(We haven’t been discussing matter. I haven’t been insisting that you affirm the existence of matter. There aren’t any circumstances parallel to those involving “qualia”.)
But, since you ask, here’s the best I can do on short notice.
First, purely handwavily and to give some informal idea of the boundaries, here are some things that I would call “matter” and some possibly-similar things that I would not. Matter: electrons, neutrons, bricks, stars, air, people, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (considered as a particular bunch of particular people). Not matter: photons, electric fields, empty space (to whatever extent such a thing exists), the London Philharmonic Orchestra (considered as a thing whose detailed composition changes over time), the god believed in by Christians (should he exist), minds. Doubtful: black holes; the gods believed in by the ancient Greeks (should they exist).
“Matter” is a kind of stuff rather than a kind of thing; that is, in general if some things are “matter” then so is what we get by considering them together, and so are whatever parts they might have. (This might need revision if e.g. it turns out that things I consider “matter” and things I don’t are somehow merely different arrangements of some more fundamental stuff.)
Conditional on the universe working roughly the way I currently model it as doing (or, more precisely, allow other people better at these things to model it as doing), I think the actually-existing things I call “matter” are coexistent with “things made from excitations of fermionic quantum fields”. If the way the universe works is very different from how I think it does, then depending on the details I might want (1) to continue to say that matter is excitations of fermionic quantum fields, and to declare that contrary to appearances some things we’ve all been thinking of as matter are something else, or (2) to continue to say that the things we naïvely think of as matter should be called matter, even though some of them are made of other things than excitations of fermionic quantum fields, or (3) to abandon the notion of “matter” as ill-adapted for the way the world actually turns out to be.
If faced with someone denying, or reluctant to positively affirm, the existence of “matter”, I would be interested to know whether they mean that some or all concrete things I regard as “matter” are fictions or simulations or imaginations or something, or whether they agree that those things are real but disagree somehow about their fundamental nature (in which case it would be nice to know what), or whether as in our case they don’t find my usage of the term clear enough to endorse or reject.
(In our case, I think the experiencing you point at when you refer to “qualia” is real; I do not know whether you are intending to point at something more noun-like, nor whether the things in question are real; I don’t think the term “qualia” generally presupposes any detailed view about the underlying nature of whatever-it-points-at but would want a clearer understanding of how my interlocutor is using the term before being confident of that in a specific case.)
Why?
(We haven’t been discussing matter. I haven’t been insisting that you affirm the existence of matter. There aren’t any circumstances parallel to those involving “qualia”.)
But, since you ask, here’s the best I can do on short notice.
First, purely handwavily and to give some informal idea of the boundaries, here are some things that I would call “matter” and some possibly-similar things that I would not. Matter: electrons, neutrons, bricks, stars, air, people, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (considered as a particular bunch of particular people). Not matter: photons, electric fields, empty space (to whatever extent such a thing exists), the London Philharmonic Orchestra (considered as a thing whose detailed composition changes over time), the god believed in by Christians (should he exist), minds. Doubtful: black holes; the gods believed in by the ancient Greeks (should they exist).
“Matter” is a kind of stuff rather than a kind of thing; that is, in general if some things are “matter” then so is what we get by considering them together, and so are whatever parts they might have. (This might need revision if e.g. it turns out that things I consider “matter” and things I don’t are somehow merely different arrangements of some more fundamental stuff.)
Conditional on the universe working roughly the way I currently model it as doing (or, more precisely, allow other people better at these things to model it as doing), I think the actually-existing things I call “matter” are coexistent with “things made from excitations of fermionic quantum fields”. If the way the universe works is very different from how I think it does, then depending on the details I might want (1) to continue to say that matter is excitations of fermionic quantum fields, and to declare that contrary to appearances some things we’ve all been thinking of as matter are something else, or (2) to continue to say that the things we naïvely think of as matter should be called matter, even though some of them are made of other things than excitations of fermionic quantum fields, or (3) to abandon the notion of “matter” as ill-adapted for the way the world actually turns out to be.
If faced with someone denying, or reluctant to positively affirm, the existence of “matter”, I would be interested to know whether they mean that some or all concrete things I regard as “matter” are fictions or simulations or imaginations or something, or whether they agree that those things are real but disagree somehow about their fundamental nature (in which case it would be nice to know what), or whether as in our case they don’t find my usage of the term clear enough to endorse or reject.
(In our case, I think the experiencing you point at when you refer to “qualia” is real; I do not know whether you are intending to point at something more noun-like, nor whether the things in question are real; I don’t think the term “qualia” generally presupposes any detailed view about the underlying nature of whatever-it-points-at but would want a clearer understanding of how my interlocutor is using the term before being confident of that in a specific case.)