I don't recall making a claim about objectivity. Could you quote me that post? — Isaac

You presented or assumed subjectivity as flawed. I’m trying to show you that this is not the case. Subjectivity is the bedrock of scientific objectivity.

Science has to reconcile itself with subjectivity. It’s a mistake to try and banish it, or to treat as an illusion, or as flawed.

You presented or assumed subjectivity as flawed. — Olivier5

Where?

Here:

This seems to be the perennial trick of the idealists and woo-merchants. To point out that empirical data has flaws (subjectivity, the necessity of an observer etc) and then for some reason assume this counts as an argument in favour of alternative methods of discussion. — Isaac

I smell Stove's Gem.

We could always marry qualia to universals and really stoke the flames. — Marchesk

You mean like Descartes taking Plato's Forms (the domain of the Intellect) and adding sentience to posit the Cartesian mind?

That debate has been going on for hundreds of years (if not thousands)...

Actually Aristotle's form/matter distinction was a counter to dualism (in this case, Plato's).
— Andrew M

Didn’t know that, thanks. True that form cannot exist without matter and vice versa. Still it is a duality of sorts, like the two sides of the same coin. — Olivier5

OK. I think of dualism as an ontological separation thesis, where each dual has its own nature and principles for understanding them.

Long story short, I think kicking happens out there in the world, not in people's minds (it's a kind of relation, which is part of the physicist's toolkit). However it doesn't follow that it has an independent existence apart from individuals. Which is why it is abstract, not concrete.
— Andrew M

That makes sense. But I think the same thing applies to individuals. An individual is a being (be-ing) in the sense of the term as verb, yet being, like kicking, does not have an independent existence apart from individuals.

So for me an act of kicking is as concrete as the individual doing the kicking and the object being kicked. And kicking in the general sense, is no more abstract than being or existence in the general sense. — Janus

Yes agreed, and well put. Kicking is concrete when those relational dependencies are met (i.e., when someone is kicking something).

OK. I think of dualism as an ontological separation thesis, where each dual has its own nature and principles for understanding them. — Andrew M

Fair. But ontology is elusive. We don’t really know what matter ‘is’, for instance. Personally I try to stay away from it. (ontology I mean, not matter, as staying away from matter would be difficult)

I'd like to return to this:

Perhaps a way to proceed would be to look at the definitions given in the SEP article.

Four uses are provided. The first is the phenomenal character of the experience, which you seem to be adopting. The second is as properties of sense data. The third, as intrinsic non-representational properties. The fourth, as intrinsic, nonphysical, ineffable properties.

The second is out of favour along with sense-data. The fourth is that which Dennett seeks to Quine.

Now I think those of us who reject qualia have been implicitly suggesting that the first entails the third and fourth, and that this is the position taken by Dennett.

How's that? — Banno

That debate has been going on for hundreds of years (if not thousands)... — Andrew M

Interesting, didactic, nicely put.

As an aside, in Popper’s three worlds theory, world 1 is the physical world, world 2 is the subjective world of individuals, and world 3 is the world of ideas as historically produced by world 2 (us humans), therefore it is an intersubjective world where human ideas collaborate or fight with one another a little bit like Dennett’s memes do. Popper’s world 3 is of course based on worlds 1 and 2, and made possible by the invention of language and writing. It’s all one world in the end.

What I find interesting in this view — which must have many precedents — is that the Platonic world of ideas is not ‘out there’ and objective; rather it is grounded in human subjectivity, and built by our intersubjective dialogue and intellectual efforts generation after generation.

↪Daemon
What do you think? Posit an example, and we can have a look. — Banno

I may post some examples, but whether this is worthwhile will depend on your response to another question:

We use talk of beliefs in order to explain human behaviour. We can extend this to cats, but the belief is not a thing in the mind of the cat; it's just a pattern of behaviour. That is, the belief is not in the cat, but in the explanation. — Banno

Would you also hold that your own belief is not a thing in your own mind, but only a pattern of behaviour?

Four uses are provided. The first is the phenomenal character of the experience, which you seem to be adopting. The second is as properties of sense data. The third, as intrinsic non-representational properties. The fourth, as intrinsic, nonphysical, ineffable properties.

The second is out of favour along with sense-data. The fourth is that which Dennett seeks to Quine.

Now I think those of us who reject qualia have been implicitly suggesting that the first entails the third and fourth, and that this is the position taken by Dennett.

How's that? — Banno

That probably accounts for a lot, thanks. As the article says:

Thus, announcements by philosophers who declare themselves opposed to qualia need to be treated with some caution. One can agree that there are no qualia in the last three senses I have explained, while still endorsing qualia in the standard first sense. — SEP

Unexpected segue into Godwin's law at the end there, but as a fan of Dead Snow I approve.

Oooo, nice. But it's late here, so I'll have a think on that and reply later. Good reply.

A robot has a relationship with its environment as well. Humans are part of the environment. To assert that humans are somehow special in this regard, is unwarranted.

The practical contact with the world for both humans and robots is via the physical senses.

Experience is information. — Harry Hindu

Humans and other living organisms are special in this regard. The specialness comes about with the development of single-celled organisms, and results from the division between "self" and "other".

Humans and certain other living organisms are more special still. We have experiences.

Robots don't have experiences. They don't feel, they don't hear, they don't see things.

You say that experience is information, but then you also say that everything is information, so this claim of yours doesn't explain anything.

Robots don't have experiences. They don't feel, they don't hear, they don't see things. — Daemon

How do you know?

I recently posted an article on 15 years of research that showed that humans really aren't like other animals in terms of memory storage.

Human memory is stored in an overlapping jumbled way compared to other animals like us.

An obvious speculation would be that our ability to abstract is related to this anomoly. So human thought may be truly unique in the animal world (now that our cousins are all extinct).

So if your goal is to say something about evolution, you might have to be tentative.

...you are taking a piece of language and supposing that because we talk as if it refers to something, there must be something to which it refers. You are reifying belief. — Banno

Pots and kettles for a purveyor of belief as propositional attitude.

That's not what a reification fallacy is anyway, and anyone whose read what I've wrote here ought know that I'm not treating belief as if it is physical or concrete.

You there? I'd really like to know where this was going. When you have a minute. — Banno

Sure. Since you are either unable or unwilling to provide an argument for the position you hold (that beliefs only apply to statements), I'll provide a counter argument to the position.

One type of account of belief construes belief as a propositional attitude. That is, an attitude an agent may hold towards a proposition. If x is an agent and p is a proposition, that propositional attitude can be expressed as "x believes that p". Keep "expressed" in your mind for later.

So we don't get bogged down unnecessarily in redundancy, I'll grant you that "x believes that p" and "x believes that "p" is true"" say the same thing, in the sense that to assert that p is to assert ""p" is true". In other words, in this account, the following two things are logically equivalent (one is true when and only when the other is true):

(1) x believes that p
(2) x believes that "p" is true

And we can say that because "p" is true if and only if p.

Onto the argument, let's say that x believes that snow is white. Under what conditions is x's belief true? x's belief is true when and only when snow is white. But notice, x may believe that snow is white, and x may believe the statement that "snow is white" is true; but the former is a belief about snow, and the latter is a belief about the statement "snow is white" that is true whenever snow is white. The first has belief directed towards snow being white (as a truthmaker/truth condition/event/state of affairs), the second has belief directed towards a statement that snow is white.

If beliefs can only be directed towards statements, then x will not (definitionally) have beliefs about snow - they can only have beliefs about statements about snow. But I don't just believe the statement "snow is white", I believe snow is white.

Under the account of truth above, when a person believes that snow is white, that does not concern snow. It concerns a statement about snow. Now remember "expressed" earlier - it comes back to haunt us, propositional attitudes are expressed in statements, but are themselves attitudes towards states of affairs.

What the equivalence between (1) and (2) lets you do is to speak as if people only have beliefs about statements, simply because if x believes that p, that is logically equivalent to having the belief about the statement "p" is true (but see the hidden * comment for another wrinkle), despite that one is targeted at a state of affairs - snow being white - and one is targeted at a statement.

That construes beliefs as a relation between agents and states of affairs, rather than between agents and statements. Perceptual expectations are relationships between agents and states of affairs. There will be some overlap; "I believe that my cup is on my table", what else is there to that than seeing my cup on my table and expressing it as a belief statement? If I saw a statement in place of my cup, I would be very surprised. A theory of perceptual expectations can tell you how the "I believe" in "I believe my cup is on my table" comes to apply the state of my cup being on my table. What it means for an agent to form a belief , accounting for that "I believe" part in "I believe my cup is on my table", is what a theory of belief requires. Deflating it into statements just won't do, as beliefs care very much about the truth conditions of belief statements.

I recently posted an article on 15 years of research that showed that humans really aren't like other animals in terms of memory storage.

Human memory is stored in an overlapping jumbled way compared to other animals like us.

An obvious speculation would be that our ability to abstract is related to this anomoly. So human thought may be truly unique in the animal world (now that our cousins are all extinct). — frank

I actually agree that our thought is unique in the animal world, as a direct result of written language, but not regarding everything prior to.

So if your goal is to say something about evolution, you might have to be tentative.

I've not read the article mentioned. Do you find that anything I've written stands in conflict?

In order for conscious experience to have been able to have gradually emerged over an evolutionary timeline, it must have been able to have begun at some simple, basic, and/or rudimentary level of complexity, and continue to grow and evolve in it's complexity over sufficient time and repetition into something like exactly what we're doing here and now.
— creativesoul

So, would you describe your overall approach as scientific realism? — Wayfarer

Nah. I don't do 'isms'.

Less than 100 comments left to overtake Brexit

A sure sign that there's no substance to the counter-argument is when a participant focuses upon the author rather than the argument being given. — creativesoul

It's a joke between teammates. The other side has done the same.

Are there sides? Shit. I'm clueless, I seem to be arguing against both.

:wink:

The sides have become confused recently with Banno's latest push for 100 and talk of propositional content.

Back when we were tangentally discussing quning qualia, the sides were those in favor of Dennett's intuition pumps, and those of us who were not.

@Banno

Thus, announcements by philosophers who declare themselves opposed to qualia need to be treated with some caution. One can agree that there are no qualia in the last three senses I have explained, while still endorsing qualia in the standard first sense. — SEP

Which most of the posters in this thread seem to agree with. So the question is what does qualia in the first sense amount to, and does the likes of Dennett, Frankish and the Churchlands support it, or is that to be eliminated also?

↪Daemon

Robots don't have experiences. They don't feel, they don't hear, they don't see things. — Daemon


How do you know? — khaled

Same way you know Khaled.

Same way you know Khaled. — Daemon

It's panpyshchist robots all the way down.

You mean like Descartes taking Plato's Forms (the domain of the Intellect) and adding sentience to posit the Cartesian mind?

That debate has been going on for hundreds of years (if not thousands)... — Andrew M

Interesting. I had in mind the ancient skeptical Cyrenaics school of philosophy, since we had a former poster who was a fan of them.

Even if all people were to agree on the perceptual quality that some object has–for instance, that a wall appears white–the Cyrenaics still think that we could not confidently say that we are having the same experience. This is because each of us has access only to our own experiences, not to those of other people, and so the mere fact that each of us calls the wall ‘white’ does not show us that we are all having the same experience that I am having when I use the word ‘white.’

https://iep.utm.edu/cyren/#SSH2a.ii — IEP, Cyrenaics

One interesting thing about them is that they preferred to say things like, "I am sweetened, or I am whitened.", instead of "The honey is sweet, or the wall is white". And they did this because they were skeptical that we could know whether objects had a taste or color independent of our sensations.

There's much talk in modern philosophy about how language misleads. Well, the Cyrenaics would have said that our way of saying, "The cup is red and the coffee tastes bitter sweet.", is misleading us into attributing properties of sensation onto objects.

Anyway, it sounds to me like that Cyrenaics and other ancient skeptical schools anticipated much of the modern debate around qualia, minus the physicalism and neurological part. I do recall that one criticism of ancient atomism was that atoms and the void couldn't create sensations of color and taste.

That construes beliefs as a relation between agents and states of affairs, rather than between agents and statements. — fdrake

A proposition is a state of affairs.

I just remembered that I told you that when I first came to this forum and you were insulting as fuck, something about my not knowing my ass from a hole in the ground.

Jesse you're an asshole.

I actually agree that our thought is unique in the animal world, — creativesoul

Possibly due to memory processing.