As someone who could be described as “pro-qualia”: I think there are still a number of fundamental misconceptions and confusions that people bring to this debate. We could have a more productive dialogue if these confusions were cleared up. I don’t think that clearing up these confusions will make everyone agree with me on everything, but I do think that we would end up talking past each other less if the confusions were addressed.
First, a couple of misconceptions:
1.) Some people think that part of the definition of qualia is that they are necessarily supernatural or non-physical. This is false. A qualia is just a sense perception. That’s it. The definition of “qualia” is completely, 100% neutral as to the underlying ontological substrate. It could certainly be something entirely physical. By accepting the existence of qualia, you are not thereby committing yourself to anti-physicalism.
2.) An idea I sometimes see repeated is that qualia are this sort of ephemeral, ineffable “feeling” that you get over and above your ordinary sense perception. It’s as if, you see red, and the experience of seeing red gives you a certain “vibe”, and this “vibe” is the qualia. This is false. Maybe someone did explain it that way to you once, but if they did, then they were wrong. Qualia is nothing over and above your ordinary sense perception. It’s not seeing red plus something else. It’s just seeing red. That’s it.
Those are what I would call the “objective” misconceptions. Past this point, our intuitions may start coming apart, and it may become harder to communicate exactly what my position is. But I can still try.
When defining qualia as a “sense perception”, something crucial that’s implicit in the definition is that it is your first-person experience of the sense perception. It’s what you actually perceive. Some people may be thinking at this point, “well, I don’t know what this ‘first-person experience’ is. There is the data I take as input, there is the processing that my brain does on it, there is the behavior that I emit as a result, and I suppose you could call the totality of this whole thing a ‘sense perception’, but I don’t know what this ‘first-person experience’ component is supposed to add to the story.” For people who are in this position, I would add two more arguments to help clarify what’s going on:
1.) Do you know what it feels like to feel pain? Then congratulations, you know what it feels like to have qualia. Pain is a qualia. It’s that simple. If I told you that I was going to put you in intense pain for an hour, but I assured you there would be no physical damage or injury to you whatsoever, you would still be very much not ok with that. You would want to avoid that experience. Why? Because pain hurts! You’re not afraid of the fact that you’re going to have an “internal representation” of pain, nor are you worried about what behavior you might display as a result of the pain. You’re worried first and foremost about the fact that it’s going to hurt! The “hurt” is the qualia.
2.) Imagine that you have a very boring and unpleasant task to do. It could be your day job, it could be a social gathering that you would rather not attend, whatever. Imagine I offer you a proposition: while you are performing this unpleasant task, I can put you into a state that you will subjectively experience as deep sleep. You will experience exactly what you experience when you are asleep but not dreaming: i.e., exactly nothing. The catch is, your body will continue to function as though you were wide awake and functioning. Your body will move around, your eyes will be open, you will talk to people, you will do everything exactly as you would normally do. But you will experience none of it. It sounds like an enticing proposition, right? You get all the benefit of doing the work without the pain of actually having to experience the work. It doesn’t matter if you think this isn’t actually possible to achieve in the real world: it’s just a thought experiment to get you to understand the difference between your internal experience and your outward behavior. What you’re essentially being offered in the thought experiment is the ability to “turn off your qualia” for a span of time.
If you read all that and you think “ok, I have a better idea of what you mean by ‘qualia’ now, but I still don’t see why it’s a big deal or why it should be hard to explain with standard physics”, then that’s ok. That’s a reasonable position that’s shared by a number of experts in this area. I’m not trying to make you into a Believer In The Hard Problem, I’m just trying to make you understand what “qualia” means.
If you still think “I still have no idea what qualia is and I think you’re delusional”… well, that sort of makes me think that I still just haven’t found the right way to explain it. But, I suppose at some point we just have to accept that people will have wildly divergent intuitions and ways of modeling the world, and there’s only so much we can do to bridge the gap.
As someone who could be described as “pro-qualia”: I think there are still a number of fundamental misconceptions and confusions that people bring to this debate. We could have a more productive dialogue if these confusions were cleared up. I don’t think that clearing up these confusions will make everyone agree with me on everything, but I do think that we would end up talking past each other less if the confusions were addressed.
First, a couple of misconceptions:
1.) Some people think that part of the definition of qualia is that they are necessarily supernatural or non-physical. This is false. A qualia is just a sense perception. That’s it. The definition of “qualia” is completely, 100% neutral as to the underlying ontological substrate. It could certainly be something entirely physical. By accepting the existence of qualia, you are not thereby committing yourself to anti-physicalism.
2.) An idea I sometimes see repeated is that qualia are this sort of ephemeral, ineffable “feeling” that you get over and above your ordinary sense perception. It’s as if, you see red, and the experience of seeing red gives you a certain “vibe”, and this “vibe” is the qualia. This is false. Maybe someone did explain it that way to you once, but if they did, then they were wrong. Qualia is nothing over and above your ordinary sense perception. It’s not seeing red plus something else. It’s just seeing red. That’s it.
Those are what I would call the “objective” misconceptions. Past this point, our intuitions may start coming apart, and it may become harder to communicate exactly what my position is. But I can still try.
When defining qualia as a “sense perception”, something crucial that’s implicit in the definition is that it is your first-person experience of the sense perception. It’s what you actually perceive. Some people may be thinking at this point, “well, I don’t know what this ‘first-person experience’ is. There is the data I take as input, there is the processing that my brain does on it, there is the behavior that I emit as a result, and I suppose you could call the totality of this whole thing a ‘sense perception’, but I don’t know what this ‘first-person experience’ component is supposed to add to the story.” For people who are in this position, I would add two more arguments to help clarify what’s going on:
1.) Do you know what it feels like to feel pain? Then congratulations, you know what it feels like to have qualia. Pain is a qualia. It’s that simple. If I told you that I was going to put you in intense pain for an hour, but I assured you there would be no physical damage or injury to you whatsoever, you would still be very much not ok with that. You would want to avoid that experience. Why? Because pain hurts! You’re not afraid of the fact that you’re going to have an “internal representation” of pain, nor are you worried about what behavior you might display as a result of the pain. You’re worried first and foremost about the fact that it’s going to hurt! The “hurt” is the qualia.
2.) Imagine that you have a very boring and unpleasant task to do. It could be your day job, it could be a social gathering that you would rather not attend, whatever. Imagine I offer you a proposition: while you are performing this unpleasant task, I can put you into a state that you will subjectively experience as deep sleep. You will experience exactly what you experience when you are asleep but not dreaming: i.e., exactly nothing. The catch is, your body will continue to function as though you were wide awake and functioning. Your body will move around, your eyes will be open, you will talk to people, you will do everything exactly as you would normally do. But you will experience none of it. It sounds like an enticing proposition, right? You get all the benefit of doing the work without the pain of actually having to experience the work. It doesn’t matter if you think this isn’t actually possible to achieve in the real world: it’s just a thought experiment to get you to understand the difference between your internal experience and your outward behavior. What you’re essentially being offered in the thought experiment is the ability to “turn off your qualia” for a span of time.
If you read all that and you think “ok, I have a better idea of what you mean by ‘qualia’ now, but I still don’t see why it’s a big deal or why it should be hard to explain with standard physics”, then that’s ok. That’s a reasonable position that’s shared by a number of experts in this area. I’m not trying to make you into a Believer In The Hard Problem, I’m just trying to make you understand what “qualia” means.
If you still think “I still have no idea what qualia is and I think you’re delusional”… well, that sort of makes me think that I still just haven’t found the right way to explain it. But, I suppose at some point we just have to accept that people will have wildly divergent intuitions and ways of modeling the world, and there’s only so much we can do to bridge the gap.