empirical test for qualia seems impossible pretty much by definition
I completely share your reluctance to start yet another discussion about qualia, but there’s an important meta-issue here. No nontrivial statement about the real world (e.g. the impossibility of something) can ever be true “by definition”, because that would make dictionaries capable of sympathetic magic.
I completely share your reluctance to start yet another discussion about qualia, but there’s an important meta-issue here. No nontrivial statement about the real world (e.g. the impossibility of something) can ever be true “by definition”, because that would make dictionaries capable of sympathetic magic.