Please note: because you're not logged in, you may be viewing older cached versions of pages which are served up to reduce server load.
Do Qualia Exist?
Can you prove it?
Print Do Qualia Exist? | |
|
bert1
Assistant Professor  Usergroup: Sponsors Joined: Dec 11, 2007 Location: Morecambe, UK Total Topics: 24 Total Posts: 358 |
 #11
mway wrote: Upon talking to many people, I find the common belief to be that Qualia exists, usually as some sort of dualistic substance that everyone is trying to understand. I would like to know why this seems to be of common acceptance when there is no logical proof, and Occam's points strongly in the direction of a software analogue illusion? The one thing you don't have to prove is that you are a subject, that you have experiences. It's the one thing you just know and cannot be wrong about. You don't have to go any further than that and posit any spooky dualistic things (souls, God, goat, whatever) if you don't want to. But if you have noticed that you are conscious (some people, even philosophers, don't seem to have done) then the fact that you have subjective experiences is beyond question. Panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness except for all the others. - Winston Churchill Good is simply that which is willed. - Eugene Halliday. Substance feels its own condition. - Eugene Halliday. My web page on Halliday. Skrbina on Panpsychism |
|
mway
Professor Usergroup: Members Joined: Apr 07, 2009 Total Topics: 15 Total Posts: 659 |
#12
bert1 wrote: The one thing you don't have to prove is that you are a subject, that you have experiences. It's the one thing you just know and cannot be wrong about. You don't have to go any further than that and posit any spooky dualistic things (souls, God, goat, whatever) if you don't want to. But if you have noticed that you are conscious (some people, even philosophers, don't seem to have done) then the fact that you have subjective experiences is beyond question. I think that you have made an error in your assumptions. If the brain creates the mind, then "you" do not exist, and neither do your experiences. Why do people always make this assumption? Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality. |
|
bert1
Assistant Professor Usergroup: Sponsors Joined: Dec 11, 2007 Location: Morecambe, UK Total Topics: 24 Total Posts: 358 |
#13
Do you think experiences happen at all? I can understand you thinking the brain creates the mind, and even that there is no self. But are you really suggesting that there are no experiences anywhere in the universe? Can there be experiences that don't belong to anyone, on your view? mway wrote: Why do people always make this assumption? They believe experiences happen because they experience things! If the brain creates the mind, then "you" do not exist, I don't think this follows. If I am my mind, and the brain has created me, then I exist. You can be a materialist and still believe in the mind and self. Edited by bert1 on Jul 21, 2009 - 12:03 AM Panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness except for all the others. - Winston Churchill Good is simply that which is willed. - Eugene Halliday. Substance feels its own condition. - Eugene Halliday. My web page on Halliday. Skrbina on Panpsychism |
|
bert1
Assistant Professor Usergroup: Sponsors Joined: Dec 11, 2007 Location: Morecambe, UK Total Topics: 24 Total Posts: 358 |
#14
I just found this in the drugs thread mway: mway wrote: In a world where all we have is conscious experience, What's going on?! Maybe if I pop some LSD all will become clear! Panpsychism is the worst theory of consciousness except for all the others. - Winston Churchill Good is simply that which is willed. - Eugene Halliday. Substance feels its own condition. - Eugene Halliday. My web page on Halliday. Skrbina on Panpsychism |
|
MarchHare
Tenured Poster  Usergroup: Members Joined: Jun 23, 2009 Location: Where tomorrow meets today Total Topics: 21 Total Posts: 1139 |
#15
I suspect qualia, as with so many issues in the philosophy of the mind, is a problem largely caused by language and perspective. All of our observations of reality come from a subjective perspective which isn't public in the same way scientific knowledge is public. If you've found a new mineral, you can show it to me and I can perform an act of observation that is similar to yours and can form a public piece of knowledge; if you have had a new emotional experience, you have to convey this by a complex of language and artistic expression. It's regrettable that people can turn a simple problem of perspective into a huge issue of metaphysical ontology with outlandish claims like "You're denying experience takes place!" or "You're a Mysterion!", but I like to think that this is the kind of topic that philosophy can be used to eliminate. Doubt requires a reason to doubt. Nothing is immune from potential doubt. "That every form of speech, which language affords to express our judgments, should, in all ages, and in all languages, be used to express what is no judgment; and that feelings, which are easily expressed in proper language, should as universally be expressed by language altogether improper and absurd, I cannot believe." - Thomas Reid |
|
MarchHare
Tenured Poster Usergroup: Members Joined: Jun 23, 2009 Location: Where tomorrow meets today Total Topics: 21 Total Posts: 1139 |
#16
mway wrote: I think that you have made an error in your assumptions. If the brain creates the mind, then "you" do not exist, and neither do your experiences. Why do people always make this assumption? So the fact that the spider makes the web means that the web doesn't exist? Stupid spiders. I suppose I should really doubt the existence of my chair, since not only did I create it (so it doesn't exist) but "I" also don't exist, making it a non-existent thing made my another non-existent thing! Call me a dirty, synthetic philosopher (and you'd be half right on the second point) but I'm sceptical of any attempt to separate the mind from the brain in the first place. In fact, I'm sceptical any attempt to separate the brain from the body in the context of identity. Doubt requires a reason to doubt. Nothing is immune from potential doubt. "That every form of speech, which language affords to express our judgments, should, in all ages, and in all languages, be used to express what is no judgment; and that feelings, which are easily expressed in proper language, should as universally be expressed by language altogether improper and absurd, I cannot believe." - Thomas Reid |
|
mway
Professor Usergroup: Members Joined: Apr 07, 2009 Total Topics: 15 Total Posts: 659 |
#17
Of course I agree that these blocks of matter react to the other blocks of matter. I am saying that if we are just biological machines, whereby the brain creates the mind [illusion], then there is no 'self'. If there is no 'self', then there cannot be experience, only an illusion of one. Everyone tries to quantify experience, as if it was some objective thing, when it is widely known that we have no way to objectively analyse it. Ask yourself, "Is it not plausible, that the brain does not in fact create subjective experience itself, but instead creates the illusion of subjective experience?". So yes, all we have is conscious experience, which we should no doubt live by. But 'we' is an illusion; a ride. Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality. |
|
Crackers
Professor Usergroup: Members Joined: May 28, 2009 Total Topics: 5 Total Posts: 735 |
#18
mway wrote: I was not arguing that experience is real or not, I was arguing that qualia is not real. There is a wavelength of light we call red, but the redness of red is just an illusion. How do you address the software analogy above? Define "illusion." Is it the existence of light that is illusion or is it our perceptions of certain wavelengths of light that is illusion? Are you saying that "our perceptions of certain wavelengths of light is not how said light actually is"? Are you asserting, then, that light exists independent of all subjective perceptions i.e. exists, in some way, as a "thing-in-itself"? If I say: "red is how I perceive a certain wavelength of light" am I saying something false? If I say: "a certain wavelength of light is red" am I saying anything different(?) considering the given context of the sentence- that I am saying it from my own reference point. If a certain wavelength of light is not "actually red" then what is light? How can we describe light as a "thing-in-itself"(?) considering that our language is subjective i.e. we describes qualities as they appear to us, "light is radiant energy" is subjective, "radiant energy" are words to describe more of our subjective perceptions. |
|
mway
Professor Usergroup: Members Joined: Apr 07, 2009 Total Topics: 15 Total Posts: 659 |
#19
Crackers wrote: Define "illusion." Is it the existence of light that is illusion or is it our perceptions of certain wavelengths of light that is illusion? Are you saying that "our perceptions of certain wavelengths of light is not how said light actually is"? Are you asserting, then, that light exists independent of all subjective perceptions i.e. exists, in some way, as a "thing-in-itself"? If I say: "red is how I perceive a certain wavelength of light" am I saying something false? If I say: "a certain wavelength of light is red" am I saying anything different(?) considering the given context of the sentence- that I am saying it from my own reference point. If a certain wavelength of light is not "actually red" then what is light? How can we describe light as a "thing-in-itself"(?) considering that our language is subjective i.e. we describes qualities as they appear to us, "light is radiant energy" is subjective, "radiant energy" are words to describe more of our subjective perceptions. The illusion is 'you/I/me', and the subsequent experience, not the light. You obviously have to adopt some sort of materialism for this. If you believe that we are just biological machines, then you have to question subjectiveness itself. I believe it is possible to create subjective software (and that the brain does just that), rendering the 'redness of red', and the labels 'red' and 'light' itself part of the [subjective] illusion. Our brains are just recurrent temporal encoders of patterns within the universe. Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality. |
|
Gulnara
Professor Usergroup: Members Joined: Dec 08, 2005 Location: USA Total Topics: 2 Total Posts: 659 |
#20
If crates our experiences, then everyone has their own, although for he most part quite similar gualia. Other species have other gualias. A color blind person has different qualia, and so is an infant who sees only three colors in comparison to an old person, who do not see colors as bright as young person. Humming Bird |
| |
||
Sorry, you don't have permission to post. Log in, or register if you haven't yet.