the neuron firing pattern is presumably the cause of the quale, it’s certainly not the quale itself.
And you seem to consider this self-evident. Well, it seemed self-evident to me that Martha’s physical reaction would ‘be’ a quale. So where do we go from there?
(Suppose your neurons reacted all the time the way they do now when you see orange light, except that they couldn’t connect it to anything else—no similarities, no differences, no links of any kind. Would you see anything?)
You’ve heard of functionalism, right? You’ve browsed the SEP entry?
Have you also read the mini-sequence I linked? In the grandparent I said “physical reaction” instead of “functional”, which seems like a mistake on my part, but I assumed you had some vague idea of where I’m coming from.
Who said anything about our intuitions (except you, of course)?
You keep making statements like,
And you seem to consider this self-evident. Well, it seemed self-evident to me that Martha’s physical reaction would ‘be’ a quale. So where do we go from there?
(Suppose your neurons reacted all the time the way they do now when you see orange light, except that they couldn’t connect it to anything else—no similarities, no differences, no links of any kind. Would you see anything?)
I guess you need to do some more thinking to straighten out your views on qualia.
Goodnight, Aaron Swartz.
downvoted posthumously.
Let’s back up for a second:
You’ve heard of functionalism, right? You’ve browsed the SEP entry?
Have you also read the mini-sequence I linked? In the grandparent I said “physical reaction” instead of “functional”, which seems like a mistake on my part, but I assumed you had some vague idea of where I’m coming from.
Or you do. You claim the truth of your claims is self-evident, yet it is not evident to, say, hairyfigment, or Eliezer, or me for that matter.
If I may ask, have you always held this belief, or do you recall being persuaded of it at some point? If so, what convinced you?