You can do a Dennett and deny that anything is really blue.
I’d like to see what he’d do if presented with blue and a red balls and given a task: “Pick up the blue ball and you’ll receive 3^^^3 dollars”.
Even though many claim to be confused about these common words their actual behaviour betrays them. Which raises the question that what is the benefit of this wondering of “blueness”? What does it help anyone to actually do?
I believe you are confused about what Dennett asserts. Quining Qualia would probably be the most obviously relevant essay easily located online, if you want to read him in his own words.
If you don’t, the key point is that Dennett maintains that qualia, as commonly described, are necessarily:
ineffable
intrinsic
private
directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness
...and that nothing actually exists with these properties. You see blue things, but there is no pure experience of blue behind your seeing blue things.
Edit: Allow me to emphasize that I do not consider the confusion to reflect poorly upon yourself—yours was a reasonable reading of Mitchell_Porter’s characterization of Dennett’s remarks. A better wording for the opening of my reply would be: “I think the quote doesn’t reflect what Dennett believes.”
It seems I was wrong about Dennett’s claims and misinterpreted the relevant sentence.
However the original question remains and can be rephrased: What predictions follow from world containing some intrinsic blueness?
The topmost cached thought I have is that this is exactly the same kind of confusion as presented in Excluding the Supernatural. Basically qualia is assumed as an ontologically basic thing, instead of neural firing pattern.
The big question is therefore (as presented in this thread already in various forms): What would you predict if you’d find yourself in a world with distinct blueness compared to a world without?
Ah, I apologize—I had not realized you had the other point in your comment. That strikes me as a key angle, and one of the reasons why I upvoted ciphergoth’s question.
I’d like to see what he’d do if presented with blue and a red balls and given a task: “Pick up the blue ball and you’ll receive 3^^^3 dollars”.
Even though many claim to be confused about these common words their actual behaviour betrays them. Which raises the question that what is the benefit of this wondering of “blueness”? What does it help anyone to actually do?
I believe you are confused about what Dennett asserts. Quining Qualia would probably be the most obviously relevant essay easily located online, if you want to read him in his own words.
If you don’t, the key point is that Dennett maintains that qualia, as commonly described, are necessarily:
ineffable
intrinsic
private
directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness
...and that nothing actually exists with these properties. You see blue things, but there is no pure experience of blue behind your seeing blue things.
Edit: Allow me to emphasize that I do not consider the confusion to reflect poorly upon yourself—yours was a reasonable reading of Mitchell_Porter’s characterization of Dennett’s remarks. A better wording for the opening of my reply would be: “I think the quote doesn’t reflect what Dennett believes.”
It seems I was wrong about Dennett’s claims and misinterpreted the relevant sentence.
However the original question remains and can be rephrased: What predictions follow from world containing some intrinsic blueness?
The topmost cached thought I have is that this is exactly the same kind of confusion as presented in Excluding the Supernatural. Basically qualia is assumed as an ontologically basic thing, instead of neural firing pattern.
The big question is therefore (as presented in this thread already in various forms): What would you predict if you’d find yourself in a world with distinct blueness compared to a world without?
Ah, I apologize—I had not realized you had the other point in your comment. That strikes me as a key angle, and one of the reasons why I upvoted ciphergoth’s question.