I failed to understand what qualia were. Their attempts at explanation failed to engage with anything in my introspection, and in some cases seemed like word salad. I was eventually led to the conclusion that one of the following was true: (a) I am too dumb to understand qualia. Probably not true, since I am smart enough for most things. (B) It’s one of those wooly concepts that continental philosophers like, and doesn’t actually have a referent. Probably not true, since down-to-earth philosophers, like Dennet or Ned Block, talk about it. (C) my cognition is such that I don’t have what they were trying to point at.
When you see the color red, what is that like? When you run your hand over something rough and bumpy, what is that like? When you taste salt, what is that like?
I’m not actually sure I’d argue qualia are particularly different from “the experience of sensation” (but, I think they are different from “sensation”).
(I notice other people in this thread, who are talking about qualia and asking you questions, seem to be asking different questions than the ones I’d ask, so I’m still not sure even the “obviously qualia!” people are talking about the same thing)
Some quotes of yours I wanted to respond to:
> So what happens if you hallucinate a color? When that happens, is there anything red, any “redness” or “experience of redness” there?
There is nothing red, there is no redness, but there is an experience of redness. It’s just another case of my brain lying to me, like telling me I don’t have a blind spot, or have color vision all the way to the periphery.
and
qualia are a kind of tag on top of perceptions, that says “This is real, reason on that basis.” I don’t have that tag, so it’s easier for me to believe that my mind has constructed reality from sense data, rather than that I directly perceive it.
Note that I don’t think of qualia as having anything to do with things being real. I think qualia is pretty close to just meaning “experience of sensation”. Insofar as I have a tag-connected-with-my-perceptions, it’s more like “it matters to me that I experience perceiving this.” (I usually think of this as most important for “I experience perceiving happiness, excitement, sadness, fear, i.e. emotions with positive or negative valence)
I think sensation is different from experience-of-sensation. A thermostat has sensation of temperature, but I would be very surprised if it had an experience of sensation (I think when I feel “hot” or “cold”, there is an experience of what-that-feels like that I think requires some kind of mental representation, and I don’t think thermostats can have temperature representations)
Neither, it means “understand semantically”.
what does “get the point” mean? Are you saying you failed to understand what “qualia” means , or.failed to understand why qualia are significant?
I failed to understand what qualia were. Their attempts at explanation failed to engage with anything in my introspection, and in some cases seemed like word salad. I was eventually led to the conclusion that one of the following was true: (a) I am too dumb to understand qualia. Probably not true, since I am smart enough for most things. (B) It’s one of those wooly concepts that continental philosophers like, and doesn’t actually have a referent. Probably not true, since down-to-earth philosophers, like Dennet or Ned Block, talk about it. (C) my cognition is such that I don’t have what they were trying to point at.
D) the idea that the word must mean something weird, since it is a strange word—it cannot be an unfamilar term for something familiar.
You said you had the experience of redness. I told you that’s a quale. Why didn’t that tell you what “qualia” means?
When you see the color red, what is that like? When you run your hand over something rough and bumpy, what is that like? When you taste salt, what is that like?
I’m not actually sure I’d argue qualia are particularly different from “the experience of sensation” (but, I think they are different from “sensation”).
(I notice other people in this thread, who are talking about qualia and asking you questions, seem to be asking different questions than the ones I’d ask, so I’m still not sure even the “obviously qualia!” people are talking about the same thing)
Some quotes of yours I wanted to respond to:
and
Note that I don’t think of qualia as having anything to do with things being real. I think qualia is pretty close to just meaning “experience of sensation”. Insofar as I have a tag-connected-with-my-perceptions, it’s more like “it matters to me that I experience perceiving this.” (I usually think of this as most important for “I experience perceiving happiness, excitement, sadness, fear, i.e. emotions with positive or negative valence)
I think sensation is different from experience-of-sensation. A thermostat has sensation of temperature, but I would be very surprised if it had an experience of sensation (I think when I feel “hot” or “cold”, there is an experience of what-that-feels like that I think requires some kind of mental representation, and I don’t think thermostats can have temperature representations)
To be clear, the thing the zombies argument is about is explicitly not the thing that caused (only) by ability to have a mental representation.