Via hypnosis it’s perfectly possible to let someone perceive the raspberry flavor when eating an Oreo. There’s no problem to say that an Oreo has a flavor that based on the person eating it (an observer).
The flavor qualia of an Oreo is not predetermined by it’s physcial makeup.
In the presence of hypnosis, hallucination, olfactory damage, etc., the different flavour qualia of the Oreo are not properties of the Oreo at all. This doesn’t seem to me at all analogous to the p-zombie or “inverted spectrum” thought experiments, where the point is that the people are the same and the qualia are unchanged.
the different flavour qualia of the Oreo are not properties of the Oreo at all.
Why isn’t how the Oreo tastes a property of the Oreo? It’s just not a physical property of it in the sense that you can investigate it by investigating the physical makeup of the Oreo.
It’s simplier to how the qualia of conscious experience that a p-zombie might lack.
Sorry, I was a little inexact. The way an Oreo tastes to someone whose tasting-system has been interfered with is a property of both the Oreo and the interference, and in some cases (e.g., someone hypnotized to think they’re eating a raspberry) it may be a property of only the interference; in any case, the differences between different such tasters’ experiences is largely a matter of the interference rather than the Oreo.
Something a bit like this is true even without interference, of course. Different people have different experiences on tasting the same foods. Very different, sometimes.
But, again, none of this is a good analogy for the p-zombie or inverted-spectrum experiments. The way the analogy is meant to work is:
Person : inverted spectrum :: Oreo : tastes of raspberries.
Inversion is a difference in the person :: raspberry taste is a difference in the Oreo.
In both cases the change is purely internal.
“Inverted spectra” pose no sort of difficulty for physicalism if what’s actually happening is that person 1 sees red and person 2 sees green because person 1 is looking at a tomato and person 2 is looking at a cabbage.
In both cases the only change is supposed to be non-physical.
Otherwise there’s no argument against physicalism here.
And timujin is suggesting that the Oreo version of this is obviously silly, and that we should apply the same intuitions to the other side of the analogy.
Your introduction of hypnosis breaks the analogy, because now (1) the change is no longer “internal”: the raspberry taste is only there if a particular person is eating the Oreo, and that person has changed; and (2) the change is no longer non-physical: hypnosis involves physical processes and so far as we know is a physical process.
Via hypnosis it’s perfectly possible to let someone perceive the raspberry flavor when eating an Oreo. There’s no problem to say that an Oreo has a flavor that based on the person eating it (an observer).
The flavor qualia of an Oreo is not predetermined by it’s physcial makeup.
In the presence of hypnosis, hallucination, olfactory damage, etc., the different flavour qualia of the Oreo are not properties of the Oreo at all. This doesn’t seem to me at all analogous to the p-zombie or “inverted spectrum” thought experiments, where the point is that the people are the same and the qualia are unchanged.
Why isn’t how the Oreo tastes a property of the Oreo? It’s just not a physical property of it in the sense that you can investigate it by investigating the physical makeup of the Oreo.
It’s simplier to how the qualia of conscious experience that a p-zombie might lack.
Sorry, I was a little inexact. The way an Oreo tastes to someone whose tasting-system has been interfered with is a property of both the Oreo and the interference, and in some cases (e.g., someone hypnotized to think they’re eating a raspberry) it may be a property of only the interference; in any case, the differences between different such tasters’ experiences is largely a matter of the interference rather than the Oreo.
Something a bit like this is true even without interference, of course. Different people have different experiences on tasting the same foods. Very different, sometimes.
But, again, none of this is a good analogy for the p-zombie or inverted-spectrum experiments. The way the analogy is meant to work is:
Person : inverted spectrum :: Oreo : tastes of raspberries.
Inversion is a difference in the person :: raspberry taste is a difference in the Oreo.
In both cases the change is purely internal.
“Inverted spectra” pose no sort of difficulty for physicalism if what’s actually happening is that person 1 sees red and person 2 sees green because person 1 is looking at a tomato and person 2 is looking at a cabbage.
In both cases the only change is supposed to be non-physical.
Otherwise there’s no argument against physicalism here.
And timujin is suggesting that the Oreo version of this is obviously silly, and that we should apply the same intuitions to the other side of the analogy.
Your introduction of hypnosis breaks the analogy, because now (1) the change is no longer “internal”: the raspberry taste is only there if a particular person is eating the Oreo, and that person has changed; and (2) the change is no longer non-physical: hypnosis involves physical processes and so far as we know is a physical process.