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Nothing interesting? How can we be so sure? Qualia can at least be found out about, if perhaps not so scientifically. Recreational drugs can be taken to play w

Nothing interesting? How can we be so sure? Qualia can at least be found out about, if perhaps not so scientifically. Recreational drugs can be taken to play with perception. Qualia can be made to change fairly reproducibly. Maybe you can't find out much about some other person's experience, but it's something.

amichail 18y ago
I think the qualia problem asks why subjective experience exists and whether people experience the world in the same way subjectively. So this has little to do with recreational drugs and perception.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  My point is that one can know something about the content of one's own subjective experience, and how it changes. Knowing about someone else's subject experience is a much taller order. So far people seem to learn about it by assuming that others are much like themselves, and then asking them details to get a better picture by successive approximation. It seems we're stuck with examining responses to qualia, at least for now.
  - MaysonL 18y ago
    One can also do some fairly objective studies of subjective experience. See for example, Robert Ornstein's book On the Experiencce of Time http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Time-Robert-E-Ornstein/dp/081333442X http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Time-Robert-E-Ornstein/dp/0...
- swombat 18y ago
  So this has little to do with recreational drugs and perception. I disagree with that. I suggest you take some psychadelics and try to explain your experience to someone who's never taken them. Words fail to convey this properly. It's as hard as explaining the colour red, I think.
robg 18y ago
Not just those drugs that many deem recreational. I know my perceptions change rather dramatically when I'm hungry vs. satiated, tired vs. rested, happy vs. sad, listening to music vs. listening to waves, in love vs. alone, etc., etc. etc. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern. - William Blake
- DaniFong 18y ago
  That's right; our perception is constantly changing. Thank's for the poem. It brought a smile to the New Year. :-)

amichail 18y ago

I think the qualia problem asks why subjective experience exists and whether people experience the world in the same way subjectively. So this has little to do with recreational drugs and perception.

DaniFong 18y ago
My point is that one can know something about the content of one's own subjective experience, and how it changes. Knowing about someone else's subject experience is a much taller order. So far people seem to learn about it by assuming that others are much like themselves, and then asking them details to get a better picture by successive approximation. It seems we're stuck with examining responses to qualia, at least for now.
- MaysonL 18y ago
  One can also do some fairly objective studies of subjective experience. See for example, Robert Ornstein's book On the Experiencce of Time http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Time-Robert-E-Ornstein/dp/081333442X http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Time-Robert-E-Ornstein/dp/0...
swombat 18y ago
So this has little to do with recreational drugs and perception. I disagree with that. I suggest you take some psychadelics and try to explain your experience to someone who's never taken them. Words fail to convey this properly. It's as hard as explaining the colour red, I think.

robg 18y ago

Not just those drugs that many deem recreational. I know my perceptions change rather dramatically when I'm hungry vs. satiated, tired vs. rested, happy vs. sad, listening to music vs. listening to waves, in love vs. alone, etc., etc. etc. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern. - William Blake

DaniFong 18y ago
That's right; our perception is constantly changing. Thank's for the poem. It brought a smile to the New Year. :-)