Why do say that? — Janus

Dreams don't seem like a movie is going on in the mind, except with the additional feeling of your body?

Not if you can sell the (promise of a) taste for a profit!

which is just the notion of conscious awareness of things — Janus

Which is sometimes just conscious awareness of mental activity. I don't know why perception thoroughly dominates the discussion. It's a bit harder to dismiss the Cartesian Theater when dreams come up.

Perception can be a bit misleading because the discussion becomes so focused on what the properties of the things are and our relation to them. You can't do that with other conscious experiences.

Is there a mantis shrimp being consulted? — creativesoul

Are they tasty?

If I only had a brain. — frank

I have a brain in my mind, but I've never tasted seen my own.

I'm just spinning in the void shooting out woo tangents like lighting bolts — frank

And I'm just shivering qualia in a p-zombie apocalypse. I think on The Walking Dead they briefly showed the zombie consciousness of an important character when they turned. Turns out, there is something it's like to want brains.

Tell me Mr. Deckard, did you ever take that test yourself?" — frank

Good one! Also, Westworld.

You know, of course, that it is all just physics. Where you go wrong is thinking that this makes it pointless and meaningless. All along, it was up to you to give it meaning, to find a purpose. — Banno

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html

I don't know, of course, that physics is all there is.

On Star Trek The Next Generation, they show Data's dreams from a first person perspective one episode when a secret dream chip is activated.

On the terminator movies, they usually show a brief first person perspective of the killer robot from which looks like human vision with various information overlays.

Permutation City by Greg Egan is a classic mind-uploading science fiction novel where the main character uploads a digital copy of his brain in the 2050s when there's enough computing power. His copies always commit suicide, so he disables that ability for the last one in order to run various tests to see whether it will effect the copy's conscious experience. The copy goes on to develop his dust theory of consciousness.

I read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid too, from the age of about 8 into my teens, as my old man had an extensive collection. I don't recall encountering the idea of qualia. Which author(s) do you have in mind? — Janus

Arthur C Clarke in his 3001 book has Hal and Dave tell the humans that the monolith around Jupiter isn't conscious. It's just a really sophisticated machine. They're able to use this information to logic bomb it to death.

Did you read the essay? — frank

Hey now! This thread is about not reading Dennett. You're risking a tangent on Quining Qualia.

I've been willing since I first jumped into this thread and admit that qualia is problematic (certainly as Dennett discusses it). But I haven't seen a good explanation for what consciousness is if it isn't something along the lines of qualia.

Or to put it another way, even if we dispense with the notion of qualia, consciousness still poses a problem for physicalism, because those colors and pains are simply absent from any biological, chemical or physical explanation of the mechanisms behind conscious experience (as best we understand them).

Somehow color and pain pop into existence from the structure and function of the biological systems. I guess one could bite the bullet and endorse spooky emergentism, which would be a form of non-reductive physicalism.

But I'm not sure how strong emergentism is different from property dualism. And I also don't know why you couldn't have a physical universe absent that spookiness. To paraphrase Chalmers: "God has to go to extra work to add in law for consciousness when the right structure and function are in place." And by God, Chalmers just means the additional supervenience that's not logically necessitated from the physical.

We could probably do it if somebody would paste in half of War and Peace. — frank

Have we come to any sort of consensus as to what color is? Or pain?

If it's not qualia, is it ... a model? A language game? A private beetle we can't talk about?

Weak sauce. Banno-inspired perception-related debates used to go 100+ pages. And it often included talk of apples.

p-zombies would make for lousy hedonists.

I'm not clear on what you're getting at here at all. — Isaac

It sounded like you were denying color sensations. But perhaps you prefer to call colors models of wavelength or reflectivity.

Learning what pain is consists in no more than being able to use the word suitably. — Banno

But, but using the word suitably is only possible because we feel various pains. just like the various color words exist because we see colors.

In the same sense that they "exist", yes. In the sense of patterns in observable phenomena, then yes, obviously: patterns in observable phenomena are themselves observable. In the sense of human theories about what exactly those patterns are, also yes: we can observe that humans do really have those theories. — Pfhorrest

Let me rephrase. Is causation observable? Are those observed patterns the result of necessary relations?

Are physical laws observable?

Not just that, pain determines language use. Pain is one of the things that show what words like "good" and "bad" mean. — Daemon

There's an entire ethical system built around that.

the language itself is no longer connected to anything aside from itself and it's user. — creativesoul

That part. Just being a bit snide.

When you dream of flying, is it your body or a mental image of your body? The dreaming scenario shows it’s possible for your body to present an image of the body to itself. But more specifically, the nervous system.

Sounds like an argument for private language!

It jumps to the next parallel universe where you survive. P-zombies (deniers of qualia) don't get to take advantage. They stay and rot in their original universe.

Our use of language. — Isaac

That's absurd. Does this mean birds don't see colors?

And why don't we have the equivalent language for the rest of the EM spectrum or sonar?

Is it the theory that is physical, or what the theory is about (what it points to) that is physical, or both? — Harry Hindu

I would say the theory is ideal, in that it's humans creating a map of the territory, while the territory itself might be understood as physical, assuming a physicalist ontology. That does allow for the possibility that the theory is missing something fundamental. A map is only as good as the map makers and their knowledge of the territory.

So .... the mind is a Matrix? We need to take the red pill of philosophy to get to the desert of the real? Then we can go back inside the mind and kick some ass?

All conscious experience of seeing red cups includes more than just red cups, ya know? — creativesoul

I should hope so. Red cups in the brain doesn't sound like a healthy condition.

Neither, and I said as much from the very beginning. Curious that, huh? — creativesoul

I don't recall the beginning. I think I jumped in sometime after about 18 pages. It is a bit curious.

Sure, but once one side begins psychologizing the other, turn about is fair play.

I don't personally believe in an afterlife, but I do think Chalmers, Nagel, McGinn, Block, etc. present more convincing arguments than Dennett, Churchland, Frankish, etc.

Indeed. — creativesoul

Wait, now I'm confused. Whose side are you on? Do you just not like the term qualia?

Me too! I imagine there must be some emotional attachment to the term because it is thought to support some form of idealism. I think perhaps some people feel disappointed with materialism, because they think it challenges their hopes for a life beyond this one. — Janus

Alternatively, materialism fails to properly account for conscious experience. One might turn the psychologizing around and say that materialists have a dogmatic commitment to dismissing any arguments challenging their metaphysical positions.

There are variations in our biological machinery. — creativesoul

Of course. That variation somehow produces the color difference.

Gotta love it when folk ask someone to compare something that is nowhere to be seen to a color chart. — creativesoul

Public versus private colored?

But thing is that we don't always see the same colors.

What do you think about the three kinds of conscious experience I set out recently? — creativesoul

You'll have to refresh my memory. But does it matter for whether qualia is a useful concept? I take it you think the three kinds show that it is not useful.

Yeah, its weird how everyone always picks out the red ones. I'm fairly certain that that's because those frequencies appear exactly like those frequencies each and every time someone is picking out red cups... — creativesoul

You're certain that everyone will pick out the same shade of red?



Is the apple candy or rose colored?

But they are visual conscious experiences containing a red cup image.

When someone refuses to agree that all conscious experience of seeing red cups includes red cups, there's not much more that can be said is there? — creativesoul

Illusions, hallucinations and red not being a property of the cup itself leaves some room for saying otherwhise.

Proponents will insist that consciousness is not a thing, and that it thus cannot be subjected to empirical investigation; but this attitude assumes its conclusion. — Janus

Isn't that the case for any foundational premise? If we instead begin with the premise that we have direct access to material objects, then idealism and skepticism are boh assumed to be false.