If many individual people talked about feeling these experiences even without being excessively primed with other people’s philosophical discussions, would it make you ‘believe in qualia’, if you didn’t have it?
No. Consider religion and belief in the supernatural. Due to the existence of pareidolia and other psychological phenomena, people may exhibit a shared set of psychological mechanisms that cause them to mistakenly infer the presence of nonphysical or supernatural entities where there are none. While I believe culture and experience play a significant role in shaping the spread and persistence of supernatural beliefs, such beliefs are built on the foundations of psychological systems people share in common. Even if culture and learning were wiped out, due to the nature of human psychology it is likely that such mistakes would emerge yet again. People would once again see faces in the clouds and think that there’s someone up there.
So too, I suspect, people would fall into the same phenomenological quicksand with respect to many of the problems in philosophy. Even if we stopped teaching philosophy and all discussion of qualia vanished, I would not be surprised to find the notion emerge once again. People are not good at making inferences about what the world is like based on their phenomenology. I mean no disrespect, but your account sounds far more like the testimony of a religious convert than a robust philosophical argument for the existence of qualia. Take this blunt remark:
I know for certain that consciousness and qualia exist.
I’ve spent a lot of time discussing religion with theists, and one could readily swap out “consciousness and qualia” for “Jesus” our “God”: “I know for certain that [God] exist[s].” I don’t know for certain that qualia don’t exist. I don’t know for certain that God doesn’t exist. I don’t generally make a point of telling others that I know something “for certain,” and if I did, I think I would appreciate if someone else suggested to me, hopefully kindly, that perhaps my declaration that I know something for certain serves more to convince myself than to convince others.
I take the hallmark of a good idea to be its utility. The notion of qualia has no value. On the contrary, I see it as a product of confusions and mistakes born of overconfidence in our intuitions and phenomenology and to the poor methods of academic philosophy, which serve to anoint such errors with the superficial appearance that they are backed by intellectual rigor.
I’d believe in qualia if and when the concept appears meaningful and when it can figure into our best scientific explanations of what the world is like. That is, I’d accept it if it were a useful feature of our explanations/allowed use to make more accurate predictions than alternative models that didn’t posit qualia.
I take you’d likely disagree, and that’s totally fine with me. But if we survive this century and colonize the stars, it will be due to knowledge and discoveries that pay their way by allowing us to understand and anticipate the world around us, and augment it to our ends. It will not be due to the notion of qualia, which will be little more than a footnote buried deep in the pages of some galactic empire’s archives.
Hey, glad you saw my post and all that. Yes, I know about religion and people having unexplainable supernatural experiences. I don’t have anything like that, and I think people who daydreamed up a supernatural experience shouldn’t have literal certainty, just high confidence. (you’d also expect some high inconsistency in people who recount supernatural events. which unfortunately is probably true for qualia currently too, due to similar levels of how society spreads beliefs)
There is irony in using ‘convert’ when I was unconverted from believing these things by philosophical confusion, and then later untangled myself. Yes, you could go swap out any ‘certainty’ claim with any other words and mock the result. Sure, I guess no one can say ‘certain’ about anything.
“I think I would appreciate if someone else suggested to me, hopefully kindly, that perhaps my declaration that I know something for certain serves more to convince myself than to convince others.” My use of certainty is about honestly communicating strength of belief etc., not being hyperbolic or exaggerating. Yes I understand that many people exaggerate and lie about ‘certain’ things all the time so I trust other people’s “for certain” claims less. It doesn’t mean I should then reduce my own quality of claims to try to cater to the average, that makes no sense. (like, if I said it wasn’t certain, wouldn’t that be room for you to claim it’s a delusion anyway?) Like, the nature of consciousness/qualia is that someone who’s conscious/has qualia is never “uncertain” they are conscious (unlike with free will where there isn’t that level of certainty).
I think I mentioned it before but it seems perfectly rational if someone who doesn’t have qualia is confused by the whole thing. A “robust philosophical argument” isn’t possible, only some statistical one. (the same way that, if you didn’t understand some music’s appeal while a majority of other people did, the response to try to convince you could never be a robust philosophical argument.)
Despite that, I wish to convey that consciousness-related stuff is really about something meaningful and not a religious dream, and that it is very likely possible to make “more accurate predictions”, even though the actual topics relating to those predictions are usually really insignificant. (if consciousness had a major role to play in intelligence, for example, the world would still exhibit that with looking at intelligence only and there’d be likely other correlations to notice, although you might not be able to draw the connection to consciousness directly.)
It will not be due to the notion of qualia
debating this subject seems ultimately not very relevant to people’s actions or prosperity, yes.
, which will be little more than a footnote buried deep in the pages of some galactic empire’s archives.
I take the hallmark of a good idea to be its utility. The notion of qualia has no value
The idea that everything must be useful to explain something else doesn’t work unless you have a core things that need explaining, but are not themselves explanatory posits...basic facts...sometimes called.phenomena.
So qualia don’t have to sit in the category of things-that-do-explaining , because there is another category of things-that-need-explaining.
Even if we stopped teaching philosophy and all discussion of qualia vanished, I would not be surprised to find the notion emerge once again. People are not good at making inferences about what the world is like based on their phenomenology.
“Phenomena” (literally meaning appearances ) is a near synonym for “qualia”. And people aren’t good at making inferences from their qualia. People generally and incorrectly assume that colours are objective properties (hence rhe consternation caused , amongst some, by the
dress illusion
).
That’s called naive realism, and it’s scientifically wrong.
According to science , our senses are not an open window on the world that portrays it exactly as it is. Instead , the sensory centres of our brains are connected the outside world by a complex causal chain, during which information, already limited by our sensory modalities, is filtered and reprocessed in various ways.
So scientific accounts of perception require there to be a way-we-perceive-things...quite possibly , an individual one. Which might as well be called “qualia” as anything else. (Of course , such a scientific quale isn’t immaterial by definition. Despite what people keep saying, qualia aren’t defined as immaterial).
I wouldn’t expect a theory of colour qualia to re emerge out of nowhere, because naive realism about colour is so pervasive. On the other hand, no one is naively realistic about tastes, smells etc. Everyone knows that tastes vary.
No. Consider religion and belief in the supernatural. Due to the existence of pareidolia and other psychological phenomena, people may exhibit a shared set of psychological mechanisms that cause them to mistakenly infer the presence of nonphysical or supernatural entities where there are none. While I believe culture and experience play a significant role in shaping the spread and persistence of supernatural beliefs, such beliefs are built on the foundations of psychological systems people share in common. Even if culture and learning were wiped out, due to the nature of human psychology it is likely that such mistakes would emerge yet again. People would once again see faces in the clouds and think that there’s someone up there.
So too, I suspect, people would fall into the same phenomenological quicksand with respect to many of the problems in philosophy. Even if we stopped teaching philosophy and all discussion of qualia vanished, I would not be surprised to find the notion emerge once again. People are not good at making inferences about what the world is like based on their phenomenology. I mean no disrespect, but your account sounds far more like the testimony of a religious convert than a robust philosophical argument for the existence of qualia. Take this blunt remark:
I’ve spent a lot of time discussing religion with theists, and one could readily swap out “consciousness and qualia” for “Jesus” our “God”: “I know for certain that [God] exist[s].” I don’t know for certain that qualia don’t exist. I don’t know for certain that God doesn’t exist. I don’t generally make a point of telling others that I know something “for certain,” and if I did, I think I would appreciate if someone else suggested to me, hopefully kindly, that perhaps my declaration that I know something for certain serves more to convince myself than to convince others.
I take the hallmark of a good idea to be its utility. The notion of qualia has no value. On the contrary, I see it as a product of confusions and mistakes born of overconfidence in our intuitions and phenomenology and to the poor methods of academic philosophy, which serve to anoint such errors with the superficial appearance that they are backed by intellectual rigor.
I’d believe in qualia if and when the concept appears meaningful and when it can figure into our best scientific explanations of what the world is like. That is, I’d accept it if it were a useful feature of our explanations/allowed use to make more accurate predictions than alternative models that didn’t posit qualia.
I take you’d likely disagree, and that’s totally fine with me. But if we survive this century and colonize the stars, it will be due to knowledge and discoveries that pay their way by allowing us to understand and anticipate the world around us, and augment it to our ends. It will not be due to the notion of qualia, which will be little more than a footnote buried deep in the pages of some galactic empire’s archives.
Hey, glad you saw my post and all that. Yes, I know about religion and people having unexplainable supernatural experiences. I don’t have anything like that, and I think people who daydreamed up a supernatural experience shouldn’t have literal certainty, just high confidence. (you’d also expect some high inconsistency in people who recount supernatural events. which unfortunately is probably true for qualia currently too, due to similar levels of how society spreads beliefs)
There is irony in using ‘convert’ when I was unconverted from believing these things by philosophical confusion, and then later untangled myself. Yes, you could go swap out any ‘certainty’ claim with any other words and mock the result. Sure, I guess no one can say ‘certain’ about anything.
“I think I would appreciate if someone else suggested to me, hopefully kindly, that perhaps my declaration that I know something for certain serves more to convince myself than to convince others.” My use of certainty is about honestly communicating strength of belief etc., not being hyperbolic or exaggerating. Yes I understand that many people exaggerate and lie about ‘certain’ things all the time so I trust other people’s “for certain” claims less. It doesn’t mean I should then reduce my own quality of claims to try to cater to the average, that makes no sense. (like, if I said it wasn’t certain, wouldn’t that be room for you to claim it’s a delusion anyway?) Like, the nature of consciousness/qualia is that someone who’s conscious/has qualia is never “uncertain” they are conscious (unlike with free will where there isn’t that level of certainty).
I think I mentioned it before but it seems perfectly rational if someone who doesn’t have qualia is confused by the whole thing. A “robust philosophical argument” isn’t possible, only some statistical one. (the same way that, if you didn’t understand some music’s appeal while a majority of other people did, the response to try to convince you could never be a robust philosophical argument.)
Despite that, I wish to convey that consciousness-related stuff is really about something meaningful and not a religious dream, and that it is very likely possible to make “more accurate predictions”, even though the actual topics relating to those predictions are usually really insignificant. (if consciousness had a major role to play in intelligence, for example, the world would still exhibit that with looking at intelligence only and there’d be likely other correlations to notice, although you might not be able to draw the connection to consciousness directly.)
debating this subject seems ultimately not very relevant to people’s actions or prosperity, yes.
nah
The idea that everything must be useful to explain something else doesn’t work unless you have a core things that need explaining, but are not themselves explanatory posits...basic facts...sometimes called.phenomena.
So qualia don’t have to sit in the category of things-that-do-explaining , because there is another category of things-that-need-explaining.
“Phenomena” (literally meaning appearances ) is a near synonym for “qualia”. And people aren’t good at making inferences from their qualia. People generally and incorrectly assume that colours are objective properties (hence rhe consternation caused , amongst some, by the dress illusion ).
That’s called naive realism, and it’s scientifically wrong.
According to science , our senses are not an open window on the world that portrays it exactly as it is. Instead , the sensory centres of our brains are connected the outside world by a complex causal chain, during which information, already limited by our sensory modalities, is filtered and reprocessed in various ways.
So scientific accounts of perception require there to be a way-we-perceive-things...quite possibly , an individual one. Which might as well be called “qualia” as anything else. (Of course , such a scientific quale isn’t immaterial by definition. Despite what people keep saying, qualia aren’t defined as immaterial).
I wouldn’t expect a theory of colour qualia to re emerge out of nowhere, because naive realism about colour is so pervasive. On the other hand, no one is naively realistic about tastes, smells etc. Everyone knows that tastes vary.