So, I take it that you've no idea what it takes to attribute meaning? — creativesoul

Kantian? I should know better than to argue consciousness or direct/indirect perception with a Kantian, if that's the case. That's a different enough position to make those irrelevant. It's the bloody physicalists and functionalists that need to shouted down.

Thought and belief are not mental states on my view, by the way. — creativesoul

I don't know what you mean here. What are they?

That sounds like a worthy project. So consciousness is an overloaded word with different meanings. That's probably why qualia was used to denote sensations. Dennett wants to quine some of the proported properties of those sensations, undermining any hard problem or explanatory gap. I have my doubts as to his success.

But this thread has broadened to other related matters so ...

Should this be its own thread? Or do you we just continue since we left Dennett's quning in the dust long ago?

What does that have to do with anything I've written here? — creativesoul

Attributing meaning sounds like something to do with "the quality of mental states (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) that consists in their being directed toward some object or state of affairs.".

Now obviously you think this is a conscious activity. But it sounds like a different topic than the sensations that make up consciousness. If you agree there are any.

You do realize intentionality is separate debate in philosophy of mind?

Because there's no color or pain in neurons?

That works. — frank

Yes, but apparently we can just talk about something else and there's no problem.

Ah yes. A Dennett speciality. Change the definition and declare the problem dissolved.

I'm beginning to think some of you don't actually experience colors or pains. How else could you claim to be conscious and argue the way you do? Maybe Jaron Lanier was right. You can't argue with a zombie.

So functionalism? If not, why not? — frank

Because colors and pains don't make up functional explanations.

s that what counts as an acceptable reply nowadays? — creativesoul

Is it acceptable to use a different definition? Attributing meaning is a separate topic.

in·ten·tion·al·i·ty
the fact of being deliberate or purposive.
PHILOSOPHY
the quality of mental states (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) that consists in their being directed toward some object or state of affairs.

Maybe that's not exhaustive enough, thus I mentioned cognition and intelligence.

You can't tell us what qualia are, because they are ineffable. — Banno

Primitive is another way to put it. You can't break down red into anything else, unless there is someday a neurological explanation from neural function to red experience.

And you cannot show them to us, because they are private. — Banno

Certainly not if you've never seen red before. But if you have, I can remind you or point out a red thing.

The ability to attribute meaning. — creativesoul

So you have your own definition for consciousness.

Wouldn't that better fall under intentionality, cognition or intelligence?

Is it just a conflict about what qualia is? — frank

I prefer to just say qualia is the contents (or properties) of conscious experience, whatever that turns out to be. If qualia is too problematic, we can drop it in favor of colors, sounds, pains, etc. Or just sensations.

Or one can defend qualia against it's critics, maybe with some amendments to the concept. Your choice. The interesting thing is that conscious properties do tend to circle back to those four properties Dennett critiqued. Or three, since he didn't really do anything with privacy.

Color is a primitive property making up visual experience.

ou can't tell us what qualia are, because they are ineffable. — Banno

I thought we were talking about red. I don't know whether the concept of qualia is worth salvaging, but trying to explain a sensation is impossible other than via analogy. Doesn't mean there is no sensation of color.

Problem is that sensations tend to lead back to qualia, so round and round we go.

p-zombies are hard to kill.

http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=47537

:lol: — Banno

adjective
incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible:
ineffable joy sonary.

Should I circle back to Luke's comment on showing?

So you're quesitoning whether we can know that we don't know something? Or are you questioning whether it's meaningful to say there could be conscious experiences different from the kinds humans have?

Because the second one is awful anthropocentric. But maybe I don't follow your death knell blow.

For some reason, it's never broached in the Matrix Trilogy. Neo and the rest of the unplugged just accept that being outside the Matrix is the real world. Now for someone born naturally, that makes sense. But for someone unplugged, what makes them any more confident in the nightmare world they wake up to? If one world was a simulation, how do they know the next one isn't?

The Thirteenth Floor explores that a little bit better, but the movie eXistenZ ends on that note of doubt.



So does Inception, for that matter.

I agree that dolphins have conscious experiences. But I disagree in that we can say some of their experiences might be fundamentally different from our own, because they have a form of perception we don't. What that is, we cannot say.

It's just noting a hard limit to our understanding, at least as things stand now.

And??? — creativesoul

Only 32 more pages to 100.

You cannot explain it because there is no it... — creativesoul

There is a conscious visual experience with red in it.

Too bad the paper hinges upon it. — creativesoul

The paper hinges on the possibility that bats have kinds of conscious experiences we don't. If not bats, then almost certainly dolphins.

Plain and simple. — creativesoul

I don't undestand what you mean by "consciousness" then. Color is an aspect or property of visual experience. We could substitute "What it's like" with what are the properties of sonar experience?

Ok. Explain it then. What's it like to see red? — creativesoul

I obviously can't explain that other than to say it's one of the three primary shades of objects in visual experience, which differs from other sensory modalities. Maybe "What it's like" is a misleading phrase. All it means is that a bat may have sonar sensations like we have color sensations, but we can't know what those are.

That's too much effort for a long thread with so many wordy posts.

I'm not sure how I mischaracterized it. I just don't agree that there's nothing it's like to see color or hear sound. Maybe I misunderstood.

Errr... ummm... ahhh... maybe something like what I've been doing? — creativesoul

I honestly can't remember at this point. Brief summary?

I'm a little worried for your gustary enjoyment while we wait on the neuroscientists.

Fair enough, but what we'll do in the meantime?

ere's a thought, something to kick around.

What if Dennett is right that qualia are incoherent, but wrong about reductionism? — Banno

That would be interesting. How would we characterize consciousness in that case?

Most wretched existence is ours. Stuck in our conscious containers with our dreadful colors displaying on the mind's wall. Unable to appreciate the pure material forms.

We shiver about unable to know the truth that would set us free of that awful model.

I think you've been taking science fiction too seriously; it is fiction after all! — Janus

It's not all science fiction, since there are some organizations like NASA and SpaceX researching such matters. Maybe the pessimists are right and we are nearing the peak of human technological progress. But my guess is that if we make it out of this century, we'll a lot of time to figure things out.

Maybe you should ask Dennett to summarize then.

Mostly I got it from this recent post:

So people like Barrett try to find out what's going on. How can a set of physiological states with no boundary and no non-overlapping properties give rise to the feeling that we're 'angry'? The answer she proposes (and with substantial empirical support) is that we use public models to infer the causes of our interocepted signals. "I've just had someone punch me, people get 'angry' when they're punched, these mental states I'm receiving data about must be 'anger'"

Same can be said of colour, tastes, memories... the more we look, the more useful an explanation this model provides. — Isaac

So we're apparently interpreting some physiological response via a public model and that becomes what we're conscious of, or at least what we say we are.

Also, the expectations have something to do with public models, which are what we think other people would do in our situation.

So feeling anger or seeing the red of an apple is the result of telling ourselves about the public model, I think. An outside-in or top-down sort of construction of consciousness.

What I'm not sure about is whether @Isaac thinks this means consciousness is a kind of illusion, or merely just identical to the public model self-reporting mechanism (or expectations).

*Sigh* So yet once again another game of changing the language to avoid the hard problem. Your side is nothing if not persistent.

Are the colors we experience out there in the world as such? Or are they generated by our conscious visual system, often (but not always) in response to stimulation from the eyes when there's illumination?

[deleted] — Wayfarer

I'm searching for a public model to express my experience of seeing a deleted comment. Disappointment? I'll have to shiver harder.

But whether complete or not, water still freezes at 32F and boils at 212F. — tim wood

Yeah, but you can alter those temperatures that by adding stuff to the water or changing the air pressure.

Isn't there a whole science about that, and the huge inexactness? — bongo fury

Yes, so what makes the colors real?

Not sure what you're getting at. — bongo fury

Visible light is part of the EM spectrum. We call it visible because that's what we evolved to see, since it reflects off surfaces. But what makes the visible light special such that its colored, unlike radio and gamma rays? They have the same kinds of properties in terms of frequencies and wavelengths.

I think illuminations events are actually colored i.e. ordered into hues. — bongo fury

For the entire electromagnetic spectrum? Do these hues correspond exactly to the three cone combinations in human eyes?

There you go again. — bongo fury

Do you think photons are actually colored?