My orientation to this conversation seems more like “hmm, I’m learning that it is possible the word qualia has a bunch of connotations that I didn’t know it had”, as opposed to “hmm, I was wrong to believe in the-thing-I-was-calling-qualia.”
But I’m not yet sure that these connotations are actually universal – the wikipedia article opens with:
In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term qualia derives from the Latinneuter plural form (qualia) of the Latin adjective quālis(Latin pronunciation: [ˈkʷaːlɪs]) meaning “of what sort” or “of what kind” in a specific instance, like “what it is like to taste a specific apple, this particular apple now”.
Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to “propositional attitudes”,[1] where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.
Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett once suggested that qualia was “an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us”.[2]
Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Consequently, the nature and existence of various definitions of qualia remain controversial because they are not verifiable.
Later on, it notes the three characteristics (ineffable/private/intrinsic) that Dennett listed.
But this looks more like an accident of history than something intrinsic to the term. The opening paragraphs defined qualia the way I naively expected it to be defined.
My impression looking at the various defintions and discussion is not that qualia was defined in this specific fashion, so much as various people trying to grapple with a confusing problem generated various possible definitions and rules for it, and some of those turned out to be false once we came up with better understanding.
I can see where you’re coming from with the soul analogy, but I’m not sure if it’s more like the soul analogy, or more like “One early philosopher defined ‘a human’ as a featherless biped, and then a later one said “dude, look at this featherless chicken I just made” and they realized the definition was silly.
I guess my question here is – do you have a suggestion for a replacement word for “the particular kind of observation that gets made by an entity that actually gets to experience the perception”? This still seems importantly different from “just a perception”, since very simple robots and thermostats or whatever can be said to have those. I don’t really care whether they are inherently private, ineffable or intrinsic, and whether Daniel Dennett was able to eff them seems more like a historical curiosity to me.
The wikipedia article specifically says that they people argue a lot over the definitions:
There are many definitions of qualia, which have changed over time. One of the simpler, broader definitions is: “The ‘what it is like’ character of mental states. The way it feels to have mental states such as pain, seeing red, smelling a rose, etc.”
That definition there is the one I’m generally using, and the one which seems important to have a word for. This seems more like a political/coordination question of “is it easier to invent a new word and gain traction for it, or get everyone on page about ‘actually, they’re totally in principle effable, you just might need to be a kind of mind different than a current-generation-human to properly eff them.’
It does seem to me something like “I expect the sort of mind that is capable of viewing qualia of other people would be sufficiently different from a human mind that it may still be fair to call them ‘private/ineffable among humans.’”
I know I’m not being as clear as I could possibly be, and at some points I sort of feel like just throwing “Quining Qualia” or Keith Frankish’s articles or a whole bunch of other blog posts at people and say, “Please just read this and re-read it until you have a very distinct intuition about what I am saying.” But I know that that type of debate is not helpful.
I think I have a OK-to-good understanding of what you are saying. My model of your reply is something like this,
“Your claim is that qualia don’t exist because nothing with these three properties exists (ineffability/private/intrinsic), but it’s not clear to me that these three properties are universally identified with qualia. When I go to Wikipedia or other sources, they usually identify qualia with ‘what it’s like’ rather than these three very specific things that Daniel Dennett happened to list once. So, I still think that I am pointing to something real when I talk about ‘what it’s like’ and you are only disputing a perhaps-strawman version of qualia.”
Please correct me if this model of you is inaccurate.
I recognize what you are saying, and I agree with the place you are coming from. I really do. And furthermore, I really really agree with the idea that we should go further than skepticism and we should always ask more questions even after we have concluded that something doesn’t exist.
However, the place I get off the boat is where you keep talking about how this ‘what it’s like’ thing is actually referring to something coherent in the real world that has a crisp, natural boundary around it. That’s the disagreement.
I don’t think it’s an accident of history either that those properties are identified with qualia. The whole reason Daniel Dennett identified them was because he showed that they were the necessary conclusion of the sort of thought experiments people use for qualia. He spends the whole first several paragraphs justifying them using various intuition pumps in his essay on the matter.
Point being, when you are asked to clarify what ‘what it’s like’ means, you’ll probably start pointing to examples. Like, you might say, “Well, I know what it’s like to see the color green, so that’s an example of a quale.” And Daniel Dennett would then press the person further and go, “OK could you clarify what you mean when you say you ‘know what it’s like to see green’?” and the person would say, “No, I can’t describe it using words. And it’s not clear to me it’s even in the same category of things that can be either, since I can’t possibly conceive of an English sentence that would describe the color green to a blind person.” And then Daniel Dennett would shout, “Aha! So you do believe in ineffability!”
The point of those three properties (actually he lists 4, I think), is not that they are inherently tied to the definition. It’s that the definition is vague, and every time people are pressed to be more clear on what they mean, they start spouting nonsense. Dennett did valid and good deconfusion work where he showed that people go wrong in these four places, and then showed how there’s no physical thing that could possibly allow those four things.
These properties also show up all over the various thought experiments that people use when talking about qualia. For example, Nagel uses the private property in his essay “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” Chalmers uses the intrinsic property when he talks about p-zombies being physically identical to humans in every respect except for qualia. Frank Jackson used the ineffability property when he talked about how Mary the neuroscientist had something missing when she was in the black and white room.
All of this is important to recognize. Because if you still want to say, “But I’m still pointing to something valid and real even if you want to reject this other strawman-entity” then I’m going to treat you like the person who wants to believe in souls even after they’ve been shown that nothing soul-like exists in this universe.
Spouting nonsense is different from being wrong. If I say that there are no rectangles with 5 angles that can be processed pretty straght forwardly because the concept of a rectangle is unproblematic. But if you seek why that statement was made and the person points to a pentagon you will find 5 angles. Now there are polygons with 5 angles. If you give a short word for 5 angle rectangle” it’s correct to say those don’t exists. But if you give an ostensive definition of the shape then it does exist and it’s more to the point to say that it’s not a rectangle rather that it doesn’t exist.
In the details when persons say “what it is like to see green” one could fail to get what they mean or point to. If someone says “look a unicorn” and one has proof that unicorns don’t exist that doesn’t mean that the unicorn reference is not referencing something or that the reference target does not exist. If you end up in a situation where you point at a horse and say “those things do not exist. Look no horn, doesn’t exist” you are not being helpful. If somebody is pointing to a horse and says “look, a unicorn!” and you go “where? I see only horses” you are also not being helpful. Being “motivatedly uncooperative in ostension receiving” is not cool. Say that you made a deal to sell a gold bar in exchange for a unicorn. Then refusing to accept any object as an unicorn woud let you keep your gold bar and you migth be tempted to play dumb.
When people are saying “what it feels like to see green” they are trying to communicate something and failing their assertion by sabotaging their communication doesn’t prove anything. Communication is hard yes but doing too much semantics substitution means you start talking past each other.
My orientation to this conversation seems more like “hmm, I’m learning that it is possible the word qualia has a bunch of connotations that I didn’t know it had”, as opposed to “hmm, I was wrong to believe in the-thing-I-was-calling-qualia.”
But I’m not yet sure that these connotations are actually universal – the wikipedia article opens with:
Later on, it notes the three characteristics (ineffable/private/intrinsic) that Dennett listed.
But this looks more like an accident of history than something intrinsic to the term. The opening paragraphs defined qualia the way I naively expected it to be defined.
My impression looking at the various defintions and discussion is not that qualia was defined in this specific fashion, so much as various people trying to grapple with a confusing problem generated various possible definitions and rules for it, and some of those turned out to be false once we came up with better understanding.
I can see where you’re coming from with the soul analogy, but I’m not sure if it’s more like the soul analogy, or more like “One early philosopher defined ‘a human’ as a featherless biped, and then a later one said “dude, look at this featherless chicken I just made” and they realized the definition was silly.
I guess my question here is – do you have a suggestion for a replacement word for “the particular kind of observation that gets made by an entity that actually gets to experience the perception”? This still seems importantly different from “just a perception”, since very simple robots and thermostats or whatever can be said to have those. I don’t really care whether they are inherently private, ineffable or intrinsic, and whether Daniel Dennett was able to eff them seems more like a historical curiosity to me.
The wikipedia article specifically says that they people argue a lot over the definitions:
That definition there is the one I’m generally using, and the one which seems important to have a word for. This seems more like a political/coordination question of “is it easier to invent a new word and gain traction for it, or get everyone on page about ‘actually, they’re totally in principle effable, you just might need to be a kind of mind different than a current-generation-human to properly eff them.’
It does seem to me something like “I expect the sort of mind that is capable of viewing qualia of other people would be sufficiently different from a human mind that it may still be fair to call them ‘private/ineffable among humans.’”
Thanks for engaging with me on this thing. :)
I know I’m not being as clear as I could possibly be, and at some points I sort of feel like just throwing “Quining Qualia” or Keith Frankish’s articles or a whole bunch of other blog posts at people and say, “Please just read this and re-read it until you have a very distinct intuition about what I am saying.” But I know that that type of debate is not helpful.
I think I have a OK-to-good understanding of what you are saying. My model of your reply is something like this,
“Your claim is that qualia don’t exist because nothing with these three properties exists (ineffability/private/intrinsic), but it’s not clear to me that these three properties are universally identified with qualia. When I go to Wikipedia or other sources, they usually identify qualia with ‘what it’s like’ rather than these three very specific things that Daniel Dennett happened to list once. So, I still think that I am pointing to something real when I talk about ‘what it’s like’ and you are only disputing a perhaps-strawman version of qualia.”
Please correct me if this model of you is inaccurate.
I recognize what you are saying, and I agree with the place you are coming from. I really do. And furthermore, I really really agree with the idea that we should go further than skepticism and we should always ask more questions even after we have concluded that something doesn’t exist.
However, the place I get off the boat is where you keep talking about how this ‘what it’s like’ thing is actually referring to something coherent in the real world that has a crisp, natural boundary around it. That’s the disagreement.
I don’t think it’s an accident of history either that those properties are identified with qualia. The whole reason Daniel Dennett identified them was because he showed that they were the necessary conclusion of the sort of thought experiments people use for qualia. He spends the whole first several paragraphs justifying them using various intuition pumps in his essay on the matter.
Point being, when you are asked to clarify what ‘what it’s like’ means, you’ll probably start pointing to examples. Like, you might say, “Well, I know what it’s like to see the color green, so that’s an example of a quale.” And Daniel Dennett would then press the person further and go, “OK could you clarify what you mean when you say you ‘know what it’s like to see green’?” and the person would say, “No, I can’t describe it using words. And it’s not clear to me it’s even in the same category of things that can be either, since I can’t possibly conceive of an English sentence that would describe the color green to a blind person.” And then Daniel Dennett would shout, “Aha! So you do believe in ineffability!”
The point of those three properties (actually he lists 4, I think), is not that they are inherently tied to the definition. It’s that the definition is vague, and every time people are pressed to be more clear on what they mean, they start spouting nonsense. Dennett did valid and good deconfusion work where he showed that people go wrong in these four places, and then showed how there’s no physical thing that could possibly allow those four things.
These properties also show up all over the various thought experiments that people use when talking about qualia. For example, Nagel uses the private property in his essay “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” Chalmers uses the intrinsic property when he talks about p-zombies being physically identical to humans in every respect except for qualia. Frank Jackson used the ineffability property when he talked about how Mary the neuroscientist had something missing when she was in the black and white room.
All of this is important to recognize. Because if you still want to say, “But I’m still pointing to something valid and real even if you want to reject this other strawman-entity” then I’m going to treat you like the person who wants to believe in souls even after they’ve been shown that nothing soul-like exists in this universe.
Spouting nonsense is different from being wrong. If I say that there are no rectangles with 5 angles that can be processed pretty straght forwardly because the concept of a rectangle is unproblematic. But if you seek why that statement was made and the person points to a pentagon you will find 5 angles. Now there are polygons with 5 angles. If you give a short word for 5 angle rectangle” it’s correct to say those don’t exists. But if you give an ostensive definition of the shape then it does exist and it’s more to the point to say that it’s not a rectangle rather that it doesn’t exist.
In the details when persons say “what it is like to see green” one could fail to get what they mean or point to. If someone says “look a unicorn” and one has proof that unicorns don’t exist that doesn’t mean that the unicorn reference is not referencing something or that the reference target does not exist. If you end up in a situation where you point at a horse and say “those things do not exist. Look no horn, doesn’t exist” you are not being helpful. If somebody is pointing to a horse and says “look, a unicorn!” and you go “where? I see only horses” you are also not being helpful. Being “motivatedly uncooperative in ostension receiving” is not cool. Say that you made a deal to sell a gold bar in exchange for a unicorn. Then refusing to accept any object as an unicorn woud let you keep your gold bar and you migth be tempted to play dumb.
When people are saying “what it feels like to see green” they are trying to communicate something and failing their assertion by sabotaging their communication doesn’t prove anything. Communication is hard yes but doing too much semantics substitution means you start talking past each other.