If you ask me a question about, umm, I’m not sure the exact term, let’s say “3rd-person-observable properties of the physical world that have something to do with the human brain”—questions like “When humans emit self-reports about their own conscious experience, why do they often describe it as having properties A,B,C?” or “When humans move their mouths and say words on the topic of ‘qualia’, why do they often describe it as having properties X,Y,Z?”—then I feel like I’m on pretty firm ground, and that I’m in my comfort zone, and that I’m able to answer such questions, at least in broad outline and to some extent at a pretty gory level of detail. (Some broad-outline ingredients are in my old post here, and I’m open to further discussion as time permits.)
BUT, I feel like that’s probably not the game you want to play here. My guess is that, even if I perfectly nail every one of those “3rd-person” questions above, you would still say that I haven’t even begun to engage with the nature of qualia, that I’m missing the forest for the trees, whatever. (I notice that I’m putting words in your mouth; feel free to disagree.)
If I’m correct so far, then this is a more basic disagreement about the nature of consciousness and how to think about it and learn about it etc. You can see my “wristwatch” discussion here for basically where I’m coming from. But I’m not too interested in hashing out that disagreement, sorry. For me, it’s vaguely in the same category as arguing with a theology professor about whether God exists (I’m an atheist): My position is “Y’know, I really truly think I’m right about this, but there’s a gazillion pages of technical literature on this topic, and I’ve read practically none of it, and my experience strongly suggests that we’re not going to make any meaningful progress on this disagreement in the amount of time that I’m willing to spend talking about it.” :-P Sorry!
Thanks for your reply.
If you ask me a question about, umm, I’m not sure the exact term, let’s say “3rd-person-observable properties of the physical world that have something to do with the human brain”—questions like “When humans emit self-reports about their own conscious experience, why do they often describe it as having properties A,B,C?” or “When humans move their mouths and say words on the topic of ‘qualia’, why do they often describe it as having properties X,Y,Z?”—then I feel like I’m on pretty firm ground, and that I’m in my comfort zone, and that I’m able to answer such questions, at least in broad outline and to some extent at a pretty gory level of detail. (Some broad-outline ingredients are in my old post here, and I’m open to further discussion as time permits.)
BUT, I feel like that’s probably not the game you want to play here. My guess is that, even if I perfectly nail every one of those “3rd-person” questions above, you would still say that I haven’t even begun to engage with the nature of qualia, that I’m missing the forest for the trees, whatever. (I notice that I’m putting words in your mouth; feel free to disagree.)
If I’m correct so far, then this is a more basic disagreement about the nature of consciousness and how to think about it and learn about it etc. You can see my “wristwatch” discussion here for basically where I’m coming from. But I’m not too interested in hashing out that disagreement, sorry. For me, it’s vaguely in the same category as arguing with a theology professor about whether God exists (I’m an atheist): My position is “Y’know, I really truly think I’m right about this, but there’s a gazillion pages of technical literature on this topic, and I’ve read practically none of it, and my experience strongly suggests that we’re not going to make any meaningful progress on this disagreement in the amount of time that I’m willing to spend talking about it.” :-P Sorry!