There are less drastic ways of explaining qualiaphobia.
Firstly, to get qualia you have to stop believing in naive realism. Naive realism means that colours are taken to be painted on the surfaces of objects and perceived exactly as they are. People vary a lot about in how easy they find it to get away from naive realism
Secondly subjective feelings are what scientists are trained to ignore in favour of 3rd person perspective. That’s a perfectly good methodological rule in the most areas of science, but it tends to get exaggerated into a fact of reality - - “feels don’t real”. Consciousness isn’t a typical scientific field—subjectivity is central.
First, a side note: I don’t like the word “qualiaphobia” for what we’re discussing here, because (a) I’m not afraid of qualia, I just don’t think I have them, and (b) it smacks of homophobia or transphobia, which have a negative connotation.
More later— your comments provoke me to have many thoughts, which I’ll have to finish thinking later, because I have to go to work now.
“To get qualia you have to stop believing in naive realism.” Does “get” mean “experience” or “acquire”? In any event, I don’t believe in naive realism. (if I have correctly understood what naive realism means). I am quite aware of the enormous processing it takes to keep object colors constant under changes in illumination. I further believe that many things that we feel are “out there” are in fact concocted by our brain to make the world easier to understand. That includes the ideas of objects that have properties, kinds of objects, people who have beliefs, desires and intentions, and the passage of time, None of these appear in true reality, but everybody thinks with them, because otherwise it’s too hard.
“Feelings are what scientists are trained to ignore.” It’s true that I was raised as a scientist, but I’ve believed in the validity of subjective evidence since my sophomore year at college, when I took a cognitive science class and had my mind expanded. That was also about the time people tried to explain qualia to me, and my first experience of completely failing to get the point.
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)
There are less drastic ways of explaining qualiaphobia.
Firstly, to get qualia you have to stop believing in naive realism. Naive realism means that colours are taken to be painted on the surfaces of objects and perceived exactly as they are. People vary a lot about in how easy they find it to get away from naive realism
Secondly subjective feelings are what scientists are trained to ignore in favour of 3rd person perspective. That’s a perfectly good methodological rule in the most areas of science, but it tends to get exaggerated into a fact of reality - - “feels don’t real”. Consciousness isn’t a typical scientific field—subjectivity is central.
First, a side note: I don’t like the word “qualiaphobia” for what we’re discussing here, because (a) I’m not afraid of qualia, I just don’t think I have them, and (b) it smacks of homophobia or transphobia, which have a negative connotation.
More later— your comments provoke me to have many thoughts, which I’ll have to finish thinking later, because I have to go to work now.
“To get qualia you have to stop believing in naive realism.” Does “get” mean “experience” or “acquire”? In any event, I don’t believe in naive realism. (if I have correctly understood what naive realism means). I am quite aware of the enormous processing it takes to keep object colors constant under changes in illumination. I further believe that many things that we feel are “out there” are in fact concocted by our brain to make the world easier to understand. That includes the ideas of objects that have properties, kinds of objects, people who have beliefs, desires and intentions, and the passage of time, None of these appear in true reality, but everybody thinks with them, because otherwise it’s too hard.
“Feelings are what scientists are trained to ignore.” It’s true that I was raised as a scientist, but I’ve believed in the validity of subjective evidence since my sophomore year at college, when I took a cognitive science class and had my mind expanded. That was also about the time people tried to explain qualia to me, and my first experience of completely failing to get the point.
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.