A sign has meaning by comparison to things that it’s not. Saussure in his “Course in General Linguistics” shows effectively how the differentiation of a given spoken word from other words is what allows us to assign a meaning to it, if a word begins to be pronounced in two different ways in different contexts then this difference in pronunciation can take on a conceptual difference.[2]
Which amounts to the claim that difference is necessary for meaning. The more contentious claim is that it is sufficient.
tiated from each other in order for them to be connected back to signifiers. Philosophers obsessed with qualia often ask things like what gives the red of a rose its redness. From a semiotic perspective the answer is ready at hand: the redness of a rose comes from its differentiation from green and black and blue and all the other colors of all the other objects and their associated textures, smells, etc
You seem to be hinting at a theory of pure difference, that Qualia are not intrinsic properties with difference between , but constituted by the differences alone. That’s a very difficult theory to make work. If Red is constitutes by being differentiate blue and green , blue is constituted by being different to red and and green, etc, then each of them is an (unspecified) X that is different to an (also unspecified) Y and Z....so they are all the same! The situation is even worse dealing with normatively laden qualia like pleasure and pain. Does pain really have n o characteristic s other than being different from pleasure?
Having said that, I can’t be certain that you are putting forward a theory of pure difference. If instead you are just saying that qualia are [something unknown] that happens to have a structure of differences, then you are making a statement anyone could agree with and not solving the problem.
People might produce a more or less fuzzy and three dimensional projection of a rose in their mind, but no matter how sharp it is, the qualities the mental construct has are present on a spectrum where the other positions of that spectrum are other possible characteristics of objects. Green vs woody stems, red petals vs white ones, thorns vs fuzz, and so on.
Yes, qualia space has a structure. It doesn’t follow from that a quale is characterised entirely by its location in qualia space. Qualia space would still have a structure,.If Qualia had intrinsic properties instead of being pure differences.That’s the necessity/sufficiency distinction again.
Now that we’ve established that ideas and qualia are signs
That has been assumed, not established.
Any and all systems of signs that process an input according to a preexisting code necessarily have qualia, and share the sort of negativity which philosophers have so long restricted to the human subject. Your dog has qualia, your phone has qualia, your infection has qualia.
Obviously not, since humans have conditions in which qualia can go missing, or become hypertrophic, eg. colour blindness and synaesthesia.
I’m purposefully trying to avoid either camp as both camps require a type of dualism
Yes I would agree that I’m trying to establish a theory of pure difference. That “they are all the same” in terms of only being differences is not a negative but a perk of the theory, its what makes it compatible with a monist materialism. As soon as you permit a positive meaning you must permit these different aspects or plains of existence.
Does pain really have no characteristic s other than being different from pleasure?
Pain is differentiated not just from pleasure but from all other experiences. Difference doesn’t all mean the same difference, I’m thinking of like neural net weights where each connection is some number between zero and one. When this becomes a many to many network of connections, the possible structural patterns can become quite complex. Its my hypothesis for example that pain has a unique structural pattern that comes from causing changes within many sensous input systems themselves, and is therefore characterized as “a mode of perceiving and subjective experience which is undesired”.
Obviously not, since humans have conditions in which qualia can go missing, or become hypertrophic, eg. colour blindness and synaesthesia.
Not sure I understand what the objection is here.
I don’t see why camp #1 requires dualism
Camp 1 is unable to account for self evident experience qua experience, it creates an outside to physical reality in saying “this isn’t worth addressing”, there’s what’s real and, perhaps uncharitably, what’s fiction. To create a truly material monist ontology you must create a material account of this fiction or belief or whatever experience. The failure to do this is a major error in analytic philosophy and the failure of people like Yudkowsky in my opinion.
Which amounts to the claim that difference is necessary for meaning. The more contentious claim is that it is sufficient.
You seem to be hinting at a theory of pure difference, that Qualia are not intrinsic properties with difference between , but constituted by the differences alone. That’s a very difficult theory to make work. If Red is constitutes by being differentiate blue and green , blue is constituted by being different to red and and green, etc, then each of them is an (unspecified) X that is different to an (also unspecified) Y and Z....so they are all the same! The situation is even worse dealing with normatively laden qualia like pleasure and pain. Does pain really have n o characteristic s other than being different from pleasure?
Having said that, I can’t be certain that you are putting forward a theory of pure difference. If instead you are just saying that qualia are [something unknown] that happens to have a structure of differences, then you are making a statement anyone could agree with and not solving the problem.
Yes, qualia space has a structure. It doesn’t follow from that a quale is characterised entirely by its location in qualia space. Qualia space would still have a structure,.If Qualia had intrinsic properties instead of being pure differences.That’s the necessity/sufficiency distinction again.
That has been assumed, not established.
Obviously not, since humans have conditions in which qualia can go missing, or become hypertrophic, eg. colour blindness and synaesthesia.
I don’t see why camp #1 requires dualism.
Yes I would agree that I’m trying to establish a theory of pure difference. That “they are all the same” in terms of only being differences is not a negative but a perk of the theory, its what makes it compatible with a monist materialism. As soon as you permit a positive meaning you must permit these different aspects or plains of existence.
Pain is differentiated not just from pleasure but from all other experiences. Difference doesn’t all mean the same difference, I’m thinking of like neural net weights where each connection is some number between zero and one. When this becomes a many to many network of connections, the possible structural patterns can become quite complex. Its my hypothesis for example that pain has a unique structural pattern that comes from causing changes within many sensous input systems themselves, and is therefore characterized as “a mode of perceiving and subjective experience which is undesired”.
Not sure I understand what the objection is here.
Camp 1 is unable to account for self evident experience qua experience, it creates an outside to physical reality in saying “this isn’t worth addressing”, there’s what’s real and, perhaps uncharitably, what’s fiction. To create a truly material monist ontology you must create a material account of this fiction or belief or whatever experience. The failure to do this is a major error in analytic philosophy and the failure of people like Yudkowsky in my opinion.