Quaila belongs by definition. I am my experience, not yours or anyone else's. You can never access my quaila no matter how much you feel or think like me. It's MY Being and cannot be anyone else's. That's what it means to exist as being of experience. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If this were so, it would need to be encoded in the laws of physics or declared a new law of physics. For the moment, there is no indication that physical processes that create qualia and even any particular quale you might possess is inaccessible. Furthermore, there is no reason why I (with suitable augmentation) could not experience any of your qualia exactly.

In terms of the "hard problem," semiotic theory considers it either incoherent or irrelevant. Since qualia doesn't have an apparent logical structure, there's nothing to say about it with the constraints of logic. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So how then this does not answer the question at hand by bypasses it to go to an easier problem.

So even phenomenology has an irreducible Kantian issue in thinking it can talk about the thing in itself which would be naked or primal experience. Any attempt at description is already categoric and so immediately into the obvious problems of being a model of the thing. You can't just look and check in a naively realistic way to see what is there. Already you have introduced the further theoretical constructs of this "you" and "the thing" which is being checked. — apokrisis

So, you are going to bypass this problem by ignoring it and go on to more answerable problems? Then you are not answering the question at hand. The naked primal experience is at hand. No one is saying you have to provide naked primal experience but explain it. You have not explained the dasein, you have only explained the formal structure for which it evolves. How dasein is generated from the triadic monism or what not is not explained. Even if it was, it would be an emeregence of non-dasein world into dasein world, and then you would have to explain how it is that an inner world of a subjective experience can come out of nowhere at X point in time.

If matter has subjectivity, then why don't animals have it? — tom

I would argue that animals do have subjectivity- they have a "what it's like aspect". It may not be self-awareness though.

Whitehead was not a panpsychist, but a pan-experientialist; a distinction which Whitehead himself was at pains to emphasize. — John

I would agree he is a pan-experientialist. Pan-experientialism is related to panpsychism. But if you do not agree with that, I can use pan-experientialist. Either way, the system has "occasions of experience" baked into it from the start, not emerging from nowhere at X time.

I would argue that animals do have subjectivity- they have a "what it's like aspect". It may not be self-awareness though. — schopenhauer1

I wish you would. I have never seen an argument for qualia in animals beyond sentimental anthopomorphising.

Animals cannot create the sort of knowledge to possess qualia. If they could create "what it's like" knowledge, then they could create any sort of knowledge, including knowledge of themselves.

So, you are going to bypass this problem by ignoring it and go on to more answerable problems? Then you are not answering the question at hand. The naked primal experience is at hand. — schopenhauer1

You forget that I was addressing the OP, not the Hard Problem.

But we've talked about the Hard Problem often enough. I agree that there is a limit on modelling when modelling runs out of counterfactuality. And this reinforces what I have been saying about intelligibility. To be intelligible, there must be the alternative that gets excluded in presenting the explanation. And once we get down to "raw feels" like redness or the scent of a rose, we don't have counterfactuals - like how red could be other than what it is to us.

But up until the limit, no problem. Or all Easy Problem.

And then - challenging your more general "why should it feel like anything?" - is my response. If the brain is in a running semiotic interaction with the world in a way that it is a model of being in that world, then why should it not feel like something? Why would we expect the brain to be doing everything that it is doing and yet there not be something that it is like to be doing all that?

Of course it requires a considerable understanding of cognitive neuroscience to have a feeling of just how much is in fact going on when brains model worlds in embodied fashion - way and above, orders of magnitude, the most complex knot of activity in the known Universe. But still, the Hard Problem for philosophical zombie believers is why wouldn't it be like something to be a brain in that precise semiotic relation to the world? Answer me that.

Panpsychism is a different kettle of fish. It just buries its lack of explanatory mechanism as far out of sight as possible. It says don't worry folks. Consciousness is this little glow of awareness that inhabits all matter. And that is your "explanation". Tah, dah!

Any sot of recognition indicates the existence of what you call "what it's like" knowledge, "qualia". That's what recognition is based in, knowing what it is like, in order to recognize similar occurrences. My dog recognizes me, so clearly my dog has this type of knowledge.

You've lost me in apparent contradiction. You say that we can think illogical thoughts, but this is not really thinking. We can establish mental relations "that don't have relation of logical entailment", but even those thoughts "must have some kind of associative logic". Do you see the contradiction? — Metaphysician Undercover

And you've lost me in uncharitable interpretation: it should have been obvious by the way that I qualified what I wrote that I meant to say something like: "we can think what we might call "illogical thoughts"".

There is no contradiction in saying that thoughts might either be merely joined by associative logic (say they are thoughts of objects whose only connection is that they are green for example) or they are connected by logical entailment, such that one thought follows from another. Both can be understood to be logical forms of thought and thinking, in their different ways. But if I merely present a number of thoughts with nothing at all to connect them, then that would not really be thinking; it would just be presenting or laying out a set of random thoughts. It cannot be a process if it is just a series of disconnected thought events; so I say it cannot be counted as 'thinking'.

Now, after merely laying down some random thoughts or images we might engage in thinking about them to try to come up with some logical associations between them, but the mere presenting of them could not be said to be a process of thinking, but instead just a series of selections of whatever appears in the mind. You might want to argue that there are always subconscious associations; and there might well be; but thinking is usually understood to be a conscious and intentional process.

You and apokrisis alike, seem to be obsessed with this preconceived notion that the freedom within, the local freedom, is necessarily constrained by a larger, global constraint system. But this is clearly not the case, if there are prior constraints on the local freedoms, these must be inherent within, and not of a global character at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is clearly the case that both our thinking and what we think is "constrained by a larger global constraint system". What we can think is obviously both augmented and constrained by language, for a start. (Note: just to anticipate a possible misinterpretation I think you are likely to commit, I am not saying thought is impossible without language; it might be reasonable to claim that, but that would be a stronger claim than my argument relies on, so I don't need to make it here).

Language is also obviously constrained by actuality, by the nature of what is experienced. It also comes to constrain that experience; it is a reciprocal or symbiotic relation between perception and conception. For me that natural primordial symbiosis consists in the reception of, response to and creation of signs, and I suspect apokrisis would agree. This symbiosis just is semiosis, in other words. Also, I don't see why you think something "inherent within" cannot be something global. Signs are outside us, and we 'take them in'. Language is both external to us and within us, and the language of inner and outer is ultimately an expression of the relative, not of the absolute; what's the problem?

Language is also obviously constrained by actuality, by the nature of what is experienced. It also comes to constrain that experience; it is a reciprocal or symbiotic relation between perception and conception. For me that natural primordial symbiosis consists in the reception of, response to and creation of signs, and I suspect apokrisis would agree. — John

Yep. Symbiosis is a good way to think about it. It all has the causal interdependency that an ecological perspective presumes.

Precisely. The question is considered incoherent. There is no relevant answer. It's a waste to ask it.

Experiences aren't generated separate to the triad monism. They are part of it. The "hard problem" misunderstands consciousness. It thinks it something separate to the world, outside its formal cause (from a semiotic theory perspective), so it just misses the boat completely in its analysis of experiences and the world.

Naked primal experience in the world just isn't a problem. In the sense the dualists means, it really does come out of nothing. Dasein emerged out of the absence of dasein (e.g. in terms of the dasein, "nothing" ). Experience doesn't have a formal cause separate to the world. That's what emergence means.

From a dualist perceptive (i.e. experience has a formal cause separate to the rest of the world), emergence isn't "unexplained," it's impossible. No account of consciousness works because the dualist considers it be outside and separate to the things that exist ( "body").

Such reasoning is a category error. The identity of qualia is a logical one, not one of causality. My qualia cannot by anyone else by definition.

If that were true, my experiences would have to be someone else. Not in the sense of thinking or feeling the same (that's perfectly possible), but in the sense of the logical object defined as me (I) being the logical object of somebody else (not-I). Even mistakes in understanding oneself can't get around this.

Let's say I mistake my experience for someone else, such that the thoughts and feelings "out there" are really mine. If that's true, I've merely misunderstood myself. What I thought was "not-I" was "I" all along. No-one else has the Being of my qualia.

But if I merely present a number of thoughts with nothing at all to connect them, then that would not really be thinking; it would just be presenting or laying out a set of random thoughts. It cannot be a process if it is just a series of disconnected thought events; so I say it cannot be counted as 'thinking'. — John

See, here you approach the same contradiction. How can you set out a set of random thoughts without thinking? Any act of setting out thoughts is necessarily thinking. How could you set out thoughts without thinking? Where would these thoughts come from? A serious of disconnected thought events is necessarily an act of thinking because thoughts cannot be produced from anything else but thinking. You want to deny that this is thinking, but then the thoughts have no source, they come from nothing, or some random act which is not an act of thinking. But how could thoughts spring from some random act which is not an act of thinking? That's illogical, contradictory, to say that thoughts are produced from something other than an act of thinking.

What we can think is obviously both augmented and constrained by language, for a start. (Note: just to anticipate a possible misinterpretation I think you are likely to commit, I am not saying thought is impossible without language; it might be reasonable to claim that, but that would be a stronger claim than my argument relies on, so I don't need to make it here). — John

Now you contradict yourself again, here. You say that what we can think is constrained by language, then in brackets you say that it is not really constrained by language, thought extends beyond the constraints of language. Which do you believe is the case? Is thought constrained by language, or does it extend beyond the confines of language? If thought extends beyond the constraints of language, as you say in brackets, then your original claim, that what we can think is constrained by language, is clearly false.

Why keep contradicting yourself, in an effort to support an untenable position?

It is a consequence of the laws of physics that you, or any aspect of you, including your qualia, can be rendered exactly by a virtual reality generator. We don't know how to achieve that yet, but it is guaranteed possible under known physics.

Alternatively, we could make an AI that experiences your qualia, for whatever reason. Perhaps she wants to know what it feels like to be human.

Of course, it is not possible to render exactly your soul, because that does come under a different category i.e. "things that don't exist".

Image recognition software doesn't possess qualia either.

It's obvious that automatic association cannot properly be called 'thinking'.

I'm not going to waste any more time replying to false accusations of contradiction. Put your magnifying glasses on and read it again properly this time. :-}

That's incoherent. Any other person or instance virtual reality is not my experience. Even if the replicate my ideas and experiences exactly, they will not be me.

Knowing what it's like to be me is possible-- that only takes someone have an experience which is understanding of what I feel or think. We have such experiences all the time.

But they will never BE me. This is not in some immaterial "soul sense", but in a worldly material one. My existing experiences will never be anyone else's. Contary to what the history of idealism and substance dualism would have us believe, my identity is a question of the world, not some separate realm irrelevant to its meaning.

I missed the part where I claimed that the exact rendering of your qualia would BE you.

It is a consequence of the laws of physics that you, or any aspect of you, including your qualia, can be rendered exactly by a virtual reality generator. We don't know how to achieve that yet, but it is guaranteed possible under known physics. — tom

No. It isn't.

The entire premise of your argument is that my qualia (my being) can be given in someone else (their being).

Supposedly, the virtual reality generator can render my presence exactly, create a repeated instance of my being. This is incoherent. Even if you copy everything about me, it will still be a different person than I. Creating a copy of any part of me, whether my body or qualia, is impossible.

8-)

Language is also obviously constrained by actuality, by the nature of what is experienced. It also comes to constrain that experience; it is a reciprocal or symbiotic relation between perception and conception. — John

Have a browse of the essays of Steve Talbott at the New Atlantis. He's not an advocate of semiotics as such, rather a kind of independent philosopher of biology, more aligned with Owen Barfield (although there is some commonality). Have a look in particular at Logic, DNA and Poetry, which touches on some of the themes suggested by the above quote. (He's a friendly guy, too, I wrote to him a few times and he was very responsive.)

Cheers, I'll have a read. I like some of Barfield's writings that I have come across.

You clearly want to change the topic from your qualia to your existence by conflating the two. "Being" and identity are interesting topics of course, but I'd rather avoid them as the conversation is inevitably bogged down by an adolescent attachment to the idea of one's uniqueness.

It might be useful to remind ourselves what qualia are. Consider a scientist who is a colour expert and a robot. Neither can detect blue due to a genetic and a wiring fault respectively. A doctor gives the scientist a pill that cures her, and an engineer fixes the wiring in the robot. They can both now detect blue, but only the scientist has the subjective sensation of blue. Only she has a "what it is like" experience. There are a couple of other interesting aspects of the scientist's quale of "blue": that she could not predict it, and that she can't describe it.

Both the robot and the scientist possess computationally universal hardware, which are by definition, equivalent. Both the computer and the brain have identical repertoires. So, what could bring about this difference?

My qualia is part of my existence. We can't discuss someone's qualia without talking about a part of the world which is them. It is unique. There no other state of the world is my qualia.

By definition the scientist and robot do not possess equivalent hardware. One produces their quale of blue when given the pill, the other does not. The difference is already within their existence.

You ask what could bring about the difference, but we already know: a human body with the pill produced the scientist's blue quale, while in the case of the robot body, there was no production of quale.

That's the difference. The existence of quale as a result of an environment of objects.

My qualia is part of my existence. We can't discuss someone's qualia without talking about a part of the world which is them. It is unique. There no other state of the world is my qualia. — TheWillowOfDarkness

According to physics your qualia are not unique, even without simulation. It's a consequence of the Bekenstein Bound in an infinite universe.

By definition the scientist and robot do not possess equivalent hardware. One produces their quale of blue when given the pill, the other does not. The difference is already within their existence. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If they both possess computationally universal hardware, then they are equivalent. If only the robot does, then that makes matters easier for the simulation. Once you achieve universality, there is nowhere else to go.

You ask what could bring about the difference, but we already know: a human body with the pill produced the scientist's blue quale, while in the case of the robot body, there was no production of quale. — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, the scientist and the robot are running different software. Qualia are a software feature. It cannot be anything else!

I'm not going to waste any more time replying to false accusations of contradiction. Put your magnifying glasses on and read it again properly this time. :-} — John

Ok, you refuse to acknowledge your contradictions. Let me explain this issue. It's quite straight forward, but metaphysically important. Your claim that logic constrains thinking cannot be upheld, because logic is a specialized way of thinking which is created by thinking itself. Therefore thinking is necessarily prior to logic, and not constrained by it. That thinking is constrained by logic is an illusion. Dispelling this illusion will open your mind to a vast component of reality, which this illusion has laid inaccessible to you, like Plato's cave people.

The freedom in thinking is described by the concept of free will, and it is an important aspect of reality which should be understood by anyone doing metaphysics. Just like moral principles, and the laws of the land, we are not constrained by the laws of logic, we willfully consent to them. This consent is described by the concept of free will.

When you assume, premise, that thinking is naturally constrained by logic, that it is inherently constrained in such a way, you remove the necessity for this free act of will. So you produce a metaphysics which represents thinking as just naturally constrained, without any reference to this act of will, which is an essential component of any such constraint system. That's the essential component which you and apokrisis are leaving out from your metaphysics. You fail to recognize, that such constraint systems must necessarily be willed into being. Because of this, such metaphysics avoids the very important issue of approaching the thing which does the willing.

This thing which does the willing is excluded from your reality, it is not real, and therefore not approached. That is why recognizing the true relationship between thinking and logic, is important. Once willing is understood as an essential aspect of such a constraint system, then this principle must be extended to all semiotic constraint systems. There is a very clear need to assume a thing which wills such a constraint system into existence.

↪Metaphysician Undercover Image recognition software doesn't possess qualia either. — tom

Why not, if you define "qualia" as "what it's like"? Clearly, the computer, with the software must recognize what the image is like, to make the determination. But if you define "qualia" as "what 'it's like as experienced by a human subject", then obviously not.

My question would be, how do we produce a definition of "qualia" which excludes my experience of what it's like from being the same as your experience of what it's like.

Have a browse of the essays of Steve Talbott at the New Atlantis. He's not an advocate of semiotics as such, rather a kind of independent philosopher of biology, more aligned with Owen Barfield (although there is some commonality). Have a look in particular at Logic, DNA and Poetry, which touches on some of the themes suggested by the above quote. (He's a friendly guy, too, I wrote to him a few times and he was very responsive.) — Wayfarer

Here's a passage from that article on "Logic, DNA and Poetry".

The problem is that their insistence upon textual mechanisms blinds them even to the most obvious aspects of language — aspects that prove crucial for understanding the organism. If I am speaking to you in a logically or grammatically proper fashion, then you can safely predict that my next sentence will respect the rules of logic and grammar. But this does not even come close to telling you what I will say. Really, it’s not a hard truth to see: neither grammatical nor logical rules determine the speech in which they are found. Rather, they only tell us something about how we speak, not what we say or who we are as speaking beings.

If geneticists would reckon fully with this one central truth, it would transform their discipline. They would no longer imagine they could read the significance of the genetic text merely by laying bare the rules of a molecular syntax. And they would quickly realize other characteristics of the textual language they incessantly appeal to — for example, that meaning flows from the larger context into the specific words, altering the significance of the words. This is something you experience every time you find yourself able, while hearing a sentence, to select between words that sound alike but have different meanings. The context tells you which one makes sense.

Although the focus is on "context", notice the last line, "...to select between words..": Poetry is a meaningful use of words, which, through careful word selection, provides a degree of ambiguity. The ambiguity allows freedom of interpretation. The freedom of interpretation allows the poetry to be relevant, meaningful, to the masses of people, despite the fact that I derive a different meaning than you do, from it. This is why we can discuss endlessly the meaning, or content of such art.

But the freedom has two sides, not only is there freedom to interpretation, but there is also freedom in composition. Freedom in composition is of the essence, because it is this freedom which allows for freedom of interpretation.

Experiences aren't generated separate to the triad monism. They are part of it. The "hard problem" misunderstands consciousness. It thinks it something separate to the world, outside its formal cause (from a semiotic theory perspective), so it just misses the boat completely in its analysis of experiences and the world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So where is experience IN the triad monism? If it was always there- panexperientialism. If it "comes about" how is it "semiotics doing their thing" on one side and "semiotics being experience" on the other?

Experience doesn't have a formal cause separate to the world. That's what emergence means. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't know what you mean here. I don't want to misinterpret you and lead down more unnecessary rabbit holes of circular arguing. Much of my problem debating you I believe is clarity. If you can, would you please bullet point the exact things you think I am positing and then answer them beneath with your objections? I think that might be a more productive way to debate as it's hard for me to follow you at times, possibly due to the phrasing and wording you use.

From a dualist perceptive (i.e. experience has a formal cause separate to the rest of the world), emergence isn't "unexplained," it's impossible. No account of consciousness works because the dualist considers it be outside and separate to the things that exist ( "body"). — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, they don't think it's "impossible". It happens all the time WHEN there is already-a mind perceiving it (i.e. bricks become buildings, tropical storms become hurricanes, any physical process over time, etc.). Now, experience, DOES appear to be different than physical processes UNLESS one posits that the physical processes ARE in someway EXPERIENTIAL.