Interesting experiment. It reminds me of an experiment where subjects wore glasses that turned world upside down (really, right side up for the projection on our eye) and eventually they adjusted so the world looked upside down when taking off the glasses.
What do you think a “yes” or “no” in your experiment would mean?
On waking up and finding your visual world highly anomalous, you should exclaim “Egad! Something has happened! Either my qualia have been inverted or my memory-linked qualia-reactions have been inverted. I wonder which!”
I know about the experiment you mention, and it partly motivated my suggestion; I just subjectively find “yellowness” and “blueness” more qualious than “upness” or “leftness”.
In my experiment, “yes” would mean that there would be no dissonance between memories and perceptions, that I would just not feel that the trees are red or purple, but green, and find the world “normal”. That I would, one day, cease to feel the need to get rid of the color-changing glasses, and my aesthetic preferences would remain the same as they were in the pre-glasses period. I think it’s likely—based on the other subjects’ experiences with upside-down glasses—that it would happen after a while, but the experience itself may be more interesting than the sole yes/no result, because it is undescribable. That’s one problem with qualia: they are outside the realm of things which can be described. Describing qualia is like describing flavour of an unknown exotic fruit: no matter how much you try, other people wouldn’t understand until they degust it themselves.
Interesting experiment. It reminds me of an experiment where subjects wore glasses that turned world upside down (really, right side up for the projection on our eye) and eventually they adjusted so the world looked upside down when taking off the glasses.
What do you think a “yes” or “no” in your experiment would mean?
Note, Dennett says in Quining Qualia :
I know about the experiment you mention, and it partly motivated my suggestion; I just subjectively find “yellowness” and “blueness” more qualious than “upness” or “leftness”.
In my experiment, “yes” would mean that there would be no dissonance between memories and perceptions, that I would just not feel that the trees are red or purple, but green, and find the world “normal”. That I would, one day, cease to feel the need to get rid of the color-changing glasses, and my aesthetic preferences would remain the same as they were in the pre-glasses period. I think it’s likely—based on the other subjects’ experiences with upside-down glasses—that it would happen after a while, but the experience itself may be more interesting than the sole yes/no result, because it is undescribable. That’s one problem with qualia: they are outside the realm of things which can be described. Describing qualia is like describing flavour of an unknown exotic fruit: no matter how much you try, other people wouldn’t understand until they degust it themselves.