you keep using language which makes it sound like you’re looking for real “blueness” or something.
Of course I am. I emphasize again that the really undeniable reality (though you are apparently denying it) is the individual shade of color. Color names like blue are fuzzy in scope. But the concrete instances of color which they are intended to categorize very definitely exist.
Your second paragraph is a fascinating exercise in constructing a way to keep colors out of the realm of the real. First, assert that there is no such thing as blueness, except something not actually blue which has the functional properties of blueness:
a way of distinguishing a certain kind of sight experience
Second, say that a thing is blue only if it has the property of causing the experience of blueness:
Jeans are blue in virtue of the fact that when a subject looks at them they experience blueness
Finally, observe that the cognitively relevant physical properties of the brain are very different from the reflectively relevant physical properties of surfaces, and triumphantly conclude that the blueness in the external world is nothing like the experienced blueness in the brain,
so how could that kind of blueness be found within experience?
The physicalist vision of a world made solely of quantity, space, and causality has a very strong grip on the imaginations of those who can wield the formalism. But arguments like this really are an exercise in denying reality. The physicalist ontology is a subset of the real ontology and you can see some of what’s missing whenever you open your eyes. Just because you don’t yet know how to think about it precisely is no excuse for denying that it’s there.
Look, an annotated repetition of my argument followed by
The physicalist vision of a world made solely of quantity, space, and causality has a very strong grip on the imaginations of those who can wield the formalism. But arguments like this really are an exercise in denying reality.
amounts to a kind of circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. You don’t actually dispute any claim I make you just ‘diagnosis’ it. It is mildly annoying and throughly unhelpful. Are you really denying that there is a difference between blueness as a phenomenal quality and blueness understood as the reflective quality of an object? Even if you want to say that the experience of looking at the sky is “blue” experience do you actually hold that experience is blue in the same way that the sky is? Do think that experiences have reflective properties? Do the electrons in the atoms of experience drop out of higher energy levels and release photons of different wavelengths?
When we talk about any phenomenal entity, quality or event are we not talking about subjective experience? Isn’t the definition phenomenology the study of things as we experience them and not the things in themselves? If so, when we talk about the phenomenon of blueness are we not talking about a kind of experience?
Anyway, I don’t even understand how I’m the dogmatic physicalist in this discussion. I’m the one willing to posit fundamental laws that relate brain states to subjective experience. You’re the one positing a physical entity with no empirical evidence, which somehow, through the handwaving magic of quantum physics is subjective experience. This is a big point: even if it is the case that a substantial part of subjective experience is accounted for by something other than neuron firings we will still need a separate set of laws to relate the brain state to subjective experience.
Are you really denying that there is a difference between blueness as a phenomenal quality and blueness understood as the reflective quality of an object? Even if you want to say that the experience of looking at the sky is “blue” experience do you actually hold that experience is blue in the same way that the sky is?
The appropriate use of the words has changed along with our ontology. In a mode of naive realism, in which appearances are not distinguished from their external causes, then the blueness of the sky is the blueness of the experience of the sky, because no distinction is being made between sky and experience of sky. However, once you get to the point of distinguishing between the experienced sky and the physical sky, then blueness in the original sense is only a property of the experienced sky, and the new “blueness” of reflective physics is only a property of the physical sky.
The problem now is that in the attempt to reduce experience to physics as well, the original sense of blueness is being banished entirely from discussion, solely in order to achieve the reduction. While it may be annoying to be lectured about how you’re evading the question, you say outright
there’s no such thing as blueness except as a way of distinguishing a certain kind of sight experience
which I take to be an explicit repudiation of the naive concept of blueness as applying to anything, physical sky or experienced sky. And you also said, two steps back,
This is all to deny the motivation of looking past neuron firings to find qualia
which suggests that you do understand this motivation, and are deliberately trying to route around it.
Of course I am. I emphasize again that the really undeniable reality (though you are apparently denying it) is the individual shade of color. Color names like blue are fuzzy in scope. But the concrete instances of color which they are intended to categorize very definitely exist.
Your second paragraph is a fascinating exercise in constructing a way to keep colors out of the realm of the real. First, assert that there is no such thing as blueness, except something not actually blue which has the functional properties of blueness:
Second, say that a thing is blue only if it has the property of causing the experience of blueness:
Finally, observe that the cognitively relevant physical properties of the brain are very different from the reflectively relevant physical properties of surfaces, and triumphantly conclude that the blueness in the external world is nothing like the experienced blueness in the brain,
The physicalist vision of a world made solely of quantity, space, and causality has a very strong grip on the imaginations of those who can wield the formalism. But arguments like this really are an exercise in denying reality. The physicalist ontology is a subset of the real ontology and you can see some of what’s missing whenever you open your eyes. Just because you don’t yet know how to think about it precisely is no excuse for denying that it’s there.
Look, an annotated repetition of my argument followed by
amounts to a kind of circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. You don’t actually dispute any claim I make you just ‘diagnosis’ it. It is mildly annoying and throughly unhelpful. Are you really denying that there is a difference between blueness as a phenomenal quality and blueness understood as the reflective quality of an object? Even if you want to say that the experience of looking at the sky is “blue” experience do you actually hold that experience is blue in the same way that the sky is? Do think that experiences have reflective properties? Do the electrons in the atoms of experience drop out of higher energy levels and release photons of different wavelengths?
When we talk about any phenomenal entity, quality or event are we not talking about subjective experience? Isn’t the definition phenomenology the study of things as we experience them and not the things in themselves? If so, when we talk about the phenomenon of blueness are we not talking about a kind of experience?
Anyway, I don’t even understand how I’m the dogmatic physicalist in this discussion. I’m the one willing to posit fundamental laws that relate brain states to subjective experience. You’re the one positing a physical entity with no empirical evidence, which somehow, through the handwaving magic of quantum physics is subjective experience. This is a big point: even if it is the case that a substantial part of subjective experience is accounted for by something other than neuron firings we will still need a separate set of laws to relate the brain state to subjective experience.
The appropriate use of the words has changed along with our ontology. In a mode of naive realism, in which appearances are not distinguished from their external causes, then the blueness of the sky is the blueness of the experience of the sky, because no distinction is being made between sky and experience of sky. However, once you get to the point of distinguishing between the experienced sky and the physical sky, then blueness in the original sense is only a property of the experienced sky, and the new “blueness” of reflective physics is only a property of the physical sky.
The problem now is that in the attempt to reduce experience to physics as well, the original sense of blueness is being banished entirely from discussion, solely in order to achieve the reduction. While it may be annoying to be lectured about how you’re evading the question, you say outright
which I take to be an explicit repudiation of the naive concept of blueness as applying to anything, physical sky or experienced sky. And you also said, two steps back,
which suggests that you do understand this motivation, and are deliberately trying to route around it.