Do you have a citation I could look into? — Isaac

This website has a bunch of articles by Johnjoe McFadden, the originator of CEMI theory. If you want to spend the time perusing them, you'll get a detailed sense for what it's about. Or like a said you can just read my thread Uniting CEMI and Coherence Field Theories of Consciousness to get a summary of the basic idea along with some of my extensions.

I mean I know what qualia are. — fdrake

It's just this:

"The phenomenal character of an experience is what it is like subjectively to undergo the experience."

That's it. We don't know what causes it. Presently, there is no testable theory of it. Neither MP nor Dennett offer one.

You're pretty thoroughly wedded to the notion that qualia has to be somehow independent units of perception. You're free to stick to that, although I don't know why you'd want to.

I’m not sure what you’re saying here, but my claim is that — plausible or not, convincing or not — the following is not simply incomprehensible — Srap Tasmaner

It's perfectly comprehensible. The characters believe they can create a thing that tastes like whiskey. That doesn't mean that one whiskey tastes the same as another, that your first whiskey tastes the same as your second, that whiskey tastes the same to you now as it did when you started drinking it aged 11, or that it tastes the same irrespective of whether you brushed your teeth.

In taking exception to your rendering, it is not incumbent on me to supply an alternative — Mww

If your counterargument is that there is a different authoritative definition, you ought to be able to cite it.

....is found the necessary causality not given in the first, re: certain properties. — Mww

That's the opposite of the case. If I was _certain_ that a given perception was caused by a particular object, then I'd be saying that such an object is necessary. The fact that all such objects, indeed the external world itself, are hypotheses, however confident I am in them, allows for the possibility of other sources. Therefore the hypothesised object is _not_ a necessary condition.

....is found that those conditions sustaining epistemological monism are apparently false, insofar as herein it is said there is nothing of those given properties of that object found in the brain. — Mww

I was unclear, I apologise. What I mean is that when I observe, say, a flower, there is nothing of the flower in my brain being somehow directly conveyed to my consciousness (like a Cartesian theatre). You're right that my brain belongs to the external world.

First......What do you tell the boss? — Mww

Btw I enjoyed this very much. I'd tell the boss that I had been slapped and how hard. We're not in disagreement that information flows from nerves to brains. We're in disagreement that this alone constitutes perception. Perception is the organisation of these messages, not the messages themselves.

it's that sense data as a concept itself stakes out a claim regarding the process that couples mind and world — fdrake

Your feeling that any such concept brings with it the trace of its theoretical origins and connotations is what I'm arguing against. Things first, theories second.

Taking an analogy with cosmology, it would scupper useful discussion to hold that the concept of the cosmological constant brings with it the assumption of a steady-state universe _because that's what Einstein intended_. It's much clearer to have a healthy divorce between concepts (sense-data, qualia, cosmological constants) and theories. The confusion arises from hauling in the theory uninvited, not:

Using sense data as you've been doing contributes to the mess. — fdrake

I haven't "used" it at all, except as directed by your good self. I've asked questions about the usefulness of the term 'qualia'.

It seems to me that you think in sufficient accord with sense data theories that you're happy treating the concept as transportable between perceptual theories — fdrake

Not really, unless "the concept of sense datum itself is useful" is the sufficient accord you're thinking of, which is a very low bar. For instance, one doesn't need to hold that unappraised perception is how we generally see prior to cognition, as per sense data theories. We know that sensory information pre-exists such a cognition, something more akin to @Mww "s notion of perception, for instance.

I come here to discuss with fellow free-thinkers that can think for themselves and come to their own conclusions, and not only about what other people write. — Harry Hindu

Ah, yes, another tabula raza know-nothing. Lazy is as lazy does, Harry. You prove my point. :yawn:

It's much clearer to have a healthy divorce between concepts (sense-data, qualia, cosmological constants) and theories. — Kenosha Kid

Isn’t a concept a mini-theory( fact-value distinction and all)?

We don't know what causes it. Presently, there is no testable theory of it. Neither MP nor Dennett offer one. — frank

Coherence field theory is testable, or at least currently researchable. Look for classes of molecules and biochemical pathways in the brain that are strongly correlated with abnormalities such as perceptual hallucinations of a severity equivalent to those caused by substances such as mescaline, LSD, etc. Then find out the mechanism of action, which is probably going to be some variant of additive superposition with relatively low frequency EM radiation, perhaps by experimenting on synthetic variants in the lab. Simple.

Isn’t a concept a mini-theory( fact-value distinction and all)? — Joshs

That's fair. Even objects are mini-theories :smile:

A really homogeneous area offering nothing to be cannot be given to any perception.

:up: Yes, it's an interesting thought experiment, and as I said earlier:

If I can differentiate the colours of the walls when all else is equal, that's a legitimate use case for the word 'qualia'. — Kenosha Kid

I expect in this case, as opposed to a hellish scenario in which an unchanging red wall was all I ever saw since birth, I probably could. It's not just space that contextualises but time too.

But this was just an extreme example. I'm not championing the idea of pure qualia, merely the means to ask how I experience the red of a red flower.

That doesn't mean that one whiskey tastes the same as another, that your first whiskey tastes the same as your second, that whiskey tastes the same to you now as it did when you started drinking it aged 11, or that it tastes the same irrespective of whether you brushed your teeth. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, these are all possibilities, and they are the sort of thing you're interested in, as I understand it, because you're interested in how that works. And it is interesting. But it's also interesting that bathtub gin + iodine + hair tonic tastes a bit like scotch, and we'll talk about this concoction, itself, tasting like scotch. When we say, "It does taste a bit like scotch," we take ourselves to be talking about that thing, and we're not simply and obviously wrong to do so.

I'm just trying, a little, to hold you back from, in a stroky-beard moment of your own, correcting people -- "Actually, you mean that to you, at this moment, it tastes a bit like scotch." Whether you're inclined to say that sort of thing isn't altogether clear to me.

But it's also interesting that bathtub gin + iodine + hair tonic tastes a bit like scotch, and we'll talk about this concoction, itself, tasting like scotch. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed, it's interesting even that the second scotch tastes like the first too, even if not exactly alike, because it isolates the 'what it is like' from possible deviations of sensory information. If there were a 1-to-1 mapping, that would be a lot less interesting: same thing in, same thing out.

When we say, "It does taste a bit like scotch," we take ourselves to be talking about that thing, and we're not simply and obviously wrong to do so. — Srap Tasmaner

Agreed, but I've not argued that things taste something like themselves or other things, or told anyone they're wrong to do so. Wrong end of the stick, I think. I'm just saying there's no 1-to-1 map. Our perceptions aren't functions of objects from which we can prove the existence of those objects.

I'm just saying there's no 1-to-1 map. Our perceptions aren't functions of objects from which we can prove the existence of those objects. — Kenosha Kid

A 1-to-1 relationship exists between cone cells and the sensing of specific colors, a 1-to-1 relationship between the perception of a specific color and its neural correlate in the visual cortex, so why not a 1-to-1 relationship between the subjective color itself and properties of some class of molecules or molecular array in the brain? It seems apparent from the success of science that any alternate explanation is impossible, though the objects will be novel in mechanism of action compared to either the retina or neural networking.

That's fair. Even objects are mini-theories :smile: — Kenosha Kid

Your feeling that any such concept brings with it the trace of its theoretical origins and connotations is what I'm arguing against. Things first, theories second.

Taking an analogy with cosmology, it would scupper useful discussion to hold that the concept of the cosmological constant brings with it the assumption of a steady-state universe _because that's what Einstein intended_. It's much clearer to have a healthy divorce between concepts (sense-data, qualia, cosmological constants) and theories. The confusion arises from hauling in the theory uninvited, not: — Kenosha Kid

This makes me very confused. Objects are mini theories, but don't worry about the theories using those objects imports to discourse?

This makes me very confused. Objects are mini theories — fdrake

I'm assuming because all objects belong to a system of value and meaning.

I'm assuming because all objects belong to a system of value and meaning. — Tom Storm

Yes! That bit doesn't confuse me. The bit which confuses me is that objects are mini theories but don't worry about the theoretical import of the object when using it.

Gravity isn't a theory. Newton said so himself.

Simple — Enrique

Uh... :joke:

Our perceptions aren't functions of objects from which we can prove the existence of those objects. — Kenosha Kid

That's a really interesting thing to say.

So does that mean that if there were a 1-to-1 mapping, we could *prove* not just what something is, but that it is? (Not just a function, but a function whose inverse is also a function.)

If the fake scotch tastes to me, at the moment, like real scotch -- we have to fudge a lot here, previous tastings of credible scotch? an average of those? what? --- then my tasting fails to discriminate the real from the fake, and thus fails to provide conclusive evidence that my drink is scotch. But that's all 'what'. How do we get to 'that' this way? Can I similarly not discriminate between drinking purported scotch and not drinking at all? I don't think dreams and hallucinations get you there; there have to be some genuine experiences for those to be possible.

Anyhow, is this how we would get to 'that the scotch exists (and is really scotch)'? If there were a 1-to-1 mapping, it would leave no room for mislabeling my experience? And thus no room to think I saw or drank or tasted something I did not?

This makes me very confused. Objects are mini theories, but don't worry about the theories using those objects imports to discourse? — fdrake

Why is that confusing? Otherwise you end up pulling in every theory when you wanted to talk about just one.

A 1-to-1 relationship exists between cone cells and the sensing of specific colors, a 1-to-1 relationship between the perception of a specific color and its neural correlate in the visual cortex, so why not a 1-to-1 relationship between subjectivity of the color itself and properties of some class of molecules or molecular array in the brain? — Enrique

It's not the molecules in the brain. When we drink the fake whiskey, a sample isn't sent up to the brain for analysis, rather signals about the sample are sent up. We can test this for ourselves. Water tastes much better when we're thirsty, meatloaf when we're hungry, etc. Objects appear the same throughout the day despite the ambient light changing. And different people see the same objects in different ways.

different people see the same objects in different ways. — Kenosha Kid

And I don't see how you can say that with a straight face.

That's why when Dennett tries to explain consciousness, it sounds like he's explaining it away, while wishing to keep the term instead of just embracing eliminativism. When Dennett says of course he's not denying consciousness, he means the functional definition of it, and not conscious sensation. — Marchesk

I don't believe that Dennett denies sensation. I'd have to see quotes that show him saying that to be convinced of it. I take Dennett to be saying that of course we experience sensations, see colours, and feel all kinds of emotions; of course we can be conscious of our experiences, but that the naive thought that feelings, sensation and consciousness are not physical is based on our "folk" intuitive presuppositions concerning what it means to be physical, which leads us to posit an incoherent idea of mental substance.

I take Dennett to be saying that of course we experience sensations, see colours, and feel all kinds of emotions; of course we can be conscious of our experiences, but that the naive thought that feelings, sensation consciousness are not physical is based on our "folk" intuitive presuppositions concerning what it means to be physical, which leads us to posit an incoherent idea of mental substance. — Janus

No. Dennett is a functionalist.

Yes! That bit doesn't confuse me. The bit which confuses me is that objects are mini theories but don't worry about the theoretical import of the object when using it. — fdrake

This is not my area, but I guess we can't know which theory to ascribe towards an object at any point given all the potential values possible. Is a gun operating as a tool, an instrument of oppression, a source of liberation, as symbol of the constitution, a hammer? But I could be totally wrong...

different people see the same objects in different ways.
— Kenosha Kid

And I don't see how you can say that with a straight face. — Srap Tasmaner

I can also say this with a straight face...

He allows sensations, thoughts, etc, but denies they are properties of an agent or person. Instead they're illusions generated by the activities of unconscious neural processes that create the illusion of agency.

Consider how Dennett talks about qualia, philosophers’ term for subjective experiences. My qualia at this moment are the smell of coffee, the sound of a truck rumbling by on the street, my puzzlement over Dennett’s ideas. Dennett notes that we often overrate the objective accuracy and causal power of our qualia. True enough.

But he concludes, bizarrely, that therefore qualia are fictions, “an artifact of bad theorizing.” If we lack qualia, then we are zombies, creatures that look and even behave like humans but have no inner, subjective life. Imagining a reader who insists he is not a zombie, Dennett writes:

“The only support for that conviction [that you are not a zombie] is the vehemence of the conviction itself, and as soon as you allow the theoretical possibility that there could be zombies, you have to give up your papal authority about your own nonzombiehood.” — John Horgan

The point you're not seeing about Dennett is very simple: there is no in-principle difference between beings and things. There are only things, and what we understand as 'beings' are simply concetanations of material things that behave in the way they do because of the blind forces of evolution executing the 'darwinian algorithm', as per Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

How can it be right to say the external world is an hypothesis, when we all experience a world external to our bodies — Janus


I'm intrigued to hear how you think we do that. Because from where I'm sitting, nothing of the external world is, for instance, in my brain. Cut me open (please don't) and there's no aforementioned flower in there being experienced.

If you're thinking some kind of perfect divine insight, okay that's your belief system and I'm not going to try and talk you out of it, likewise for some exotic everything-is-one-consciousness-type belief. — Kenosha Kid

The fact that nothing of the external world is in your brain is the basis on which it can be said that there is an external world. (In a sense of course internal and external are arbitrary; if you try to think of the world from no one's perspective, then there is not absolute internality and externality). But we are speaking here from the human perspective (of course) and the surface of our bodies defines the boundary between internal and external.

When I said we experience a world external to our bodies I meant that we experience ourselves as bodies interacting with a world that is outside our bodies. So you interact with the flower, touch the flower, smell the flower, see the flower, hear the tiny sound as you break off its petals one by one. As a child you can interact with the flower as soon as you notice it is there; which is not difficult if the flower is brightly coloured. You don't need a model of the flower in order to notice and interact with it; it reveals itself to you, to the body, promordially.

a position described as naive realism.

Do you also think the external world and all the objects in it are an hypothesis instantiated in your individual brain?

When I stand in the desert here in Australia looking at sand and jagged scrub, I know my Aboriginal Australian comrades see food, water and an entire ecosystem of meaning and potential which is nothing but a howling void to me. We see different things.

It's not the molecules in the brain. When we drink the fake whiskey, a sample isn't sent up to the brain for analysis, rather signals about the sample are sent up. We can test this for ourselves. Water tastes much better when we're thirsty, meatloaf when we're hungry, etc. Objects appear the same throughout the day despite the ambient light changing. And different people see the same objects in different ways. — Kenosha Kid

Probably more accurate to say that whatever molecules in the brain are responsible for subjective color itself constitute a fraction of the 1-to-1 identity between physical reality and consciousness. I imagine that a particular additive relationship between wavelengths of EM radiation and wavicles in atoms comprises the basic substance of subjective color itself, so some biochemical/radiative complex = red itself in a sense. But any conscious experience identifiable to the subject transcends particular percepts such as these because experience arises from numerous regions of the brain and a huge host of fluctuating environmental features in general, as per your alcoholic beverage argument.

Perhaps something like a morphogenetic field exists which participates in forming conscious experiences, so a so-called "percept" in the brain will become an unrepresentative fragment of the totality, and the definition of what consciousness is will be more finely grained conceptually: at base, trillions of physical percepts and more rather than a nonphysical entity, exactly as theorizing neural networks has enhanced comprehension of the mind. Some collection of physical properties is equivalent to consciousness.

We see different things. — Tom Storm

Then what would you mean when you said "we see the same objects (differently)"?

I think a big part of the problem here is in the use of the world "external".

"External" means, not belonging to me (or us) and thus, extra mental.

The objects we interact with directly (though mediated by our sensory organs and intellectual apparatus) are not "external" to us.

In fact, it leads to a kind of forced dualism which need not arise in these instances. Not that all dualisms are bad, but, they should be avoided when possible.

What seems to be external to us is the things physics talks about and describes, chemistry too. When it comes to biology, we begin to enter into complications about what's external or not.

An open question is if the stuff physics describe what's internal to objects or is it the external manifestations (atoms and particles) of something internal to the thing (whatever it is that gives rise, at bottom, to the things studied in physics) , which we cannot access.

It's tough.