There are no language games about “Prefflings” — Luke

Seems you have entirely missed what was said.

On your account, you have already entered into the game about Prefflings.

What can we say? Well, it's a word I made up on the spot, but we already know that a Preffling is smaller than a Preff. And because it is capitalised, we know that they are individuals.

There are those who claim that "pref" comes from "preference". But others claim it comes from "prefabricated". Which side will you take?

Seems you have entirely missed what was said. — Banno

If you’re only going to respond to the first line of each of my posts then why should I bother?

It is you who has missed what was said. Being the topic of a discussion is “having a role in the language game”. However, your claim is that qualia “cannot have a role in the language game”. Contradiction.

Fucksake.

Ok, you got me. You win. There is indeed a language game about qualia.

As indeed there is now a language game about Prefflings.

And they have equal impact on anything else.

Ok, you got me. You win. There is indeed a language game about qualia. — Banno

Good. Then you should accept that it’s not senseless to talk about qualia or inverted spectra.

Good. Then you should accept that it’s not senseless to talk about qualia or inverted spectra. — Luke

Why? Are all language games sensical?

Full circle...

What does "qualia" pick out to the exclusion of all else?

I’d really prefer to return to my argument that we can talk about qualia even though qualia are not the basis for the meanings of sensation terms. Banno’s minimalist responses to the first lines of my posts have brought us here. But okay why aren’t all language games sensical?

Why? Are all language games sensical? — Isaac

I'd say they are not. But if we all think we enjoy an inner life, then even though we cannot directly share our inner lives in the way we can directly share the sensory world, could it not be sensical to talk about our inner lives, since we at least have thinking we have an inner life in common? Isn't that what poetry often does?

why aren’t all language games sensical? — Luke

I had https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense_verse in mind. Maybe you're using a stricter meaning of sensical than I, but I don't think the subject matter of nonsense poetry is suitable for serious discussion, even if the existence of nonsense poetry is.

But if we all think we enjoy an inner life, then even though we cannot directly share our inner lives in the way we can directly share the sensory world, could it not be sensical to talk about our inner lives — Janus

Wouldn't talking about our inner lives count as sharing them? Otherwise how would we select the words which might constitute such a conversation if there were no public meanings to which they might refer?

There is no experience of qualia beyond the language game of talking about the use of "qualia".

I meant that we cannot pick out precisely determinate features of our inner lives to share, as we can with perceptible objects. Sure, there's a commonality of language, based on commonalities of feeling and impression about the way our inner lives seem to each of us I suppose. We could even disagree about how our inner lives seem on the basis of there being sufficient commonality for such disagreement to be possible.

None of this is to say we need to speak in terms of qualia, though; unless 'qualia' simply means something like 'quality of experience'. But then inner experience is all qualitative, so I guess we don't even need to speak about quality of experience, but just about the experience itself.

What does "qualia" pick out to the exclusion of all else? — creativesoul

Conscious experience.

I meant that we cannot pick out precisely determinate features of our inner lives to share, as we can with perceptible objects. — Janus

Yeah, maybe. Then i suppose those we must show, or pass over in silence.

I guess we don't even need to speak about quality of experience, but just about the experience itself. — Janus

Spot on. There seems no purpose for this wierd intermediary 'qualia', neither in perception, nor in experience. What we can say we can say directly of the world itself, what we cannot say...we cannot say.

You're complaining that your eggs are overdone while the house burns down around you.

Are you an eliminative materialist?
— Luke

Here's the thing: I do not have to have an alternative explanation in order to show that qualia are not helpful.

But since you asked, it seems to me that the hard problem is a result of looking at the issue the wrong way. Here's a post of mine from a while back:


Painted using a matte house paint with the least possible gloss, on stretched canvas, 3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide, in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

An anti-war statement displaying the terror and suffering of people and animals.

Two ways of talking about the very same thing.

Do we need to reduce one to the other?

There is indeed a discussion to be had about how the selection of paint leads to the impact that Guernica has on the viewer. In the end you might be able to show the effect, but not to say it; there is nothing to say, when what is left is to look a the painting. A complete description of the tones and materials will not have the same impact.

Here's another:

Philosophy is a jigsaw puzzle.

Descartes thought the best way to finish the puzzle was to start by finding the corners. The corners are fixed, he thought, so if we get them in place, we can work our way around the edge by finding the straight edges, and work our way into the middle. He argued that "I think therefore I am" was a corner.

Other folk thought he was mistaken. They looked for other corners. A priori concepts, perhaps; or dialectic, or the Will, or falsification, or logic, language, choice... And on and on

Wittgenstein's contribution consists in his pointing out that this particular jigsaw does not have corners, nor edges. There are always bits that are outside any frame we might set up. And further, we don't really need corners and edges anyway. We can start anywhere and work in any direction. We can work on disjointed parts, perhaps bringing them together, perhaps not. We can even make new pieces as we go.
— Philosophy is a jigsaw puzzle. Descartes thought the best way to finish the puzzle was to start by finding the corners. The corners are fixed, he thought, so if we get them in place, we can work our way around the edge by finding the straight edges, and work our way into the middle. He argued that

See what I did there?

Or the cliché, should we argue that this is reducible to an image of a rabbit?



Is it really just a rabbit? Is the mind really just matter?

This is the content of Wittgenstein's PI, and it seems to me to have an impact on many philosophical questions; to carry a great deal of weight.

But don't ask me to tell you what that impact weighs in kilograms. That's not a sensible question. — Banno

Banno’s minimalist responses to the first lines of my posts have brought us here. — Luke

Disingenuous.

Nonsense verse is not complete nonsense, but the nonsensical aspects are due to the use of words which intentionally lack meaning/sense. Maybe a word like “Preffling”. But “qualia” isn’t one of those words.

“qualia” isn’t one of those words. — Luke

But that's just begging the question. We're arguing about just that very proposition.

:up:

I guess we don't even need to speak about quality of experience, but just about the experience itself. — Janus

What’s the difference? I guess it depends on whether you take an “experience” to be something inner or something outer. Qualia is what eliminative materialists want to eliminate.

There seems no purpose for this wierd intermediary 'qualia', neither in perception, nor in experience. — Isaac

Why does it need to be considered as an “intermediary” instead of just the (quality of the) experience that a person has? The way things taste, look, sound or feel to a particular person. We know that these things are not the same for everyone, otherwise there would be no colour-blindness or synaesthesia or deafness, etc. And it’s likely that there could be even more slight, less noticeable differences for more “normal” people.

You think that the word “qualia” has an intentionally nonsensical meaning?

Full circle... — creativesoul

Yep.

You think that the word “qualia” has an intentionally nonsensical meaning? — Luke

Maybe you are beginning to understand...?

Qualia is what eliminative materialists want to eliminate. — Luke

If someone were to set up a world in which there was only eliminative materialism or qualia, and one were obligated by reason to reject qualia, one would also be obligated to accept eliminative materialism.

Is that your world?

Why does it need to be considered as an “intermediary” instead of just the (quality of the) experience that a person has? — Luke

What is the difference between the quality of the experience and the experience?

The way things taste, look, sound, feel to a particular person. — Luke

What is 'the way' doing here?. The taste of an apple is the taste of an apple, there's no other thing it becomes inside my mind. There's the chemicals which make it up, there's the responses those chemicals cause (both in neurological terms, if you're a neuroscientist, and in stated cultural terms for the rest of us). Where in that is qualia? It's not that I spit out the bitter coffee, it's not that my neurons fire in a certain way, it's not that I reach for the word 'bitter' when describing it, it's not that I'm reminded of my grandma's coffee...because none of these things require a new non-physical entity. The synaesthete reaches for a different word, has different memories, has different mental images... none of these issues requies a new entity either. So wither qualia?

Conscious experience. — Marchesk

Nobody's denying that people have conscious experience, just qualia. :up:

Why does it need to be considered as an “intermediary” instead of just the (quality of the) experience that a person has? The way things taste, look, sound, feel to a particular person. We know that these things are not the same for everyone, otherwise there would be no colour-blindness or synaesthesia or deafness, etc. And it’s likely that there could be even more slight, less noticeable differences for more normal people. — Luke

Different people have different experiences, and the same people have different experiences on different occasions. That should not be surprising, even on a purely physical account, because each body and environment is different and on each occasion too.

I think the reason for eliminating unnecessary terms like 'qualia', is that experiences are always already qualitative, so we have no need, in fact it will just produce reificatory confusion, to speak of the quality of an experience. You know, it's like the taste of beer; there's no experience of the taste of beer since the taste of beer is the experience, and to say that there is an experience of the taste of beer is like saying there is an experience of the experience. So how much less is there a quality of the experience of the taste of beer?

You think that the word “qualia” has an intentionally nonsensical meaning? — Luke

To an extent yes. A lot of people hang a lot of their professional respect on being expert in matters which would take too long (and too much risk of error) to learn the physical basis of. There's a strong incentive to create entities whose properties are sufficiently ineffable that one can forever be right about them without fear of redundancy.

What is the difference between the quality of the experience and the experience? — Isaac

See my latest response to @Janus.

What is 'the way' doing here?. The taste of an apple is the taste of an apple — Isaac

If an apple has a taste, then there is a way it tastes. Am I Englishing wrong?

there's no other thing it becomes inside my mind. — Isaac

If apples have a taste then you can taste them (or not), which means they taste some way to you. I’m not suggesting it becomes some other thing in your mind, but it becomes something in your mind: a sensation of taste. That sensation of taste probably has properties, such as sweet, bitter, juicy, sharp, etc.

If an apple has a taste, then there is a way it tastes. Am I Englishing wrong? — Luke

"A taste"...