Theres a difference between causation and reduction. The idea that qualia have physical causes is compatible with dualism, the idea that they are not ieducible to physics.
Knowing what causes non standard qualia, or where they diverge, still doesn’t tell you how non standard qualia feel to the person having them.
For that reason, we are not going to have private language dictionaries any time soon. Looking at brain scans of someone with non standard qualia us not going to tell me what their qualia are as qualia.
Granted; we won’t have definitive evidence for or against dualism until we’re at the point that we can fully test the (non-) reductive nature of qualia. If people who have access to each other’s private language dictionaries still report meta-feeling that the other person feels different qualia from the same mental stimulus then I’ll have more evidence for dualism than I do now. True, that won’t help with incomparable qualia, but it would be kind of...convenient...if the only incomparable qualia are the ones that people report feeling differently.
Theres a difference between causation and reduction. The idea that qualia have physical causes is compatible with dualism, the idea that they are not ieducible to physics.
Knowing what causes non standard qualia, or where they diverge, still doesn’t tell you how non standard qualia feel to the person having them.
For that reason, we are not going to have private language dictionaries any time soon. Looking at brain scans of someone with non standard qualia us not going to tell me what their qualia are as qualia.
Granted; we won’t have definitive evidence for or against dualism until we’re at the point that we can fully test the (non-) reductive nature of qualia. If people who have access to each other’s private language dictionaries still report meta-feeling that the other person feels different qualia from the same mental stimulus then I’ll have more evidence for dualism than I do now. True, that won’t help with incomparable qualia, but it would be kind of...convenient...if the only incomparable qualia are the ones that people report feeling differently.
We are not going to have private language dictionaries.