“C. We can’t capture the ineffable core of raw experience with language because there’s really nothing there.
One task in philosophy is articulating the intuitions implicit in our thinking, and sometimes rejecting the intuition should result from concluding it employs concepts illogically. What shows the intuition of raw experience is incoherent (self-contradictory or vacuous) is that the terms we use to describe raw experience are limited to the terms for its referents; we have no terms to describe the experience as such, but rather, we describe qualia by applying terms denoting the ordinary cause of the supposed raw experience.”
That’s an over-generalisation from colour. Pain is a textbook example of a quale, and “pain”
describes an effect, a reaction, not a cause, which would be something like “sharp” or “hot”.
Likewise, words for tastes barely map onto anything object. “Sweet” kind of means “high in calories”,
but kind of doens’t, since saccharine is thousands of times sweeter than sugar, but not thousands
of times more calorific. And so on.
″ The simplest explanation for the absence of a vocabulary to describe the qualitative properties of raw experience is that they don’t exist: a process without properties is conceptually vacuous.”
The simplest explanation for the universe is that it doesn’t exist. It’s not popular, because the universe
seems to exist. Explanations need to be adeqaute to the facts, not just simple.
There is a perspective from which it is surpising we can describe anything that it going on in our heads.
Billions of neurons must churn data in considerable excess of gigabits per second, but speech has a bandwidth of only a few bits per second. So the surprise is that some things, chiefly discursive thought, are expressible
at all. Although that is not really a surpise, since we can easily account for it on the assumption that
discursive thought is internalised speech.
Since the inexpressibility of qualia can be accounted for given facts about the limited bandwidth
of speech, it does not need to be accounted for all over again on the hypothesis that qualia don’t
exist.
“D. We believe raw experience exists without detecting it.
One error in thinking about the existence of raw experience comes from confusing perception with belief, which is conceptually distinct. When people universally report that qualia “seem” to exist, they are only reporting their beliefs—despite their sense of certainty.”
Beliefs about what?
It might be just about credible that other people are p-zombies, with no qualia, but with a mistaken belief
that they have qualia. However, it is much harder for me to persuade myself that I am a zombie.
When I look at a Muler-Lyer illusion, I have a (cognitive, non perceptual) belief that
the lines are the same length, but I will also report that they look different. That second
belief is not a belief about belief, it is a belief about how things look.
″ Where “perception” is defined as a nervous system’s extraction of a sensory-array’s features, people can’t report their perceptions except through beliefs the perceptions sometimes engender: I can’t tell you my perceptions except by relating my beliefs about them. This conceptual truth is illustrated by the phenomenon of blindsight, a condition in patients report complete blindness yet, by discriminating external objects, demonstrate that they can perceive them. Blindsighted patients can report only according to their beliefs, and they perceive more than they believe and report that they perceive. Qualia nihilism analyzes the intuition of raw experience as perceiving less than you believe and report you perceive, the reverse of blindsight.”
I don’t see where you are going with that. Unless your “less” amounts to a zero, that doesn’t amount
to nihiism. Having some qualia, but less than we previosously thought, raises the same problems.
“3. The conceptual economy of qualia nihilism pays off in philosophical progress
Eliminating raw experience from ontology produces conceptual economy.”
So does eliminating matter in favour of free-floating mental content, as do idealists (or perhaps
we should call them matter nihilists). Parsimony can be a two-edged sword.
″ A. Qualia nihilism resolves an intractable problem for materialism: physical concepts are dispositional, whereas raw experiences concern properties that seem, instead, to pertain to noncausal essences. ”
The epiphenomenality of qualia is not something that “seems” intuitively or introspectively, it is
a delicately argued position
″ Qualia nihilism offers a compelling diagnosis of where important skeptical arguments regarding the possibility of knowledge go wrong. The arguments—George Berkeley’s are their prototype—reason that sense data, being indubitable intuitions of direct experience, are the source of our knowledge, which must, in consequence, be about raw experience rather than the “external world.””
One can challenge such arguments on the grounds that the “about” doens’t follow.
“If you accept the existence of raw experience, the argument is notoriously difficult to undermine logically because concepts of “raw experience” truly can’t be analogized to any concepts applying to the external world. Eliminating raw experience provides an effective demolition; rather than the other way around, our belief in raw experience depends on our knowledge of the external world, which is the source of the concepts we apply to fabricate qualia.”
I have a more modest proposal: let’s eliminate the idea that some things X cannot represent, stand for,
or inform us about, some thing Y without being similar or analogous to it.
“Against these considerations, the only argument for retaining raw experience in our ontology is the sheer strength of everyone’s belief in its existence.”
The simplest explanation for the universe is that it doesn’t exist. It’s not popular, because the universe seems to exist. Explanations need to be adeqaute to the facts, not just simple.
Upvoted for this line alone. See also, “If nothing exists, I want to know how the nothing works and why it seems to be so highly ordered.”
Pain is a textbook example of a quale, and “pain” describes an effect, a reaction, not a cause, which would be something like “sharp” or “hot”. Likewise, words for tastes barely map onto anything object[ive]. “Sweet” kind of means “high in calories”, but kind of doens’t, since saccharine is thousands of times sweeter than sugar, but not thousands of times more calorific. And so on.
And as I pointed out in the other thread, our experiences change in response to the relationship between viewer and object even as the object neither changes nor seems to change. We have the ability to be aware of internal states which are intimately involved in, but not informationally exhausted by, cognition of the external world. From a point of view valuing only knowledge of the external world as such, qualia are pure “noise”.
But of course, it makes good evolutionary sense for us to be aware of some internal states. (And even if it didn’t, evolution was never the perfect designer (witness flea wings and human appendix).) A cognitive system with a penchant for learning might easily take notice of its own internal workings during acts of perception. Such self-awareness might be extremely useful for a social animal. So you are quite wrong to assert, elsewhere in the thread, that subjective qualities would not be expected on the hypothesis of physicalism.
I’m not sure how this is relevant. I was responding to the objection that qualia have no vocabulary of their own, but ony parasitize vocabulary relating to external properties.
But of course, it makes good evolutionary sense for us to be aware of some internal states
Sure, but that’s introspection, not subjectivity.
So you are quite wrong to assert, elsewhere in the thread, that subjective qualities would not be expected on the hypothesis of physicalism.
I don’t think so. bearing in mind that what I mean by “subjectivity” is “objective inaccessibility”, not “introspectability”.
Permalink
bearing in mind that what I mean by “subjectivity” is “objective inaccessibility”
Just how inaccessible must something be, objectively, to count? Must it be logically impossible to access the state objectively, for example? Depending on how you cash this out, you may be in danger of using the word “subjectivity” idiosyncratically.
I have already listed another condition besides introspectability:
internal states which are intimately involved in, but not informationally exhausted by, cognition of the external world.
We could easily add conditions or clarifications. For example, let “external world” or “objective access” be specified as what other humans can detect with unaided senses.
The simplest explanation for the universe is that it doesn’t exist. It’s not popular, because the universe seems to exist. Explanations need to be adequate to the facts, not just simple… Since the inexpressibility of qualia can be accounted for given facts about the limited bandwidth of speech, it does not need to be accounted for all over again on the hypothesis that qualia don’t exist.
But can the inexpressibility of qualia be accounted for by such facts as mentioned? That’s the question, since the claim here is that the only supposed fact you have to support your belief that you experience qualia is your inability to doubt that you do. It’s hard to see how that’s a good reason.
Your claim to account for the ineffability of qualia based on expressive limitations is no different. No facts can tell you whether articulating qualia would exceed our expressive limitations because we have no measure of the expressive demands of a quale. The most you can say is that potential explanations might be available based on expressive limitations, despite our currently having no idea how to apply this concept to “experience.”
Whereas the argument for matter is...?
Science. Human practice. Surely not “I just can’t help believing that matter exists.”
But can the inexpressibility of qualia be accounted for by such facts as mentioned?
It would be more intesting to put forward a specific objection.
the claim here is that the only supposed fact you have to support your belief that you experience qualia is your inability to doubt that you do. It’s hard to see how that’s a good reason.
I don’t think that anything anywhere is better supported. Can you prove the existence of matter, or the falsity of contradictions without assuming them?
No facts can tell you whether articulating qualia would exceed our expressive limitations because we have no measure of the expressive demands of a quale.
What an odd thing to say. The argument for the inexpressability of qualia is just the persistent inability of anyone
to do so—like the argument against the existence of time machines. An explanation for that inablity
is what I gave, just as their are speculative theories against time travel.
Science. Human practice. Surely not “I just can’t help believing that matter exists.”
I think that if you unpack “science” and “human practice” you will find elements of “we assume without proving”..and “we can’t help but believe”.
That’s an over-generalisation from colour. Pain is a textbook example of a quale, and “pain” describes an effect, a reaction, not a cause, which would be something like “sharp” or “hot”. Likewise, words for tastes barely map onto anything object. “Sweet” kind of means “high in calories”, but kind of doens’t, since saccharine is thousands of times sweeter than sugar, but not thousands of times more calorific. And so on.
The simplest explanation for the universe is that it doesn’t exist. It’s not popular, because the universe seems to exist. Explanations need to be adeqaute to the facts, not just simple.
There is a perspective from which it is surpising we can describe anything that it going on in our heads. Billions of neurons must churn data in considerable excess of gigabits per second, but speech has a bandwidth of only a few bits per second. So the surprise is that some things, chiefly discursive thought, are expressible at all. Although that is not really a surpise, since we can easily account for it on the assumption that discursive thought is internalised speech.
Since the inexpressibility of qualia can be accounted for given facts about the limited bandwidth of speech, it does not need to be accounted for all over again on the hypothesis that qualia don’t exist.
Beliefs about what? It might be just about credible that other people are p-zombies, with no qualia, but with a mistaken belief that they have qualia. However, it is much harder for me to persuade myself that I am a zombie. When I look at a Muler-Lyer illusion, I have a (cognitive, non perceptual) belief that the lines are the same length, but I will also report that they look different. That second belief is not a belief about belief, it is a belief about how things look.
I don’t see where you are going with that. Unless your “less” amounts to a zero, that doesn’t amount to nihiism. Having some qualia, but less than we previosously thought, raises the same problems.
So does eliminating matter in favour of free-floating mental content, as do idealists (or perhaps we should call them matter nihilists). Parsimony can be a two-edged sword.
The epiphenomenality of qualia is not something that “seems” intuitively or introspectively, it is a delicately argued position
One can challenge such arguments on the grounds that the “about” doens’t follow.
I have a more modest proposal: let’s eliminate the idea that some things X cannot represent, stand for, or inform us about, some thing Y without being similar or analogous to it.
Whereas the argument for matter is...?
Upvoted for this line alone. See also, “If nothing exists, I want to know how the nothing works and why it seems to be so highly ordered.”
See also Occam’s sandblaster
If qualia are explained by our innate intuitions (or beliefs)—propositional attitudes—then two questions follow about “how it works”:
What is the propositional content of the beliefs?
What evolutionary pressures caused their development?
I make some conjectures in another essay.
Qualia might be beliefs instead of qualia. Matter might be qualia instead of matter.
:. Beliefs might be Matter instead of Beliefs, or put more simply, beliefs may matter.
Or in other words “I think, therefore I want to explore.”
And as I pointed out in the other thread, our experiences change in response to the relationship between viewer and object even as the object neither changes nor seems to change. We have the ability to be aware of internal states which are intimately involved in, but not informationally exhausted by, cognition of the external world. From a point of view valuing only knowledge of the external world as such, qualia are pure “noise”.
But of course, it makes good evolutionary sense for us to be aware of some internal states. (And even if it didn’t, evolution was never the perfect designer (witness flea wings and human appendix).) A cognitive system with a penchant for learning might easily take notice of its own internal workings during acts of perception. Such self-awareness might be extremely useful for a social animal. So you are quite wrong to assert, elsewhere in the thread, that subjective qualities would not be expected on the hypothesis of physicalism.
I’m not sure how this is relevant. I was responding to the objection that qualia have no vocabulary of their own, but ony parasitize vocabulary relating to external properties.
Sure, but that’s introspection, not subjectivity.
I don’t think so. bearing in mind that what I mean by “subjectivity” is “objective inaccessibility”, not “introspectability”. Permalink
I smell a false dichotomy.
Just how inaccessible must something be, objectively, to count? Must it be logically impossible to access the state objectively, for example? Depending on how you cash this out, you may be in danger of using the word “subjectivity” idiosyncratically.
No. But introspectability if far too weak a standard. I can introspect thoughts that are possible to communicate objectively.
I have already listed another condition besides introspectability:
We could easily add conditions or clarifications. For example, let “external world” or “objective access” be specified as what other humans can detect with unaided senses.
But can the inexpressibility of qualia be accounted for by such facts as mentioned? That’s the question, since the claim here is that the only supposed fact you have to support your belief that you experience qualia is your inability to doubt that you do. It’s hard to see how that’s a good reason.
Your claim to account for the ineffability of qualia based on expressive limitations is no different. No facts can tell you whether articulating qualia would exceed our expressive limitations because we have no measure of the expressive demands of a quale. The most you can say is that potential explanations might be available based on expressive limitations, despite our currently having no idea how to apply this concept to “experience.”
Science. Human practice. Surely not “I just can’t help believing that matter exists.”
It would be more intesting to put forward a specific objection.
I don’t think that anything anywhere is better supported. Can you prove the existence of matter, or the falsity of contradictions without assuming them?
What an odd thing to say. The argument for the inexpressability of qualia is just the persistent inability of anyone to do so—like the argument against the existence of time machines. An explanation for that inablity is what I gave, just as their are speculative theories against time travel.
I think that if you unpack “science” and “human practice” you will find elements of “we assume without proving”..and “we can’t help but believe”.