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Good article. Except for the "qualia" asides. Really there is no such thing as qualia. There is nothing to explain, there is no "explandum", so to speak. There
by Allocator2008 18y ago
Good article. Except for the "qualia" asides. Really there is no such thing as qualia. There is nothing to explain, there is no "explandum", so to speak. There is no such thing as "redness", there is only the fact that a human subject will use the word "red" to refer to an electromagnetic pulse of wavelength 600nm. The subject will say "red" to relate the wavelength, that is, we can predict the subject will say "red" if asked for the "color" of a pulse shone at the subject of wavelength 600nm. There is simply nothing to explain in qualia, it does not exist.
To steal from Dennett, one might as well ask about gremlins that appear in the cylinders of a combustion engine. We can explain the fact that wheels move in a combustion engine via the action of the cylinders, or, we can say it is the action of the cylinders plus the gremlins. Thinking of qualia as something that needs explaining is like thinking that your car's movement is predicated upon the gremlins produced in its cylinders. The gremlins do not exist, neither does redness, nor any other type of qualia. Period.
- tocomment 18y agoThis sounds interesting. Where can I learn more?
- Allocator2008 18y agohttp://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230745125&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Denne... That is an amazon link to Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained", where he deals with consciousness, qualia, and so forth. Dennet's personal website is at: http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm By the way, I myself am not a philosopher, I am a QA engineer, so it is not like I have a "stake" in this whole topic, but I just like Dennett's approach to it, which is more sane than some others.
- jkkramer 18y agoWe're not trying to explain how wheels move in a combustion engine. A functioning brain is not predicated upon qualia, which is why it's so mysterious. (See: zombies.) I think the problem is that qualia don't have any place in existing models of our world. And yet we experience them (at least, I do). That's bizarre, and suggests our models aren't quite right.
- stcredzero 18y agoThere are no gremlins, but there is combustion happening in the cylinders. Dennett's Consciousness Explained is like your above explanation of internal combustion engines. Your explanation mentions combustion but is missing details about how the resulting pressure and forces are channeled. His explanation is missing essential details as well. There are no gremlins. There are laws of physics. There are facts of molecular biology. We don't know all of these things yet. I think it's premature to declare that "there's nothing to explain" until we know more about the brain. I suspect we're like Galileo if he were confronted with an internal combustion engine. He might be able to deduce that it's all just physical phenomena, but he wouldn't even know all of the physical laws a team of engineers would use to design the thing.
- MaysonL 18y agoAnd yet, the "red" that appears in my consciousness differs, when I look at an object with my left eye, from that produced by my right eye.