One of philosophy's greatest mysteries, even more mysterious than the hard problem, is the mystery of how Daniel Dennett ascended to prominence in anglo-american philosophy — sime

I found his book Consciousness Explained useless, as in not making any useful points.

I'd put it down to the fact that people are far less in awe of sacred cows these days. It's a good time for balloon poppers. Or was, for a while.

Aside from saving me from prepending every reference to an object with "my experience of"...... — Kenosha Kid

Ya know.....if reference to an object is the experience, or the possible experience, then qualia is itself a prepending, which was the ground of the negation argument from the beginning.
—————

Collapsing the distinction between a thing and my experience of it eliminates the language to ask interesting and relevant questions — Kenosha Kid

True enough, but in certain circles it is as alive and well, talked about and pondered, as it was since the Renaissance. Everydayman collapses it as a matter of course, but he doesn’t ask about it either.

....acknowledging the shorthand allows me to ponder how we get from currents along optic nerves to experienced images. — Kenosha Kid

Initially, representational systems authorized that kind of progression, but without sufficient knowledge of the inclusive physiology as validation. Would your acknowledgement indicate qualia are meant to replace representations, as a consequence of empirical knowledge?

I think the collapse we're talking about is hardcore idealism.

Ya know.....if reference to an object is the experience, or the possible experience, then qualia is itself a prepending, which was the ground of the negation argument from the beginning. — Mww

If... Is this you introducing the idea, or a mistranslation of mine? Reference to the object is not experience of the object, but a shorthand for reference to the experience of the object. When I refer to the red flower, I am generally referring to my experience of it. "It is red" is a clue that I'm referring to experience, not the purported object itself, since "red" is not a property of the flower, except again as shorthand for its emission spectrum in natural or everyday environments.

That said, I have to correct myself. Just as I might refer to "the red flower" as a shorthand for "my experience of a red flower", I'm also apt to refer to the object itself as "the red flower" as a shorthand for "the (hypothesed) object that causes my experience of the red flower". Then, of course, all references to objects are really just references to mental models, to hypotheses about an us-independent reality that with overwhelming likelihood exists, but that we have no direct knowledge of.

I'm interested in the bit between photons hitting my retina and me perceiving a red flower. Flowers are, to that extent, boring, but experiences of flowers are interesting and maddeningly complex. Properties of those experiences are therefore also interesting, and we have the word 'qualia' for them. Is this a good word? Does it bring with it relevant connotations of some value when discussing experiencing itself? Time will tell. But...

Would your acknowledgement indicate qualia are meant to replace representations, as a consequence of empirical knowledge? — Mww

... I don't really see it as a contest between likely inaccurate descriptions of consciousness by stroky beard types before the data is in and conclusive. Consciousness seems to involve representation, a model, along with pathological features and errors. Awareness of that representation is experience itself. If that experience has properties, and it seems to, then qualia and representations aren't mutually exclusive*. "The red flower" is such a model, unconsciously constructed based on all sorts of data and processes. My experience of it checks out, and has properties like 'red', and 'flower-shaped' as well as contextual properties. I don't know where these come from or why they seem, but it's useful to be able to talk about them.

*It also seems to me that philosophy has a problem tolerating useful words associated with outdated theories. "Sense data" being another example. Becoming apoplectic at its employment just means having to invent more crap terminology for data we receive via our senses, all because some stroky beard dipshit said incorrect things about it. Philosophers are weird.

shows that qualia are not widely accepted in the professional philosophical community. — Banno

The OP asks how useful a discussion of qualia are, and I can't say much time has been spent by me on the topic. I'm open to figuring our how all these hairs are split among the differing choices in the philosopher poll, but I see representationalism entailing some degree of acceptance of qualia. If we admit to a (1) a world and (2) an interpreted phenomenal world, we must admit that phenomenal world has composition and then we must describe those properties some way. What else to call those things and those properties within the phenomenal world other than "qualia"?

That is, it just seems some overlap is necessary among the representationalists and qualia folks.

I think the collapse we're talking about is hardcore idealism. — frank

Oh. I didn’t get that from the statement. I take KK to be very far from an idealist, so I guess that’s why I didn’t make that connection.

Even so, as far as my readings go, the blanket hardcore idealist maintains the reality of experienced objects....how could he not.....yet holds the collapsible distinction to be a concern of that which experiences, and not as much as we, the lesser human experiencers, distinct from our objects.

I didn’t get that from the statement. I take KK to be very far from an idealist, so I guess that’s why I didn’t make that connection. — Mww

I wasn't generalising, I just meant collapsing the distinction between objects and our experiences of them in language doesn't seem helpful for talking specifically about experience.

But if you collapse the distinction between perception and object, doesn't that mean the world is the content of perception? It appears to be close to "to be is to be perceived."

I realize those on the forum who advocate this kind of collapse don't mean to take this step, but how would one avoid it?

You can't avoid the implied subjective idealism, but naturalised science can at least accommodate the paradox via the adoption of an irrealist stance; If one wants to solve the hard-problem, deflate one's notion of experience to the objects experienced. On the other hand, if one wants to solve the perceptual problem of how one perceive's optical red, study neuroscience.

The questions are qualitatively different, and so are the answers that are expected. So it shouldn't matter that incommensurable theories are used for the different types of question, except for the epistemological foundationalists who are on a hiding to nothing.

But if you collapse the distinction between perception and object, doesn't that mean the world is the content of perception? — frank

Sure, that would be a generalisation, from how we talk about things to how we think about or model things. I was just talking about Banno's language, not his beliefs.

I realize those on the forum who advocate this kind of collapse don't mean to take this step, but how would one avoid it? — frank

I haven't realised that. That is, they don't seem to be trying to avoid that absurd conclusion to me. But you've been here longer than I have, so you'd know I suppose.

Dennett's argument is essentially that reality is physical, so a discourse splitting hairs over every conceivable illusion about the purportedly nonphysical (philosophical zombies, etc.) is superfluous in the pursuit of accuracy, truth.

I don't think Dennett's perspective can depreciate the value of introspective insight, however, and perhaps that's not his intention. When we're seriously trying to express the qualities of what we experience, that has value.

Some experiences can be fundamentally reduced to dimensionality: photons hitting the retina, voltage gradients carrying signals along nerves, colors that take up space within the forms of objects in consort with these brain processes, etc. But some experiences have a nondimensional component, such as tactile sensations, sounds, smells, basically nonvisual "feelings". Yet these are not feelings in the sense of sentiments, but rather prior to the ego. I think it is these nonegoistic, immediate feelings that are grouped into the same category as nonegoistic, immediate dimensional perceptions by the concept of qualia, so it does have a distinctive, nonsuperfluous meaning within philosophical discourse: all perceptual experiences that occur semi-independent of the ego.

I agree with Dennett somewhat when he suggests that talking about philosophical zombies and Chinese rooms probably obfuscates the whole issue when what should really be discussed is introspective insight and, which is Dennett's focus, the physical basis of introspective content. So I almost never use the word qualia anymore and just say "percept", meaning a specific introspective but to some degree nonintentional experience.

if reference to an object is the experience, or the possible experience...
— Mww

If... Is this you introducing the idea, or a mistranslation of mine? — Kenosha Kid

Introduction. I hope I didn’t mistranslated. The idea is that an object cannot be referenced in any way, shape or form, without it first being subjected to a method for doing it.
———-

With respect to what qualia do for you, this.....

Aside from saving me from prepending every reference to an object with "my experience of" — Kenosha Kid

....became this.....

shorthand for reference to the experience of the object. — Kenosha Kid

When I refer to the red flower, I am generally referring to my experience of it. — Kenosha Kid

Properties of those experiences are therefore also interesting, and we have the word 'qualia' for them. — Kenosha Kid

So we arrive at a thesis for qualia, in that for you, they provide properties of experiences. “Red” belongs to the experience, “flower” belongs to the experience, “stem”, “petal”, and so on, all belong. Different, but not necessarily contradictory
————

I'm interested in the bit between photons hitting my retina and me perceiving a red flower. — Kenosha Kid

And somewhere in there will be a bridge for the explanatory gap? Talk about a paradigm shift, if so.

Anyway.....I got what I was after: properties of experiences. So, thanks.
———-

I just meant collapsing the distinction between objects and our experiences of them in language doesn't seem helpful for talking specifically about experience. — Kenosha Kid

I suppose this to mean making them the same. Not an issue for me, insofar as I hold them to be distinct necessarily, therefore the collapsing one to or into the other, is unintelligible. Collapsing an object to its representation is standard for some cognitive procedures, but representation is not experience. They are that which makes experience possible.

So sayeth the better of the outdated theories.

Introduction. I hope I didn’t mistranslated. — Mww

:up:

So we arrive at a thesis for qualia, in that for you, they provide properties of experiences. — Mww

They _are_ properties of experience, by definition, aren't they? Although I sometimes see people talk about them as if they are _objects_ of experience e.h. "the red flower" is the qualia, not it's redness or flower-shape. I believe this was also the ambiguity with sense-data.

They way I see it, the seeming of qualia has two possible origins, both of which seem viable and therefore validate use of the term.

Data comes in via the senses.
The (unconscious, system-oney) brain integrates, transforms, filters, and annotates that data to build a model.
Then either:
1. We experience (conscious, system-twoey) that model, that experience has properties, those properties are called qualia, or
2. Those models have properties, we experience those properties, experience of those properties are what we're calling qualia.
Which I think amount to the same thing. Somehow or other I'm conscious of the redness of the red flower, whether because the model has a property that is experienced as redness, or because the experience has the property of redness.

I suppose this to mean making them the same. Not an issue for me, insofar as I hold them to be distinct necessarily, therefore the collapsing one to or into the other, is unintelligible. — Mww

Yes, especially as it removes the language to make things intelligible.

I haven't realised that. That is, they don't seem to be trying to avoid that absurd conclusion to me. But you've been here longer than I have, so you'd know I suppose — Kenosha Kid

You may be right.

So we arrive at a thesis for qualia, in that for you, they provide properties of experiences.
— Mww

They _are_ properties of experience, by definition, aren't they? — Kenosha Kid

Not necessarily. Depends on who’s advocating. Dennett, 1991 holds with this, but I think it the most restrictive and the least justified. The literature stumbles all over itself trying to keep them apart.

the seeming of qualia — Kenosha Kid

....the root of all this particular evil. This seeming, what it feels like, has been around forever, qualia being merely the latest rendition of it. The same fox entering the same henhouse, but through a different hole.

When I refer to the red flower, I am doing so as a shorthand for my experience of the red flower. — Kenosha Kid

Your experience of what, now?

"When I refer to the red flower, I am doing so as a shorthand for my experience of the red flower"

If "red flower" is a shorthand for "my experience of the red flower", substitute "my experience of the red flower" for "red flower":

"When I refer to the red flower, I am doing so as a shorthand for my experience of my experience of the red flower"

And again, a few times:

"When I refer to the red flower, I am doing so as a shorthand for my experience of my experience of my experience of my experience of my experience of my experience of my experience of my experience of.... "

Of what?

If you are going to refer to your experience of the red flower, you are still going to have to refer to the red flower.

So cut the unnecessary, and just say that when you refer to the red flower, you are refering to the red flower.

Or join @Hanover in failing to commit to the red flower's existing.

Then, of course, all references to objects are really just references to mental models, to hypotheses about an us-independent reality that with overwhelming likelihood exists, but that we have no direct knowledge of. — Kenosha Kid

If you want it broken down into simpler pieces, I have done that too:

Data comes in via the senses.
The (unconscious, system-oney) brain integrates, transforms, filters, and annotates that data to build a model.
Then either:
1. We experience (conscious, system-twoey) that model, that experience has properties, those properties are called qualia, or
2. Those models have properties, we experience those properties, experience of those properties are what we're calling qualia. — Kenosha Kid

There's no recursion here

Or join Hanover in failing to commit to the red flower's existing. — Banno

No, I commit to all of reality, I won't cherry-pick. What I don't commit to is the fantasy of direct knowledge of objects.

No, I commit to all of reality, I won't cherry-pick. What I don't commit to is the fantasy of direct knowledge of objects. — Kenosha Kid

Then why not commit to direct perceptual access of vague objects?

If you are happy that the flower exists, then we can refer to it. I put it to you that we can refer to two distinct things: the flower and the perception of the flower.

Hence,it is not the case that we always refer to the experience fo the flower.

Notice also that your description makes use of an homunculus. It describes the situation as if one were experiencing a mental model of the flower; but that is not what is happening. The mental model is not something we experience, so much as part of our very act of experiencing.

It's that bit that prevents events from ever totally repeating a non-specific je ne sais quoi.

I put it to you that we can refer to two distinct things: the flower and the perception of the flower. — Banno

I think it's me putting that to you

Hence,it is not the case that we always refer to the experience fo the flower. — Banno

Never said otherwise, although in my description of the shorthand way we use language, I originally omitted the later clarified point:

Just as I might refer to "the red flower" as a shorthand for "my experience of a red flower", I'm also apt to refer to the object itself as "the red flower" as a shorthand for "the (hypothesed) object that causes my experience of the red flower". — Kenosha Kid

It describes the situation as if one were looking at a mental model of the flower; but that is not what is happening. The mental model is not something we observe, so much as part of our very act of observing. — Banno

I don't disagree about observing, but then I didn't speak about it. I am conscious of the representation. I am not conscious of building the representation. To that extent, then, the representation is presented to my consciousness, which is the humunculus you refer to.

I have been careful throughout to refer to this as a seeming, and the origins of this seeming are interesting, not fully understood, and therefore worth having a language for, meaning we need words for the experiences and not just their objective causes. Whether qualia will be a useful description in the end, I cannot say, but right now since I seem to have experiences and those experiences seem to have properties, qualia seem to be useful concepts.

But I agree it's perfectly reasonable to consider that there's no difference between having a model and experiencing it, if that's more what you meant, but the above is consistent with that too.

Then why not commit to direct perceptual access of vague objects? — sime

I don't know what you mean by "vague objects". I don't commit to, or even entertain, direct perception of objects because it conflicts with evidence and doesn't actually have any explanatory power, like God or any other daft concept that merely kicks the question down the road.

I see representationalism entailing some degree of acceptance of qualia. — Hanover

Qualia are so loosely and variously defined that this will doubtless be so. While few would suggest that there is no such thing as the experience of such-and-such, the question here is the utility of treating an experience as if it were an object, to be individuated.

So there's no consensus among professional philosophers regarding the nature of perceptual experience. — Marchesk

Yep. The point of citing the survey was simply to show how little acceptance there is of qualia in the community. That in answer to @Jack Cummins question as to their usefulness. Were they more useful, one might expect greater acceptance.

I am conscious of the representation. — Kenosha Kid

That strikes me as question-begging. No, you are conscious of the flower. It is not until you have studied philosophy that you might mistakenly come to think of yourself as conscious of a model of the flower.

Again, the model is part of your being aware of the flower.

But consider this: when you pick the flower, it is the flower that has it's stem broken, not the model. The model does not have a stem.

Dupe. Deleted.

join Hanover in failing to commit to the red flower's existing. — Banno

I commit to its existing. I've not argued for idealism.

An existence of which we can say nothing doesn't count.

That strikes me as question-begging. No, you are conscious of the flower. It is not until you have studied philosophy that you might mistakenly come to think of yourself as conscious of a model of the flower. — Banno

That makes no sense. I am conscious of what I'm conscious of. Whether I'm mistaken about what it is is irrelevant to what I'm conscious of.

Again, the model is part of your being aware of the flower. — Banno

The model is not constructed consciously.

But consider this: when you pick the flower, it is the flower that has it's stem broken, not the model. — Banno

This sort of error is more likely to be made by someone who fails to accurately distinguish between a hypothesised object and their phenomenal experience than by someone who is more careful.

I experience the representation of the complete flower, of the breaking of it, and of the broken flower. An objective reality of the flower remains the best theory for this. Nonetheless, I have no direct, unmediated perception of the flower, only a model built from data. The flower is not interesting: the model, and my awareness of it, are interesting. For that, I need a language to talk about it, which you argue against having.

That makes no sense. — Kenosha Kid

On the contrary, it is what is so. Sure, you are aware that you are aware of the flower.

By way of keeping track of the argument, let's go back to the post to which i took exception:

When I refer to the red flower, I am doing so as a shorthand for my experience of the red flower. — Kenosha Kid

This is not the case. We can refer to the flower, and alternately, we can refer to the experience of the flower.

Your appear to claim was that when we refer to the red flower we are actually referring only to the experience.

However there is a flower to which we can refer. That flower does not consist in what we are aware of, being independent of our awareness.

Now, have I misunderstood your claim?