On Illusionism, what is an illusion exactly?
Despite being skeptical of phenomenal properties, for longest time I've been confused by the idea that they are illusory. An illusion as I know the term occurs at the perceptual level through some kind of sensory "distortion" a thing appears as something other than what it is. So as we say "the stick submerged in water appears bent, but is actually straight", under illusionism we would say "our experiential states appear to have phenomenal properties, but they actually do not".
Thinking about it I've come to believe that this kind of statement is very misguided not just with respect to phenomenal properties, but to illusions in general. Importantly I distinguish illusions from misinterpretations, an illusion happens at the level of perception, while a misinterpretation happens (obviously) at the level of interpretation.
But to declare something an illusion you must arbitrarily associate one particular interpretation with a particular appearance, such that a thing can appear different from how it "should" look. But appearances are not propositions, they cannot actually be wrong, the fault so to speak lies not with "wrong appearances" but with "wrong interpretations".
So the I guess radical conclusion for me is that phenomenal properties cannot be illusory because there simply is no such thing as an illusion, and for the surrounding questions to make progress they must be reframed in terms of interpretations rather than appearances, and most of all without privileging a particular interpretation at the outset as "aligning with appearances".
Thinking about it I've come to believe that this kind of statement is very misguided not just with respect to phenomenal properties, but to illusions in general. Importantly I distinguish illusions from misinterpretations, an illusion happens at the level of perception, while a misinterpretation happens (obviously) at the level of interpretation.
But to declare something an illusion you must arbitrarily associate one particular interpretation with a particular appearance, such that a thing can appear different from how it "should" look. But appearances are not propositions, they cannot actually be wrong, the fault so to speak lies not with "wrong appearances" but with "wrong interpretations".
So the I guess radical conclusion for me is that phenomenal properties cannot be illusory because there simply is no such thing as an illusion, and for the surrounding questions to make progress they must be reframed in terms of interpretations rather than appearances, and most of all without privileging a particular interpretation at the outset as "aligning with appearances".
Comments (154)
There is an entire Enlightenment philosophy predicated on a similar conclusion. So either your conclusion isnt as radical as you supposed, or, your conclusion is as outdated as the original.
If it were me Id have said judgement instead of interpretation, but other than that Im in general agreement.
Not a radical conclusion, but a very sensible one.
If I perceive certain phenomena, of touch, sight, sound, taste or smell, my perceiving such phenomena cannot be mistaken. My judgement of what caused these phenomena may be mistaken, in that I may think the postbox is red, but this would be an illusion, in that the postbox is actually emitting a wavelength of 700nm.
Quoting goremand
Many psychologists and philosophers today would argue that perception is interpretation all the way down.
While it may be that it's not human nature to perceive without also interpreting, I think the two are distinct. I would say a camera is an example of perception without interpretation in the sense I mean.
The camera is recording, not perceiving. When humans perceive something they are not just detecting it with their eyes, there is a whole perceptual apparatus attached to the act of seeing that just isnt present in a camera, yet.
I think that you are anthropomorphizing here, rather that making a real distinction. Simple recordings like from a camera are distinct from human perception but are not a distinction of the word/act of perceiving. Apples and oranges.
There seems to be two levels of perception.
First is the perception of simple concepts, such as colours, shapes, sizes, smells, sounds, tastes, feelings, etc. As these are directly from sensations and sense data, the observer cannot be mistaken about having perceived them.
Second is the perception of complex concepts, such as apples, trees, mountains, governments, etc. The brain combines simple concepts into complex concepts. As no cognitive judgment has been made, the observer cannot be mistaken about having perceived them.
Although the observer cannot be mistaken about what they have perceived, what they have perceived may not exist outside their perception of it.
With cognition, the brain combines these simple and complex concepts using memory, reasoning and language to understand what has been perceived, enabling propositions such as "the apple is on the table". As a cognitive judgment has been made, the observer can be mistaken about what they have judged to be the case.
Is there a name for it I can look up?
And secondly you can absolutely be mistaken about having perceived something. It literally happens every day.
That said the only way for illusion to really carry any meaning is to know what is real and thats a whole can of worms right there.
Transcendental Idealism generally, particularly, with respect to the OP, the first Book in CPR, entitled Transcendental Aesthetic.
Dont hate the messenger.
Kant to me was always the epitome of the philosopher who makes everything more complicated than it has to be and expresses that complicated understanding in obscure language. More recently I've come to find some of his thinking interesting and helpful. So... I won't blame you. I'll take a look.
Good luck. Just remember its only a theory. If this, then that kinda thing. Whether or not there ever is a this .ehhhhh, youll have to decide.
Quoting goremand
Quoting DingoJones
The above quoted posts are an interesting exchange.
Perception implies the mind and beliefs (true belief or false belief). So, a distinction between perception and interpretation does not make sense. (To understand this further, I mentioned in another thread at one time that when we talk (philosophically, scientifically) of awareness/consciousness, we are talking about the central nervous system. But there is a sort of a zombie nervous system that does not require our mind in order for it to function, and that is the enteric nervous system. (Look this up please).
That said, Goremand's analysis of illusion is a good one. Where does the error -- or the illusion -- occur? In the epistemological analysis of beliefs, it is a matter of various facts associated with an assertion. Should we prefer being justified or possessing the truth?
I believe that every individual walking around has a brain inside their skull. But I could not attain the truth of this belief because I wouldn't be able to open every person's skull to check if there's a brain inside.
What I want is to single out the process prior to anything resembling the generation of a proposition (i.e. something that can be true/false), perhaps calling this "perception" is an abuse of terminology. There is a causal connection between me seeing a red apple coming to believe the proposition "that's a red apple", but the apple does not speak out to me and tell me about itself, I am the one creating that proposition. So if the proposition is false, I have only myself to blame.
The camera analogy does the job insofar as the camera perceives/records/whatever-you-want-to-call-it without making judgments whose truth-value could be subject to evaluation.
You are dealing here with two different subjects: "illusion" as a concept and "illusionism" as a philosophical idea.
In the first case, most dictionaries and even Wikipedia, treat the concept of "illusion" from a physical view, and more specifically related to human perception and senses. For example, we all know of course about optical illusions. But surprisingly enough, they miss another huge area of application of the term.
Dictionary.com (former Oxford LEXICO), defines "illusion" as follows:
[i]"1. Something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality.
2. The state or condition of being deceived; misapprehension."[/i]
See the "space" that these definitions open up?
In the second case, although there are different theories of "illusionism" in philosophy, I think that the most common and what I personally came to know about is one that has to do with the nature of consciousness. A view belonging to "eliminative materialism", which considers and describes phenomenal consciousness as an illusion.
In the article "Eliminative Materialism" of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, we read:
"'Illusionism' about consciousness [is] a label designed to help indicate why it seems to us that phenomenal consciousness is real (Frankish, 2016, 2017). Illusionism is motivated in part by broader theoretical considerations, such as the problematic nature of consciousness from the standpoint of physicalism and the observation that even reductive accounts of phenomenal experience typically suggest some sort of misapprehension of what is really going on."
Quoting goremand
I don't know why you say that there is no such thing as an illusion. I believe that after clearing the term, as I did above, you must give the concept of "illusion" a second chance! :smile:
Otherwise, I agree with you that the phenomenal properties cannot be illusory, at least as far as consciousness is concerned, but for another reason. What you are experiencing is always real. As what you are dreaming is always real. It just happens. It is kind of "registered". Now if the contents of what you are experiencing and what you are dreaming are nonsense, contrary to facts or logic, etc. this is something else. We are talking here about relative reality, relative truth, which are on a scale from totally illogical or unreal to very logical and real. Because there's no such thing as absolute reality or truth. Hypothetically maybe yes, but not on practical level, i.e. a level that we can talk about, that we can express, explain or describe. What is real or true for me, may not be for you. And vice versa. The same goes for illusion. My reality about a subject may look illusionary to you and vice versa.
I am thinking of illusion in that first sense, as a "deceiving appearance", and yes by Illusionism I was referring to the eliminative theory or at least broadly the idea of phenomenal properties being illusory (and thus presumably targets of elimination). I think that the "illusion" is taken to be sensory, the sense-introspection analogy is very important to the theory and I think illustrated well by a passage in SEP just below what you quoted:
"Illusionism claims that introspection involves something analogous to ordinary sensory illusions; just as our perceptual systems can yield states that radically misrepresent the nature of the outer world, so too, introspection yields representations that substantially misrepresent the actual nature of our inner experience."
Good. But I'm not sure if you still believe that illusion is something inexistent. Also, if you believe that phenomenal consciousness is something inexistent too ...
BTW, in such cases, where a lot of concepts are involved and their analysis leads to doubt, conflict, confusion, etc., I believe the best thing to do is to try to use one's experience, i.e. first-hand knowledge. In this case, forgeting about terms and concepts, just be aware of your environment and yourself in it and inside you (one at a time! :smile) If all that feels real to you and you can repeat it whenever and for how many times you want, would you think that it is an illusion? That is, your environment, yourself, your thoughts, etc. do not actually exist?
As I said in the OP I am skeptical of phenomenal properties, my main point is that skepticism should not be equated with Illusionism. Skepticism of phenomenal properties has been my position for a long time, it does not mean I am in an emotional state of doubt, confusion etc.
I see. OK.
Yes, this is the gist of the cogito.
Yes, if introspection is to be likened to a sense it must detect something. The question is whether phenomenal properties are a part of this something. The ability to detect internal states alone does not require phenomenal properties in my opinion as even a computer can do it.
All experience is not an illusion.
Experience happens. Illusions and delusions are part of experience. Once we recognise a delusion it becomes an illusion. That is all.
The idea that a rainbow "appears to be an object" rather than a refraction of light is a good example of what I mean by a privileged interpretation. In truth both interpretations are in line with the actual appearance of a rainbow and it is unclear why I should prefer one over the other based only on that appearance.
The same idea would apply to our sense of time if that too is to be considered a form of perception (which I believe is reasonable now that you made me think of it).
Similar things can be said of for example flat earth, the appearance of the horizon is obviously consistent with a round earth but even some who don't believe in a flat earth will still insist that "it looks flat". "Flat earth" is the privileged interpretation here.
If consciousness is an illusion, then what is it that knows what's really going on, but perceives a contradiction? The idea that consciousness is, itself, an illusion, but an illusion that perceives itself as real, is like picking yourself up by your own bootstraps.
But the thing is the image does not "contradict what we know". To those who understand how light travels through water, the image is a straightforward representation of reality, no-one is getting fooled.
Quoting Patterner
Illusionists do not believe consciousness is an illusion, only phenomenal properties. If you believe phenomenal properties are by definition necessary for consciousness, or that phenomenal properties are necessary for perception, I guess it amounts to the same thing. But I think that is a very trivial argument, basically laying claim to as many words as possible to increase the odds of the Illusionist undermining themselves with careless language.
Quoting goremandI'm not sure of the wording "phenomenal properties are by definition necessary for consciousness." More like "phenomenal properties wouldn't exist without conscious." Without consciousness, there would be nothing but particles and groups of particles, interacting as their properties and the laws of physics determine. But we have consciousness, and the physical interactions are accompanied by subjective experience/phenomenal properties. The Hard Problem of Consciousness being figuring out why/how it is [I]not[/I] just physical interactions. So no, I don't think it's trying to lay claim to words inappropriately. (Love your last sentence!)
As I said in the OP I don't agree with this, I am skeptical of phenomenal properties and argue that there is no "appearance of the phenomenal" (as opposed to the appearance being an illusion).
Try to look at this from my perspective, you make an assumption (the existence of phenomenal properties) and this assumption creates a philosophical problem that is so difficult it is called the Hard Problem with capital letters. I think it's worth considering whether this was a safe assumption to make in the first place.
Quoting Patterner
Thank you, it is unfortunate but there is a bit of a diplomatic aspect to this debate where whomever is allowed to define the terms of mental language gain a lot of rhetorical clout. I would prefer functionalist definitions of course.
I agree with your point of view. But I'm inclined to be a bit more than sceptical of phenomenal properties, understood as a kind of screen or veil between us and reality. I think the idea is based on a naive realist view of language.
We sometimes think we see something that doesn't exist (as in Macbeth and his dagger). We say that Macbeth is hallucinating a dagger, which is correct. Anyone who isn't paying attention will be tempted to say that Macbeth is seeing a hallucinatory dagger. One can be forgiven, I suppose, for concluding that a hallucinatory dagger is an object like a dagger. But it isn't. It is a non-existent dagger and Macbeth is not seeing it. He is thinking that he is seeing it. If we insist that there must be something (some entity) that he is seeing, endless problems follow.
Illusions are a bit different. But there is the same temptation to think that we are seeing an illusion is an entity that we are seeing. But, as you say, an illusion is not an entity; it is a misunderstanding. There is a perfectly good explanation for making the mistake of thinking that the stick in water is bent and it is clear that there is no bent object of any kind involved (except possibly some light waves, which, strictly speaking are not bent, but refracted). The catch comes when we generalize. Physics explains to us what sound waves (or light waves or heat) are and how they explain our ability to see or hear feel what's going on around us. But then that old chestnut (!) about the tree falling in the forest arises and we feel we need to make a choice. Either the sound is there whether we hear it or not, or there is only a sound when we hear it. The choice is inappropriate, since we hear the sound when we interact with the sound waves. We can resolve the dilemma either way. It doesn't matter - unless one then wants to treat sounds as some mysterious entity between us and the tree.
Dennett's problem is that an illusion is only an illusion in the light of a description of reality and analysis of how things appear in terms of that description. He takes physics &co as not merely a description of reality, but as the description of reality. I call that a naive realist view of physics.
The idea that we perceive reality is often characterized as direct or naive realism. (I've never seen a view that one could characterize as indirect or sophisticated realism, which may be significant.) I'm sure you've noticed that I think there are naive views of some other things in circulation. I don't mean to be sarcastic, but characterizing a view from the outset as naive is hardly dispassionate.
It would be a mistake to cover all the ground in one go. I think that's enough for now.
Phenomenal properties don't exist outside of our consciousness. Illusions don't exist outside of our consciousness. They aren't physical things that we perceive under certain circumstances.
But they exist. "Only" within our consciousness, sure. But that's still existence. They are the subject of the conversation. We have a lot of common ground when we discuss them. A magician doesn't do something, and hope somebody in the audience gets something out of it. Something objective is at play, and the magician works with it.
How am I doing?
I'm sorry. I made an assumption and I was wrong. You're doing well.
Illusions exist, all right. They are perfectly objective. The tricky bit comes when we try to explain what they are. And this matters because of the grand question what the phenomena that we experience through our sense are, and how they relate to physics.
Useful background for this is this idea of a category mistake. See Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
You need to go carefully here, because even though we say that illusions exist only in our consciousness, it's a metaphor. There's nothing wrong with that, until you try to make too much of it. Our consciousness isn't a place and doesn't have an inside or an outside. So the existence of illusions in our consciousness isn't like the existence of my lap-top in my house. Explaining the literal truth of the existence of illusions and other experiences complicated and difficult.
All of that makes perfect sense to me.
Excellent!
The next step is a standard move in philosophy. When we see something, there is something that we see - a table, a goal, etc. We can draw a diagram. (I wish I was more fluent with computers and could actually draw it, but you'll have to imagine it, or sit down and draw one.) There's a head on the left side of the page, facing towards the right side, and a table on the right side of the page; an arrow connects the eyes in the head with the table. In other words, seeing has an object and the person seeing the object is in a relationship to it; the two are entirely separate entities.
Now, the question is, when I see an illusion, what is the object that I see? The obvious answer is some kind of picture of a bent stick in my head. (The same argument applies to hallucinations, which is why I was going on about Macbeth, and it seems inescapable that the same model must apply to anything that I see.)
I maintain (and so do a lot of other philosophers) that this is a conjuring trick. But I don't want to go too fast, so I'll stop there for now to make sure you are not lost.
Has that question been answered in regards to when I see an actual object? I might suspect it would be the same answer, even if the source material is different.
Quoting Ludwig V
Can you be more specific? Certainly, no part of my brain turns yellow and shapes itself like a rubber ducky if I see one floating in the water. So, yes, some thing that might be caught the conjuring trick. But how was it achieved?
I think it has, in the second paragraph. My point there is that the idea of an internal image makes better sense in the context of an illusion or hallucination. The argument then is that if we actually see internal images when we see an illusion or hallucination, it doesn't make sense to suppose that we only see images when something's gone wrong.
Quoting Patterner
Curiously enough, Aristotle has a theory quite close to that. But no-one takes it seriously any more.
Quoting Patterner
It's a trick of language. Some people have a name for it - nominalization. This is the term used in grammar for the process of inventing a noun that corresponds to a verb. You'll remember that in grammar a noun is defined as the name of a person, place or thing. This true, but can be very misleading.
If I say a) "I'm going out for a walk", that may be grammatically like b) "I'm going out for a cucumber". So if you just look at the grammar, you will likely think that a walk must be an entity somewhat like a cucumber. But b) means I am going out to get a cucumber and bring it back but a) means I am going out to walk. A cucumber is an object, but a walk is something I do.
This is where talk of categories kicks in. A walk and a cucumber are both nouns, but in different categories. There is an entity that is named or picked out by "cucumber". There is no entity that is named or picked out by "walk".
Similarly, "bent stick" picks out an entity, but "illusion of a bent stick" doesn't. It is a nominalized version of "thought the stick was bent".
The main reason for insisting that this is the right way to look at it is this. If we suppose that some kind of picture is conjured up in my brain when I see a stick bent in water, we have to explain what the process of seeing it (the internal picture) is like. Then you will find yourself wanting to suggest that there's a picture of the picture in my head. You'll realize you are on the brink of an infinite regress, and so that there is something wrong. Positing the picture in my head doesn't explain seeing, much less my mistaken seeing. The story of the light getting bent as it passes through the water is all the explanation we need.
I hope that's helpful.
Honestly, I dont know that Im in the right thread. My apologies to . I dont know that illusions are as relevant to what Im thinking as hallucinations and dreams are. Its not a physical thing. As we said, no part of my brain changes color or shape. Theres no image being projected onto a tiny movie screen in my head. Im thinking that, whether the image I have in my head is a representation of an external object that my senses perceive, or an hallucination or dream, the nature of the image is the same.
Maybe a better concept is a fantasy. If there is something there or not, we have a desire that it, for example, serve a certain purpose (reference to an appearance) that it, perhaps, hold a place to allow or close off interpretation. Whatever the object and purpose, the fantasy is from the desire for a certain outcome.
While I'm not super comfortable speculating on the psychology behind belief in illusions, I think it's a fact people prefer to fix their beliefs and dislike suspending their judgement. Belief in illusions at least allow us to "externalize" (i.e. blame on something else) our inevitable errors. Like that stereotypical guy who thinks every woman is flirting with him, so it becomes their fault when he gets turned down.
Quite right. I shouldn't have allowed habitual forms of speech to take me over. But it illustrates how difficult it is to avoid misleading ways of putting things - especially when you're trying to demonstrate that certain ways of putting things are misleading. I'm sorry.
It follows that you are not on the wrong thread.
It is better (i.e. less misleading) to say that when we see an illusion of a bent stick in water we don't see an image of a bent stick, but we see a straight stick as bent. No image is required. I think this is what is saying. I also think that disposes of illusions.
I extended the discussion to hallucinations, dreams, etc. to register that there are other cases of getting things wrong that are less amenable to this kind of explanation. It is very hard to maintain that when Macbeth hallucinates his dagger he is misinterpreting something that he is really seeing. (Dreams are even more difficult, because we are asleep (i.e. unconscious) while we are dreaming.) The psychological explanation that Shakespeare expects us to adopt is that Macbeth is secretly guilty, but that doesn't help philosophically. I don't have a pat answer to that, so to avoid misleading you any further, I'll stop there, at least for the time being.
Does that help?
I dont know what to think about the word image. Again, theres no literal image in my head, as there is on a movie screen. Still, if I close my eyes and imagine an apple, there seems some logic in saying I have an image of an apple in my head. Imagine and image having the same root, though image is possibly limited to the visual, while we can imagine things with regard to any of our senses, and then some. Can we say the verb does not result in the noun?
Quoting Ludwig VIs there reason to believe MacBeths hallucination of a dagger and his perception of an actual dagger are not of the same nature, even though they come about by different means?
Thank you for your posts.
How I would put it is, the straight and the bent stick *share* the same appearance. If X looks like Y, then Y looks like X, it goes both ways. I might as well say that a bent stick is an illusion because it looks like a half-submerged-in-water straight stick.
Quoting Ludwig V
I actually think this could be argued, a hyper-rational Macbeth could glean some insight into his own state of mind if he interpreted the "dagger" correctly. Something like: "I perceive the appearance of a dagger, but I know there is none. The appearance must have some other explanation, perhaps it is a manifestation of my guilt."
The difference between hallucination and illusion in my opinion is where we assign the blame, illusions are blamed on the "deceitful appearances" of some objects, hallucinations are blamed on the "faulty" perceptual or cognitive apparatus of the subject.
It depends what you mean by "of the same nature". They are clearly radically different, since there's no dagger. But they are clearly similar because Macbeth is behaving as if there is a dagger in front of him. The question is whether the similarity can only be explained by positing something dagger-like in his head or mind. I know it seems mysterious. But if you approach the question in a different way, it will seem (as it has seemed to many philosophers) the best and only explanation possible. This is why philosophy is hard.
Quoting goremand
Yes, of course it goes both ways. So I could easily see a bent stick in water as straight. The issue is that the phrase in italics and the phrase in bold seem to be equivalent, but actually suggest different models of what's going on. The italics phrase suggests that the illlusion must involve some thing called an appearance, and that's where the fault is. The bold phrase suggests something more like your way of putting it, that the illusion does not involve any thing except the stick.
Quoting goremand
I doubt anyone would question that. The issue is what kind of fault it is. Perhaps the quick way of explaining it is that it is a question whether it is like an error in interpreting the data or like a faulty copy of a picture. I thought you were proposing the first alternative and rejecting the second.
I have to stop now, but since we started this exchange I've been thinking about it. Later on, I'll post a suggestion that might take us a bit further.
What do you mean by something dagger-like in his head or mind?
But the very fact of having an inner experience is evidence in favor of the hard problem. If color and sound are illusions, those experiences still need to be explained in terms of how the brain produces them in a way that avoids the hard problem. Calling them interpretive illusions doesn't dissolve the matter. Just shifts it over to explaining how the brain accomplishes these illusions.
It's what Chalmers has called the meta-problem of consciousness.
Not really, unless an "inner experience" is taken to involve phenomenal properties by definition.
Quoting Marchesk
I don't think I ever spoke of "interpretive illusions". I don't think there can be such a thing, as interpretations don't have an appearance, they are just propositions.
A mistaken interpretation is not an illusion but merely a mistake. Calling a mistake an "accomplishment of the brain" is pretty funny, but I don't believe that mistaken beliefs are some great mystery to the empirical sciences.
Because otherwise, you haven't dissolved the hard problem. You've merely claimed that it's an illusion without showing how.
I don't need to "explain away their appearance", the mechanisms of color vision and pain are not a great mystery and not what results in the Hard Problem. The great mystery of the Hard Problem are
the phenomenal properties of introspective states.
Quoting Marchesk
Answering that is not really my problem, as I do not believe phenomenal experiences are illusions. The whole point of this thread is to argue against Illusionism and to explain how skepticism of phenomenal properties does not entail Illusionism.
Something like a picture or a model.
Quoting Marchesk
It certainly is, if such things as inner experiences exist. The issue is whether they exist. I read the Nagel's original account and carried out the thought experiment he proposed. Nothing. Am I deficient? A zombie? Hard to bamboozle?
Perhaps it's time to go nuclear. I think illusionism is circular. An illusion can only be defined by its difference from reality. If the deliverances of consciousness are illusions, what is the reality? Oh, yes, physics. How do we know that physics is an account of reality and that common sense is the illusion? By empirical evidence, of course. Where do we get empirical evidence? Naturally, the deliverances of consciousness.
The formulation of the hard problem is misleading. One day, perhaps, we will recognize that and develop less misleading ways of thinking about these things. But I'm not holding my breath.
I believe this is not quite correct, I agree every illusion has a counterpart, "the thing that looks like itself", the thing that does not deceive, but this thing need not be real, only privileged. For example maybe you have seen Penrose triangle sculptures (the real sculptures, not images on paper)? These create the "illusion" of a physically impossible shape, in other words they are claimed to look like something that cannot possibly be real.
Quoting Ludwig V
I think in the case of Illusionism, the counterpart would not be physics but phenomenological realism. The Illusionist says "phenomelogical properties appear to exist, but do not", the realist says "phenomelogical properties appear to exist, and do".
Quoting Ludwig V Can you direct me to this thought experiment?
Quoting Ludwig VAll matter has properties. From primary particles like quarks, electrons, and photons, to atoms, to molecules, on up to galaxies. We can study these properties. We know how these properties and the four forces produce the interactions that take place between everything.
Knowing all that, we can understand how various things are reducible to the physical. Perception, perceptual discrimination, memory, learning, on and on. Freakin monarch butterflies migrate from Canada to a relatively small part of Mexico, to roost on specific trees for the winter. They head back north in the spring, but die along the way, and the next generation continues the journey. It takes four generations of them to do a complete cycle. No monarch that flies to Mexico has ever been there before. I dont imagine anyone thinks they have a great degree of consciousness, or that one generation teaches the next in order to make this happen. Its all just physical. Massively complex, but physical.
I think the Hard Problem is explaining why/how the physical is accompanied by subjective experience, and awareness at different levels (of an event; of myself; of my own awareness). Butterflies have the physical without the subjective or awareness. Weve built machines that can perceive, discriminate, react, and learn, but dont have the subjective or awareness. If I did not hate the pain of burning my hand, the system of protecting the body would still pull my hand away from the fire. So why is the subjectivity and awareness there, and how is it accomplished? What, in addition to the physical, is there?
What do you mean by misleading?
H'm. We're talking about slightly different things. "Phenomenological properties exist" and "Phenomenological properties do not exist" are indeed contradictories. Whichever is true must be a contingent, empirical statement. Right? So where does the evidence that they exist, or not, come from?
Quoting Patterner
Careful! There's a strict use of these words in which anything that perceives, etc. is by definition, conscious, aware, has subjective experience. In that use, that statement counts as personification - a metaphorical use of the words. So that isn't quite the hard problem.
Quoting Patterner
... once you have defined "physical" and "subjective experience", and said that one accompanies the other, you have defined them as distinct, not just as chalk and cheese are distinct, but categorially distinct. So the problem no solution in virtue of the terms you use to pose it. "Team spirit" - to use Ryle's example - is something distinct from the team members, yet it is not something distinct from the team.
A rainbow is distinct from the raindrops and light that create it. Yet it is an effect of the sunlight refracting through the raindrops, not an elusive something. There is no hard problem there, is there?
Quoting Patterner
I'll have to hunt it down. I'll get back to you.
For evidence, I think the realist would say "Phenomelogical properties appear to exist, so they probably do exist", and the Illusionist would say "Phenomelogical properties result in unsolvable philosophical problems, so they probably do not exist".
Fine. But you don't want to say that rainbows don't exist just because they are fully explained by physical processes, do you?
Now, we don't know what is going on when Macbeth sees the dagger. Why can't we leave it at that rather than positing some dagger-like phenomenon in his head?
Quoting Patterner
I'm not sure what you have in mind in that sentence. Can you give an example or two?
Quoting goremand
That's admirably concise. But "exist" is complicated, so we can't understand exactly what this means without looking at it a bit more closely. Dragons, rainbows, numbers, colours, crimes all exist. But their existence is different in each case, and none of them is the same as the existence of tables and trees. The insoluble problems arise when we try to say that their existence is like the existence of tables and trees - we end up chasing ghosts and wondering why we can never catch them. The illusion of the bent stick is not an object like the stick, only in my mind. That is a metaphor, because my mind isn't a place (where "place" is a location specified in three-plus-one dimensions - time and space).
So we need to understand the manner of existence of appearances - in other words, its category.
Do you know about the idea of a category mistake? There's a helpful entry in Wikipedia, if you don't.
I'm not pretending that's a magic wand, though Ryle seems to have thought it was. But it at least allows us to formulate the problem differently and escape the endless merry-go-round (or should that be sadly-go-round?) of the traditional debate.
Quoting Ludwig VWe should not posit such a thing. I dare say that explanation is impossible.
Quoting Ludwig VSure. Sunlight refracting through raindrops does not bestow solidity to rainbows. Or audible output. Or the ability to store data. Or consciousness. It does the one thing it does. It makes a rainbow.
It may be that one physical process, or one set of physical processes, seems to produce more than one thing. Such as the process that leads to both lightning and thunder. But thats just one thing that has visual and audible (probably more) characteristics. I dont know if one process produces two truly different things. Like if sunlight refracting through raindrops lead to a rainbow that you could slide on. If we ran across such a rainbow, we would be very surprised. We would assume something else is at work, and go looking for it.
Physical processes lead to my brain being able to perceive, and discriminate between, frequencies of visible light. But distinguishing between frequencies of light is a different thing than what it is like to see blue and red. Understanding those processes in perfect detail does not describe experiencing colors, and does not help a person who sees in great detail, but is color-blind, understand what blue is. We should be surprised that physical processes that bring about the one also bring about the other. More so, in fact, than if we ran across a solid rainbow. Because lights and solidity are both physically reducible. If consciousness is physically reducible, no one has been able to figure it out. At least Christof Kochdoesnt think so. We should assume something else is at work, and go looking for it.
I asked the question because I wanted to check that you agreed with me and to make the point that we don't need any more explanation. But I hesitate to call it reductionist because it is called reductionist to suggest that it somehow implies that because there is a physical explanation, rainbows somehow don't exist.
Quoting Patterner
Don't give up too easily. We don't have an explanation yet. But the future is a long time and we can't rule anything out.
Quoting Patterner
Yes, a distinguishing between frequencies of light is different from distinguishing between colours. Neither is an attempt to describe experiencing colours. But a description is never the same as the real thing. A description of a table isn't a table. A description of a chess move isn't a chess move. A description of an smile isn't a smile. And so on. Why would a description of an experience (though I'm not really sure what that might be) be an experience?
Someone who is colour-blind is unable to experience see colours. Why would a description of a colour (whatever that might be) substitute for that? It's like trying to substitute money for food. Money can be exchanged for food, but it can't substitute for it.
There's an interesting question whether understanding something includes experiencing it. It's comparable to the question whether understanding something in theory, without practical experience of it is complete or not. That's complicated. In some cases, the answer seems to be Yes and in others it seems to be No.
Quoting Ludwig VI think we have enough brain scans and dissections to know that the brain does not reshape itself into to match things we see. Also, how would it reshape itself in order for us to hear or smell?
Quoting Ludwig VWhat I mean is, if I listed every single physical event that takes place within a robot that can perceive different frequencies of the visible spectrum, and act in different ways depending on the frequency, nobody would conclude that the robot is consciously experiencing colors. There is no hint of qualia. Same for if I listed all the physical events that take place within us, beginning with a photon hitting a retina. I would not be giving a description of someone experiencing blue.
If aliens quite unlike us, who knew nothing at all about us, ran across that list, they would have no reason to assume we were conscious beings. They might wonder if we are, just as we might wonder if any given AI is. But we dont, and might never, know about the AI. And these aliens might never know about us. Because the chain of physical events on this list does not describe two different things - our ability to perceive and differentiate frequencies of electromagnetic radiation within a certain range and our experience of seeing colors. We need a different list to capture the experience. But such a list does not exist.
Nagel, according to this video summation of What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (particularly beginning at 17:07) says such a list is not possible.
Consciousness may not be physically reducible now. But that doesn't mean it always will be. One day, I'm sure, there will be a physical account.
Quoting Patterner
If you are asking for an explanation how we see the table, it doesn't help to say that a copy or imitation or model of a table appears in our heads. Even if we found a little model of a table, how would that explain anything?
Quoting Patterner
Of course, a list of physical events won't include any qualia. They are defined as non-physical things.
Quoting Patterner
What do you mean by "capture"?
Quoting Patterner
Lists aren't necessarily helpful. But it is certain that a list of all the parts of a car isn't a description of a car, nor an explanation of how it works, and a car is not the same thing as a list of its parts, or a description of it, or an explanation of how it works.
Quoting Ludwig VTrue enough. Although I would never suspect such a copy or imitation or model.
Quoting Ludwig VDo you think the definition is correct?
Quoting Ludwig V
Quoting Ludwig VWe already have the assembled car. I said a list of physical events. If we made such a list for a car, starting with turning the key, then saying what turning the key would do within the engine, then saying what would happen next, and next, and next, we would understand the purpose of the car, and everything it does. That list of events captures - or perhaps describes, it all.
If we did the same for a brain, a much more gargantuan task, we would understand how it perceives the world through the senses; how its stores information; how it moves parts of the body; how it learns so that it comes to move parts of the body in the best ways, and at the best times, to increase its chances of survival and reproduction; etc.
But we would not understand everything the brain does. Like the car, the list of physical events only describes, or helps us understand, the physical functions of the brain. It does not touch upon consciousness. Each physical event within the car helps bring about what the car physically accomplishes. Each physical event within the brain helps bring about what the brain physically accomplishes. How do the physical events bring about the brains physical functions and its mental functions. Two things accomplished, by one means, and one of those two things is of a different nature than the means.
Quoting Patterner
It depends what you mean by correct. It's not as if there is an existing definition, or even an existing (mutually agreed) phenomenon that we are trying to "capture". We can agree what a rainbow is, both in the dictionary and in the world. So there can be an argument about the correct definition - and there isn't one, because there are criteria.
In my book, Nagel is trying to persuade us that there is a phenomenon to be captured, one that everybody can recognize. But he also knows that there isn't universal agreement about that. It's a pity he doesn't actually engage with the issue.
Quoting Patterner
It's not that simple. If you try to list every event, both the ones that are relevant to what the car does and the ones that are incidental, like comfortable seats or a sun roof and the ones that are irrelevant - side issues - like (in years gone by - the pollution it creates, you would, I suggest never come to the end.
Make a complete list of all the events going on in the desk that is supporting your computer.
Quoting Patterner
The brain is important, but not the whole story. It is probably true that the brain has a dominant role in the processing of information. But our minds do much more than that. The brain depends on the entire nervous system, all the sense organs (supplying information) and all the muscles (enabling action) to function. Our hormones regulate all sorts of things, including our emotions. I don't think we will come even close to explaining the mind unless we include our entire body in our explanations.
If one considers how we can answer similar questions about what a computer does and compare that to the questions we are asking about the brain, it becomes clear that we are barely in the foot-hills of the project, and in no position to blandly assume that we know what will happen. We don't even know which events in the brain are relevant and which are not. We don't even know what all the chemistry of the brain is never mind what parts of it are relevant and which incidental.
We haven't yet mentioned emergent properties. One of the essential functions of the car is that it moves itself. What part of the car is the one that moves it? The wheels? The engine? The body? None of them, on their own. All of them, in their systematic relations. And here's the paradox of analysis, that what you are trying to analyze, in a sense, inevitably disappears when you take it to pieces.
Consider the rainbow. Or ask how a clock tells the time. These are systems. One can analyze them, but one will not find one-to-one correspondence between one level of analysis and the next.
If one considers the conceptual revolution that we required for us to understand the simplest physical object works, it seems to me arrogant to assume that this project will not also involve conceptual revolutions that we cannot imagine. When one considers how much our idea of matter has had to change in the process of understanding that, why would one think that understanding the mind will not involve similarly radical new concepts?
Philosophy often gets ahead of itself and tries to answer questions that it does not have the conceptual equipment to answer. Qualia is an example.
I'm sorry if this is too much, but it seems right to show what is involved in this issue.
Quoting Ludwig VIm asking your opinion. Do you think qualia are non-physical things?
Quoting Ludwig VSuch a discussion with him would be great. However, I dont see anything wrong with anyone writing about topics on which there is not universal agreement, even controversial topics, from their pov. Brian Greene can write a book whose starting point is that String Theory is fact, and the pope can write one whose starting point is that Catholicism is fact. The target audience for every book isnt necessarily every human.
Quoting Ludwig VNo, not simple. But I dont think we should only think about and discuss things that are simple.
Quoting Ludwig VI hadnt explicitly said it, but Im comparing two things - cars and brains - that do things. Things whose functions/purposes are in what they do. We might say my desk supports my computer, and supports is a verb, so the desks purpose is an action. But theres an obvious difference between that action and a cars or brains.
Quoting Ludwig VNo, there is nothing simple about it. It may be the most mysterious and complex thing in the universe. IMO, its also the most important and fascinating, and worth discussing and trying to understand. How many topics here are simple and universally agreed upon?
I can't give a straight answer to that, because the question presupposes that qualia exist, which I'm not sure about, especially since I'm not clear what category of existence is attributed to them. It seems to me very unlikely, if and insofar as they exist, that they can possibly be physical objects. But the term was invented in order to justify the philosophical theory known as dualism, which I do not accept.
Quoting Patterner
You misunderstand me. I wasn't objecting to Nagel writing about his ideas. I was just disagreeing with them.
Quoting Patterner
Certainly. I was suggsting that if we can't expect to give a complete description of something as simple as a computer (or a rock) on a desk, we can't expect to give a complete description of an autonomous system like a car or a brain.
"In Nagels words, there is something that it is like to be a bat. " https://iep.utm.edu/qualia/
Philosophy is a strange business. I'm about to complain that an ordinary expression that I understand as well as anyone else is incomprehensible. But seriously, what, exactly does "something it is like to be a bat" mean? Nagel makes another empty gesture when he says he means the subjective experience of a bat, which he believes cannot be described. So he knows that there is no answer to the question what it is like to be a bat. He provokes you to try to answer and prevents you from answering at the same time. That's the point of the question. The only sensible option is to refuse his trap and refuse to answer the question.
"these (sc. qualia) are taken to be intrinsic features of visual experiences that ... are accessible to introspection, ...." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
Introspection is a very strange concept. It is supposed to be readily available to anybody, because it is an essential feature of human consciousness and yet there is endless disagreement about what it amounts to. Yet here, it is presented as if it were completely unproblematic. There is one argument, for example, that introspection is not knowledge, which I think is not exactly right, but is an important part of the concept. If that's right, the entire debate is deflated.
"It rests on the idea that someone who has complete physical knowledge about another conscious being might yet lack knowledge about how it feels to have the experiences of that being." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/
That doesn't mean that there is some magical thing that the subject of an experience knows that no-one else can know. It just means that knowing is not the same as experiencing.
There is a thesis that I think has at least an important part of the truth here. It is sometimes called the transparency thesis. "According to this thesis, experience is ... transparent in the sense that we see right through it to the object of that experience, analogously to the way that we see through a pane of glass to whatever is on the other side of it. Gilbert Harman introduced such considerations into the contemporary debate about qualia in a now-famous passage: When Eloise sees a tree before her, the colors she experiences are all experienced as features of the tree and its surroundings. None of them are experienced as intrinsic features of her experience. Nor does she experience any features of anything as intrinsic features of her experiences. (Harman 1990, 667) As Harman went on to argue, the same is true for all of us: When we look at a tree and then introspect our visual experience, all we can find to attend to are features of the presented tree. Our experience is thus transparent; when we attend to it, we can do so only by attending to what the experience represents. " https://iep.utm.edu/qualia/
That makes sense to me and doesn't need any reference to qualia. It may not be quite complete, but it settles a wide range of cases.
Stuff like this makes my head hurt
Mine too. That's why I object to it so much.
Wittgenstein says somewhere that the philosophical solution he is looking for is the one that enables him to stop doing philosophy when he wants to.
Quoting Ludwig VI dont think thats what Nagel is up to. Yes, he chose something we cannot imagine. But thats the point. (I realize youve likely known of Nagel and this paper far longer than I have. Im not trying to explain it to you. Im just stating my understanding of it, to see how close we are to being on the same page.) I think he could have done it by addressing people who are entirely color blind. But it would have been strange to make his point only to the relatively small number of such people who read his paper. Totally color blind people surely believe those of us who see in color have subjective experience. (As we believe bats do.) But they cannot experience color. (As we cannot experience how a bat experiences the world through echolocation.) And I would not expect any amount of studying and understanding the physical processes to give them the experience of color. (Or us echolocation.) Yet, we experience colors.
And bats experience echolocation. They arent just flying machines we made that navigate via echolocation. There is something it is like for a bat to be a bat, because a bat has subjective experiences. As opposed to a rock. There is nothing it is like for a rock to be a rock, because a rock does not have subjective experiences.
Quoting Ludwig VTrue. But the principle still applies. If we see a hugely complex set of events, whereby photons hit retina, which causes a signal to go up the optic nerve, on and on, we come to understand how we perceive different frequencies of the spectrum, associate different frequencies with different things, and perform different actions at different times. Weve created machines that do the same. But we do not expect those physical events in our machines that bring about these end results to also bring about the subjective experiences of seeing colors and of having awareness of it all. Although the medium is different, I dont see why we would expect the events within us to perform this double duty.
Quoting Ludwig VI sure dont think its unproblematic. But yes, we can all be introspective. I think the endless disagreement is what comes of trying to learn about something that cannot be studied with the scientific methods that we are so used to and which has been so successful in other areas.
Quoting Ludwig VI dont know that argument, or how it deflates the debate. Actually, not sure exactly what debate you mean.
Quoting Ludwig VI dont think anything magical is going on, either. I think something we dont understand is going on. That thing being experiencing various things through our consciousness. In many situations, experiencing gives us something that we cannot get through any other method. Something is added by experience.
Quoting Ludwig VThank you. Ive never heard of this. Ill have to see if I can wrap my head around it.
Well, you've identified/described three experiences quite clearly. You used a sentence, which consists of a subject, a verb and an object. So it looks as if an experience is a relationship, or (especially in the case of seeing, an activity). There are three different kinds of object, a colour, a substance and a sensation. What more do you want me to say?
Quoting Patterner
I'm not sure about total colour blindness, or about what colour-blind people believe. If they don't know that colour-blindness exists, they likely believe that everybody sees the same way they do. But I'm not denying that there's such a thing as subjective experience - that's true by definition. The question is whether a subjective experience is an object in its own right. That's why I prefer to stick to the verb "experience" rather than its associated grammatical form, the noun "experience".
Quoting Patterner
The best way to explain is to give you a link - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/ section 2.3.3.
If you think that our knowledge of our own minds is just like our knowledge of tables and chairs, you will think that subjective experiences are a premiss for an argument, that they are true or false. If our "knowledge" of our own minds isn't like our knowledge of tables and chairs, then the problem disappears. I should confess that this is not a simple either/or.
Quoting Patterner
I agree with that. But I don't think it is helpful to jump to conclusions, which Nagel does. The issue is what is added by experience, or, to put it in a more neutral way, what the difference is between knowing and experiencing.
A first step is to observe that knowing that p adopts a third-person (hopefully objective) point of view; experiencing is a first-person point of view. There's a big difference between knowing that someone is in pain and being that someone.
(Don't forget that what you know actually affects how you experience things. If you know that the earth goes round the sun and not the other way round, you see the sunrise differently. When you do a bungee jump, your knowledge that you are securely fastened make a big difference to how you experience the fall.)
Quoting Patterner
If a machine did do the same, it would be conscious and consequently not a machine. But they don't, so they're not. That's a bit unfair, but condenses another complicate topic about what the difference is and how one might create a conscious.
Quoting Ludwig VI suspect color blind people are aware that the majority of people see in ways they do not.
Quoting Ludwig VI see. Sure, that makes sense. At the moment, the only solid stance Ill take about subjective experiences is that they exist.
Quoting Ludwig VNot sure what you mean. We have machines that perceive different frequencies of the visible spectrum, and perform different actions in response to different frequencies.
Are you saying a machine that was given consciousness would no longer be a machine?
Quoting Ludwig VWhich conclusion do you mean? I try to read him, but cant usually get far.
I would like to make things simple for you and just boil this down to a question: why do you believe in qualia? I don't want to speak for Ludwig V but personally I am perfectly comfortable in my skeptical position, I can doubt "plainly" without invoking any tricks of the mind.
Do you mean that I'm using tricks of the mind to express my doubts? I believe that I'm exposing the tricks that make plausible the idea that we have an immersive experience playing in mind and especially the suggestion that everything we experience is an illusion. But I do not intend to malign anyone, so my argument would not claim to prove that the tricks are known or believed to be tricks; proponents of this idea are as taken in by these deceptive arguments as much as anyone else. They are tricks of language or perhaps I should call them misleading features of the grammar of language.
I'm comfortable for myself, but some people think that they have to refuse to acknowledge that there is a difficult philosophical problem here. That seems most unhelpful, to me.
Quoting goremand
You may well be right. Don't get me wrong. It is a brilliant piece of philosophy, demonstrating that it is perfectly all right to be wrong, so long as you are wrong in interesting ways. I suppose it's just a marginal note to say that the article might well lead to some people who have never worried about the issue getting worried about it, or that, since philosophy thrives on puzzles, some people might buy in because they love a puzzle.
The defence is that resolving the puzzle can clarify what might be called knots in our thinking.
However, I think I should temper and depersonalize my language about this.
Quoting goremand
I seem to remember that you doubt that phenomenal properties are real. Is that what you are referring to?
Quoting Patterner
I realized after I wrote that sentence that I was going too far. It is true that Nagel aims to raise a question, not present a conclusion. But Nagel does propound his example as suggesting a problem and I think that problem is an illusion.
Quoting Patterner
Yes and no. Perception is something that distinguishes consciousness beings from non-conscious (and unconscious) beings. If you say that a machine can perceive something, it is important to be clear in your own mind whether you are using "perceive" in a metaphorical way or whether you intend to attribute consciousness to it. When the EPOS machine says "Thank you", you don't believe that it is thanking you, do you?
Quoting Patterner
I wouldn't want to quarrel with that, so long as you don't get misled into clouds of philosophical problems by false analogies.
Let me try another example.
The word "appearance" gets used in two different ways. When I am waiting for a procession, (funeral, VIP, celebration) to pass by, we can say that eventually the parade appeared at the end of the street. Or that the parade made its appearance at the end of the street. These two ways of putting it mean the same thing, that the actual parade appeared, not something that looks like it or sounds like it. The appearance is an event, not an object in the sense that the cars and motor-cycles and people that make it up are objects. Right?
There's another sense of appearance which marks a distinction or contrast between appearance and reality. If we pay attention to the grammatical feature of language that an appearance is always an appearance of something, or perhaps more accurately, there is always an object that exists independently of any appearance of itself. Appearances may or may not coincide with the their objects. The stick appears to be bent or looks bent (or looks as if it is bent) is the best way to say this. This is the sense that gives trouble, especially when, as in the case of illusionism, there is no reality to distinguish appearance from - that's the philosophical move.
Experience is similar. By making a bungee jump, you have the experience of falling freely in perfect safety. But if you say it that way, you are heading for philosophical perplexity. However, if you say, by making a bungee jump, you can experience falling freely, there is less temptation to wonder what kind of object an experience is.
Quoting goremandWhat do you mean? Why do I think I see blue? And taste sweetness?
Quoting goremandNot sure I am following you. Are you saying Ludwig V is a Jedi?
I dont understand the difference between you have the experience of falling freely and you can experience falling freely.
If you take those to involve a qualitative element, then yes. Why believe that?
Like I told you I prefer functionalist definitions of taste and vision which do not involve qualia/phenomenal properties.
Quoting Patterner
No I am just saying that my doubt is straightforward, unlike that of an illusionist who needs to invoke something "extra" (illusions in this case) to justify their doubt.
No I'm sorry, this got misunderstood. When I said I wasn't speaking for you that is literally all I meant, that I wasn't speaking on your behalf and that you may or may not agree with what I am about to to say.
There is no difference of meaning, except that "you have the experience of falling freely" suggests that there is some kind of entity/thing that you in some sense have, whereas "you experience falling freely" does not suggest that.
Quoting goremand
OK. But you made me think about how I express myself so there's no harm done.
1. If qualitative element/subjective experience doesnt do anything, and everything works without it, why does it exist?
2. We can study and list all of the physical events/processes taking place in the brain and body. Maybe not literally, but in theory. And for any given cc of matter I suppose? Anyway, all of those things are the steps/building blocks of, in this example, taking my hand away from the fire. How are those physical events/processes also the steps/building blocks of the subjective experience of feeling pain and pulling my hand away from the flame? How do all of the physical events build these two different things? I would go further, and say three different things. They bring about the physical reaction of pulling my hand away from the thing damaging it, my subjective experience of it, and my awareness of it. After all, my subjective experience of the burning is not the same as my conversations about it in the future. Im still aware of this burning from days gone by, even though Im not currently experiencing it.
I don't believe that qualia/phenomenal properties do exist, so I obviously can't answer this question. I believe the position you're describing is called epiphenomenalism, but it's not one that I share. Did you mean to ask "why do many people believe it exists?"
Quoting Patterner
These are all *your* problems, as it is up to you to reconcile your belief in phenomenal properties with your belief in physical causation. I don't have these issues and that is a strength of my position.
As far as I can tell you haven't yet answered my original question, about why you believe in qualia. I think it's important you provide a direct answer, in particular I need to know if your belief is empirical (via the sense/introspection analogy) or dogmatic/a priori or perhaps a third option I haven't thought about.
Sorry for the late reply by the way.
In my view, the conception/meaning of wavelengths is entangled with everyday experience. If I ask you what you mean by wavelengths, you'll have to tell me about 'mere appearance.' In short, indirect realism that takes the scientific image as the hidden real seems to miss that this image is very much on the side of appearance and only his its meaning in context.
That's a very good way of putting it.
Quoting plaque flag
I think I agree with you, only I'm not sure what you mean by "this image" (which image exactly?).
It is certainly odd that people so often forget that the scientific version of colour is also the product of experience - that's what "empirical" means.
Ah, excellent question.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/#PhilEnteImagHumaWorl
Yes. There's a default indirect realism that crumbles upon close investigation. I saw things like that myself once. It's probably because I was a science nerd and liked to think that tables were 'really' X. I probably absorbed it from nerdy teachers.
Anyway, Kant seemed to see that the others didn't go far enough. He put everything on the side of appearance but an unspeakable void. The really real shrunk to something infinitely distant, an absurd conclusion that suggests problems with the premises. Or that's how I grasp the situation at the moment.
In my view, blueness and pain are actually just as caught up in the causal nexus and 'logical space' as everything else. Pain is used to explain behavior. Aspirin is used to explain the cessations of pain. As I see it, there's only one network of concepts whose meanings are radically interdependent.
I don't really understand how this is an answer. Why do you believe in "conscious experience", blueness, pain etc.? Why believe there is anything "unneccessary" to explain in the first place?
FWIW, Merleau-Ponty describes the philosopher as exactly the kind of person who finds the ordinary mysterious and full of complexities. The most basic concepts are perhaps the most elusive and difficult. The philosopher returns again and again to the beginning.
This is from Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible. I find it moving and helpful on these issues and thought I'd share.
There is a way in which there is something it is like to be me that does not apply to our machine that distinguishes colors and reacts to them in different ways, and senses damage and moves away from whatever is inflicting it.
Quoting goremandYou do not experience blueness or pain?
Quoting goremandBecause things work just fine without our subjective experience of them, and because the mechanisms that explain perception, memory, behavior, etc., dont also explain our subjective experience of those things. if any physical process, or group of physical processes, suddenly demonstrated signs of consciousness, we would be fairly shocked. Balls on the pool table, bouncing around in the only way they can due to the initial conditions and the laws of physics. The grand gigantic number of things going on inside of a hurricane. The earth itself is a system made up of an incalculably high number of smaller systems. Every kind of energy is bouncing around, parts of more feedback loops than we can imagine. But we dont suspect the earth is conscious. If we did, we would wonder how on earth it is happening. How do physical processes bring that about?
Why should we be less surprised or curious when purely physical systems bring about consciousness for us?
Yes, I believe in consciousness or subjectivity, but I'm a direct realist (which is maybe the source of the misunderstanding?) I think of consciousness as being, as awareness of the world. The world exists for me. If I daydream, then even that is part of the world with the firetruck and the cloud. It just exists differently--but still in the same and only causal-semantic nexus of interdependent entities.
No, not as defined by you.
This what I meant by "laying claim to words" earlier, you have claimed the word "blueness" and "pain", and now I look stupid by having to deny that I experience color or pain. It is very important that you answer my question directly, no matter how stupid it sounds: why do you believe that you feel pain or that you experience blueness?
I know you're coming at it from a position other than stupid. I know you have something in mind.. But youre not saying it. or Im not understanding what youre saying. But you know when you ask why I think I feel pain, eventually, youre going to get the question that you got.
I dont think I feel pain. I feel pain. If you think I dont, I would like to hear your argument. If you think I am laying claim to the words, I would like to hear what you think a more accurate claim for them is. I feel fairly confident in my belief that you feel pain. I suspect you fell down as a child once or twice, skinned, your knees, and it hurt. At the moment, Im not claiming or defining anything. Im just looking for common grounds. Do we both feel pain? I do.
:up:
The key point is that all entities only make sense in terms of one another, that toothaches and thunderstorms are part of the same semantic 'blanket.' As Brandom stresses, we are creatures who demand and offer reasons, and anything that plays a role in that reason-giving exists, even if there are many modes or styles of existence.
The main argument for direct realism is that indirect realism (dualism) implicitly treats the sense organs and the brain as the creations of the sense organs and the brain. It's only because we are common sense direct realists that we could fret that maybe we are trapped behind some illusion thrown up by the brain that would absurdly be part of that same illusion.
I think Husserl is correct in that we have a sort of categorial intuition. As humans, we live among concepts as much as colors. Certain traditional forms of empiricism simply assume a narrow concept of experience, along with (I claim) an ultimately absurd methodological solipsism.
The point is that claims like 'my tooth hurts' or 'your jacket is green' might be relatively irreducible. 'Experiencing blueness ' is not so absurd in my view. We can see a blue object and conceptually abstract its color. Our intentional focus in then on the blueness as a targeted aspect of the object.
This is a performative contradiction, if you say "I feel pain" then you must think you feel pain.
Perhaps you meant "I don't just think, I know I feel pain"? But I'm not interested in how confident you are, I want to know how you know.
Quoting Patterner
To make an argument, I would need something to argue against. If you just say "I feel pain" and don't provide any justification for that statement, then what can I do? Your belief is dogmatic, it's not open to discussion.
Quoting Patterner
It's not a matter of which definition is "better", I'm just giving you a heads up, don't be surprised to hear me say weird things like "I don't feel pain" because that is simply the consequence of defining pain as having qualitative character.
To illustrate with a different example, let us say that I defined "thunder" as an act of god. That would mean all the atheists of the world would have to say "I don't believe in thunder", which would make them look pretty foolish.
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Ok but well, that intuition is bound to vary from one person to another. If we want meaningful discussion and not just sit around in a room and think (though I guess Husserl loved that) we can't insist only on our preferred way of conceptualizing. If someone has a problem with how you conceptualize experience you can't get around this by saying "it's irreducible".
Quoting goremandIt doesnt matter what the origin of thunder is. You can claim its an act of god. That doesnt stop an atheist from hearing thunder.
Not thinking pain is qualitative doesnt stop you from feeling pain. If someone sneaks up behind you and jabs you with a needle, youll know it.
Have you looked into Popper's idea of basic statements ? Inquiry has no choice but to sometimes take some claims for granted. It can always return to problematize them.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#BasiStatFalsConv
In the past, I've argued pretty reductively against a focus on subjectivity, and it's true that rational norms and concepts are primarily public and ego-transcending, or philosophy would be impossible.
So I'm with you on a fidelity to the tradition of critical thought. We cannot, except at the risk of performative contradiction, argue against the conditions for the possibility of rational discourse.
But we must also avoid simply adopting yesterday's ontologies and milking them for therefore unjustified epistemologies. (Truly ontology and epistemology look endlessly entangled.)
I think there's a strong argument that the world that humans can talk about without spouting nonsense is only given through or to human beings. This world is real, and not our dream, but we can't say anything about it apart from our entanglement with it. Its mode of being given to us is something that we aren't going to put under a microscope. The world is there, it has being. As John Berger puts it, seeing transcends concepts. I can look around and yet not put my seeing as seeing into words, though I can of course report what I see.
I claim that an honest look at your own experience will reveal that you, like me, see objects right away as of a certain kind. I see apples, not red lumps. I can focus on the redness of the apple, ignore everything else, peel that redness off. None of this is more or less strange than 'intuition is bound to vary from one person to another.' You trust in our sharing, more or less, in a realm of public concepts. Should I ask you to put these concepts under a microscope ? That's like putting a smell under a microscope or holding a microphone up to a picture. The world is given in different dimensions or aspects simultaneously, including a conceptual dimension or aspect. If someone wants to play skeptic and deny it, it's hard to take them seriously, for don't they offer universal concepts that are supposed to bind me as a rational agent ?
For human beings in general, as normative subjects, responsible for their utterances, and for philosophy in its deepest intention and essence, the 'space of reasons' (Sellars) comes first. It's a performative contradiction to argue otherwise. So we need not construct it from or justify it in terms of something else. At most we can explicate/unfold its way of being.
Yes it does, technically. If thunder is an act of god, by definition, then if god does not exist then no one can hear thunder. The "thunder" we would hear would not be thunder, as it did not come from god, but something else.
I think you need to consider the difference between defining something and describing it, the two are very different.
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No, but I don't think Popper would say you can dodge skepticism of a statement by declaring it to be "basic". If you make a contentious claim you have to be prepared to justify it, if you refuse then you are really only pretending to argue.
What we feel doesnt change every time we hear a new definition that we dont accept. I still hear thunder even after hearing what I think is a crazy explanation for it.
Well it's really just a tangential point, I will rephrase the question so we get back on track: why do you believe that pain has a qualitative component? As you know I view pain only as functional, what is the problem with this?
Sure, and then I'd probably pull the hand back and start screaming, as that is the usual functional response. The functionalist account is in no way lacking in terms of explaining human behavior.
I don't resent functionalism as a mapping strategy, but on a more serious ontological level it looks absurd to me.
You seem to imply that your words are as empty of meaning as those of a stochastic parrot. You talk of 'explaining' but (respectfully) seem to be reluctant to admit the existence of concepts (the experience of meaning.) Am I to believe you when you speak like the dude in Roadhouse? Is it true that pain don't hurt ? Do you not see that you are making the bold controversial claim here ?
'You don't hear that music...you just think you do. But you also don't have the thought that you hear that music. You have no interior. Not even the illusion of the interior is in there. This conversation never happened. You are an algorithm, because that's convenient for me.'
You seem to miss that science and philosophy exist within a 'field' of normativity. Speaking of human speech acts as merely causal is a self-subverting psychologism. Such an assumption is an analogue of 'I am lying' or 'nothing is true' or 'logic is irrational.' Husserl's critique of psychologicism is illuminating, as is Karl-Otto Apel's description of something like a minimal foundation of assumptions which are already implicit in the concept of philosophy.
In short, there's a line beyond which skepticism is confused performative contradiction, and it's easy to cross that line. One is sure one is being careful, yet the fear of error is the error itself (alluding to Hegel's critique of methodological solipsism.)
Knee-jerk incredulousness is a common response, but I generally find there is not much of substance to back up the sentiment. Which is to say I don't mind "looking absurd" if that is your main objection.
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Not to worry, "meaning" too can be accommodated by the functionalist account. Pretty much any useful concept can.
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I didn't mean to imply it's wrong to make bold claims (what a boring place this would become then). You just have to be prepared to defend them.
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Really? That's not obvious to me, you'll have to elaborate.
The notion of being 'rational' is essentially normative (ethical). One prides oneself on not being credulous, on [autonomously] thinking for one's self. One is ashamed to contradict oneself, embarrassed to find oneself caught in a performative contradiction. One resents being described as a kind of 'machine' that did not reasonably (autonomously) decide but was rather 'programmed' by its environment. 'You are just saying that because you are white/black, male/female, rich/poor, straight/gay.'
This folk psychologism is a twoedged sword. If I'm an irrational robot, then why aren't you ? Precisely when you make such a self-cancelling claim ?
Rationality is universal. It applies to all of us in the rational community. You don't get your own logic. Neither do I. It's an aspect of a humanism which has liberated itself from scripture. Both the species and its individuals are grasped as autonomous beings, ideally subject only to the laws they themselves recognize as legitimate. Basically, rational people all agree that they have a sort of better self in common, namely a rationality that binds them all. 'May the best human win [ may we fallibly defer for now to whoever makes the best case.]'
Brandom focuses on this sort of thing. He calls it scorekeeping. As discursive subjects, we all hold one another responsible for our claims. The basic rule is that you can disagree with me, but you can't disagree with yourself. For the notion of the rational self is precisely of its logical cohesion or unity.
Here's another one.
[quote=Sellars]
The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says.
[/quote]
The problem I see with viewing pain as only functional is that it is not functional. If my awareness of these things and my conscious thoughts about them are not causal, because everything that happens happens because of, and is explained by, your functionalist account - ultimately, nothing but the properties of particles and laws of physics - then what we (in your view) mistakenly believe to be qualitative serves no function. If the same events would take place due to the laws of physics if I did not have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant, then why have the false belief that what I think is at all relevant? It is difficult to understand why evolution would select for this.
It is also difficult to understand how a system comprised of nothing but physical events can have false beliefs.
Phantom pains exist. Those aren't functional. Also, it's easy to distinguish the functional part of the system from the experience of pain. We do it all the time for organisms we doubt are conscious. And we can do it for machines. You can have a program behave like it's in pain without there being any reason to suspect if feels pain. You could build a robot to do so as well.
It's also possible to imagine a painful enough scenario to feel discomfort. And there's emotional pain as well.
It actually does contradict what we know, you know need to know how light works to know that's an illusion. This is just wrong and we know the water is fooling us by "bending" the stick.
It is functional, evidence shows that organisms without a pain response don't live long (as do people who have a condition that prevents them from feeling it). But it can be both functional and not functional, though mostly it is functional.
I also didnt think they really rebutted the objection that illusion only makes sense if you have a reality to compare it to. If you dont know what reality is then the term illusion looses all meaning. The same would apply if you said everything is an illusion, the term would be meaningless.
Overall this seems to have been a very pointless conversation. I mean OP even got that bit about the water wrong. But yeah, reading through this gave me the sense the convo went nowhere fast.
Well I cannot speak for the thoughts and feelings of "one" but I see no contradiction whatsoever between being a product of my environment and being rational. To be rational is just to act in accordance with the norms of reason, which have nothing to do with being "autonomous" or any other strange fantasy. I also don't see how this directly relates to qualitative properties.
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Well as far as I can remember I never signed such a contract, but in your view I did so implicitly when I joined the rational community? Could you be more specific about how denying my autonomy results in self-contradiction?
Quoting Patterner
Personally I don't believe evolution is to blame, I think the concept of qualitative properties is the product of culture. But I also don't believe that qualia is the result of some vestigial or useless "ability" as you seem to do, I think it is simply a mistaken idea that can be gotten rid of just by changing your mind.
Quoting Marchesk
Yes they are, anything that has an effect also has a functional component. For example, if you go to the doctor for help with your phantom pain, that is an effect. That the concept of "phantom pain" is even used at all is also an effect.
Quoting Darkneos
Sorry, are you being literal here? You think that the water is deceiving you intentionally?
I maintain the water is innocent, it is simply behaving in accordance physics just as everything else. If you are "fooled" by this, the problem is with yourself.
The light traveling from the stick to our retina is behaving as we know it should according to physics, when a stick in the water appears bent. It is not behaving wrongly. It is only our intuitive interpretation of this light that causes confusion.
Hush now, child. Let me tell you how things are.
Did you the sign the 'member of the English speaking community' contract ? Or did you absorb its semantic norms mostly without trying ?
Autonomy means [ approximately ] self-rule. Rejecting the unjustified claims of others is part of that. Rejecting the justified claims of others is irrationality. Note that such a framework can remain fairly blurry. The details can be debated endlessly.
You're right, sorry. Basically I just wanted to make clear I distance myself from epiphenomenalism (qualia as real, but causally impotent), so there is no need for you to argue against it.
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The latter mostly, why does it matter?
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Why? Why can't a non-autonomous being reject unjustified claims?
My point is that norms of autonomous rationality are also just mostly absorbed by members of freeish societies. We learn to take responsibility for our promises. We learn to justify claims and not expect others to simply take our word for it. We learn to think for ourselves and not just believe whatever we're told.
Quoting goremand
I'd say they couldn't do so rationally. Recall what I actually claim.
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The bolded part is where things get interesting. Despite our attachment to our current beliefs, our attachment to our conceptions of ourselves as rational dictates that we change those beliefs when they are shown inferior to or less justified than others.
Note that you are asking me to justify my claims (which also involves their clarification) as an expression of your autonomy. You are not bound to agree with me unless I make a sufficiently strong case. And you are only committed to agreeing with me, if I do make a strong enough case, to the degree that you identify with the project of determining your beliefs rationally.
I take myself to be explicating the concept of rationality here.
Ok well, I think we just have different conceptions of rationality. Maybe I believe no-one is rational in your sense of the term. So what?
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I don't understand how this is so at all. Yes I am asking you to justify your claims, yes I do believe I am being rational, I just don't see how autonomy figures into it.
Why don't you just take my word for my claims ? Why don't you just believe what I tell you to believe ?
Reason must subject itself to critique in all its undertakings, and cannot restrict the freedom of critique through any prohibition without damaging itself and drawing upon itself a disadvantageous suspicion. For there is nothing so important because of its utility, nothing so holy, that it may be exempted from this searching review and inspection, which knows no respect for persons [i.e. no person bears more authority than any otherGW]. On this freedom rests the very existence of reason, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his reservations, indeed even his veto, without holding back. (A738f/B766f, translation modified)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/
So if I lacked autonomy I would just believe whatever you said? Are you implying that anything that lacks autonomy instead becomes perfectly obedient or amenable?
No. I'm surprised you would think that. The issue is whether you ought to believe whatever I tell you. In short, I'm trying to get you to account for the normative dimension of the project of establishing beliefs rationally.
Another way to put it: why would a person be proud of being a scientist ? of trusting science ? Why would a person be proud of living an examined life ?
If I am rational, it is not because I "ought" to be or some such, but because it is in my nature, just like it is in my nature to walk, breathe, eat etc. There are "oughts" to being rational in the sense that rationality is a set of norms, but there are no norms that compel me to be rational in the first place.
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I don't think they should or should not be proud of whatever they do with their life, that's really just a psychological question. I don't think there is such a thing as a "correct" emotion to feel about anything.
Overall you seem to be saying that you are an unfree-irresponsible meatbot or the algorithm inside it. You basically claim that pain don't hurt. You also reject the founding claim-constraining normativity of rational conversation.
Try to see this pose you are offering from the outside. Why should one trust an amoral robot programmed by its environment when 'it' claims to be such an amoral robot ? 'I am a liar.' ' I don't care about truth.'
I don't mean to be rude. I'm just pointing out the strangeness of you offering your opinions with a certain confidence while eroding any possible authority or interest they are likely to have. Like a drunk at a bar, satisfying with something that sounds edgy, 'unsentimentally' numb to the lack of coherence.
To be clear, I think you do care about truth, which is to your credit. And you are just trying to see around your culture to that transcendent truth by avoiding sentimental attachment to norms that might get in the way of that truth-seeing project. Nietzchean stuff.
First off, you make it sound like I'm claiming I'm a "robot" and you're a real boy. I don't think you and me are any different really, I've made the decision to trust you despite not believing you really are compelled by the "normativity of rational conversation", based on prior experience and on my observations of your behavior, and I don't see why you can't do the same.
Second I think we are different in how we conceptualize motivation. I do not care about truth because I am rational, I am rational because I care about truth. Like most people I have curiosity, an irrational appetite or desire to know the truth and to figure things out. But if you do think that me being an erratic liar better explains my behavior, then by all means believe that.
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Well I don't mind your appraisal, I just don't see the point to it. It is not enough to just claim that what I say is incoherent, you also have to show it.
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All right, I'll just take that as a slightly patronizing compliment.
I hope I haven't been rude. I'm trying to get you to admit that you too are a real boy. I'm challenging what I see as your psychologism (rationality is just rationalization) and your functionalism (your version seems to deny the qualitative aspect of experience). You mention your curiosity. Is that something you feel ? And do you not see color or feel pain ?
No problem, don't worry.
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I think only in your case is it rationalization, the way I see it you are pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. You are rational because the norms of rationality compel you, that's like saying you play chess because the rules of chess say that you must play. It's just a cover-up for an arbitrary decision.
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This though is right on the money. I want to solve the problems of philosophy of mind, the hard problems and so on, and I do believe skepticism of phenomenal properties is the way to go.
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Feeling and sight can be accounted for functionally, so yes I have feelings and yes I see colors. But the way I understand these terms is a bit different from yours, as I think I have already made pretty clear.
To be honest I think this is a pretty shallow approach you're taking, you're basically just restating a question I've already answered. Rhetorical incredulity is not enough, if you want to show me the error of my ways I need explicit criticism.
Just so you understand, this is how this line of questioning looks like from my perspective:
"I heard you deny phenomenal properties, is that true?"
"Yes."
"But do you really?"
"Yes."
"But do you reeeally?
"Yes."
"But do you reeeeeeally?"
etc.
Quoting goremand
I understand that you want to be careful conceptually. But what I was trying to clarify here is whether you grant (basically) that life/experience involves a 'nonconceptual surplus.'
I think that people born blind can have knowledge of color because they can reason about color in a public language. So I wouldn't say that typically sighted people know about color, but I would say that there is an extra 'dimension' or 'aspect' in the way the world is given to them.
Coming from another angle, I think red functions structurally and inferentially in a way that makes knowledge of red possible for those born blind, but I don't think the referent of red is exhausted by or as its role in this structure.
I think Wittgenstein's beetle in the box analogy is brilliant, but it doesn't address what exceeds a structuralist semantics. The reason most people can't understand Wittgenstein's point is because they've used the structural place of red tacitly to locate a 'subjective' (qualitative) referent. They 'know' that pain --- the pain they care about --- is not primarily a concept. It's like the difference between the idea of bread and bread itself. Only one keeps you from starving.
To me "experience" is just a functional concept or abstraction. So no, there is no "surplus". And me saying this is just restating what I have already said, are you struggling to just take what I say at face value?
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Well, I think that it is.
Ok, it seems you are really denying there is color and sound and pain beyond the inferential role of the tokens color, sound, and pain.
How are such tokens (historically contingent black glyphs on a white background) even invented or exchanged by the non-inferentially blind (by us, I mean, as opposed to the traditionally blind ) ?
Can you live your life as normal with your eyes closed ?
Are you committed to a p-zombie approach to human existence? So that the meaning of your own claims doesn't exist for you first-person ?
As far as we can say from experience, the world is only given perspectively to different sentient creatures. Denying subjectivity is just denying the being of the world.
I say this as a direct realist who doesn't think consciousness is more than awareness of this world. I see the world and not the inside of a private bubble.
Doesn't mean that it's not deception. like I said it can fool without intent. It makes the stick appear to bend when it doesn't.
But like I said before this topic is a waste of time.
No it is behaving wrongly because it appears bent when it isn't. It has nothing to do with the intuitive interpretation of the light, hence why it's an optical illusion.
You mean, how did we invent writing and other means of information exchange? Do you believe that without qualia, the invention and use of writing becomes inexplicable?
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I'm not sure what you mean. As far as I know skepticism of qualitative properties does not entail a loss of ability.
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It seems you are "bundling" concepts together in a (to me) arbitrary way, such that denial of one becomes denial of all. I don't remember ever denying subjectivity, consciousness or meaning as useful concepts, if these can only make sense in relation to qualitative properties you will have to explain why.
Quoting Darkneos
Ok.
I don't go out of my way to hate on qualia, 'cuz there's an inferentialist defense of them probably, but I'm not a qualia-slinger myself. I'm a [ phenomenological ] direct realists. Roses are red. I see roses. I don't see some internal image of the rose. I just see the rose. I don't 'believe' in consciousness ---except as the being of the world for a sentient creature. In the human case, the world exists for (is seen by) dramaturgical-discursive subjects responsible for their claims about this world, who experience this one shared world not as a chaos of swirling sound and color but as meaningful totality of equipment and institutions.
Qualia aren't needed here. That concept tempts us toward a mystified understanding of the forest as somehow hidden behind the trees. The world itself appears in (as) the colors of the rainbow and the tweeting of birds, as colorful rainbows and tweeting birds (as a system of already meaningfully related entities).
So we need working eyes that see color (at least shades of gray, to pick out shapes) to invent writing systems. Yes. And we need ears that work to develop a rich musical tradition.
Then I suggest you read up on refraction. Light is behaving correctly as we understand it when it redirects at the boundary between water and air. The light is not misbehaving.
It is our consciousness (or brain depending on your stance) interpreting the redirected light as a bent stick that is causing the confusion.
I mean it's been 5 pages and you haven't really gone anywhere with this.
Quoting goremand
You kinda have to accept other minds otherwise there isn't a reason to take anything you say seriously.
There is no stance, it's really just the brain. That fact is more or less solved at the moment and I am well aware of refraction hence it's not the brain's fault but the light playing tricks, like it sometimes does. It's the same for a mirage.
There really isn't a reason to believe qualia exist. It's just another last gasp of dualism.
Refraction is not a trick of light. It is light behaving correctly as we understand it does.
Refraction is never a trick. It is simply the way light behaves when moving from one medium to another where there is a change in wave speed. This is well understood in physics, there is no trick, just the normal behavior of light.
Thats just not true. Refraction can sometimes be a trick like with water. That is also well understood in physics. Im thinking you dont get this as well as youre making it out
There are no tricks in physics, I have no idea what you are talking about. Light changes direction at the boundary of two medium, given by Snell's law. It always behaves correctly according to Snell's law. Always.
There is no trick that happens sometimes.
Again, it depends on the context, science is more gray than most think. Especially in biology. Like I said you don't understand it as well as you think.
Give a precise example of where light does not behave according to Snell's law when passing from water to air? Can you give such a context? I doubt it.
It is clear who doesn't understand what they are talking about, and it is not me. But maybe you can explain your position in detail rather than just repeating that I don't understand?
Considering all you're doing is parroting one thing it's likely you. Like I said it does deceive in certain instances, like water and mirages, and not others.
It always behaves according to Snell's law. Even in the case of water and mirages, it is behaving as per Snell's law, as we correctly understand it. It is not misbehaving or playing tricks. It is not violating Snell's law.
Do you understand Snell's law? If you did you would understand mirages and refraction is just normal behavior of light.
Again no, those are special instances. And as said before it is playing tricks. Still proving you dont understand what you cite.