edelman, Gerald Maurice (1992). Bright air, brilliant fire: on the matter of the mind. New York: BasicBooks. ISBN 978-0-465-00764-6.
Edelman, Gerald M. (2003). “Naturalizing Consciousness: A Theoretical Framework”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 100 (9): 5520–5524. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0536.1978.tb04573.x. ISSN 0027-8424. JSTOR 3139744. PMID 154377. S2CID 10086119. Retrieved 2023-07-19.
Koch, Christof (2020). The feeling of life itself: why consciousness is widespread but can’t be computed (First MIT Press paperback edition 2020 ed.). Cambridge, MA London: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-53955-5.
Llinás, Rodolfo Riascos; Llinás, Rodolfo R. (2002). I of the vortex: from neurons to self. A Bradford book (1 ed.). Cambridge, Mass. London: MIT Press. pp. 202–207. ISBN 978-0-262-62163-2.
Oizumi, Masafumi; Albantakis, Larissa; Tononi, Giulio (2014-05-08). Sporns, Olaf (ed.). “From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0”. PLOS Computational Biology. 10 (5): e1003588. Bibcode:2014PLSCB…10E3588O. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588. ISSN 1553-7358. PMC 4014402. PMID 24811198.
Overgaard, M.; Mogensen, J.; Kirkeby-Hinrup, A., eds. (2021). Beyond neural correlates of consciousness. Routledge Taylor & Francis.
Ramachandran, V.; Hirstein, W. (March 1997). “What Does Implicit Cognition Tell Us About Consciousness?”. Consciousness and Cognition. 6 (1): 148. doi:10.1006/ccog.1997.0296. ISSN 1053-8100. S2CID 54335111.
Tononi, Giulio; Boly, Melanie; Massimini, Marcello; Koch, Christof (July 2016). “Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrate”. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 17 (7): 450–461. doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.44. ISSN 1471-0048. PMID 27225071. S2CID 21347087.
“Because there is disagreement on what consciousness is, it must be an illusion. You do not exist, you are only a weird metaphysical phantasm which is somehow a more grounded and tenable position.”
This is a bad summary of Dennett’s view, or at least a misleading one. He thinks that ‘qualia’ as most philosophers of mind define the term doesn’t refer to anything, and is just a weasel word obscuring that we really don’t have much of an understanding of how brains do the things they do. Qualia get glossed as the “what-it’s-like-ness” of experiences (e.g. the particular feeling of seeing the color blue), which isn’t wrong, but is only part of the story. ‘Qualia’ is a technical term in the philosophy of mind literature, and has a lot of properties attached to it (privacy, incorrigibility, ineffability, so on). Dennett argues that qualia in that sense–the philosopher’s qualia–is incoherent and internally inconsistent for a variety of reasons. This sometimes gets misrepresented as “Dennett thinks consciousness is an illusion” (a misreading that he, to be fair, could work harder to discourage), but that’s not the view. His argument against the philosopher’s qualia is pretty compelling, and doesn’t imply that people aren’t conscious. See “Quining Qualia” for a pretty accessible articulation of the argument.
i look up ‘daniel dennet’ and the first ted talk i see is literally titled ‘the illusion of consciousness’. i don’t know what else to make of that.
wikipedia defines qualia as "In philosophy of mind, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə, ˈkweɪ-/; SG: quale /-li/) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. " which is how i have been using the word. i do not care about any other usage.
all of those things you mention - privacay, ineffability, etc - are logical consequences of being a subjective phenomena.
i am familiar with quining qualia, i quite dislike it and disagree with its arguments fundamentally. his ‘intuition pumps’ are frankly nonsense.
two examples:
the coffee taste and brain surgery experiments claim to show that we cannot tell the difference between our qualia changing and our reflective juddgments and predispositions to those qualia being changed, in an attempt to prove that qualia cannot be directly apprehended by consciousness. in fact, this is quite unrelated to the direct apprehend-ability in consciousness of qualia. in the brain surgery case, whichever surgery is performed, whether the patient can realize this through introspection or not, there IS a particular qualia being experienced and there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not this qualia has changed and as to which of the surgeries was performed, even if the patient’s memory has been altered such that they cannot know this - we could even empirically verify which surgery took place! yes, we are not necessarily infallible in our comparison of non-simultaneous Qualia - how does this mean that we do not apprehend the current Quale directly in consciousness? or that we did apprehend past Qualia? Direct conscious apprehension is not equivalent to accurate memory and consistent disposition/judgment regarding that direct conscious apprehension - these are information processing tasks, not subjectivity or qualia. To be aware of ANY qualitative state is to be aware of your current REAL qualitative state, and the fact that we might misremember it or otherwise interpret it differently in the future (due to neurosurgery or not) makes it no less directly apprehended.
the beer argument is equally spurious - he claims that because our qualia can change in response to environmental stimuli (i.e. we ‘acquire a taste’ for beer and enjoy it more when we are drunk, or enjoy it by associating it with the positive drunk feelings), that qualia is not ‘intrinsic’ but ‘relational’. no one would deny that qualia are part of a causal chain - everything is causal. qualia and consciousness obviously correlate to the physical brain, and are in a causal relationship with it and therefore less directly with the wider external world. but the existence of some kind of qualia/subjectivity in a conscious organism is not a relational property - the conscious organism, while conscious, always has qualia and subjectivity of some kind or another, regardless of what environment the consciousness exists in. specific features and minutiae of the subjects of qualia and subjective experience do have a causal relationship with the external world, but again, these are information processing tasks that are affected, not the very subjectivity of the organism. the contents of experience might change, but the fact that the current experiencer (the experiencer in its context) experiences them does not. the apprehended object might change, but the fact that it is being apprehended does not.
on a related note, dropping this rare banger line from wikipedia:
citation text from the wiki page for reference
Damasio, Antonio R. (2000). The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness. A Harvest book. San Diego, CA: Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-601075-7. Edelman, Gerald M.; Gally, Joseph A.; Baars, Bernard J. (2011). “Biology of Consciousness”. Frontiers in Psychology. 2 (4): 4. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00004. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 3111444. PMID 21713129. Edelman, Gerald Maurice (1992). Bright air, brilliant fire: on the matter of the mind. New York: BasicBooks. ISBN 978-0-465-00764-6. Edelman, Gerald M. (2003). “Naturalizing Consciousness: A Theoretical Framework”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 100 (9): 5520–5524. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0536.1978.tb04573.x. ISSN 0027-8424. JSTOR 3139744. PMID 154377. S2CID 10086119. Retrieved 2023-07-19. Koch, Christof (2020). The feeling of life itself: why consciousness is widespread but can’t be computed (First MIT Press paperback edition 2020 ed.). Cambridge, MA London: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-53955-5. Llinás, Rodolfo Riascos; Llinás, Rodolfo R. (2002). I of the vortex: from neurons to self. A Bradford book (1 ed.). Cambridge, Mass. London: MIT Press. pp. 202–207. ISBN 978-0-262-62163-2. Oizumi, Masafumi; Albantakis, Larissa; Tononi, Giulio (2014-05-08). Sporns, Olaf (ed.). “From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0”. PLOS Computational Biology. 10 (5): e1003588. Bibcode:2014PLSCB…10E3588O. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588. ISSN 1553-7358. PMC 4014402. PMID 24811198. Overgaard, M.; Mogensen, J.; Kirkeby-Hinrup, A., eds. (2021). Beyond neural correlates of consciousness. Routledge Taylor & Francis. Ramachandran, V.; Hirstein, W. (March 1997). “What Does Implicit Cognition Tell Us About Consciousness?”. Consciousness and Cognition. 6 (1): 148. doi:10.1006/ccog.1997.0296. ISSN 1053-8100. S2CID 54335111. Tononi, Giulio; Boly, Melanie; Massimini, Marcello; Koch, Christof (July 2016). “Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrate”. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 17 (7): 450–461. doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.44. ISSN 1471-0048. PMID 27225071. S2CID 21347087.
> be me
> literal philosopher of mind
> experiences things every moment of my life
> is asked if experiences exist
> “nah experiences aren’t real”
“Because there is disagreement on what consciousness is, it must be an illusion. You do not exist, you are only a weird metaphysical phantasm which is somehow a more grounded and tenable position.”
This is a bad summary of Dennett’s view, or at least a misleading one. He thinks that ‘qualia’ as most philosophers of mind define the term doesn’t refer to anything, and is just a weasel word obscuring that we really don’t have much of an understanding of how brains do the things they do. Qualia get glossed as the “what-it’s-like-ness” of experiences (e.g. the particular feeling of seeing the color blue), which isn’t wrong, but is only part of the story. ‘Qualia’ is a technical term in the philosophy of mind literature, and has a lot of properties attached to it (privacy, incorrigibility, ineffability, so on). Dennett argues that qualia in that sense–the philosopher’s qualia–is incoherent and internally inconsistent for a variety of reasons. This sometimes gets misrepresented as “Dennett thinks consciousness is an illusion” (a misreading that he, to be fair, could work harder to discourage), but that’s not the view. His argument against the philosopher’s qualia is pretty compelling, and doesn’t imply that people aren’t conscious. See “Quining Qualia” for a pretty accessible articulation of the argument.
i look up ‘daniel dennet’ and the first ted talk i see is literally titled ‘the illusion of consciousness’. i don’t know what else to make of that.
wikipedia defines qualia as "In philosophy of mind, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə, ˈkweɪ-/; SG: quale /-li/) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. " which is how i have been using the word. i do not care about any other usage.
all of those things you mention - privacay, ineffability, etc - are logical consequences of being a subjective phenomena.
i am familiar with quining qualia, i quite dislike it and disagree with its arguments fundamentally. his ‘intuition pumps’ are frankly nonsense.
two examples:
the coffee taste and brain surgery experiments claim to show that we cannot tell the difference between our qualia changing and our reflective juddgments and predispositions to those qualia being changed, in an attempt to prove that qualia cannot be directly apprehended by consciousness. in fact, this is quite unrelated to the direct apprehend-ability in consciousness of qualia. in the brain surgery case, whichever surgery is performed, whether the patient can realize this through introspection or not, there IS a particular qualia being experienced and there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not this qualia has changed and as to which of the surgeries was performed, even if the patient’s memory has been altered such that they cannot know this - we could even empirically verify which surgery took place! yes, we are not necessarily infallible in our comparison of non-simultaneous Qualia - how does this mean that we do not apprehend the current Quale directly in consciousness? or that we did apprehend past Qualia? Direct conscious apprehension is not equivalent to accurate memory and consistent disposition/judgment regarding that direct conscious apprehension - these are information processing tasks, not subjectivity or qualia. To be aware of ANY qualitative state is to be aware of your current REAL qualitative state, and the fact that we might misremember it or otherwise interpret it differently in the future (due to neurosurgery or not) makes it no less directly apprehended.
the beer argument is equally spurious - he claims that because our qualia can change in response to environmental stimuli (i.e. we ‘acquire a taste’ for beer and enjoy it more when we are drunk, or enjoy it by associating it with the positive drunk feelings), that qualia is not ‘intrinsic’ but ‘relational’. no one would deny that qualia are part of a causal chain - everything is causal. qualia and consciousness obviously correlate to the physical brain, and are in a causal relationship with it and therefore less directly with the wider external world. but the existence of some kind of qualia/subjectivity in a conscious organism is not a relational property - the conscious organism, while conscious, always has qualia and subjectivity of some kind or another, regardless of what environment the consciousness exists in. specific features and minutiae of the subjects of qualia and subjective experience do have a causal relationship with the external world, but again, these are information processing tasks that are affected, not the very subjectivity of the organism. the contents of experience might change, but the fact that the current experiencer (the experiencer in its context) experiences them does not. the apprehended object might change, but the fact that it is being apprehended does not.