An example would be the way lemons taste to you, as opposed to their chemical composition. Other examples: the way a sunset looks, the way sandpaper feels, the smell of coffee, a stomach-ache a sharp pain, such as sitting on a thumbtack. There are therefore qualia corresponding to all the traditional sensory modalities, although nothing need be sensed to have a quale — they occur in dreams, for instance. Some people include the “phenomenal feels” of emotional states along with qualia, although these are something of an edge case. Phenomenal states or qualia form one of three large and overlapping categories of mental states, the others being cognitive/intentional states and states of volition, will and decision-making.
I decided to look back to see how I got into this fruitless conversation. I think it started with this question from dfranke:
Are you able to make any sense of the concept of “computing red”?
I responded flippantly that I was unable to make any sense of the concept of experiencing red. I didn’t make clear that what I was really objecting to was the reification of “red”. I certainly can imagine any person with the same kindergarten education as myself, recognizing a red apple, or a red light, or a red object of indeterminate shape. I can imagine someone classifying the sensation of a tack in the bottom as painful, and someone identifying the taste of lemon juice as sour.
I also have no trouble at all imagining that a robot trained by a naive Bayes classifier (rather than by a kindergarden teacher named Mrs. Weiskopf), could easily recognize those red things as ‘red’, the piercing thing as ‘painful’, and the lemon thing as ‘sour’. Yet people keep suggesting that robots can’t have qualia.
So, I respectfully suggest that your examples are not successfully communicating to me what it is about qualia that you know you have, you suspect that I have, and you (or maybe it is just dfranke) claim a robot cannot have.
I also have no trouble at all imagining that a robot trained by a naive Bayes classifier (rather than by a kindergarden teacher named Mrs. Weiskopf), could easily recognize those red things as ‘red’, the piercing thing as ‘painful’, and the lemon thing as ‘sour’. Yet people keep suggesting that robots can’t have qualia.
Agreed. As you illustrate here, a lot of talk about “qualia” and “subjective experiences” can easily be interpreted as everyday talk about perception and discrimination between different real things out there in the physical world (e.g. there really is something about the chemistry which we are discriminating when we notice how the lemon tastes, which a robot could, if he has the right sensors, just as easily discriminate), and furthermore I think that this everyday interpretation is the main part of what makes such talk seem obviously true. That is, the philosophical talk about qualia is powered by ambiguity about what is being said, by equivocation between the everyday meaning and the “philosophical” meaning.
Equivocation—saying one thing which is accepted as true, then silently shifting its meaning in order to draw a false conclusion—is a huge problem in philosophical discussion, and it’s hard to deal with precisely because the meaning shifts are not easy to notice, since the words remain the same.
An example would be the way lemons taste to you, as opposed to their chemical composition. Other examples: the way a sunset looks, the way sandpaper feels, the smell of coffee, a stomach-ache a sharp pain, such as sitting on a thumbtack. There are therefore qualia corresponding to all the traditional sensory modalities, although nothing need be sensed to have a quale — they occur in dreams, for instance. Some people include the “phenomenal feels” of emotional states along with qualia, although these are something of an edge case. Phenomenal states or qualia form one of three large and overlapping categories of mental states, the others being cognitive/intentional states and states of volition, will and decision-making.
I decided to look back to see how I got into this fruitless conversation. I think it started with this question from dfranke:
I responded flippantly that I was unable to make any sense of the concept of experiencing red. I didn’t make clear that what I was really objecting to was the reification of “red”. I certainly can imagine any person with the same kindergarten education as myself, recognizing a red apple, or a red light, or a red object of indeterminate shape. I can imagine someone classifying the sensation of a tack in the bottom as painful, and someone identifying the taste of lemon juice as sour.
I also have no trouble at all imagining that a robot trained by a naive Bayes classifier (rather than by a kindergarden teacher named Mrs. Weiskopf), could easily recognize those red things as ‘red’, the piercing thing as ‘painful’, and the lemon thing as ‘sour’. Yet people keep suggesting that robots can’t have qualia.
So, I respectfully suggest that your examples are not successfully communicating to me what it is about qualia that you know you have, you suspect that I have, and you (or maybe it is just dfranke) claim a robot cannot have.
Agreed. As you illustrate here, a lot of talk about “qualia” and “subjective experiences” can easily be interpreted as everyday talk about perception and discrimination between different real things out there in the physical world (e.g. there really is something about the chemistry which we are discriminating when we notice how the lemon tastes, which a robot could, if he has the right sensors, just as easily discriminate), and furthermore I think that this everyday interpretation is the main part of what makes such talk seem obviously true. That is, the philosophical talk about qualia is powered by ambiguity about what is being said, by equivocation between the everyday meaning and the “philosophical” meaning.
Equivocation—saying one thing which is accepted as true, then silently shifting its meaning in order to draw a false conclusion—is a huge problem in philosophical discussion, and it’s hard to deal with precisely because the meaning shifts are not easy to notice, since the words remain the same.
Most qualiaohiic philosophers are explicit that qualia are not just discriminative behaviours or abilities.