...you do seem to be espousing illusionism in this paragraph. Which would be that we're being deluded by some trick of cognition into thinking sensations of color, sound, paint, etc. are something they're not, which is some form of the private, ineffable subjectivity.
— Marchesk — creativesoul

I've no idea how you've arrived at that from what I wrote.

On my view, an illusion is always of something else that is not an illusion. I wouldn't call Qualia an illusion, unless it is an illusion of what counts as an acceptable accounting practice.

To quite the contrary, I would call it a failed philosophical attempt at taking proper account of what conscious experience consists of and/or is existentially dependent upon. A failed attempt at setting out the pre-theoretical, basic, and/or fundamental elements of conscious experience.

This is just lovely. What an excellent post. — Srap Tasmaner

Why thanks, glad you liked it. Who said philosophy is the capacity to marvel?

With sufficient pedantry, what demarcates the steps of the "iterations" of perceptions would also vary too, no? There's no guarantee that update steps correspond 1-1 with "instants" of perception as we'd introspectively, pre-theoretically or even experientially in this case draw the line. The indexical progression of update steps within the updating procedure isn't the same thing as individuation of situated ("subjective") states. — fdrake

Yes, that's true. Libet's a good example. Also various temporal re-arrangements that have to be carried out to accommodate the expected difference in time it takes for signals which we expect to have been caused simultaneously to reach our working memory via their various routes.

Regardless, it does seem important to be able to study the "perceptual moment" and to give an account of how that arises from the steps of the updating procedure. Even if that perceptual moment is still a "finite stretching along in time" — fdrake

Yeah, at issue here in reply to is the extent to which we can usefully identify and segment off a 'result' of all this subconscious processing as some property of consciousness. I think we all agree that any such segmentation will be arbitrary, but is it useful to inquiry and does it need parameters in order to continue to be?

I think one thing that prompts a use of qualia is a desire to be able to work backwards as a explanatory precess, so to be able to take the fact that I can describe how my last sip of tea tasted and explain it. The first step qualists take is to say that because I can describe how my last sip of tea tasted (or carry out any other response) there must be some way my first sip of tea tasted. This is obviously false and we can move on from this simplistic view. So the real issue is whether there's some intermediary step between the subconscious parts of the brain responsible for forming models related to taste, tea, cups, misty mornings, headaches, work stresses...and the resultant formation of words, or actions which we'd like to be able to say 'resulted' from that mix. The best candidate would seem to be something like the sensory memory or the working memory, but Libet's work (and others) seems to throw the latter into question, much of what's stored in the working memory is stored after the event it's supposedly initiating has already been initiated, It's there to explain the action we just took, not determine it. So perhaps the sensory memory? For those that don't already know, this is a theorised, even shorter-term memory than the working memory. It stores (keeps online is a better description, given the tiny timescales we're talking about) some of the neural responses to some fairly high level sensory representations (so a little combination, filtering and suppression has taken place, but not the full works). Maybe whatever is in the sensory memory is in there long enough to count as a 'result', a 'step' in the processes even thought he rest of the process is continuing along behind it, the holding of that data, even for a fraction of a second, could break down a continual process into steps. If so then such holding is based on surprise (as active inference devotees will not be surprised to learn). We break up the continual algorithm into chunks using very short term storage based on the points in the process where we were surprised.

But that's nothing to do with qualia; their role here has been to add confusion. — Banno

We can just call it phenomenal consciousness.

I think one thing that prompts a use of qualia is a desire to be able to work backwards as a explanatory precess, so to be able to take the fact that I can describe how my last sip of tea tasted and explain it. The first step qualists take is to say that because I can describe how my last sip of tea tasted (or carry out any other response) there must be some way my first sip of tea tasted. This is obviously false and we can move on from this simplistic view. — Isaac

Why not just work backwards from the fact that there is some way the first sip of tea tasted, as described or reported by a subject? It’s as though non-qualists want to pretend there are no pre-theoretic (or simply first-person) perceptions. But aren’t they precisely what is attempting to be explained?

Why not just work backwards from the fact that there is some way the first sip of tea tasted, as described or reported by a subject? — Luke

Because there is no such fact. Dennet's just taken an entire paper showing this, we've just taken 13 pages of discussion showing it. I mean this in the most polite possible way, but you need to counter one or more of the specific points raised which show that there is no such fact, returning to the assertion that there is just puts us right back at the beginning again.

In short, to answer your question, we did start there. Then we worked out that there was no such fact of how the sip of tea tasted, and so we moved on.

It’s as though non-qualists want to pretend there are no pre-theoretic (or simply first-person) perceptions. But aren’t they precisely what is attempting to be explained? — Luke

Folk keep trying to set out the nature of the ineffable, and complaining when other folk point out that they can't.

There's nought queer as folk.

Because there is no such fact. — Isaac

Then what are you trying to explain? The mistaken belief that we taste tea? Or that people make reports about the taste of tea (even though there’s no such thing)?

Then what are you trying to explain? The mistaken belief that we taste tea? Or that people make reports about the taste of tea (even though they don’t)? — Luke

Trying to explain by what? I'm not clear here whether you're asking what inquiry into perception is trying to explain, or what dismissing qualia is trying to explain.

Trying to explain by what? — Isaac

Aren't you trying to explain something when you say, for example:

So the real issue is whether there's some intermediary step between the subconscious parts of the brain responsible for forming models related to taste, tea, cups, misty mornings, headaches, work stresses...and the resultant formation of words, or actions which we'd like to be able to say 'resulted' from that mix. The best candidate would seem to be something like the sensory memory or the working memory, but Libet's work (and others) seems to throw the latter into question, much of what's stored in the working memory is stored after the event it's supposedly initiating has already been initiated, It's there to explain the action we just took, not determine it. — Isaac

What are you trying to account for here?

Folk keep trying to set out the nature of the ineffable, and complaining when other folk point out that they can't. — Banno

Someone once observed that "what can be shown cannot be said", such as the colour red, or the Guernica painting. Others think that seeing a painting and talking about it are just two different ways of talking about it.

So... which are you?

What are you trying to account for here? — Luke

There I'm just trying to throw a bone to @Kenosha Kid's idea that we might have a defined step we could meaningfully talk about in the otherwise seamless process of perception-inference. I wasn't sure if I'd understood Kenosha's point properly so thought I'd try to lay some potential bridges. The actual idea that there's a way tea tastes to me which is stored somewhere in my brain (or mind, for any dualists out there), has, I thought, been discarded quite some way back. We laid out a fairly exhastive exposition and were met with nothing but "...but it's obvious there's qualia", so I'd kind of moved on from that argument to just the specific point Kenosha was trying to make.

The actual idea that there's a way tea tastes to me which is stored somewhere in my brain (or mind, for any dualists out there), has, I thought, been discarded quite some way back. — Isaac

I wasn't referring to (and I thought you weren't referring to) a way tea tastes to you that is stored in your brain, but to a way tea tastes to you when you taste it; the fact that it tastes a certain way to you (that you perceive it to taste a certain way) in that particular instance.

Dennet's just taken an entire paper showing this, we've just taken 13 pages of discussion showing it. I mean this in the most polite possible way, but you need to counter one or more of the specific points raised which show that there is no such fact, returning to the assertion that there is just puts us right back at the beginning again. — Isaac

As Kenosha keeps pointing out, to apparently deaf ears, Dennett does not deny that conscious experience has properties.

And I did raise a similar point earlier in the discussion, with references to the article, here:

Object(s) are still filtered/perceived by the subject (or by the subject's brain/body) in a way unique to that brain/body, even if colour or sweetness are labelled as objective properties. If there were no subjective aspect, then you should expect to find that we all have the same subjective (objective?) experiences. However, many of Dennett's examples demonstrate that this is not the case. For example, the case of cerebral achromatopsia in which a subject reports that "everything looked black or grey". I have never had this type of experience before. If colour is an objective property then why does the subject report seeing (e.g.) "bright blue objects as black"? — Luke

Are you assuming that subjects are completely mistaken in how things seem to them?

So... which are you? — Banno

At the very least, I believe that things can be shown.

I wasn't referring to (and I thought you weren't referring to) a way tea tastes to you that is stored in your brain, but to a way tea tastes to you when you taste it — Luke

So where is that 'way' if not in the brain of the person doing the tasting? And yet we can make a complete account of chemosensation->talk (or any other response) without either requiring such a fact, nor finding evidence nor mechanism for one. So why would we continue to assume such a thing exists?

And yet we can make a complete account of chemosensation->talk without either requiring such a fact, nor finding evidence nor mechanism for one. So why would we continue to assume such a thing exists? — Isaac

What (else) is chemosensation supposed to account for if not taste?

What (else) is chemosensation supposed to account for if not taste? — Luke

The signals which chemosensory neurons send to cotices higher in the hierarchy. Nothing more. Beyond that you start to see the influence of a whole slew of non-chemosensory systems getting involved, feeding back to the chemosensory neurons, suppressing certain signals, re-iterating others. One if the many paths taken ends up (together with input from a hundred other unrelated paths) in the stimulation of the motor neurons responsible for forming the words "this tea tastes bitter". Where in all that is the 'taste' of the tea?

Why does the person report that it tastes bitter? I mean, I get that qualia might not be necessary for scientific purposes, but this is philosophy. Don't you taste tea, whether or not that taste is constant or whatever, doesn't it have some flavour or taste when you drink it?

Why does the person report that it tastes bitter? — Luke

Could be any one of a large number if reasons. That's the point of rejecting qualia. We wouldn't know, at least not by introspection. Most likely is that they expected it to taste bitter, chemosensory neurons didn't keep any signals in the sensory memory long enough to trigger a revision of that expectation. But it could as easily have been because everyone else in their social group said it tasted bitter, or that their tounge wasn't working, or that they're having a bad day and want to find fault. What it's not (at least we've good reason to think it's not) is because there's some way the tea tastes stored in the brain which we seek out when wanting to make an accurate report of it.

You are again pretending as if those qualia don't exist, yet that is what you are trying to account for by means other than introspection.

I saw a reality TV cooking show once where contestants were blindfolded and given small cubes of different types of foodstuffs and they were asked to guess what each foodstuff was. They later reported that identification was difficult due to being blindfolded and because each foodstuff was presented as the same uniform cube. However, several of them were quite good at it, getting through about 6 or 7 cubes each before giving a wrong answer. This would not seem possible if they did not have some flavours stored in their memories, and if there were not some constancy to those tastes in order for them to be able to correctly identify those foods.

Does tea have some taste for you?

You are again pretending as if those qualia don't exist, yet that is what you are trying to account for by means other than introspection. — Luke

I'm not trying to account for qualia. I'd be trying to account for behaviour, neuroscientists would be trying to account for neural activity. There's no need to account for qualia because there's no cause to think they exist to require accounting for.

Does tea have some taste for you? — Luke

No. I have a range of responses to drinking tea, a range of words I reach for if asked to describe it, a range of actions I take associated with it (but also associated with all the other aspects of my environment at the time).

The argument that's been fairly exhaustively presented is that our intuitive sense that there's a way tea tastes to me (at time t) is mistaken, as many intuitions turn out to be. It's no good arguing against that position by stating that we all have such an intuition, we knew that, that's where we started, we're now checking to see if it makes sense in the light of Dennet's charges, the insights of neuroscience etc.

No. I have a range of responses to drinking tea, a range of words I reach for if asked to describe it...

The argument that's been fairly exhaustively presented is that our intuitive sense that there's a way tea tastes to me (at time t) is mistaken, as many intuitions turn out to be. — Isaac

Then what informs your response, or your "range of words" you reach for if asked to describe it (to describe what?)

Then what informs your response, or your "range of words" you reach for if asked to describe it (to describe what?) — Luke

All number of things. In neurological terms, it's the firing of whatever neurons have pathways leading to speech centres, in psychological terms it would be my beliefs about the effect those words would have compared to the goals I have the time. I can't see referring to the entire state of my mind at the time of sipping tea (regardless of the source of those states) as 'the taste of tea' being useful in any sense.

In neurological terms... — Isaac

If someone asks you "how's the tea?", you respond in neurological terms and/or strategic terms? The flavour never enters into any of your responses? What if someone asks whether you can see, hear or smell something particular. "Can you smell smoke?" You either answer in neurological terms or say what they want to hear, which is presumably "no"?

someone asks you "how's the tea?", you respond in neurological terms and/or strategic terms? — Luke

Yes. That's how people work, they say and do things with an aim to have a certain effect by doing so.

What if someone asks whether you can see, hear or smell something particular. "Can you smell smoke?" You either answer in neurological terms or say what they want to hear, which is presumably "no"? — Luke

Why would telling them what they want to hear be my only strategic choice? But yes, if it were, that's exactly what I'd say. More to the point, if I really didn't want to think there was smoke I would demonstrably be less likely to interpret chemosensory signals as indicating that there was.

Our ability to talk of taste is not reliant on the unique existence of a referent for that talk. It's reliant only on the fact that it does the job we need it to do. If saying "this tea tastes bitter" to the waiter gets more sugar put in it, then it's done its job even if there's no referent. Indeed it does the job better that way. If I want a world where waiters add sugar in response the word 'bitter' then I'd better hope it's one in which 'bitter' has a public meaning based on use, not a private one based on subjective internal states.

More to the point, if I really didn't want to think there was smoke I would demonstrably be less likely to interpret chemosensory signals as indicating that there was. — Isaac

Okay, so our perceptions get coloured by stuff. I'm just trying to get at whether or not you can smell smoke at all, or whether you've ever smelled smoke.

If saying "this tea tastes bitter" to the waiter gets more sugar put in it, then it's done its job even if there's no referent. — Isaac

So there is a way that it tastes? Otherwise, why would you want sugar added?

Okay, so our perceptions get coloured by stuff. I'm just trying to get at whether or not you can smell smoke at all, or whether you've ever smelled smoke. — Luke

Smelling smoke and 'the way smoke smells' are not the same thing. The first can be described entirely as a process without introducing new facts. The latter has introduced this new element without cause 'the way...'.

So there is a way that it tastes? Otherwise, why would you want sugar added? — Luke

No, there's no need for one, I want sugar added because I've learned such an action changes my internal states in a way that seems desirable. Again, if you want to call my entire mental state at the time 'the taste of tea' be my guest, it just seems to add unnecessary confusion. Maybe I want sugar added because I'm hungry or tired and the story I tell to account for that is 'the tea was bitter' do you want to be describing my state of hunger and tiredness within 'the taste of tea'? It's not really 'of tea' anymore by then is it?

I want sugar added because I've learned such an action changes my internal states in a way that seems desirable — Isaac

What internal states? How do you sense that it is desirable? How do you know that it will be again?

Again, if you want to call my entire mental state at the time 'the taste of tea' be my guest, it just seems to add unnecessary confusion. — Isaac

I don't want to call your entire mental state the taste of tea. I just want to know whether you can taste tea. It strikes me as abnormal that you can't.

Maybe I want sugar added because I'm hungry or tired and the story I tell to account for that is 'the tea was bitter' do you want to be describing my state of hunger and tiredness within 'the taste of tea'? — Isaac

I just want to know whether the tea tasted bitter to you (or seemed to), for whatever reason. From the outset, Dennett defines qualia as "the way things seem to us". You don't need to know all the reasons why things seem that way, only that they do.

What internal states? How do you sense that it is desirable? How do you know that it will be again? — Luke

Those are both massive questions. Short answer neural networks and predictive models. Perhaps if you could explain the relevance I could be.more specific, as it is you've just asked me for a précis of the whole of cognitive psychology.

I don't want to call your entire mental state the taste of tea. I just want to know whether you can taste tea. It strikes me as abnormal that you can't. — Luke

I can't tell if you don't understand the distinction I made earlier or if you disagree with it because you haven't referenced it at all here despite repeating the notion to which it was an answer. I'll say again - there's a difference between tasting tea [the process] and the taste of tea [the ontological commitment]. I can taste tea. I don't believe there is a thing which answers to 'the taste of tea'. Two different ideas.