If all you're saying is that there are great variations in phenomenological experience, I do think that's an interesting scientific fact, but I don't know how it matters to this philosophical question any more than the well accepted fact that there are great variations in how well different people's perceptions work as well as their intellect in deciphering the meaning of their experiences. — Hanover

It may guide different philosophers intuitions about the mind. As I stated in an earlier post, I've read that some philosophers were skeptical that people could do visual rotations in their head. This is probably because those philosophers were poor visualizers, not because nobody is capable of doing so.

And for those philosophers like Dennett, who deny that there is any experience whatsoever in the head, it's all external (there is no Cartesian Theatre), one has to wonder whether they have aphantasia.

The possibility of p-zombies would be an extreme possibility along the spectrum. Obviously there's no good reason to have a positive belief in them right now. What I claimed in the OP was just that we don't know a priori they're not actual, which most people seem to assume.

Do they, though? Aren't they like beetles-in-boxes? Indeed the machinery of the world seem to have little room for them.

I also heard that Dennett claimed the reason when people imagine say a zebra, that they don't imagine it with an exact number of stripes, is because they learn the word 'some' and have the capacity to imagine amounts of thing without an exact numeral attached by thinking about 'a zebra with some stripes.' To anyone who is a good visualizer, of course, this explanation is not only going to sound absurd, but like an alien has said it.

Do they, though? Aren't they like beetles-in-boxes? Indeed the machinery of the world seem to have little room for them. — The Great Whatever

At the same time, though, there needs to be an explanation as to how the brain produces epiphenomenal qualia, and why it would (presumably) use energy to create something that is entirely useless.

ndeed the machinery of the world seem to have little room for them. — The Great Whatever

Maybe that's because the machinery of the world is understood as an abstraction. So, materialism has a mind/body problem, because the mind was taken out of it in order to get at the objective properties.

Also, to be clear, I think it would have functional differences at some level – for example, I can totally buy a lot of AP is done without qualia. But someone like, say Franz Brentano, it would be hard to imagine that he was a p-zombie. That is, ability to experience may manifest in extremely different philosophical methods or interests.

Who knows? I can't think of a reason to rule it out a priori, though to be clear I'm not advocating epiphenominalism. Maybe qualia are a sort of genetic defect that has slipped through the cracks and stayed with us.

I suppose the metaphysics of the mind is still not developed enough to make any qualified statements. Your hypothesis, to me, is implausible. But it has just enough internal coherence, and exists in a vacuum of knowledge, that it might actually be true. I doubt it but then again I doubt most things.

I think that it does clearly affect what we think, though this fact hardly escapes everyone. Socrates seemed to take people that had audio revelations seriously, but not those that had visual ones. No doubt because his daimon was a voice and not an image. Spinoza knew this though, and suggested that hearing the voice of god meant that one thought in a predominantly auditory faculty, and seeing a burning bush suggested a visual dominance, etc.

I also mentioned earlier the college experiment, and keeping track of a minute from Chomsky, where he discovered that he was audibly counting, and his friend was imagining a clock counting. This meant that Chomsky could read, but not talk, he was too busy counting in his head, and his friend could talk but not read, because he couldn't take his "mind's eye" off of the clock.

And, indeed, some people do always visualize everything they think and hear.

I also heard that Dennett claimed the reason when people imagine say a zebra, that they don't imagine it with an exact number of stripes, is because they learn the word 'some' and have the capacity to imagine amounts of thing without an exact numeral attached by thinking about 'a zebra with some stripes.' To anyone who is a good visualizer, of course, this explanation is not only going to sound absurd, but like an alien has said it. — The Great Whatever

I'm clearly a bad visualizer, because when I try to imagine a zebra I certainly don't imagine something that can be said to have an exact number of stripes. I can't really describe what it is I imagine (except the trivial "a zebra"), but it's nothing like the image of a zebra as ordinarily seen.

Although if I close my eyes and really focus I can sort of "see" the five-side of a die.

If I press hard on my eyes, with them closed then it kind of makes colours, that I can kind of imagine are things, and warp into things. Maybe the ability to visualize has something to do with pressure, or shape of the eyes, which is why most people need glasses, and it's just my astounding visual acuity that prevents it.

I didn't mean to imply that most people visualize a zebra with an exact number of stripes. Personally, when I imagine a zebra, I don't. I suppose I can, if I want to, imagine one with ten stripes along the flank, or whatever.

What I thought was odd about Dennett's explanation was the bizarrely verbal way he'd put it, as if he himself 'imagines' things by repeating words to himself in his head rather than concocting a quasi-visual image.

Those are phosphenes. I forget the exact physiological explanation for them – it's like manually stimulating your retina.

What I thought was odd about Dennett's explanation was the bizarrely verbal way he'd put it, as if he himself 'imagines' things by repeating words to himself in his head rather than concocting a quasi-visual image. — The Great Whatever

Well, what does imagining a diabetic racist sitting at home reading a cover-less copy of the Lord of the Rings consist of? I can understand having a quasi-visual image of a person reading a book, but the rest isn't so clear. What's the visual quality of that person being a diabetic racist, of the location being that person's home, and of the cover-less book being the Lord of the Rings? Surely it just comes down to the fact that we say it's of these things?

Don't Dennett and co. have no trouble relating to and describing the experience of qualia?

I didn't mean to imply that all imaginings are visual – surely they aren't. But I took the situation to be one about the visual imagining of a zebra, since the point is about how even in the visual concoction of that zebra, we don't, unless we specifically concentrate on doing it that way, 'see' the zebra with some particular number of stripes. Rather we have the quasi-visual impression of a pattern of stripes as a kind of mass.

It would be nice if I could track down where Dennett said this, if he really did. Someone just told it to me once offhand.

I have no language-based thoughts at all. My thoughts are in pictures, like videotapes in my mind. When I recall something from my memory, I see only pictures. I used to think that everybody thought this way until I started talking to people on how they thought. I learned that there is a whole continuum of thinking styles, from totally visual thinkers like me, to the totally verbal thinkers. Artists, engineers, and good animal trainers are often highly visual thinkers, and accountants, bankers, and people who trade in the futures market tend to be highly verbal thinkers with few pictures in their minds.

<snip>

Access your memory on church steeples. Most people will see a picture in their mind of a generic "generalized" steeple. I only see specific steeples; there is no generalized one. Images of steeples flash through my mind like clicking quickly through a series of slides or pictures on a computer screen. On the other hand, highly verbal thinkers may "see" the words "church steeple," or will "see" just a simple stick-figure steeple.

http://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html — Temple Grandin

I find that fascinating, because I'm a poor visualizer like Michael. My guess is that if Dennett was like Grandin, his philosophy would go in a different direction. But then again, he probably wouldn't be a philosopher.

I think it's more plausible that Dennett has ideological prejudices so powerful that they can overcome any intuitive evidence whatsoever, than that he has experiential defects. But it's interesting to think about how phenomenological differences could lead to theoretical ones, and whether they have in the past.

Although when Dennett describes qualia to show he gets it he always mentions listening to a string quartet or something. Which is weird, because it implies sees having experience as some quasi-spiritual or artistic experience (a string quartet is like 'real experience'), whereas it's totally mundane and utterly pervasive in waking life.

I wonder if men are worse visualizers than women, or tend to have more p-zombie tendencies. It wouldn't surprise me if women generally had a greater depth or subtlety of feeling than men.

Also relevant is certain empiricists, like Berkeley, claiming to be unable to visualize e.g. triangles in the abstract, and so claiming to have no general idea of them.

I wonder if men are worse visualizers than women, or tend to have more p-zombie tendencies. It wouldn't surprise me if women generally had a greater depth or subtlety of feeling than men. — The Great Whatever

Men tend to be more autistic, but Grandin is an autstic woman. From her writings, she seems to have trouble understanding other people's feelings. The nuance of social situations have been difficult for her.

Men also seem to identify less with their bodies than women (experience a greater degree of dissociation). I wonder if this motivated philosophers in the past to think of the soul or mind independent of the body.

I tend to suspect that philosophy is heavily influenced by human biology. Notice how often visual language is used. Wasn't the notion of matching up propositions with pictures a primary motivation of the Tracticus?

Also relevant is certain empiricists, like Berkeley, claiming to be unable to visualize e.g. triangles in the abstract, and so claiming to have no general idea of them. — The Great Whatever

Step 1 in avoiding philosophical mistakes:

Resist the urge to generalize from yourself to all others.

There have been studies conducted showing that men and women differ in a statistically significant way among the philosophical positions they adopt – but it's hard to know if that's for physiological reasons or for cultural ones.

The thing about women being 'earthy' and men having their 'heads in the clouds' – women as unified bodies and men as souls attached to bodies – is an old stereotype. The general consensus among modern Westerners is that it's highly sexist and demeaning of women (as is I take it the notion of 'feminine wisdom,' which is supposed to be more earthy, less abstract wisdom). But who knows? Maybe men tend naturally to dualism and abstraction away from their embodied circumstances.

Step 1 in avoiding philosophical mistakes:

Resist the urge to generalize from yourself to all others. — Marchesk

Well, in their defense, whenever early modern philosophers pulled this sort of thing, they entreated others to see whether they could not do it in their case, and said for their own cases only they couldn't. But there was always an air of irony in this entreaty, i.e. the implication that they did not actually expect anyone else's capabilities to differ significantly from their own.

The thing about women being 'earthy' and men having their 'heads in the clouds' – women as unified bodies and men as souls attached to bodies – is an old stereotype. The general consensus among modern Westerners is that it's highly sexist and demeaning of women (as is I take it the notion of 'feminine wisdom,' which is supposed to be more earthy, less abstract wisdom). But who knows? Maybe men tend naturally to dualism and abstraction away from their embodied circumstances. — The Great Whatever

The modern trend is to downplay biological differences between men and women in the interest of equality. But that doesn't mean those differences can't be significant in some ways, generally speaking. Maybe one day when the equality issue is fixed, we can be more objective about our biological differences, individually and gender wise.

I recall reading one feminist who would become outraged at any suggestion of biological differences, claiming that culture makes any such differences irrelevant. That sounded quite dogmatic to me, but I understand the motivation for it.

When talking about psychological gender differences, there are many folk ones that might be right, but the differences statistically that have been discovered, though existing, are way too slight to be predictive. Like the greatest differences are like 60/40 one way or the other. Physiologicaly differences are much much greater, like men are on average better at throwing a rock than 90% of women.

You know, Einstein had a huge visual cortex apparently.

When talking about psychological gender differences, there are many folk ones that might be right, but the differences statistically that have been discovered, though existing, are way too slight to be predictive. Like the greatest differences are like 60/40 one way or the other. — Wosret

What about sexual preferences? I think women are far more likely to be attracted to men than men are.

You know, Einstein had a huge visual cortex apparently. — Wosret

First time in my life I had a bad thought involving Einstein.

That's a true fact, you got me there.

Well, in their defense, whenever early modern philosophers pulled this sort of thing, they entreated others to see whether they could not do it in their case, and said for their own cases only they couldn't. But there was always an air of irony in this entreaty, i.e. the implication that they did not actually expect anyone else's capabilities to differ significantly from their own. — The Great Whatever

This sort of reasoning seems to crop up in moral philosophy. Theories about morality are often judged according to whether or not they conform with one's own moral intuitions – which of course must be right – and if anyone disagrees with the "obvious" moral facts then it just means that they're lacking something and not worthy of a reasoned rebuttal.

And I guess the same with metaphysics. Obviously if one really thinks about it, the continued existence of things that aren't being seen is nonsense/evident.

Perhaps it all just bottoms out with people having fundamentally different thought processes that makes it impossible, or at least unlikely, for them to come to an agreement.