If we want to understand how consciousness works in humans, we have to accou t for qualia as part of it. Having an undertanding of human consc. is the best practical basis for deciding whether other entitieies have consc. OTOH, starting by trying to decide which entities have consc. is unlikely to lead anywhere.
The biological claim can be ruled out if it is incoherent, but not if it for being unproven, since the funciontal/computational alternative is also unproven.
Accounting for qualia and starting from qualia are two entirely different things. Saying “X must have qualia” is unhelpful if we cannot determine whether or not a given thing has qualia.
Qualia can perhaps best be described, briefly, as “subjective experience.” So what do we mean by ‘subjective’ and ‘experience’?
If by ‘subjective’ we mean ‘unique to the individual position’ and by ‘experience’ we mean ‘alters its internal state on the basis of some perception’ then qualia aren’t that mysterious: a video camera can be described as having qualia if that’s what we are talking about. Of course, many philosophers won’t be happy with that sort of breakdown. But it isn’t clear that they will be happy with any definition of qualia that allows for it to be distinguished.
If you want it to be something mysterious, then you aren’t even defining it. You are just being unhelpful: like if I tell you that you owe me X dollars, without giving you anyway of defining X. If you want to break it down into non-mysterious components or conditions, great. What are they? Let me know what you are talking about, and why it should be considered important.
At this point, it’s not a matter of ruling anything out as incoherent. It’s a matter of trying to figure out what sort of thing we are talking about when we talk about consciousness and seeing how far that label applies. There doesn’t appear to be anything inherently biological about what we are talking about when we are talking about consciousness. This could be a mistake, of course: but if so, you have to show it is a mistake and why.
Accounting for qualia and starting from qualia are two entirely different things. Saying “X must have qualia” is unhelpful if we cannot determine whether or not a given thing has qualia.
We can tell that we have qualia, and our won consciousnessn is the ntarual starting point.
“Qualia” can be defined by giving examples: the way anchiovies taste, the way tomatos look, etc.
You are makiing heavy weather of the indefinability of some aspects of consciousness, but the flipside
of that is that we all experience out won consciousness. It is not a mystery to us. So we can substitute “inner ostension” for abstract definition.
There doesn’t appear to be anything inherently biological about what we are talking about when we are talking about consciousness.
OTOH, we don’t have examples of non-biological consc.
If we want to understand how consciousness works in humans, we have to accou t for qualia as part of it. Having an undertanding of human consc. is the best practical basis for deciding whether other entitieies have consc. OTOH, starting by trying to decide which entities have consc. is unlikely to lead anywhere.
The biological claim can be ruled out if it is incoherent, but not if it for being unproven, since the funciontal/computational alternative is also unproven.
Accounting for qualia and starting from qualia are two entirely different things. Saying “X must have qualia” is unhelpful if we cannot determine whether or not a given thing has qualia.
Qualia can perhaps best be described, briefly, as “subjective experience.” So what do we mean by ‘subjective’ and ‘experience’?
If by ‘subjective’ we mean ‘unique to the individual position’ and by ‘experience’ we mean ‘alters its internal state on the basis of some perception’ then qualia aren’t that mysterious: a video camera can be described as having qualia if that’s what we are talking about. Of course, many philosophers won’t be happy with that sort of breakdown. But it isn’t clear that they will be happy with any definition of qualia that allows for it to be distinguished.
If you want it to be something mysterious, then you aren’t even defining it. You are just being unhelpful: like if I tell you that you owe me X dollars, without giving you anyway of defining X. If you want to break it down into non-mysterious components or conditions, great. What are they? Let me know what you are talking about, and why it should be considered important.
At this point, it’s not a matter of ruling anything out as incoherent. It’s a matter of trying to figure out what sort of thing we are talking about when we talk about consciousness and seeing how far that label applies. There doesn’t appear to be anything inherently biological about what we are talking about when we are talking about consciousness. This could be a mistake, of course: but if so, you have to show it is a mistake and why.
We can tell that we have qualia, and our won consciousnessn is the ntarual starting point.
“Qualia” can be defined by giving examples: the way anchiovies taste, the way tomatos look, etc.
You are makiing heavy weather of the indefinability of some aspects of consciousness, but the flipside of that is that we all experience out won consciousness. It is not a mystery to us. So we can substitute “inner ostension” for abstract definition.
OTOH, we don’t have examples of non-biological consc.