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You seem to be arguing intensely that qualia are not physical truth. No one is claiming that it is. You're assuming materialism then saying "of course qualia is

You seem to be arguing intensely that qualia are not physical truth. No one is claiming that it is. You're assuming materialism then saying "of course qualia is nothing more than material". Well sure, I agree that logically follows. I mean, forget the term "real" here for a second. Illusion or whatever you want to think of it, qualia in one form or another, exists within the mind. I am alive, I can see, hear, smell, and feel things. These things are as real to me as is seeing two objects hit eachother and deflect, or whatever other test of material reality you purpose. How do I, without already first believing in eliminativism, reject one but not the other? Or rather, on the basis that I sometimes feel pain but do not always feel pain, I assert definitely, that the subjective experience of pain exists. I am not making any claim as to what "pain" is, merely that subjective experiences (which we call qualia) exist within the mind. How does this illusion come to be achieved when there is nothing remotely similar in any attribute of physical systems? How is it possible that one can explain all the physical properties of a system, but yet not explain the experience of "pain" or "seeing red"? That we can build a robot that physically registers, and reacts to pain as we do, but have no way of knowing whether that robot experienced some subjective experience of "pain" similar to how we do. That is in essence why its called the hard problem of consciousness. If you have any interesting thoughts to share as to how this is possible, Im all ears, but so far all you've appeared to have said (and I apologize if Im missing something) is "everything has been explained materially, and I believe in material science and thus it is certainly material, end of discussion". I don't find this interesting at all. Hell lets agree qualia is just physical. But how is it physically possible? This isnt the eliminativism take though (or at least that of Dennett) its "there is no problem to solve at all because we reject subjective experiences exist at all". The only way I can imagine this of even being true is that I didn't actually feel pain at all, I just made up a thought that says that I did. But this is simply not my experience and simply saying "its in fact what happened" is not exactly convincing. By that same token I dont see why I ought to believe in material reality at all. Did I experience seeing the table in front of me? No I just believed I had. If you believe this fine Im not going to argue. >how can you expect anyone who's given this serious thought to take you seriously? Consciousness is an illusion isn't some agreed upon philosophical view, so I don't know why you're speaking as if this is a solved problem and that someones an idiot for considering otherwise. Of all the surveyed philosophical positions, eliminativism has the highest rejection https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/correlations?category=Philosophical%20questions&variable=Consciousness%3A%20eliminativism https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/correlation... Even within physicalists, about 50% of those surveyed accept there is a hard problem of consciousness.

naasking 2y ago
> You seem to be arguing intensely that qualia are not physical truth. No one is claiming that it is. I'm not sure what you mean by "no one", but the central claim behind asserting the existence of qualia is the rejection of physicalism. Maybe you're not making that claim, but p-zombies and the Knowledge Argument were intended to but failed to show that qualia exist and physicalism is false. > How do I, without already first believing in eliminativism, reject one but not the other? I find this kind of question confusing because it's just so obvious. You've done this millions of times throughout your life, both consciously and unconsciously. This is knowledge synthesis at the level of perception. You're constantly taking your perceptions and comparing them to your internalized worldview, seeing if they fit, and if not, checking if your perception was faulty or your understanding of the world is faulty. You're even trying to do it now, but you're prioritizing your personal perceptions which are known to be faulty rather than the far more robust, systematic scientific knowledge we've built. Why is it so easy for you to perceive that water appears to magically break and reconstitute a pencil (https://etc.usf.edu/clippix/picture/refraction-of-pencil-in-cup-of-water.html https://etc.usf.edu/clippix/picture/refraction-of-pencil-in-...), and discount that perception as a fact, but you can't do so for qualia? Because you've already done the work to internalize a model of the world that can explain what you perceive without the magic, via optics and refraction. I agree that a full accounting of this sort for our belief in qualia would be nice, but it's not strictly necessary to conclude that we should not prioritize our flawed perceptions over robust systematic knowledge, and further that, we have no evidence or argument that qualia actually exist besides these flawed perceptions. If you agree with these two claims, then I argue that you should take an eliminativist position until such evidence arises, ala Russell's teapot. My argument is not just "durr, obviously materialism", it's the simple epistemic argument that you probably apply to literally everything else, but you for some reason can't bring yourself to apply to these specific perceptions. The illusion is just too compelling and "obvious", just like demonic possession was obvious to people before modern psychology. > How does this illusion come to be achieved when there is nothing remotely similar in any attribute of physical systems? How is it possible that one can explain all the physical properties of a system, but yet not explain the experience of "pain" or "seeing red"? No such thing has been proved, only asserted. This is why eliminativism can dismiss the hard problem: there is no proof that there is a problem to solve, therefore the premise is rejected. > Hell lets agree qualia is just physical. But how is it physically possible? I think the paper I linked already hinted at it: the process of integrating signals from our senses also routes through an internal representation which looks up associated context but throws away information about the original perception, thus making it seemingly disconnected from anything. This establishes a separation between our direct perception of "outside" and the labels and other context, like redness, and so we attribute them to "inside". Depending on how signals are integrated or switched or whatever into our "conscious awareness", this yields a persistent inference of ephemeral internal properties separate from external perceived properties at the conscious level, similar to how a single CPU multitasking gives the impression of parallelism, but which is simply the product of it's fast switching speed compared to our conscious perceptual speed. If you've ever done cannabis you might have experienced consistent deja vu, caused by subtle timing changes in the signals from our memory vs. direct perceptions. Direct perception appears to be processed into our memory before the direct perception appears in our conscious awareness, so then it seems to us as if we remembered it. I agree this isn't a fully precise accounting, but as I said, it's a solid working theory that doesn't require any magic and could plausibly explain the weird properties people attribute to qualia. It doesn't mean we stop talking about "experiencing pain", it just means that what "experiencing pain" means changes to something non-magical. > This isnt the eliminativism take though (or at least that of Dennett) its "there is no problem to solve at all because we reject subjective experiences exist at all". The hard problem doesn't exist in this framework, so yes, there is no hard problem to solve, there is only the "easy" problem of explaining how the mechanics of the brain work, and the behaviours associated with the illusion will become clear. This was exactly the same situation with vitalism: there was a hard problem of explaining how life could arise from inert matter that wasn't alive, and those who dismissed the problem and continued to elaborate the mechanics of the cell shrunk the god of the gaps until nothing remained. That's what I predict will happen here, again. > Even within physicalists, about 50% of those surveyed accept there is a hard problem of consciousness. I agree, there's still a lot of unfortunate mysticism around this topic. Some philosophers also took vitalism seriously. My point was that there is no solid epistemic argument for accepting that qualia are real, which is why I asked you to prove they're real. You said you didn't like arguments from authority but then you reverted to one here, which I will take as an acknowledgement that there is no known proof. Until some solid evidence or proof, I operate on the minimal assumptions needed to explain observations. This requires that I acknowledge the deeply flawed nature of our perceptions, and so I refuse to trust them, particularly since taking them at face value would mean they are directly perceiving some aspect of reality that cannot otherwise be detected or measured.

naasking 2y ago

> You seem to be arguing intensely that qualia are not physical truth. No one is claiming that it is. I'm not sure what you mean by "no one", but the central claim behind asserting the existence of qualia is the rejection of physicalism. Maybe you're not making that claim, but p-zombies and the Knowledge Argument were intended to but failed to show that qualia exist and physicalism is false. > How do I, without already first believing in eliminativism, reject one but not the other? I find this kind of question confusing because it's just so obvious. You've done this millions of times throughout your life, both consciously and unconsciously. This is knowledge synthesis at the level of perception. You're constantly taking your perceptions and comparing them to your internalized worldview, seeing if they fit, and if not, checking if your perception was faulty or your understanding of the world is faulty. You're even trying to do it now, but you're prioritizing your personal perceptions which are known to be faulty rather than the far more robust, systematic scientific knowledge we've built. Why is it so easy for you to perceive that water appears to magically break and reconstitute a pencil (https://etc.usf.edu/clippix/picture/refraction-of-pencil-in-cup-of-water.html https://etc.usf.edu/clippix/picture/refraction-of-pencil-in-...), and discount that perception as a fact, but you can't do so for qualia? Because you've already done the work to internalize a model of the world that can explain what you perceive without the magic, via optics and refraction. I agree that a full accounting of this sort for our belief in qualia would be nice, but it's not strictly necessary to conclude that we should not prioritize our flawed perceptions over robust systematic knowledge, and further that, we have no evidence or argument that qualia actually exist besides these flawed perceptions. If you agree with these two claims, then I argue that you should take an eliminativist position until such evidence arises, ala Russell's teapot. My argument is not just "durr, obviously materialism", it's the simple epistemic argument that you probably apply to literally everything else, but you for some reason can't bring yourself to apply to these specific perceptions. The illusion is just too compelling and "obvious", just like demonic possession was obvious to people before modern psychology. > How does this illusion come to be achieved when there is nothing remotely similar in any attribute of physical systems? How is it possible that one can explain all the physical properties of a system, but yet not explain the experience of "pain" or "seeing red"? No such thing has been proved, only asserted. This is why eliminativism can dismiss the hard problem: there is no proof that there is a problem to solve, therefore the premise is rejected. > Hell lets agree qualia is just physical. But how is it physically possible? I think the paper I linked already hinted at it: the process of integrating signals from our senses also routes through an internal representation which looks up associated context but throws away information about the original perception, thus making it seemingly disconnected from anything. This establishes a separation between our direct perception of "outside" and the labels and other context, like redness, and so we attribute them to "inside". Depending on how signals are integrated or switched or whatever into our "conscious awareness", this yields a persistent inference of ephemeral internal properties separate from external perceived properties at the conscious level, similar to how a single CPU multitasking gives the impression of parallelism, but which is simply the product of it's fast switching speed compared to our conscious perceptual speed. If you've ever done cannabis you might have experienced consistent deja vu, caused by subtle timing changes in the signals from our memory vs. direct perceptions. Direct perception appears to be processed into our memory before the direct perception appears in our conscious awareness, so then it seems to us as if we remembered it. I agree this isn't a fully precise accounting, but as I said, it's a solid working theory that doesn't require any magic and could plausibly explain the weird properties people attribute to qualia. It doesn't mean we stop talking about "experiencing pain", it just means that what "experiencing pain" means changes to something non-magical. > This isnt the eliminativism take though (or at least that of Dennett) its "there is no problem to solve at all because we reject subjective experiences exist at all". The hard problem doesn't exist in this framework, so yes, there is no hard problem to solve, there is only the "easy" problem of explaining how the mechanics of the brain work, and the behaviours associated with the illusion will become clear. This was exactly the same situation with vitalism: there was a hard problem of explaining how life could arise from inert matter that wasn't alive, and those who dismissed the problem and continued to elaborate the mechanics of the cell shrunk the god of the gaps until nothing remained. That's what I predict will happen here, again. > Even within physicalists, about 50% of those surveyed accept there is a hard problem of consciousness. I agree, there's still a lot of unfortunate mysticism around this topic. Some philosophers also took vitalism seriously. My point was that there is no solid epistemic argument for accepting that qualia are real, which is why I asked you to prove they're real. You said you didn't like arguments from authority but then you reverted to one here, which I will take as an acknowledgement that there is no known proof. Until some solid evidence or proof, I operate on the minimal assumptions needed to explain observations. This requires that I acknowledge the deeply flawed nature of our perceptions, and so I refuse to trust them, particularly since taking them at face value would mean they are directly perceiving some aspect of reality that cannot otherwise be detected or measured.