Eliminating Qualia

[ruby sparks]

Here is Dennett's 1988 argument for eliminating qualia:

http://cogprints.org/254/1/quinqual.htm

I have read it and at a guess I'd say I probably grasp no more than about 50% of it.

At this point, I'd say I was unconvinced. Whatever the shortfalls of and problems with qualia, it seems impossible to deny that 'something is being experienced' and that therefore qualia survive, even if they are not what I tend to think they might be.

I note that it has been said of Dennett that his case amounts to saying that "careful examination of our intuitive notion of qualia reveals that it is a confused notion, that it is advisable to accept that experience does not have the properties designated by it and that it is best to eliminate it".

Is something not having the properties designated to it enough reason to eliminate it?

Here, for comparison, is a 1997 critical response (to Dennett's 1988 argument) which I have not read yet but intend to:

http://cogprints.org/368/3/LUCS58.pdf

 

[WAB]

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Well, I have several days left before I go to the funny farm, so I will try and plough through both arguments.

By the way, I have been conceiving you as a female all this time!

 

[ruby sparks]

That illusion may have affected your quales about me.

 

[ruby sparks]

Time for a very clumsy visual analogy, made in passing.



There is literally no white triangle in that image, but there is the perception/sensation that there is.

Maybe qualia are a bit like that.

I did say it was very clumsy, and only an analogy, and only a visual one, and only made in passing.

Only to suggest that things which we are convinced are there might not actually be. Agreeing in principle if you like that qualia might be an illusion, albeit of a different sort.

ps as far as I understand it, Dennett was not making this point when including this image in his 1988 paper and there may be little point in analysing the illusion in the image.

 

[untermensche]

It seems to me that Dennett's argument is that qualia exist but they are not properties of things but a property of that which experiences things.

That seems reasonable.

 

[untermensche]

There is literally no white triangle in that image, but there is the perception/sensation that there is.

There is a white triangle.

The surrounding markings accentuate it.

There are many white triangles on every white piece of paper.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I think this section is the key to Dennett’s argument:

The infallibilist line on qualia treats them as properties of one's experience one cannot in principle misdiscover, and this is a mysterious doctrine (at least as mysterious as papal infallibility) unless we shift the emphasis a little and treat qualia as logical constructs out of subjects' qualia-judgments: a subject's experience has the quale F if and only if the subject judges his experience to have quale F. We can then treat such judgings as constitutive acts, in effect, bringing the quale into existence by the same sort of license as novelists have to determine the hair color of their characters by fiat. We do not ask how Dostoevski knows that Raskolnikov's hair is light brown.

There is a limited use for such interpretations of subjects' protocols, I have argued (Dennett 1978a; 1979, esp., pp.109-110; 1982), but they will not help the defenders of qualia here. Logical constructs out of judgments must be viewed as akin to theorists' fictions, and the friends of qualia want the existence of a particular quale in any particular case to be an empirical fact in good standing, not a theorist's useful interpretive fiction, else it will not loom as a challenge to functionalism or materialism or third-person, objective science.

It seems easy enough, then, to dream up empirical tests that would tend to confirm Chase and Sanborn's different tales, but if passing such tests could support their authority (that is to say, their reliability), failing the tests would have to undermine it. The price you pay for the possibility of empirically confirming your assertions is the outside chance of being discredited. The friends of qualia are prepared, today, to pay that price, but perhaps only because they haven't reckoned how the bargain they have struck will subvert the concept they want to defend.

Iow, qualia are a useful fiction we may tell ourselves, but they are useless in regard to any other application. While I can’t know how you experience red, you can’t know it either, so no amount of insisting your experience is unique to you can ever be established, only asserted.

 

[untermensche]

Nobody is saying their experience of "red" is unique.

Only that the experience of "red" has qualities to it.

There is a quality to the light from a "red" lamp.

But what has to be also seen is the fact that there are also memories attached to "red".

So these may be elicited but they are not a quality of "red".

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Nobody is saying their experience of "red" is unique.

You speak for everybody?

But what has to be also seen is the fact that there are also memories attached to "red".

Memories are inherently unreliable. They are fungible and inconsistent and cannot ever be objectively or subjectively confirmed. Iow, they are fictions we tell ourselves.

So these may be elicited but they are not a quality of "red".

You seem to be affirming my assessment.

 

[untermensche]

You seem to be affirming my assessment.

I am saying "red" has qualities, all human experiences have qualities, it is how humans experience, but we have to be careful when separating the qualities of experiences from memories associated with the experience.

 

[WAB]

I think this section is the key to Dennett’s argument:

The infallibilist line on qualia treats them as properties of one's experience one cannot in principle misdiscover, and this is a mysterious doctrine (at least as mysterious as papal infallibility) unless we shift the emphasis a little and treat qualia as logical constructs out of subjects' qualia-judgments: a subject's experience has the quale F if and only if the subject judges his experience to have quale F. We can then treat such judgings as constitutive acts, in effect, bringing the quale into existence by the same sort of license as novelists have to determine the hair color of their characters by fiat. We do not ask how Dostoevski knows that Raskolnikov's hair is light brown.

There is a limited use for such interpretations of subjects' protocols, I have argued (Dennett 1978a; 1979, esp., pp.109-110; 1982), but they will not help the defenders of qualia here. Logical constructs out of judgments must be viewed as akin to theorists' fictions, and the friends of qualia want the existence of a particular quale in any particular case to be an empirical fact in good standing, not a theorist's useful interpretive fiction, else it will not loom as a challenge to functionalism or materialism or third-person, objective science.

It seems easy enough, then, to dream up empirical tests that would tend to confirm Chase and Sanborn's different tales, but if passing such tests could support their authority (that is to say, their reliability), failing the tests would have to undermine it. The price you pay for the possibility of empirically confirming your assertions is the outside chance of being discredited. The friends of qualia are prepared, today, to pay that price, but perhaps only because they haven't reckoned how the bargain they have struck will subvert the concept they want to defend.

emphasis mine.

"Physician, heal thyself."

Iow, qualia are a useful fiction we may tell ourselves, but they are useless in regard to any other application. While I can’t know how you experience red, you can’t know it either, so no amount of insisting your experience is unique to you can ever be established, only asserted.

Which of the following do you mean when you write "your experience is unique to you":

1. That they alone are experiencing what is going on in their minds, or
2. That they believe that no-one else has such experiences.​

Let us be precise. If we're just gonna throw words around, the thread won't amount to anything different than same old same old.


edited in:

Memories are inherently unreliable. They are fungible and inconsistent and cannot ever be objectively or subjectively confirmed. Iow, they are fictions we tell ourselves.

- Koy

in a pig's eye.

 

[untermensche]

I skipped over it because it was too absurd.

Memories are inherently unreliable. They are fungible and inconsistent and cannot ever be objectively or subjectively confirmed. Iow, they are fictions we tell ourselves.

There is no logic that takes you from a memory is inconsistent to it is a fiction.

Some memories are very consistent.

And many can be confirmed with evidence.

I remembered seeing JFK's coffin being pulled by a horse with an American flag draped over it for decades until I saw the video of it to confirm my memory.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You're being too literal. The point is memories are not reliably consistent, yet we insist that they are (oftentimes vehemently). There are numerous such instances in your own lives, no doubt, where you have believed staunchly that a certain event happened to you in a certain way only to then have someone else who was there contradict your account in some fundamental way. So, I believe Dennett is arguing that since you cannot confirm your own experiences, it is useless to assert that they exist in some objective or unique sense. Or, rather, that the point would be moot.

You claim you experience "red" differently than I. Ok, prove it. You can't. You can state, "I have had different experiences associated with the color red that are all triggered every time I see the color red," but that is not the same thing as saying that there is some intrinsically different quality to "red."

ETA: UM, you edited your previous post to include the JFK example after I posted this response, but the point still stands that while "some" memories can be consistent, not all are, thus affirming Dennett's point that "qualia" do not contain "properties of one's experience one cannot in principle misdiscover."

 

[WAB]

Okee Doke (not that I agree, necessarily, but it's much better).

All the more reason not to just say: "(Memories) are fictions we tell ourselves."

Like I said, for this kind of thread to be of any real value, or to be any different than they always have been (and I've been readin' 'em for 14 years), participants ought to be as precise as possible.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Okee Doke (not that I agree, necessarily, but it's much better).

All the more reason not to just say: "(Memories) are fictions we tell ourselves."

Like I said, for this kind of thread to be of any real value, or to be any different than they always have been (and I've been readin' 'em for 14 years), participants ought to be as precise as possible.

Concur.

 

[WAB]

ruby, et al,

What do you think of this [Porky Pig voice, muy rapido] phenome..nonimini..nominom [sorry, I have a terrible time with that word].

I am asking because, I think it's very pertinent to the thread, and because I share* Da Vinci's ideas on this, here:

https://www.livescience.com/25448-pareidolia.html

Leonardo da Vinci wrote about pareidolia as an artistic device. "If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills," he wrote in a passage in one of his extensive notebooks.

*oh alright, I retract the ludicrous comparison of myself to Da Vinci.

 

[Speakpigeon]

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Well, I have several days left before I go to the funny farm, so I will try and plough through both arguments.

By the way, I have been conceiving you as a female all this time!

What stopped you?

Women can have wives, too.
EB

 

[WAB]

- - - Updated - - -

Well, I have several days left before I go to the funny farm, so I will try and plough through both arguments.

By the way, I have been conceiving you as a female all this time!

What stopped you?

Women can have wives, too.
EB

touche!


[grumble grumble grumble ricketty frackin...]

 

[untermensche]

You're being too literal.

Memories are not "fictions we tell ourselves".

We do not create our memories. We merely access them.

And memories do degrade and change.

But that is not a fiction we tell ourselves. That is just something about the nature of memories.

They are something, especially if they are old, to be slightly skeptical of.

You claim you experience "red" differently than I.

No I don't.

I would say it could be.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Here is Dennett's 1988 argument for eliminating qualia:

http://cogprints.org/254/1/quinqual.htm

I have read it and at a guess I'd say I probably grasp no more than about 50% of it.

At this point, I'd say I was unconvinced. Whatever the shortfalls of and problems with qualia, it seems impossible to deny that 'something is being experienced' and that therefore qualia survive, even if they are not what I tend to think they might be.

I note that it has been said of Dennett that his case amounts to saying that "careful examination of our intuitive notion of qualia reveals that it is a confused notion, that it is advisable to accept that experience does not have the properties designated by it and that it is best to eliminate it".

Is something not having the properties designated to it enough reason to eliminate it?

Here, for comparison, is a 1997 critical response (to Dennett's 1988 argument) which I have not read yet but intend to:

http://cogprints.org/368/3/LUCS58.pdf

I'll try to have a look but to be honest I don't see much point in arguing about qualia with Dennett. If some people think they don't have them, fine. If Dennett thinks he could somehow argue convincingly that no one experiences qualia, then he's a triple buse, as my biology teacher used to say about us idiots. I already read a few pages carefully and there's nothing so far that doesn't look like beside the point. Rather sad that even intelligent people should be triple buses.

As a general point, the debate with "quiners" is bound to revolve around what proponents of the existence of qualia say about them in terms of their putative connection to ordinary or scientific notions such as memory, perception, neurons, etc. That can only be irrelevant to the issue of whether qualia exist or not, just as showing that a theory about the world is flawed is no argument that the world doesn't exist. I know my qualia by acquaintance. No amount of deliberation among rational people could possibly convince me I'm wrong about that.

Still, it should be interesting to see somebody intelligent like Dennett try his damnedest best to, what, disprove qualia? We'll see about that.

But I'm pleased to see that both him and David de Léon go back to Descartes. Good for them.
EB