Satisfactory for whom? I use examples because they are sufficient to get the point across to people who aren’t too biased.
It’s not satisfactory to me. Does this mean I am “too biased?” That seems like a potentially unjustified presumption to make, and not a fair way to have a discussion with others who might disagree with you.
Anyone could offer a definition then state in advance that anyone who doesn’t accept it is “too biased” then, when someone says they don’t accept it say “see, I told you so,” even if an unbiased person would judge the definition to be inadequate.
In any case, I’m not making a selective demand for rigor. Even if I were, I’d probably just shrug and raise the challenge, anyway. I don’t know what people talking about qualia are talking about. But I am also pretty confident they don’t know what they are talking about. I suspect qualia is a pseudoconcept invented by philosophers, and that to the extent that we adequately characterize it, it faces pretty serious challenges.
Where are the calls for rigourous definitions of “matter”, “computation”, etc?
The main person I discuss illusionism and consciousness with specializes in philosophy of computation and philosophy of science, with an emphasis on broad metaphysical questions. We both endorse illusionism, and have for years, so there’s little to say there. Instead, regularly we mostly discuss their views on computation and metaphysics, and I’m often asked to read their papers on these topics. So, in the past few years, I have read significantly more work on what computers and matter are than I have on consciousness.
Thus, ironically, I have more discussions about rigorous attempts to define computers and features of the external world than I do about consciousness. So if you think that, in denying qualia, I am somehow failing to apply a similar degree of rigor as I do to other ideas, you could not have picked worse examples. It is not the case that I’m especially tough on the notion of qualia.
It’s not satisfactory to me. Does this mean I am “too biased?” That seems like a potentially unjustified presumption to make, and not a fair way to have a discussion with others who might disagree with you.
Anyone could offer a definition then state in advance that anyone who doesn’t accept it is “too biased” then, when someone says they don’t accept it say “see, I told you so,” even if an unbiased person would judge the definition to be inadequate.
In any case, I’m not making a selective demand for rigor. Even if I were, I’d probably just shrug and raise the challenge, anyway. I don’t know what people talking about qualia are talking about. But I am also pretty confident they don’t know what they are talking about. I suspect qualia is a pseudoconcept invented by philosophers, and that to the extent that we adequately characterize it, it faces pretty serious challenges.
The main person I discuss illusionism and consciousness with specializes in philosophy of computation and philosophy of science, with an emphasis on broad metaphysical questions. We both endorse illusionism, and have for years, so there’s little to say there. Instead, regularly we mostly discuss their views on computation and metaphysics, and I’m often asked to read their papers on these topics. So, in the past few years, I have read significantly more work on what computers and matter are than I have on consciousness.
Thus, ironically, I have more discussions about rigorous attempts to define computers and features of the external world than I do about consciousness. So if you think that, in denying qualia, I am somehow failing to apply a similar degree of rigor as I do to other ideas, you could not have picked worse examples. It is not the case that I’m especially tough on the notion of qualia.