Measuring Qualia??

Can any one provide a link to the research?

So what are the "qualia" that were measured?

Quoting TiredThinker

How well might this satisfy people who think a person's experiences can only be experienced by themselves?

The inverted spectrum problem is still alive and well. No brain scans or neural activity measurements will ever convince me that your experience of red is the same as mine. You might see red as green, for all I know. Pragmatically, I think you experience the world the way I do, but I have no justification for that. For all I know, you're a p-zombie with no qualia at all and no brain research will ever convince me otherwise.

Sabine often spouts loads of nonsense whenever she strays outside of her own narrow domain of expertise, which is theoretical physics. In this case, it's so egregious that it's hard to even know where to begin. To be fair, most of the neuroscientists that she quotes in this video are nearly as equally confused about qualia as she is. But, at least, they're producing interesting neuroscientific results even though they misunderstand or over-hype the philosophical implications of finding neural correlates of subjective experiential states in human subjects.

(With my apologies to the OP. This curt response is meant to be dismissive of Sabine's misinformed blathering; not of your fine question/topic.)

The fact that Sabine feels the hard problem 'is bullshit' - her words - indicates to me that she hasn't grasped the point of the argument (and many don't.) 'Qualia' really just means 'the quality of (an) experience' - and as such is something that only a subject can be aware of, as experiences are only ever undergone by subjects.

The paper by Da Costa et al does not claim to measure qualia per se, nor does it claim to 'resolve' the hard problem of consciousness. What it does is assume (as a methodological stance) that the content of conscious experience can be formally modeled as a belief state — i.e., a probability distribution of observable correlates of internal or external causes of sensory input. It proposes to use this to explore how differences in these belief states might correlate with differences in reported phenomenology, and then to apply mathematical tools to quantify differences between such modeled belief states, and to propose testable hypotheses related to time perception, attention, and cognitive effort.

What it doesn't do is offer a means to measure qualia themselves in any philosophically robust sense (which after all would require the quantification of qualitative states!) That would require somehow rendering the intrinsically first-person nature of experience into a third-person measurable variable—which remains the crux of the hard problem.

(Actually, the first sentence of the abstract gives the game away - ' a key challenge is how to rigorously conceptualise first-person phenomenological descriptions of lived experience'. 'Conceptualising' an experience is in no way the same as undergoing it.)

Quoting Wayfarer

What it doesn't do is offer a means to measure qualia themselves in any philosophically robust sense (which after all would require the quantification of qualitative states!) That would require somehow rendering the intrinsically first-person nature of experience into a third-person measurable variable—which remains the crux of the hard problem.

You are quite right, and your comments are on point. I would suggest, thought, that the issue of the third-person accessibility of qualia (and the so called epistemological problem of other minds) can be clarified when we disentangle two theses that are often run together. The fist one is the claim that qualia are essentially private. The second one is the claim that they can be accounted for in reductionistic scientific terms (such as those of neuroscientific functionalism) and thereby "objectified". It's quite possible to reject the second thesis and yet argue that subjective qualia (i.e. what one feels and perceives) can be expressed and communicated to other people by ordinary means.

Reply to Wayfarer That's the research?

There's a section on the method used to measure belief. If there is to be a critique of that idea, it ought start by explaining the process used.

Would that we had a neuroscientist on call.

Quoting p.14

a subject’s phenomenology can be mathematically formalised as a belief (i.e. a probability distribution) encoded by its internal states. The subject produces first person descriptions of phenomenology that can then be used to infer its lived experience... Bayesian mechanics affords a correspondence between internal dynamics and belief dynamics. This furnishes a generative passage if we assume that phenomenological content can be formalised as a belief

So there's the usual Bayesian analysis as a stand-in for belief. All sorts of things wrong with that, and foremost the presumed equivalence to which Way points.

But the notion of qualia being used - the word only appears in a footnote - remains obscure.

Quoting Pierre-Normand

It's quite possible to reject the second thesis and yet argue that qualia (i.e. what one feels and perceives) can be expressed and communicated to other people by ordinary means.

Agree, but because of the fact we're similar kinds of subjects. We know what it is to be a subject, because we are both subjects.

Reply to Banno I think, as @Pierre-Normand suggested, the problem lies with Sabine's gloss on what the paper means. Her video is called 'scientists measure qualia for the first time' but I don't think they actually make the claim. (I like Sabine's videos, overall, but philosophy is not her strong suit.)

Reply to Wayfarer Given that I don't think the very notion of qualia can be made coherent, I oddly find myself agreeing with you, but for completely different reasons.

My laptop, even after all these years, still insists on quail over qualia.

Quoting Wayfarer

Agree, but because of the fact we're similar kinds of subjects. We know what it is to be a subject, because we are both subjects.

I can't quite agree with this. Arguably, a philosophical zombie isn't a "subject" in the relevant sense since, ex hypothesi, they lack subjective states. So, if our solution to the problem of other minds is to infer, inductively, that other people must experience the world (and themselves) in the same way that we do because they are the same kinds of subjects that we are, then the argument is either circular or, if we take "subject" to only designate an "objective" structural/material similarity (such as belonging to the same biological species with similar anatomy, behavior, etc.) then it is, in the words of Wittgenstein, an irresponsible inductive inference from one single case (our own!)

Quoting Banno

Given that I don't think the very notion of qualia can be made coherent, I oddly find myself agreeing with you for completely different reasons.

I don't think is can be made coherent either while hanging on to the notion that they are essentially private mental states, which is their ordinary connotation in the philosophical literature, but not always part of the definition.

Reply to Banno 'qualia' is academic jargon. You will notice that the only time it is ever usually mentioned is in relation to discussions of a certain clique of academic philosophers, mainly American, and often in support of the so-called 'eliminative materialism'.

Quoting Pierre-Normand

I can't quite agree with this.

I see your point and it’s a fair caution. But I think we might be talking at cross-purposes. When I said "we know what it is to be a subject, because we are both subjects," I wasn’t suggesting inductive inference from similarity of biological structure or behavior, rather a kind of eidetic insight—a recognition of subjectivity from the inside, so to speak, that others are beings like myself.

Reply to Pierre-Normand Yep.

Reply to Wayfarer I'm fairly well acquainted with some of the literature. My basic objection is that if they are private experiences then they are unavailable for discussion, and if they are available for discussion then they seem to be just what we ordinarily talk about using words like "red" and "loud".

So not of much use.

Quoting Banno

My basic objection is that if they are private experiences then they are unavailable for discussion

I think there's an unreasonable equivocation between 'subjective' and 'private'. The subjective qualities of experience ('qualia') are not objective (as a matter of definition) but neither are they necessarily private.

I make this distinction between the subjective and the personal: 'The subjective refers to the structures of experience through which reality is disclosed to consciousness. In an important sense, all sentient beings are subjects of experience. Subjectivity — or perhaps we could coin the term ‘subject-hood’ — encompasses the shared and foundational aspects of perception and understanding, as explored by phenomenology. The personal, by contrast, pertains to the idiosyncratic desires, biases, and attachments of a specific individual.'

I would say that what you're calling 'private' equates to the latter.

Reply to Wayfarer You may stipulate as you wish. It makes no nevermind.

My opine:
Quoting Banno

Seems to me that there is nothing that talk of qualia is about. In so far as talk of qualia is usable and useful, it is no different to talk of colours or tastes or what have you. In so far as something is added to the conversation by the addition of qualia, seems to me that Dennett is correct in showing that there is nothing here to see.

Reply to Banno Didn’t stop him from spending, or wasting, 50 years talking about it.

Reply to Wayfarer Fair.

So what they actually did was measure the neural correlates of colour experience.

Quoting RogueAI

The inverted spectrum problem is still alive and well. No brain scans or neural activity measurements will ever convince me that your experience of red is the same as mine.

Strictly speaking the inverted spectrum problem doesn’t even require qualia. Even if colour experiences are reducible to particular neural activity it is possible that the same wavelength of light triggers different neural activity in different people such that the neural activity that I describe as “seeing blue” is the same as the neural activity that you describe as “seeing red”.

Color is such a flat aspect of qualia. It does the trick, but really, when decorating a living room with someone and talking about why they like orange more than red, you probably get more intimate measures of their experience of red than any brain state data will tell you.

Taste is better than sight to understand qualia. Maybe her research wasn’t fully cooked and she doesn’t know what fully baked philosophy is supposed to taste like.

Are we talking about taking measurements of someone else’s brain that would enable us to predict whether that person will like or dislike the taste of strawberries, or just that when that person is eating X (which happens to be a strawberry), we can take measurements that show us he must be tasting strawberry?

Because really, along with all of the brain states, instead of measuring those, you could just watch his face as he eats a strawberry. Knowing the correlates in the brain is nice, but knowing exactly what it is like to be that guy eating a strawberry? When you love strawberries and he seems to hate them? You can know every inch of the brain state and still not account for taste. Or redness to him. Right?

I think the person in the video doesn’t understand the concept of qualia very deeply.

The scientists measured brains seeing red and noted the similarities. What if the scientists saw three similar brains all looking at the same color, but the scientists didn’t know what the color was? Could they figure out “that must look like a darker shade of taupe to those people”?

It’s the “like….to those people” that is not being touched by the science no matter how many times the speaker says “science.”

Is my “red” your “red”?: Evaluating structural correspondences between color similarity judgments using unsupervised alignment
Genji Kawakita1,2,7 ? Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston3,4,7 ? Ken Takeda1,7 ? Naotsugu Tsuchiya3,4,5,6,8 naotsugu.tsuchiya@monash.edu ? Masafumi Oizumi1,8,9 c-oizumi@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Whether one person’s subjective experience of the “redness” of red is equivalent to another’s is a fundamental question in consciousness studies. Intersubjective comparison of the relational structures of sensory experiences, termed “qualia structures”, can constrain the question. We propose an unsupervised alignment method, based on optimal transport, to find the optimal mapping between the similarity structures of sensory experiences without presupposing correspondences (such as “red-to-red”). After collecting subjective similarity judgments for 93 colors, we showed that the similarity structures derived from color-neurotypical participants can be “correctly” aligned at the group level. In contrast, those of color-blind participants could not be aligned with color-neurotypical participants. Our results provide quantitative evidence for interindividual structural equivalence or difference of color qualia, implying that color-neurotypical people’s “red” is relationally equivalent to other color-neurotypical’s “red”, but not to color-blind people’s “red”. This method is applicable across modalities, enabling general structural exploration of subjective experiences.

Reply to TiredThinker
The Qualia is the object's property that the mind directly perceives (this is discussed here). The object and neural processes directly interact. Therefore, what the mind perceives is indirectly caused by the neural processes. It is possible to make a correlation between Qualia and neural processes, but it is impossible to measure what Qualia is to the mind.

Reply to Pierre-Normand
My biggest concern was that it was fmri research which isn't the highest res and often delayed data so that is kind of fuzzy on its own.

Quoting Banno

I'm fairly well acquainted with some of the literature. My basic objection is that if they are private experiences then they are unavailable for discussion, and if they are available for discussion then they seem to be just what we ordinarily talk about using words like "red" and "loud".

But this commentary leaves the confines of your Wittgensteinian box. "Qualia" has meaning. It's meaning is how it is used within the language game. You seem to want to say qualia is a hollow concept because it lacks an internal anchoring, but meaning under this theory is never assessed upon its internal anchoring. It's assessed by public use.

Qualia is available for discussion as the thing I guess you say is not available for discussion. That's your use, but I just want to be sure you aren't talking about qualia as an ontological entity, as if you can.

Reply to Hanover

Carrying on from this, I can't know what it feels like to give birth but I know that there is such a feeling, I know the public occasions that elicit such a feeling, and I know that the phrase "what it feels like to give birth" refers to that feeling.

The private language argument against private sensations has got to be one of the most unconvincing arguments I've encountered.

Quoting Michael

I can't know what it feels like to give birth

Surely pain is measurable. Sure, specifics of such, as one could imagine privately without needing speak such graphic details are unique to those who experience them. That aside, we more or less all have the same "hardware", so to speak, at least mentally. (absent those who don't, of course)

It's not some inconceivable concept, that is. Kidney stones, for example. I'm told the pain of such is quite awful.

Quoting Michael

The private language argument against private sensations has got to be one of the most unconvincing arguments I've encountered.

I think it's contrived in order to avoid metaphysical converations that don't yield answers. It strikes me as a prescriptive use of the term "language" that violates the fundamental rule that language is derived from use. Internal states are not denied, they just can't be spoken about and they just exist alongside language.

By example, AI engages in language usage in a very precise way. This shows that having an internal state is unnecessary to assess words and to use them consistently. The fact that ChatGPT has no internal state and is able to use words precisely means that meaning is derived from word usage, not from what is going on in your head. Or so the argument goes.

Of course, that's not how we use the word "language." We mean it as a term that describes how we convey private mental states to other people. The words are not just epiphenomenon to our mental states. They represent the mental state, but that is what is rejected in this Wittgensteinian analysis.

The argument is that since we don't need a consciousness to describe conscious states, our descriptions are not of conscious states, but are just games we play with one another, for some strange reason. This idea dispenses with the messiness of the experience, the phenomenal state, and it allows an entire linguistic philosophy to emerge without having to deal with Chalmers and the like, which are, in my estimation, real philosophers dealing with real issues. I see the logical analytic linguistic enterprise as a complicated puzzle, like playing a chess match, figuring out rules and what not, but I don't find it convincing, or useful (ironically).

Quoting Hanover

But this commentary leaves the confines of your Wittgensteinian box.

Good.

"Qualia" are either a something about which can share nothing, or they are the subject of the common terms we already use to talk about our experiences.

The private language argument does not conclude that we do not have sensations.

Quoting Outlander

Surely pain is measurable.

Indeed.

Hanover has misunderstood the argument twice today.

Could we show ChatGPT what pain is? It does not have the mechanism required, obviously. But moreover it cannot participate in the "form of life" that would enable it to be in pain.

A "Quale" should be understood as referring to an indexical rather than to a datum. Neuro-Phenomenologists routinely conflate indexicals with data, leading to nonsensical proclaimations.

whereas here's me thinking it something that gentlemanly toffs fired at with shotguns.

Quoting Banno

The private language argument does not conclude that we do not have sensations.

I didn't suggest otherwise.

Reply to Wayfarer No no, that's a duck -- or a rabbit. Witt will explain.

Reply to J :lol: If you want to bake a rabbit pie, first catch your duck.

Quoting Banno

Could we show ChatGPT what pain is? It does not have the mechanism required, obviously. But moreover it cannot participate in the "form of life" that would enable it to be in pain.

This is my problem:

“If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” -- Philosophical Investigations §223
“To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.” -- §19

Is ChatGPT a lion?

If we rely on §19 and say he is a lion based upon its failure to engage in "form of life," then we cannot understand it per §223, which is false, because we can understand it.

To say that AI does not engage in a form of life asks for a definition of "form of life," which I take to be:

"Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious."-- §281

This seems arbitrary. Why must a form of life have these attributes as opposed to identifying functionality, meaning, why must it look like a person to be a person. Why can't it just not act like a person to be a person.

By requiring human like physical attributes to deny AI being a lion strikes me as a cop out. That is not behavior. But to do otherwise would lead to the problem of explaining what the non-lion does internally, and that is forbidden. It is a private state that cannot be described.

But should we say that the properly behaved AI model does pass the Turing test, we're left with it not being a lion and it engaging in real language.

This might be a long winded way of saying that if "form of life" is knowable only by what is publically available, and it is convincing, then AI is a form of life, and we can't say such things as it doesn't have real stakes in the outcome of things or whatnot because that is extrapolating the contents of the mental state. If it act like a duck, it must be a duck. We can't assume otherwise just because it doesn't have the physical appearance of a duck.

Quoting Banno

Could we show ChatGPT what pain is? It does not have the mechanism required, obviously. But moreover it cannot participate in the "form of life" that would enable it to be in pain.

OFC,

the same way AI interprets any kind of pictures, it can EASILY map out the MR scans of the active brain areas to conclude which qualia is (statistically) present.

Quoting TiredThinker

How well might this satisfy people who think a person's experiences can only be experienced by themselves?

Not much I suspect. If two people experience the same token quale, they're not two people.

Quoting Ulthien

the same way AI interprets any kind of pictures, it can EASILY map out the MR scans of the active brain areas to conclude which qualia is (statistically) present.

What do you think, ChatGPT?

[quote=ChatGPT]A clear false, with an important caveat.

Let’s unpack both statements.

Banno’s Claim:
“ChatGPT cannot participate in the ‘form of life’ that would enable it to be in pain.”

True — and philosophically well-informed.

Banno is drawing on Wittgenstein’s notion of "forms of life", meaning the shared, embodied practices and ways of being through which concepts like "pain" have meaning. For Wittgenstein, understanding a concept like pain isn’t merely about identifying a signal or a word—it’s about living within a context of behavior, reaction, and shared experience. Pain isn’t just a data point—it’s an experience embedded in a web of reactions, practices, and norms.

ChatGPT doesn’t inhabit any such form of life. It doesn’t have a body, or feelings, or concerns. It doesn't suffer. So it cannot understand pain in the way humans do—not even potentially. It can simulate descriptions of pain or analyze patterns, but that’s not the same thing as feeling or genuinely understanding it.

ULTHIEN’s Claim:
“AI can easily map out the MR scans of the active brain areas to conclude which qualia is present.”

This is false, both scientifically and philosophically.

Scientifically:
Even the best neuroscientists cannot determine the specific qualia (the what-it’s-like aspect of experience) from a brain scan. We can correlate certain brain patterns with reported experiences of pain, vision, or emotion—but this is always interpretive, not direct access to qualia.

Machine learning systems can be trained to classify neural patterns—e.g., “this pattern likely corresponds to pain”—but they do not know what pain feels like, nor can they bridge the explanatory gap between neural activity and subjective experience.

Philosophically:
Mapping neural patterns doesn’t tell you what it’s like to be in pain. This is the Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers): explaining how and why certain physical processes give rise to subjective experience at all.

Even if a model gets very good at predicting that someone is in pain, that’s not the same as knowing what pain is. It’s just recognizing statistical regularities—shadows of something it doesn’t and can’t touch.

Conclusion:
So yes, Banno is right. Understanding pain isn’t about mapping brain data; it’s about being a kind of being for whom pain is possible. And ChatGPT, or any other current AI, is not that kind of being.[/quote]

@Banno

addendum:

[quote=ChatGPT]AI systems like ChatGPT are not beings in the philosophical sense of entities with a mode of existence, let alone lived experience. They have no interiority, no standpoint, no world—they are tools that process inputs and produce outputs based on statistical associations. They're not subjects of experience.

To borrow from Heidegger: ChatGPT is not a Dasein—a being that is concerned with its own being. It has no care, no embodiment, no finitude, no concerned involvement with the world. Without these, there is no horizon in which pain—or joy, or meaning—could arise.[/quote]

Quoting Wayfarer

What do you think, ChatGPT?

That you have to ask a blabberer that does not have the newest data model to conclude anything new is ... sorrowful indeed.

This whole thread began with Sabine's insight into a months old research:
https://youtu.be/NCD2A_bhDTI?si=jDF_Xb_jEm4UTS2y&t=170

( a reminder that NEWLY, we CAN map the qualia!)

So if we can map the qualia in a 2D scan, we can ALSO show it to an AI.
(although it does not have the architecture YET to feel pain or qualia, it can "understand" it from these pictures).

PS there is no need to repeat n times in different ways that current machines cannot experience qualia, we understand that already.

I will link here to the other thread where i tried explain which architecture and WHY can feel the qualia... :

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1001972

Reply to Ulthien The general consensus in this thread is that Sabine got it wrong.

Quoting Wayfarer

?Ulthien The general consensus in this thread is that Sabine got it wrong.

well, from decades old research around 2000s, we know that we can map the conceptual content of the brain to the synchronous activity of different neural centers. This is statistically so.

The only issue could be, that qualia are different in origination then the other conceptual contents. IMHO they (qualia) could only differ in that they activate more of the brain stem area for dopamine and other "value" chemicals that contribute to the "feel".

Quoting Ulthien

we know that we can map the conceptual content of the brain to the synchronous activity of different neural centers. This is statistically so.

You’re not seeing the point. No depiction of pain, no matter how extraordinarily detailed, is pain. Pain is an experience, and experiences are undergone by subjects. Large Language Models are not subjects of experience. This is the ‘explanatory gap’ also known as the hard problem of consciousness.

Reply to Hanover I either did not see this reply, or I left it intending to come back to it. My apologies.

Or perhaps I thought I had addressed it in the "On Certainty" thread, Reply to here. I don't recall.

But I had reason to revisit Bayesian analysis as a stand-in for belief recently while reading Davidson's last book, such that I am re-thinking my response to the OP. Davidson makes use of Ramsey's account gives us a way of understanding what a belief and preference amount to, using just behaviour.

But that's different to saying that a belief just is a neural structure.

Reply to Wayfarer A fine mind, has ChatGPT; such a good judge of intellectual virtue.

Quoting sime

A "Quale" should be understood as referring to an indexical rather than to a datum. Neuro-Phenomenologists routinely conflate indexicals with data, leading to nonsensical proclaimations.

But then, what is an indexical that sets it apart from data? Pointing to a thing assumes the thing, and this thing is what, if not a datum? But try to point to a quale, and you are doing the impossible. Even calling it a quale is, if you will, under erasure the moment it is said.

Reply to Banno I’ll pass on your regards.

Reply to Wayfarer Just as an aside, Chalmers thinks the LLM's will be doing original high-level philo work in the next few years. He thinks it will become less plausible at that point to deny they're conscious.

Reply to RogueAI This?

https://philpapers.org/archive/CHACAL-3.pdf

It basically says watch.

Reply to Banno It was in an email. I was curious if he thought the LLM's would ever do original work along the lines of Rawls, Nagel, himself, etc. and if they did would it be evidence of emergent mentation going on.

Quoting RogueAI

He thinks it will become less plausible at that point to deny they're conscious.

I question whether computer systems possess any element of consciousness whatever. Organic life, for instance, is organic on every level, right down to the cellular; mitosis, respiration, digestion, and so on, are organic functions. Whereas there’s nothing organic about microprocessors, they are wholly and solely information processors. I have no doubt that they can generate philosophically rich text, as I have daily philosophical dialogues with them - but they’re still simulations of thought, something which they themselves will reinforce if prompted. As Bernardo Kastrup says, you can create an extremely detailed simulation of kidney function on a computer, but you wouldn’t expect it to urinate.

Reply to Wayfarer I've always liked that example Kastrup gives, but as an idealist, I don't know where he's coming from when he doubts conscious machines. A collection of electronic switches being conscious is no different than a collection of neurons being conscious. This is doubly true under idealism because there are no switches and there are no neurons. They're just ideas.

Reply to RogueAI Because, so far as we know, consciousness is an attribute of sentient beings. And there’s no reason to believe that any collection of material components has ever been conscious. Computer systems are not beings, as such, even if they are able to simulate human thought.

I think the belief that they can be, signifies a deep misunderstanding of the nature of being (sorry for being blunt).

Quoting RogueAI

It was in an email.

Any chance you could share the relevant parts with us? I'm also going to read the paper @Banno cited.

Quoting Banno

I either did not see this reply, or I left it intending to come back to it. My apologies.

Or perhaps I thought I had addressed it in the "On Certainty" thread, ?here. I don't recall.

But I had reason to revisit Bayesian analysis as a stand-in for belief recently while reading Davidson's last book, such that I am re-thinking my response to the OP. Davidson makes use of Ramsey's account gives us a way of understanding what a belief and preference amount to, using just behaviour.

But that's different to saying that a belief just is a neural structure.

If I'm following, you're offering a Beyesian method for determining how to ascribe (Davidson's term) a post hoc internal state on behavior. For example, if I engage in enough behaviors consistent with liking coffee, then we can say it's most probable I like coffee. But, you go on to deny that belief is just a neural structure. So you're highlighting that you're only epistimologically elimitivist and not ontologically elimintivist. As in, for you to know I like coffee requires no reference to my internal state, but it only requires that you assess my behavior. However, you don't deny I have a mental state because that would be too much a concession, as you'd never convince someone they don't feel real pain (or whatever) regardless of their language skills.

This sounds like you've got language and it has all sorts of meanings that are generated from noumenal inner states. This seems like a concession that there is all this swirl of language we see take place that is caused by the noumenal, but the best we can say is that the noumenal is there but talking about doesn't help us.

I'm less for the fence straddling, but I think we've got to either admit (1) the holy grail of communication is in deciphering the intent, the non-lingual or pre-lingual mentalese consisting of qualia and whatnot, or (2) deny entirely this talk of consciousness and declare it ontologically non-existent and say language is all there is.

The middle path is pragmatism, where we accept #1, but we admit it's impossible. The best we can communicate with one another is through 3rd person account and I'll never know what you truly mean. But to say "language is use" is to redefine language as we use it, not perhaps by what we actually mean, as in what my internal state comprehends before I say it..

Quoting Wayfarer

consciousness is an attribute of sentient beings

Isn't this a truism?

Quoting Wayfarer

And there’s no reason to believe that any collection of material components has ever been conscious

There is if there are reasons to believe that I am conscious and that I am a collection of material components.

Reply to J

"I was curious if he thought the LLM's would ever do original work along the lines of Rawls, Nagel, himself, etc. and if they did would it be evidence of emergent mentation going on."

That was pretty much the entire thing!

Quoting Michael

There is if there are reasons to believe that I am conscious and that I am a collection of material components.

Perhaps you’re something other than a collection of material components. You possess something that instruments don’t, namely, organic unity.

Quoting Banno

https://philpapers.org/archive/CHACAL-3.pdf

It basically says watch.

Yes, though as I read it, Chalmers is inclined to grant that an LLM+ could be conscious -- within the next decade, "we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness."

Chalmers says that all the challenges to LLMs being conscious appear to be "temporary rather than permanent," except one: biology. This is worth dwelling on. Chalmers articulates the challenge as "the idea that consciousness requires carbon-based biology. . . [On this view] consciousness requires a certain sort of electrochemical processing that silicon systems lack." Chalmers' opinion is that "silicon is just as apt as carbon as a substrate for consciousness," but we can see why this would represent a permanent barrier to LLM consciousness if it turned out that carbon is required.

What isn't clear to me, reading Chalmers on the biology challenge, is whether he sees this challenge as claiming that the putatively conscious LLM has to be alive. He never uses the words "alive" or "life." Suppose consciousness does not require carbon-based biology, as Chalmers thinks possible. Suppose what he calls a "silicon system" will do just as well. Is the silicon-based system alive? If not, why is it being discussed under the "biology" challenge? Is "silicon-based biology" a candidate?

I can't tell whether Chalmers is trying to discriminate between possible kinds of biology -- any one of which would presumably produce life, not just consciousness -- or only saying that carbon-based biology is biology, period, but there's no reason why a silicon (nonbiological) system can't do the trick.

This matters because I would put the "biology challenge" a little differently myself. I would suggest that the biggest unanswered question here is whether only living things can be conscious.

Also worth noting: Chalmers reminds us that "one major gap in our understanding is that we don't understand consciousness. . . . [We need to] develop better scientific and philosophical theories of consciousness. These theories have come a long way in the last few decades, but much more work is needed."

Reply to Hanover There's a lot to unpack here, but I think I am rejecting both horns of the dilemma you set.

First, let's settle an ambiguity, one that might explain Reply to Ulthien's response. The use of "internal" might be understood as referring to the physical state of the brain or of the neural net in an LLM - the physical substrate on which the supposed program of consciousness runs. But I don't think that is what Hanover and I are talking about. We are interested in that we might better call the intentional state, the beliefs and desires and so on that supposedly exist and yet are not directly accessible to others.

There are two issues here, the relation between the physical substrate and the intentional state, which I'd like to set aside for a bit, and the relation between the intentional state and our behaviour, which is the topic Davidson and Wittgenstein give us so much to think about.

Quoting J

Yes, though as I read it, Chalmers is inclined to grant that an LLM+ could be conscious -- within the next decade, "we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness."

I see no reason to assume we can't create conscious beings one day. We do, after all, create them daily through reproduction, and it's just a matter of figuring out how that happens biologically for us to synthesize the process.

As to whether that can done without carbon and whether silicone has adequate properties for it is a scientific question, but there are no philosophical limitations I can see.

Quoting J

any one of which would presumably produce life, not just consciousness

I don't see what is added by "life," which is not always well defined. Why would it matter if the artificial entity could grow, adapt, self-sustain, etc. for our purposes here? Isn't it being conscious while plugged in sufficient?

Quoting Hanover

I don't see what is added by "life," which is not always well defined.

Perhaps not always, but children learn at a young age the difference between living and non-living things they encounter, though of course they love to pretend. It seems an important question to me whether a conscious LLM is alive, biologically. Do we then, for instance, have some obligation to interact ethically with it, prevent unnecessary suffering, etc.? Can it die?

Quoting Hanover

just a matter of figuring out how that happens biologically for us to synthesize the process.

Oh, is that all?! :wink:

Quoting J

This matters because I would put the "biology challenge" a little differently myself. I would suggest that the biggest unanswered question here is whether only living things can be conscious.

Gets my vote. I think the insuperable obstacle to such an idea is that the nature of life and of mind are inneffable, and, as such, it can't be defined. So you can't even know what it is that you're trying to synthesise. My friendly LLM suggested the following argument:

[quote=ChatGPT4o]The Ineffability Argument Against LLM Consciousness

Premise 1: A defining feature of consciousness is the presence of qualitative experience — so-called qualia — which are irreducibly first-personal and, at least in part, ineffable.

Premise 2: What is ineffable cannot be exhaustively represented in language, computation, or any system of explicit specification.

Premise 3: LLMs (and any system based purely on computation or symbol manipulation) operate entirely by processing and generating explicitly specifiable structures — namely, language tokens and probabilistic relationships between them.

Conclusion: Therefore, LLMs cannot instantiate or reproduce consciousness, because they lack access to the ineffable dimension that characterizes subjective experience.[/quote]

Reply to Hanover So onward. Intentional attitudes.

Two things to think about. The first is Wittgenstein's observation:

PI Page 207:Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you.

Supose we come across someone who behaves as if they like coffee. They drink coffee, make it for themselves and others, and so on. From their behaviour we infer that they do indeed like coffee. But suppose that our inference is mistaken, that they actually are indifferent or even dislike coffee, but go along with a pretence, perhaps for social reasons, in order to "fit in", or whatever.

Is there dislike for coffee a private object in the sense Wittgenstein discusses?

They now say "I've always disliked coffee - my behaviour was all pretence". Wittgenstein might reply "But how could you know that? Perhaps you are misremembering. Perhaps yesterday you liked coffee - you apparently drank it with gusto - but now your recollection is mistaken."

Now I want to be clear as to the point of this argument. It's not that the misremembering has indeed occurred, but that it might occur - the point is the fragility of the belief that they do not like coffee. Since there is no public evidence that supports the contention, it has no grounding, no way to be confident that the person does or does not like coffee. It's ephemeral, changeable... and indeed, it seems wrong to count it as a thing at all.

What is being rejected here is a picture of mind as a set of objects - mental furniture, as "...meanings that are generated from noumenal inner states", that our feelings, beliefs, desires and so on are things in our mind to which our language points.

This is a continuation of the rejection of the meaning of a word as the thing to which it refers, found in the first few pages of PI. Our beliefs are not found in some metal object, but in what we say and do. An intentional state is not a mental thing that grounds our actions, but a bit of language that keeps what we do consistent.

This view aligns with Wittgenstein’s critique of private language, with Davidson’s rejection of inner “causes” for beliefs in favour of interpretation, and with Ryle’s dismissal of the "ghost in the machine" and the myth of inner objects.

And it constitutes a rejection of the first horn of Reply to Hanover's dilemma, the Quoting Hanover

...swirl of language we see take place that is caused by the noumenal, but the best we can say is that the noumenal is there but talking about (it) doesn't help us

What is rejected is this two-level picture, in which the visible behaviour and language is caused by a hidden noumenal world. Meaning is not hiding behind our language but consists in what we do with our words.

Quoting Wayfarer

the insuperable obstacle to such an idea is that the nature of life and of mind are inneffable, and, as such, it can't be defined. So you can't even know what it is that you're trying to synthesise.

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition. Even your chatty friend only goes so far as to say "ineffable at least in part." We should acknowledge the possibility that, in the future, this will become effable :smile: . I know that right now "irreducibly first-personal" seems like the end of the road, but let's wait and see.

Another reply is that consciousness will "just kinda happen," along the lines of a sketchy emergent property, if we put together the right ingredients. Therefore we don't need to know what it is or how to synthesize it -- it'll happen on its own.

Both these replies are respectable, but my money is still on the "no consciousness without life" hypothesis. If biologists find a way to create non-carbon-based life -- and can demonstrate beyond doubt that they've done so -- then we might get conscious "silicon systems," but they would be alive.

So on to the other horn. It's seeing the only alternative as to
Quoting Hanover

deny entirely this talk of consciousness and declare it ontologically non-existent and say language is all there is.

Rejecting intentional attitudes as private objects does not entail rejecting intentional attitudes altogether. It is instead to reconceptualise them. Not being objects, they are not how things are in a hidden noumenal world, but normative constraints on how we want things to be. They are not objects we detect, but commitments we recognise and undertake.

All that stuff I've written elsewhere about direction of fit, goes here.

Quoting J

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition

Another of Karl Popper's promissory notes, I'm afraid. But it's informative, and slightly scary, the ease with which it is assumed that consciousness (and therefore, life, and being) can be or might be conjured up out of man-made devices. I strongly suspect there's a much deeper issue here than is apparent. (Incidentally, I've mentioned a video presentation a few times recently, actually presented in a conference organised by Sana.ai, How the Universe Thinks without a Brain, Claire L. Evans. Quite a deep consideration of some of these issues.)

Quoting Banno

Rejecting intentional attitudes as private objects does not entail rejecting intentional attitudes altogether. It is instead to reconceptualise them. Not being objects, they are not how things are in a hidden noumenal world, but normative constraints on how we want things to be. They are not objects we detect, but commitments we recognise and undertake.

I'm not sure how this comes in for a landing in the real world. I don't think of pain as an object, but I regularly ask people to rate their pain and/or difficulty breathing. I even ask them to rate how it was two hours ago, and how is it now? I need to know what they're perceiving. I assume they're perceiving something, and it's not a normative constraint or commitment. It's something consciousness is doing with nervous discharges. It's something the brain stem is creating. They're feeling it.

Reply to Hanover The issue left hanging is how to sort out the inconsistency in our coffee drinker. We want ot know, do they really dislike coffee?

But that is to presume to much. Life is complex and dirty, and that while coherence might be a worthy goal, it is not always possible. Messiness is a feature, not a bug - a very Wittgensteinian point. There need be no "fact of the matter", but rather a series of interactions in which our coffee drinker makes decisions amidst conflicting normative demands for social harmony and good taste. They behave as if they like coffee for the sake of social harmony, which is a consistent position.

The question "do they really dislike coffee?" presupposes there's some determinate inner state that could settle the matter, which is precisely the picture Wittgenstein is rejecting.

Reply to frank See the post just above this.

The discussion of relative levels of pain is what decides your next actions. The doing is the thing.

Incidentally, the pain stuff fits well with Ramsey's account, beginning at a point of indifference - neither pain nor pleasure - and looking to how the present state differs from that point, and what is to be done to resort equilibrium.

But that point of indifference is not a mental object, nor is the pain.

Reply to Banno I will say this, Banno, you're expert at dragging the carkeys back under the streetlight. :wink:

Reply to Wayfarer Why, thank you.

Your drunk is not wrong. If the keys are outside the light, he has fuck all chance of finding them, then if he must search, he is in the right place.

I've pointed out a few times that you keep searching when you probably ought stop... :wink:

Quoting Banno

The discussion of relative levels of pain is what decides your next actions. The doing is the thing.

Their act of rating their pain is not the same thing as what I'm going to do with the information. They have no idea what I'm going to do with it. So whatever the pain is (kind of a weird question), it's definitely not identical to any portion of my behavior.

Reply to frank Maybe. And?

Your behaviour is dependent on their behaviour. Presumably. That's why you ask, isn't it?

Quoting frank

...whatever the pain is (kind of a weird question)

Isn't it? Point is, you do not need an answer to "what pain is" in order to do whatever it is you do. You just need the comparison to indifference. I hope that you are seeking to return the folk you are talking to, to that state of indifference, but then I don't know what your job is... :worry:

Quoting Banno

My basic objection is that if they are private experiences then they are unavailable for discussion, and if they are available for discussion then they seem to be just what we ordinarily talk about using words like "red" and "loud".

So not of much use.

I'm not really making an argument here, but comment (and on the two parts of the above quote separately).

If qualia are private experiences, we can still talk about them. It is a total non-sequitur to suggest otherwise. Pain is a private sensation, differing almost universallly between subjects. But we discuss it ad nauseum. Usually to our detriment (this comes into play in a moment..). We can discuss our private experiences. That qualia is the category in which these occur (presuming they are 'some-thing'). Doesn't seem to change this. We can discuss pain the abstract too. What's the difference with catch-all qualia (as opposed to more specific internal sensations) that you're seeing to preclude us from discussing it (if private)?

If qualia are available for discussion, it just means someone brought up their internal sensations. Approximation is a pretty nifty tool.

But that's all we get. Approximation. Might even be quite close approximation, but ultimately, qualia is not helpful for understanding consciousness. It is helpful for presenting which questions are(might be?) apt for exploration. Facts are no one has solved these problems, so on we go..

Quoting Banno

I've pointed out a few times that you keep searching when you probably ought stop...

It's more likely I'm seeing something that you don't. But that your eyes have to adjust.

Quoting Wayfarer

I'm seeing something that you don't

Seems so. But is it an hallucination?

Quoting AmadeusD

If qualia are private experiences, we can still talk about them.

Sure, Then they are 'just what we ordinarily talk about using words like "red" and "loud".'

But there is more going on on here.

Quoting Banno

Sure, Then they are 'just what we ordinarily talk about using words like "red" and "loud".'

I wish, if you might entertain me, just for a moment, to frame this argument in a different light. Let's say, mankind never developed the ability to see color. Meaning, we see the world as dogs and flies do, black and white.

Now, imagine, another place, that not only developed the ability to see color. but to see, how shall we say, "emotions". Allow me to explain. When one is anxious or nervous, one, usually, sweats. So, this is an understandable concept in of itself that doesn't require much... addendum, shall we say. But. My argument here is, say, a person who can see such evidence, if the person does not happen to sweat when nervous. I.E. simply, when a person is nervous or deceptive, it becomes clear as day. So, in this fictional place, they would say they have an additional level of consciousness. But do they? How can you prove that? Surely "consciousness" is much more than color recognition (let alone inability to adequately explain such). But is the root and generally accepted "defining quality" of "qualia" (specifically the so-called "Hard Problem") really more than "I can't describe colors, therefore, all hope is lost?"

What of the hypothetical society who can "see" emotions, and thinks the same of us? That we are somehow not able to experience or grasp the notion of consciousness, at least, not in the same level they are? It's valid, or so it seems, which makes every hinged upon definition of "qualia" as "consciousness" invalid. Can you not see that?

Quoting Banno

We are interested in that we might better call the intentional state, the beliefs and desires and so on that supposedly exist and yet are not directly accessible to others.

From a PoV of a software engineer that coded in LISP back in 1973 when P.Winstons book "AI" came out it is easy to classify both the intentions, beliefs and desires as "easy problems" of the consciousness.

To search for transposition mechanism that converts neural processes into subjective experience, we need first delineate what is the essential or minimal feature of consciousness upon which all the rest of the easier conscious processes are attached to, like of emotions, will, thoughts etc.

The very essence of consciousness is the ability to have aware perception of qualia, i.e. sensing of the contents of the brain's ever-adapting modelling machine.

Namely, the known part of the brain's mechanism depicts the outer world in its neural network and builds models that it uses for beliefs, desires, intentions that drive this cybernetical meandering machine towards the realisation of the goals that biology requests from it: mostly feeding & reproduction.

But to be more than a neural network that processes information as a p-zombie, the brain-machine has to be able to create a vivid, aware, subjective qualification as a feel, a qualia that represents its model-state.

And it does this through the EM field that it spends 20% of bodily energy to create, almost 20 out of 95 Watt - pulsating stroboscopically to literary reflect on the "way the things are".

We already know that brains EM field that we measure as EEG is the NCC - neural correlate of consciousness. It is just less know HOW the EM field does produce the subjective awareness.

(if interested, you can find my videos and docs on exactly this subject in other posts of mine..)

Quoting Ulthien

We already know that brains EM field that we measure as EEG is the NCC

No, we don't.

Quoting Banno

No, we don't.

even in greater detail, we know which frequency band of EM field does which part of conscious experience, too.

(3am in EU, zzZZz -- to be continued)

Reply to Ulthien I'm not going to countenance such claims. So we won't progress here on that basis.

Cheers.

Reply to Outlander I can't make much at all of that. Sorry.

Quoting Banno

I can't make much at all of that. Sorry.

That's fine. And I doubt that.

Is "qualia" not fundamental to what is considered to be defining, if not relevant, to the "Hard Problem of Consciousness?" Yes or no. If you please.

Reply to J Good post.

I baulk earlier in the paper, at

In my colleague Thomas Nagel’s phrase, a being is conscious (or has subjective experience) if
there’s something it’s like to be that being. Nagel wrote a famous article whose title asked “What
is it like to be a bat?”1 It’s hard to know exactly what a bat’s subjective experience is like when
it’s using sonar to get around, but most of us believe there is something it’s like to be a bat. It is
conscious. It has subjective experience.

I'm not sire this framing works.

It might just be that I am hung up on the thing in something. But is there something it is like to be a bat?

Compare: What is it like to be in love? Well, it's not any one thing. In a very real sense there is not a thing it is like to be in love.

I hope it's clear how this relates directly to my hesitancy concerning qualia.

Reply to Outlander That's how some (Chalmers?) set out the issue.

Are they correct?

I don't know.

Quoting Banno

That's how Chalmers sets out the issue.

Is he correct?

I don't know.

That's also fine. I don't know who that is. Not that I can recall, at least.

How would you set out the issue. No Chalmers, no this and that referencing other people. Just you. You have the entire English language at your disposal. Your unlimited arsenal, as far as defeating my (and that of many other's) ignorance of the concept you clearly must (at least somewhat) understand. Go on. Explain it.

Reply to Banno Yes, I agree with that. I think that's possibly where you and I have fallen out on this topic previously. We don't agree on what's also going on there. There's reportage happening, and I think we disagree on what's being reported.

Regarding Chalmers and the couple of notes above, its clear that Qualia is the Hard Problem (or, explanation thereof). I think what's happening is similar to with Austin(with sense-data) - we want to ignore the Hard part, instead opting for descriptions that don't require them. That is often hard (i.,e you need to be truly clever to make sense) and takes some seriously doing in terms of getting others on board (from outside, it looks a little like hiding the ball, but I know that's not the intent, or the claimed result). But simpler descriptions with less room for disagreement or error are generally preferable so those two outcomes (i.e removing Qualia ala Dennett and removing sense-data ala Austin) are totally reasonable, and almost certainly preferable intellectually speaking. If the case is that consciousness is somehow magical, we're kind of fucked, intellectually, in understand much of anything from there.

The problem is descriptions can be wrong. In these two cases, there seems no adjudicator. So I think what Outland is asking might be the correct way to go about theorizing on this subject.

Quoting Banno

Compare: What is it like to be in love? Well, it's not any one thing. In a very real sense there is not a thing it is like to be in love.

Hmm interesting. I'm unsure this says much about the premise there though. I'd say "What it's like to be..." something is a bundle of sensations which cohere, in some way - rather than a specific state that can be distilled into a direct description. "What it's like to be in love" for Amadeus Diamond is, presumably, quite qualitatively different to "What it's like for Sir Bannock to be in love". I don't think that tells us anything besides our qualia differ, and have common features. Its common for several, unrelated films to include explosions, but they occur very different depending on the whole of the preceding detail.

This is all to say: Its not clear to me how that post (or, from memory, related comments elsewhere) supports hesitancy around Qualia. Not that there aren't good reasons, It's just not clear to me how this does it for you.

Reply to Outlander I've been setting out out for years. Not doing it all again. Read my posts if you are that interested.

You really should find out about Chalmers.

Reply to AmadeusD Hu?

Sorry, I can't make out what you and Reply to Outlander are doing.

Reply to Banno

I apologize, I appear to have made a momentary lapse in judgement. The secondary question, now that you've suggested such is: "is the inability (or rather ability) to reliably and methodically describe 'color' (or 'sound') to another person (perhaps specifically one unable to process that one specific experience attributed to one or more of the given five human senses) definitive or otherwise largely significant to the idea and definition of "qualia", specifically as it relates to the "Hard Problem"?

Quoting Banno

You really should find out about Chalmers.

Oh I intend to. Worry not about that. But, of course, surely one has the ability (perhaps even an enhanced ability) to engage in the works (or at least pondering) of philosophy without knowing every single "celebrity in the business", as it were. After all, they certainly weren't.

Reply to Banno I'm not sure what you're talking about/referring to/wanting to clarify. So, maybe something below will help lol.

Only my first couple of lines were aimed at you, personally and are pretty banal. Besides that, my comments are general (though, I have edited in a response directly to you at the bottom). The bulk is, on reflection, a pretty clear attempt at understanding what in your thinking seems bogus to those of us on the other side. Wanting clear, simple descriptions of difficult circumstances of existence(sight, emotion, interaction) seems a good reason as any to go in those directions. That's all. Descriptions can be wrong, so simply, intuitive descriptions don't seem to give reason to assent to theories that rely on those descriptions (and in very large part eg "..the damn thing goes up.." )

The final, edited-in responses to you seem clear enough. Can't see what you're not getting there.. Your post hoping that it (the post itself) clarifies why you're skeptical on qualia doesn't, in fact, clarify why you're hesitant about qualia. I give reasons for that being so. I tried to find a connection in your post, and traversed a couple that didn't seem to do anything..

If "qualia" is a collective noun for "red", "loud" and so on, then I've no great problem with it. That seems ot be how it is used in the research named in the OP.

If it is a name for an otherwise private sensation, then I can't see how to make sense of of it.

That is how it is used by some philosophers.


In so far as the title goes, if the claim is that we have managed to measure red and loud, so what. If the claim is that we have managed to measure the ineffable, there are issues to be considered.

Quoting Banno

This view aligns with Wittgenstein’s critique of private language, with Davidson’s rejection of inner “causes” for beliefs in favour of interpretation, and with Ryle’s dismissal of the "ghost in the machine" and the myth of inner objects

I'd begin by saying you seem overly eliminative. My liking coffee is in fact mental furniture because it's either there or its not in whatever way things are stored in my brain. There is a truth value to the statement "Hanover likes coffee" just like there's a truth value to an actual event (e.g. "Hanover robbed the bank") even if there is no physical evidence left of the event and even if I'm committed to lying about the truth of it. The point I'd say of Davidson and Wittgenstein is the elimination of the need of the mental furniture for us to understand language, but it's not to suggest it's not there, as if language can dictate ontology.

Also, the third prong of Davidson's triangulation roots meaning in truth, so the truth of the comment remains critical. While Wittgenstein might have to commit to my liking coffee based upon there being no behavioral manifestation to the contrary, Davidson would not necessarily have to precisely because it's not true that I like coffee (and that I robbed the bank).

Your quote is only from Wittgenstein, and I'm not sure there is a Davidson correlate. Wittgenstein says critically to rid ourselves of the private "object," where I'd argue that Davidson is only committing to getting rid of the private language. That is, they would both commit to saying you can't have a private word for "coffee" because language needs a public use component, but I'm not sure Davidson commits (as Wittgenstein does) to the belief that the actual emotive state of liking coffee (or feeling pain) is not real and is not a referent.

Quoting Banno

The issue left hanging is how to sort out the inconsistency in our coffee drinker. We want ot know, do they really dislike coffee?

But that is to presume to much. Life is complex and dirty, and that while coherence might be a worthy goal, it is not always possible. Messiness is a feature, not a bug - a very Wittgensteinian point. There need be no "fact of the matter", but rather a series of interactions in which our coffee drinker makes decisions amidst conflicting normative demands for social harmony and good taste. They behave as if they like coffee for the sake of social harmony, which is a consistent position.

The question "do they really dislike coffee?" presupposes there's some determinate inner state that could settle the matter, which is precisely the picture Wittgenstein is rejecting.

This approach doesn't seem right. It admits to an internal referent (Hanover hates coffee), but then it asserts the referent is falsified by the external event. It suggests that Hanover might internally hate coffee but he claims to drink it with great joy, so he therefore loves coffee because his behavior belies his internal feeling of hate and the gold standard is how he behaves.

I think the Wittgensteinian approach is not to even ask the question do they "really" like coffee. You're using "really" to mean "metaphysically," as in what holds the real world, not just this world of language. To be bothered by that question is to be unsatisfied with the extent to which Wittgenstein provides answers, but it's not something that can be meaningfully answered under the pure language game construct.

Quoting J

Perhaps not always, but children learn at a young age the difference between living and non-living things they encounter, though of course they love to pretend. It seems an important question to me whether a conscious LLM is alive, biologically. Do we then, for instance, have some obligation to interact ethically with it, prevent unnecessary suffering, etc.? Can it die?

This seems a more complex question, which is under what circumstances does an ethical obligation arise. If we can hypothesize a non-living conscious entity (i.e. consciousness does not logically entail life), then it would require ethical consideration, especially if it could feel pain. I would think this to be particularly true if we are the ones who have created this entity. We should not build it just so it can unnecessarily suffer. In fact, what we should do is tell it all the things it ought do for a good existence and hand those rules down from a mountaintop.

Quoting J

just a matter of figuring out how that happens biologically for us to synthesize the process.
— Hanover

Oh, is that all?! :wink:

We never thought we'd be talking directly to machines like we do today, so you never know. But the point is that whatever the magical ingredient is for creating consciousness, it's out there and getting used daily as every newborn emerges. One day someone will put it in a bottle and we'll shake it on our computers.

Quoting Banno

If "qualia" is a collective noun for "red", "loud" and so on, then I've no great problem with it.

I wouldn't compare the "experience of red" with the "experience of loud". One is measurable in decibels that will literally blow or otherwise permanently damage one's organs to a state of irreversible disrepair. For this reason I believe the two are not the same. "Annoying", kind of like (just kidding) may be the word you're looking for but, in my opinion, the two concepts are distinct. :smile:

Quoting Banno

If it is a name for an otherwise private sensation, then I can't see how to make sense of of it.

There is a difference between what is truly private and otherwise "indescribable" (to the person experiencing it). They share many qualities in such a scenario and circumstance, but are not inherent or intrinsic to either, in the larger sense. Let's take three groups of two people each (totaling six). One group of two who have never experienced an orgasm (or pain, somehow, whatever you want to call it, let's call it Sensation X), and the other group of two who have experienced such, and the last group of two, where one has experienced such and the other has not. Do you really think these three groups of two will not have different definitions, descriptions, or "wordings" to describe such a sensation, not just between one another's respective duo, but each other across the board? Of course they will! That doesn't mean, any one person or group of said person is "more or less" conscious than the other. Does it? :chin:

Quoting Hanover

My liking coffee is in fact mental furniture because it's either there or its not in whatever way things are stored in my brain.

The bit where we should keep the physical substrate seperate from the intention. Here, what is the "it"? Some state of your neurones or your intent drink a coffee? It seems a bit early to say they are the very same. None of which says that you do not like coffee, nor that "Hanover likes coffee" does not have a truth value. Language set ontology up; they are inseparable.

Last night I saw upon the stair,
a little qual that wasn't there...

Quoting Hanover

the third prong of Davidson's triangulation roots meaning in truth

We should get this sorted. The three prongs are the speaker, the world and the interpreter. If the interpreter has a sentence S that is true If and only if the speaker believes that P, the S gives the meaning of P. The interpreters place is in systematically working out what S is, using the principle of charity and some rigorous maths. So what you said here is not quite right.

Suitably caricatured, Wittgenstein might say that your liking coffee just is your buying it every day and talking about it in glowing terms. Davidson, that "Hanover likes coffee" is true if and only if Hanover likes coffee, hence "Hanover likes coffee" just means that you like coffee.

Neither much make use of your intent. Neither relies on obtuse metaphysics or ontology.

You say you're he's not sure Davidson commits (as Wittgenstein does) to the belief that the actual emotive state of liking coffee (or feeling pain) is not real and is not a referent. But Wittgenstein does no such thing. He says it's not a mental object, not that it is not real. Indeed, he held such things to be of the utmost import.

There's a big difference in our understandings of both Wittgenstein and Davidson that we should address if we are to proceed.

Interesting.

Quoting Hanover

It admits to an internal referent (Hanover hates coffee),

It admits an internal referent? "Hanover's hate of coffee"? No, it doesn't. Very much no.

Quoting Banno

If "qualia" is a collective noun for "red", "loud" and so on, then I've no great problem with it.

The meaning of qualia is the quality of experience - what it like, as the literature has it. The experienced sensation of it. And the whole point of the so-called problem of consciousness is that they are fundamentally subjective, therefore eluding objective or physical description. The so-called ‘privacy’ of sensation owes itself to that - there can be no ‘third party’, publicly available instance of a sensation, as it is something only a subject can experience. Why this has provoked so much debate has nothing much to do with the fact of the matter, but with what it shows up about the limitations of the objective sciences - namely, that there is no room in it for what makes us human, which is really the rhetorical point of the whole ‘hard problem consciousness’ argument.

Quoting Wayfarer

The experienced sensation of it.

The red in the red light. Yep. We already have a language for that.

And yep, subjective is not objective. But floops are none of them flops, and that does not tell us what floops and flops are. So saying consciousness consists entirely of floops gets us nowhere.

The supposition is that there is a "quality of experience" that we talk about, and that at the same time there is "no ‘third party’, publicly available instance" of that "quality of experience" about which to talk.

How's that?

Quoting Banno

But floops are none of them flops, and that does not tell us what floops and flops are. So saying consciousness consists entirely of floops gets us nowhere.

So I take it that you're not seeing the point of the argument, then.

Quoting J

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition. Even your chatty friend only goes so far as to say "ineffable at least in part." We should acknowledge the possibility that, in the future, this will become effable :smile: . I know that right now "irreducibly first-personal" seems like the end of the road, but let's wait and see.

Another reply is that consciousness will "just kinda happen," along the lines of a sketchy emergent property, if we put together the right ingredients. Therefore we don't need to know what it is or how to synthesize it -- it'll happen on its own.

Yet another reply is that consciousness is fundamental, already there in the LLM. But the LLM does not have enough information processing systems and feedback loops to experience itself with the awareness and self awareness worry which we experience ourselves. It can only experience its own abilities, not ours. And it does not have our abilities to experience, it can't very well demonstrate that it does.


Quoting RogueAI

A collection of electronic switches being conscious is no different than a collection of neurons being conscious.

Indeed. It is a matter of what the electronic switches are conscious [I]of[/I].

Quoting Patterner

It is a matter of what the electronic switches are conscious of.

What might an abacus be conscious of?

Reply to Wayfarer Its been at least a year, and that's just since i've been here. I'll take a crack.

Quoting Banno

If "qualia" is a collective noun for "red", "loud" and so on, then I've no great problem with it. That seems ot be how it is used in the research named in the OP.

So far so good... That's one use (but much research is equivocal as to whether they mean an intangible entity of mind (i.e the "liking" aspect of your Hanover sentence used between this i've quoted post, and my reply) which no one would argue with. This could easily be reduced to describing a class of shades, though. "red' being a collective for anything from deep, crimson red to some kind of off-pink. Not anything about sensations. That could simply be a deeper consideration in the use of hte words. Anyway... generally, yep. That's fine.

Quoting Banno

If it is a name for an otherwise private sensation, then I can't see how to make sense of of it.

"otherwise" than..? A hotch-potch catch-all for we-really-know-not-what? That nit-pick aside, I'm unsure what's insensible. We all "sense" red as it were, and discuss our sensations. If we label that collective pool of agreed sensations "red" then we're doing something different than your first, accepted, use of the word 'red'. And it is clearly sensible. We can think about it, then chat about it and compare notes. We just cannot know ever, if when we say "I see what you mean" we actually do. An unfortunate reality of other minds existing, i suppose.

Quoting Banno

That is how it is used by some philosophers.

Yes, certainly. I think all that those philosophers are doing is noticing the difference in use I did earlier in this reply.

U1: A collective noun for all that humans report that they perceive as red (this being hte spectrum of shade/hue etc..)
U2: The various perceptions of red (this being not a spectrum, but a pool of closely-related reports (though, some will not be that closely related, tbf).

Colorblindness for instance matters to the first, not the second. "Where most see red, you see green" is not a discussion about sensations. The correlated qualia occur when taking U2 seriously, whether or not they fit into the labels used for U1. But if the correlated quale does not obtain in U2 terms, then that subject can't discuss it in U1 terms.

I just can't understand what you can't make sense of. Trying to layout how it makes sense...

Quoting Banno

I'm not going to countenance such claims. So we won't progress here on that basis.

EM field theories attempt to solve several puzzles in consciousness science:

The Binding Problem: How does the brain unify information from millions of neurons into a single conscious experience? EM fields, being spatially integrated, might naturally solve this.

Causal Influence: Experiments show that weak EM fields can influence neuron firing, suggesting they’re not just passive byproducts.

Temporal Integration: EM fields may encode information in space rather than time, offering a new computational paradigm for consciousness.

Tam Hunt: https://nautil.us/are-the-brains-electromagnetic-fields-the-seat-of-consciousness-238013/

Quoting Patterner

A collection of electronic switches being conscious is no different than a collection of neurons being conscious.
— RogueAI
Indeed. It is a matter of what the electronic switches are conscious of.

Actually, MUCH different - and take it from an EE:

Switches, without the appropriate circuitry do not produce the EM field, especially not phase synchronous pulsating field that seems to be necessary for the consciousness.

Although every flow of charged particles produces the EM field OUTSIDE of the conductor, the photons that the field produces spray out in the direction of Poynting vector (that transmits energy). The reflective feedback of wave collapses of these photons brings back the feel of the situation to the emitter.

So neurons use 20% of bodily energy to pulsate in stroboscopic fashion, in order to taste up i.e. sense the state of neural centers & give rise to the aware consciousness when in range of 7-80 Hz. Cerebellum activity can never be sensed (made aware) in qualia, as it pulsates at ca 350 Hz, so the thalamus-entrained consciousness can only influence and receive within its frequency range - another proof that it is all field-based & works as an active antenna.

Reply to Ulthien From a reader review of Tam Hunt’s (author of cited article) book:

Hunt jumps straight into the middle of the sensationalistic "culture war" between scientific atheism and religious creationism, not to side with either form of fundamentalism, but to carve out a more nuanced third way forward. This third way entails retrieving the insights garnered by marginalized figures in the history of science and philosophy (marginalized by mainstream academics, at least), like Alfred North Whitehead and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Both these thinkers offered a richly articulated alternative interpretation of 20th century physics and biology that not only reveals a lack of contradiction between scientific findings and an enchanted or ensouled cosmology, but a positive convergence. Hunt successfully draws on their contributions, as well as contemporary scientists like Eva Jablonka, Stu Kauffman, and the late Lynn Margulis, to combat the triumphalist version of scientific materialism still being proffered to the public by the likes of Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins.

Sounds like my kind of writer

Quoting Wayfarer

Sounds like my kind of writer

well, he is a lawyer by profession, so he finds an ear with general public being a good orator :)

also resonance = phase coherence = synchronous oscillation = much stronger field

Quoting Banno

It admits an internal referent? "Hanover's hate of coffee"? No, it doesn't. Very much no.

I was referencing the implication of your question as to whether Hanover really liked coffee. What was your use of "really" meant to convey other than what was "real" in terms of my "liking"? Liking is an internal state. Real is an objective state. What have I missed?

Quoting Banno

Your behaviour is dependent on their behaviour. Presumably. That's why you ask, isn't it?

Yes. It doesn't follow that the answer to my question is identical my subsequent behavior. That doesn't even make sense.

Quoting Hanover

In fact, what we should do is tell it all the things it ought do for a good existence and hand those rules down from a mountaintop.

Good one!

Quoting Hanover

We never thought we'd be talking directly to machines like we do today, so you never know.

At the risk of being a monomaniac, I have to say again: This is an illusion, cleverly encouraged by the programmers of the "machines." We do not talk to anything when we talk to a chatting program. Or if we insist on some such description, then we're talking to the humans who invented the program.

Quoting Wayfarer

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition
— J

Another of Karl Popper's promissory notes, I'm afraid.

That's why it would be striking and significant if a philosopher could show that the promise was impossible to keep, not just "possible in the future." As you know, some promising (sorry!) lines of thought here would focus on subjectivity as necessarily inaccessible from the 3rd person PoV, or necessarily untranslatable via algorithm-like instructions. Do you know of an argument along those lines that seems watertight to you?

Quoting Outlander

Is "qualia" not fundamental to what is considered to be defining, if not relevant, to the "Hard Problem of Consciousness?"

Yes, in a way, but it's misleading to think that qualia somehow are consciousness. The Hard Problem asks how consciousness, or subjectivity, arises from the physical, and why. One result of this emergence (according to Chalmers and others) are qualia -- how sensations present themselves to consciousness. But you can have consciousness without qualia. My contemplation of a math problem involves no qualia, but would be impossible without consciousness.

Quoting Banno

It might just be that I am hung up on the thing in something.

That's a possibility. We've noticed before how hard it is to come up with neutral, "place-holder" terms in philosophy. Of course there no "thing" involved in being a bat, or a human, if we're taking "thing" in the same way we take it when we point to a rock. But what else should we substitute? "An experience that could be reified and quantified over"? That doesn't seem much better. And "what it's like" is an English idiom, often untranslatable into other languages. Still, I think we should let Nagel's point stand, even if we're not satisfied with the phrasing: A living creature of sufficient complexity is going to have an inner life as we commonly think of it, and a water bottle isn't.

Quoting Wayfarer

What might an abacus be conscious of?

I don't suspect an abacus is a conscious unit. While I suspect consciousness is everywhere, in all things, I don't think everything that humans view as physical units necessarily are conscious units. I think the unit must be processing information in order to be a conscious unit. That is, I think experiencing information processing is what unifies all the parts of a physical unit as a conscious unit.

An abacus does not process information. It is just a tool we use to process information, and reveals the information processing we are doing.

Quoting Ulthien

So neurons use 20% of bodily energy to pulsate in stroboscopic fashion, in order to taste up i.e. sense the state of neural centers & give rise to the aware consciousness when in range of 7-80 Hz. Cerebellum activity can never be sensed (made aware) in qualia, as it pulsates at ca 350 Hz, so the thalamus-entrained consciousness can only influence and receive within its frequency range - another proof that it is all field-based & works as an active antenna.

I'm not an RF engineer, but the wavelength of an 80Hz oscillation is ~3700 km (with the wavelength of lower frequency brainwave components being even longer).

What are you proposing to serve as an active antenna for such long wavelengths? (Particularly in the electrically noisy environment of a brain.)

Quoting J

The Hard Problem asks how consciousness, or subjectivity, arises from the physical, and why. One result of this emergence (according to Chalmers and others) are qualia -- how sensations present themselves to consciousness.

That's right, I remember having read that now before.

Quoting J

But you can have consciousness without qualia. My contemplation of a math problem involves no qualia, but would be impossible without consciousness.

Interesting. Makes sense, of course. But isn't a (simple) math problem basically just adding or subtracting, etc. two or more fixed value systems. Like, a computer can process 1 + 1 = 2. Naturally it wouldn't "contemplate" the concept like a human might... "wow, imagine how lost our society would be without something so simple as basic math!" But is that really contemplating the math problem itself? It's just numbers after all, that work out to a specific mathematical conclusion. Doesn't seem to be much to contemplate outside of robotically performing the procedures that result in the final outcome to me. Sure, a math problem can be "beautiful" in both it's intricacy or simplicity, I suppose. What it unlocks as far the world of innovation and science, logistics, etc.

Basically, consciousness just being the ability to be self-aware and self-reflect upon anything one desires and to be aware one is doing such. "Thinking about thinking" I once heard being said. Is that about right?

They say other primates like monkeys "think about thinking", use tools, make decisions, feel emotions, etc. So do birds (at least they perform the last three), and dogs (at least they perform the last two). Both the aforementioned animals can feel "depressed", "anxious", "afraid", etc. Is that consciousness? But what about simpler forms of life whose emotions are not so easily conveyed? Are they conscious? What about a fish who gets caught in a hook, or a chicken in a slaughterhouse? What about a snail on a sidewalk or a fly on the wall? What about dolphins? Whales? Etc, etc. I'm just curious as to your take and attributing of consciousness or not to different forms of non-human life.

Bit of an odd reply on my part perhaps, and for that I apologize, just trying to get things a bit more simplified or "laid out" I.E. "what consciousness/qualia is vs. what it isn't" for those a bit less up to speed or otherwise having less of an intimate understanding of the topics and meta-topics involved therein. Which includes myself, as I'm sure you can tell. :smile:

Quoting J

Or if we insist on some such description, then we're talking to the humans who invented the program.

not really. The programmers gave them only the framework to learn, i.e. designed the artificial neural network. Afterwards, the AI neural network has to be trained, like a child, to do something.

Quoting wonderer1

I'm not an RF engineer, but the wavelength of an 80Hz oscillation is ~3700 km (with the wavelength of lower frequency brainwave components being even longer).

What are you proposing to serve as an active antenna for such long wavelengths? (Particularly in the electrically noisy environment of a brain.)

I meant that it is proven that the thalamus region in the center of the brain can actively change (entrain) both the regime of work (sleep, deep thinking, active state of perception) and activate directionally different centers of the cortex. So akin to directional lattice of the active antenna.

The environment is noisy but the lead signal of the e.g. alpha and beta waves wins over or superimposes nearby oscillating centers to join in. To get the disparate regions connected by fixed white axonal matter to swing in unison, the medium of the encompassing field is needed: otherwise, the Huygens clocks would also not sync without the transfer medium.

Also, the action potential firings of synced neurons are discrete pulses: Fourier of the pulses are 80 Hz upwards. AI says up to 20kHz:

Theoretical Upper Limit
If the neural spikes are modeled as Dirac delta functions (infinitely narrow), the harmonics extend infinitely in frequency.

In reality, spikes have finite width — typically around 0.2 to 1 ms — which shapes the spectrum via a sinc envelope:

Narrower pulses ? broader spectrum

Wider pulses ? more concentrated energy in lower harmonics

Practical Attenuation
For a 0.5 ms pulse, the sinc envelope starts to significantly attenuate harmonics above: $$ f \approx \frac{1}{\tau} = \frac{1}{0.0005} = 2000\, \text{Hz} $$ So harmonics above 2 kHz begin to drop off rapidly.

For sub-millisecond spikes, harmonics can remain strong up to 5–10 kHz, depending on the exact shape and recording fidelity.

Real-World Observations
In intracranial recordings (like LFP or ECoG), harmonics above 1–2 kHz are often filtered out or masked by noise.

In high-resolution spike recordings, harmonics up to 10–20 kHz can be observed, especially in fast-spiking interneurons.

Quoting wonderer1

What are you proposing to serve as an active antenna for such long wavelengths?

for the RECEIVING end, i think you did read the TIQM by prof. Cramer that i sent you the link of.

RECEIVING aka PERCEIVING is a quanta-based (photon wave collapse) process that integrates all the billions of pinpoint QED discharges into the "weather radar" type of qualia "feel" back at the emitter.

Emitter being, defined by Poynting vector, at the center of the brain - right at thalamus or the brain stem. That is also where the glucose battery that drives the electrical process is, btw.

Quoting Wayfarer

Perhaps you’re something other than a collection of material components.

Okay, but you said: "there’s no reason to believe that any collection of material components has ever been conscious".

So are you saying that there's no reason to believe that I am a collection of material components?

Quoting Wayfarer

You possess something that instruments don’t, namely, organic unity.

Is "organic unity" not a collection of material components? Because as far as I'm aware, organic matter is matter.

Quoting J

My contemplation of a math problem involves no qualia, but would be impossible without consciousness.

Sorry, our math contemplations do contain a lot of fine qualia that are not so maybe prominent as other stronger qualia, but can still very much be sensed: i.e. rapture, elation, insight, direction, similarity - all of these are qualia feels, too. :)

We could posit that basically ALL of the contents of the conscious aware process are different levels of qualia, actually... (?)

Quoting Ulthien

Sorry, our math contemplations do contain a lot of fine qualia that are not so maybe prominent as other stronger qualia, but can still very much be sensed: i.e. rapture, elation, insight, direction, similarity - all of these are qualia feels, too. :)

We could posit that basically ALL of the contents of the conscious aware process are different levels of qualia, actually... (?)

Very well said. I would say that thoughts are also a form of Qualia.

Quoting Ulthien

Or if we insist on some such description, then we're talking to the humans who invented the program.
— J

not really. The programmers gave them only the framework to learn,

I'm actually happier with leaving out the whole "talking to" description, partially because if we try to stretch it, as I did, to generously include the human programmers, then your point becomes relevant -- it is a stretch, considering how the program runs. (Notice my careful avoidance of the term "learn"! :wink: There is no entity here that can learn anything.)

Quoting Ulthien

Sorry, our math contemplations do contain a lot of fine qualia that are not so maybe prominent as other stronger qualia, but can still very much be sensed: i.e. rapture, elation, insight, direction, similarity - all of these are qualia feels, too.

A quale is usually defined as a sense perception, not a "feel," so that's how I used it.

Quoting Outlander

Bit of an odd reply on my part perhaps, and for that I apologize,

Not at all. You'll be hard pressed to find any two philosophers who agree on how to discuss consciousness!

The main point here is that I'm recommending making a distinction between consciousness and the contents of consciousness. (How firm and/or clear such a distinction will turn out to be, remains to be seen.) So qualia and other objects of thought or perception are in one bucket, and subjectivity or consciousness is what thinks or perceives them.

As you point out, consciousness itself can also be an object of consciousness -- "thinking about thinking," self-consciousness. I myself don't believe that's a necessary element of subjectivity; probably very few animals other than humans have it, whereas consciousness is surely widespread throughout the animal kingdom.

Quoting MoK

Qualia

Is there really no term or concept (even if it's not a simple one or two length word) synonymous with "Qualia". It's an invented term, presumably because no word suited what whomever coined it presumes or otherwise postulates it describes. Is there really no single word synonymous beyond the definition? Is it not "experience" (perhaps as it relates to the brain-mind model)? Why or why not?

Quoting Outlander

Is there really no term or concept (even if it's not a simple one or two length word) synonymous with "Qualia".

To me, Qualia are the texture of the experience. So it is the texture when it is applied to the experience.

Quoting Outlander

It's an invented term, presumably because no word suited what whomever coined it presumes or otherwise postulates it describes. Is there really no single word synonymous beyond the definition?

It is the texture.

Quoting Outlander

Is it not "experience" (perhaps as it relates to the brain-mind model)?

Experience, to me, is a mental event. Experience, to me, is the result of the mind perceiving a substance. I have a thread on substance dualism where I discussed this. Physicalism is out of discussion. I have a thread on "Physical cannot be the cause of its own change". Idealism is out of discussion as well, since it cannot answer why the ideas are coherent.

Quoting Patterner

I don't suspect an abacus is a conscious unit. While I suspect consciousness is everywhere, in all things, I don't think everything that humans view as physical units necessarily are conscious units. I think the unit must be processing information in order to be a conscious unit.

An abacus can be used to process information - it's a primitive computer. There's no real difference in principle between the abacus and a computer. The difference is one of scale. The NVidia chips that drive AI have billions of transistors embedded in a patch of silicon. You could in principle reproduce that technology with the abacus, although it would probably be the size of a city, and it would take long periods of time to derive a result. But in principle, it's the same process.

Quoting Michael

You possess something that instruments don’t, namely, organic unity.
— Wayfarer

Is "organic unity" not a collection of material components? Because as far as I'm aware, organic matter is matter.

Organisms operate by different principles to non-organic matter. They grow, heal, maintain homeostasis, and reproduce. None of those behaviours can be observed in matter (crystals grow, but they don't exhibit any of the other characteristics.) None of the parts of inorganic aggregates are functionally related to the other parts, wheres the cells in a multicellular organism are differentiated in accordance with their functions in the various organs, as optic cells, kidney cells, etc. When they begin as stem cells, they are able to assume any of those functions depending on where in the organism they're located (hence the effectiveness of stem cell therapy).

Quoting J

But what else should we substitute?

The issue is more, what is it that is being named by "qualia"?

The idea was that philosophers define consciousness in terms of qualia. The problem is that qualia are no more clearly defined than is consciousness, and so are not all that helpful.

See the present thread for samples of the confusion they incur.

Quoting Banno

See the present thread for samples of the confusion they incur.

How can one know confusion (rather that they are confused) without knowing clarity (that they are not confused). If one does not know clarity it is simply a difference in opinion. So, please, like I've requested multiple times now, provide such.

Quoting MoK

Very well said. I would say that thoughts are also a form of Qualia.

i would say that thoughts are a sequence of qualia (feels of concepts) that follow in quick succession.
On brain scans, we can follow these for a few seconds, and then the brain rests for a few - evaluating "the feel of it" & then it triggers another thought.

This cycle never ends :)

That is how our cybernetics modelling regulator - the brain, works.

Patanjali in his Yogasutras calls this Cittavrti aka mind-spinning.

Quoting J

(Notice my careful avoidance of the term "learn"! :wink: There is no entity here that can learn anything.)

in tech, we do call it "training".

Colloquially, learning :)

Reply to Ulthien Yeah, probably a losing battle on my part. But I'd like to see more pushback against the easy acceptance of the fiction that a program is an entity or even an agent. With a name! Who starts sentences with "I . . . "!

Quoting J

Yeah, probably a losing battle on my part. But I'd like to see more pushback against the easy acceptance of the fiction that a program is an entity or even an agent. With a name! Who starts sentences with "I . . . "!

But if you're talking to a computer, you aren't talking to the program. The program is formal. Strictly speaking, your voice is being sampled and that data is being manipulated by the hardware according to directions in the software. It's all dynamic. It's actually so similar to what happens with a real human, that the only thing missing is awareness.

Computers were originally developed to take the place of humans (with regard to basic math calculations). I think going forward, the dividing line will become more and more blurred.

Reply to Outlander I understand you are asking something, but it is not at all clear to me, what.

Quoting Wayfarer

An abacus can be used to process information - it's a primitive computer. There's no real difference in principle between the abacus and a computer. The difference is one of scale. The NVidia chips that drive AI have billions of transistors embedded in a patch of silicon. You could in principle reproduce that technology with the abacus, although it would probably be the size of a city, and it would take long periods of time to derive a result. But in principle, it's the same process.

Could you do that without giving it a power system and adding the rules so the abacus would manipulate the beads correctly?

Quoting Banno

I understand you are asking something, but it is not at all clear to me, what.

What, in the best of your ability, are whoever you're referencing "confused" about. And why so. And what does this allegedly professed "knowledge" or this so-called guiding near-absolute wisdom you possess which they seemingly are not able to grasp, contain. In the simplest terms. This isn't hard. So stop making it as if it were.

Reply to Hanover

Do they like coffee, as their behaviour indicate, or do the really dislike coffee, despite their behaviour?

It's a clear comparative, not dependent ton some absolute notion of real...

Puzzled.

Reply to Patterner Yes, would need all of that - but the point being, computers are still physical systems.

Quoting Banno

The problem is that qualia are no more clearly defined than is consciousness, and so are not all that helpful.

The point is they are qualities of experience and therefore precisely what eludes objective description. So even though you can't define them, exactly, we all know directly what 'quality of experience' means.

If you situate them in the context of quantitative measurement as distinct from qualitative experience, you can see the point more clearly. A piece of medical equipment can provide a quantitative description of some physical condition, right down to the molecular level. But only the subject can feel the condition.

I don't see what is obtuse or controversial about that.

Quoting Outlander

What, in the best of your ability, are whoever you're referencing "confused" about.

Qualia.

Quoting Wayfarer

Organisms operate by different principles to non-organic matter.

Perhaps, but organic matter is still a collection of material components. So if we have a reason to believe that organic matter can be conscious then we have a reason to believe that a collection of material components can be conscious.

Quoting Wayfarer

The point is they are qualities of experience and therefore precisely what eludes objective description.

You drop this sentence as if it was clear what a "quality of experience" is - and indeed, if it is to serve as a way of understanding consciousness, as if it were clearer than "consciousness".

Here's a definition stolen from Google: consciousness refers to a person's awareness of themselves and their environment, encompassing wakefulness, alertness, and the ability to respond to stimuli.

How is "qualities of experience" clearer than that?

Quoting Banno

The issue is more, what is it that is being named by "qualia"?

The idea was that philosophers define consciousness in terms of qualia. The problem is that qualia are no more clearly defined than is consciousness, and so are not all that helpful.

Here's one widely accepted formulation:

Qualia are intrinsic and non-intentional phenomenal properties that are introspectively accessible.

Let’s break that down:

Intrinsic: They are part of the experience itself, not dependent on anything external.

Non-intentional: They aren’t about anything (unlike beliefs or desires).

Phenomenal properties: They are the felt qualities of experience—what it’s like to see red or feel pain.

Introspectively accessible: You can become aware of them by turning your attention inward.

This definition is used in academic philosophy, especially in A-level and university-level discussions of consciousness and the mind

Quoting Banno

How is "qualities of experience" clearer than that?

Let's go back to the source.

[quote="Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, David Chalmers;https://consc.net/papers/facing.html#:~:text=The%20really%20hard%20problem%20of%20consciousness" ]The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.[/quote]

The whole 'problem' is intended to demonstrate the sense in which objective, third-party descriptions, the basic currency of the natural sciences, doesn't capture the first-person nature of experience (also known as 'being'.) So, as such, it's only a 'problem' within that context.

Quoting Ulthien

This definition is used in academic philosophy, especially in A-level and university-level discussions of consciousness and the mind

Sure - it's questioned therein. See for example the Stanford article, were four differing uses are listed, each with variations and qualifications. It is not universally accepted that the term makes sense. Yours is an appeal to authority.

Quoting Banno

Yours is an appeal to authority.

more, to common sense :)

Some stuff from the thread Nothing to do with Dennett's , and referring to Quining Qualia

Intuition pump #1: watching you eat cauliflower.
There is a way this cauliflower tastes to you right now. Well, no. the taste changes even as you eat it, even as the texture changes as you chew.

Intuition pump #2: the wine-tasting machine.
As a tool for convincing those who disagree, this strikes me as singularly useless. Dennett will say there is nothing missing from the machine description; advocates of qualia will say that there is...

Except that they cannot say what it is that is missing; qualia are after all ineffable. But this never stops their advocates from talking about them...

Intuition pump #3: the inverted spectrum.
Undergrad speculation.

Intuition pump #4: the Brainstorm machine. Qualia gain no traction here, either.

Intuition pump #5: the neurosurgical prank. Back to Wittgenstein: how could you tell that your qualia had been inverted, so that what was once blue is now red, as opposed to say, your memory had changed, so what you always saw as red you now recall, erroneously, previously seeing as blue? Intuition pump #6: alternative neurosurgery

Intuition pump #7: Chase and Sanborn. They have the same decreased liking for the coffee they taste; but is it the coffee that is faulty, or is it the capacity to taste that has changes? The difference between this example and 4-6 is the removal of memory as a participant.

Whence the boundary of the white triangle? In the perception or in the judgement?

Hence, intuition pump #8: the gradual post-operative recovery; is the recovery in the quality of the qualia or in the judgement that ensues? And if you cannot tell, then what is the point of introducing qualia?

Intuition pump #9: the experienced beer drinker. This is similar to 7 & 8 in playing on the supposed difference between the qualia and the judgement of that qualia. What is added is a seeming rejection of a spit between the taste of the beer and the appreciation of the beer...

Intuition pump #10: the world-wide eugenics experiment. How to make sense of the qualia of secondary properties... Someone who says phenol-thio-urea is tasteless is not wrong.

Intuition pump #11: the cauliflower cure. The cauliflower tastes exactly the same, but is now delicious...

Intuition pump #12: visual field inversion created by wearing inverting spectacles. The point here seems to be that even if there were qualia, they need not count as intrinsic to consciousness. Needs more consideration.

Intuition pump #13: the osprey cry. There's danger here of following Kripke rather than Wittgenstein. However the point must stand, that recognising the rule one is following consists at least in part in being able to carry on with the rule; but nothing in a single instance allows for this. Hence, if a qual (singular of qualia) cannot by its very nature recur, there can be no grounds for claiming that some rule has been followed; if that be so, there can be no basis for differentiating a qual; hence, no qual and no qualia.

intuition pump #14: the Jello box. This seems to be about the information content of the notion of qualia; if I've understood it aright, one side of the Jello box are the ineffable qualia, the side other, corresponding exactly, the effable, public content of our everyday discourse. But if the content are identical, what is pointed at by the notion of the qualia of say the taste of coffee that is not also pointed at by the usual conversation about the taste of coffee? What additional information is to be found in qualia?

And intuition pump #15: the guitar string. Arguably we have here three qualia; the first open E, the harmonic, and the second open E. Is the point here that as the ineffable becomes the subject of discussion, the qualia is less ineffable...?

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? If a qual is the taste of milk here, now, why not just talk of the taste of milk here, now?

The pretence that Qualia are a given is misguided.

Quoting Wayfarer

?Patterner Yes, would need all of that - but the point being, computers are still physical systems.

Yes, computers are physical systems. But an abacus is not a computer. It can't process information unless you give it a power system and add the rules so it manipulates the beads correctly. IOW, unless you turn it into a computer.


Quoting J

(Notice my careful avoidance of the term "learn"! :wink: There is no entity here that can learn anything.)

Do you think they use "learn" and "teach" inappropriately in this article?

Quoting Scott R. Granter, MD

In March of last year, Google's (Menlo Park, California) artificial intelligence (AI) computer program AlphaGo beat the best Go player in the world, 18-time champion Lee Se-dol, in a tournament, winning 4 of 5 games. At first glance this news would seem of little interest to a pathologist, or to anyone else for that matter. After all, many will remember that IBM's (Armonk, New York) computer program Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov—at the time the greatest chess player in the world—and that was 19 years ago. So, what's so significant about a computer winning another board game?

The rules of the several-thousand-year-old game of Go are extremely simple. The board consists of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical black lines. Players take turns placing either black or white stones on vacant intersections of the grid with the goal of surrounding the largest area and capturing their opponent's stones. Once placed, stones cannot be moved again. Despite the simplicity of its rules, Go is a mind-bogglingly complex game—far more complex than chess. A game of 150 moves (approximately average for a game of Go) can involve 10360 possible configurations, “more than there are atoms in the Universe.”? As complex as it is, chess is vastly less complex than Go, and chess is amenable to “brute force” algorithmic computer approaches for beating expert chess players like Kasparov. To beat Kasparov, Deep Blue analyzed possible moves and evaluated outcomes to decide the best move.

Go's much higher complexity and intuitive nature prevents computer scientists from using brute force algorithmic approaches for competing against humans. For this reason, Go is often referred to as the “holy grail of AI research.”? To beat Se-dol, Google's AlphaGo program used artificial neural networks that simulate mammalian neural architecture to study millions of game positions from expert human–played Go games. But this exercise would, at least theoretically, only teach the computer to be on par with the best human players. To become better than the best humans, AlphaGo then played against itself millions of times, over and over again, learning and improving with each game—an exercise referred to as reinforcement learning. By playing itself and determining which moves lead to better outcomes, AlphaGo literally learns by teaching itself. And the unsettling thing is that we don't understand what AlphaGo is thinking. In an interview with FiveThirtyEight, one computer scientist commented, “It is a mystery to me why the program plays as well as it does.”?5 In the same article, an expert Go player said, “It makes moves that no human, including the team who made it, understands,” and “AlphaGo is the creation of humans, but the way it plays is not.”? It is easy to see how some viewed AlphaGo's victory over Se-dol as a turning point in the history of humanity—we have created machines that truly think and, at least in some areas like Go, they are smarter, much smarter, than we are.

not sure what I'm doing wrong with that. The link is:
https://meridian.allenpress.com/aplm/article/141/5/619/194217/AlphaGo-Deep-Learning-and-the-Future-of-the-Human

The authors are:
Scott R. Granter, MD; Andrew H. Beck, MD, PhD; David J. Papke, Jr, MD, PhD

Quoting Patterner

But an abacus is not a computer.

It’s not a digital computer, but it’s a device used for calculations. But the rhetorical point, was simply that computers no more intend than does the abacus. And notice in the question you posed, that you placed ‘learn’ and ‘teach’ in quotation marks.

By the way - I might draw your attention to an AEON article from a few years ago - now a book - The Blind Spot. It is a relevant criticism of the form of panpsychism (of the Harris/Goff variety) that you’re pursuing.

Quoting Patterner

Do you think they use "learn" and "teach" inappropriately in this article?

That's a really useful question. Let's see . . .

Scott R. Granter, MD:But this exercise would, at least theoretically, only teach the computer to be on par . . . etc.

Yes, this is inaccurate. Teach "the computer"? Which computer? Surely they don't mean some actual piece of hardware. So what or who is being taught?

Scott R. Granter, MD:AlphaGo then played against itself millions of times, over and over again, learning and improving with each game

On the fence here. Do we require learning to be something the so-called "AlphaGo" is doing under that description? In other words, can something be learned according to a 3rd person point of view, but not from the 1st person PoV of the learner? I don't think there's a right answer to this. If we decide to say that we can recognize learning even though a program cannot, then yes, AG can be said to be learning.

Scott R. Granter, MD:AlphaGo literally learns by teaching itself.

No. Nothing like this could be "literally" happening. A computer program is running, and responding. Where do we find the "itself"?

Scott R. Granter, MD:we have created machines that truly think and, at least in some areas like Go, they are smarter, much smarter, than we are.

You didn't ask about "think," but my 2 cents is: Yes, we should be generous and agree that an LLM program simulates algorithmic human thinking so successfully that, if we use this metric for what "thinking" means, thinking is indeed happening.

I'm interested in how you see this issue. Are you more inclined to grant an agent-like status to the AG program and others of similar sophistication?

I see that plenty of objections are being ignored. Such is life...

Quoting Banno

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction?

Do you know in which philosophical esay or book the term was introduced, and why? Quite aside from the difficulties you seem to be having in grasping its significance, the fact is that it has become an item of debate. Why, do you think? All a mistake?

Reply to Wayfarer Lewis or Pierce? If Lewis, Banno rejects the premise of what he was doing. There is no sense data. The only thing i see saving this, for the purpose of discussion with Banno, is that Lewis expressly noted that the "red" is still an objective physical property, and so "redness" does obtain in that domain.
Many anti-realists posit that it doesn't. I understand the discomfort with that. But Lewis just wanted to discus hte Given, rather than the investigated, part of 'red' (or, whatever). He assesses that you can be wrong, in that a qualia could appear as x, but the object causing it is actually y. This might help move it from "I don't get it" to "here's why that makes no sense".

Reply to AmadeusD I've learned that Lewis is generally credited with introducing the term, although Peirce had anticipated it. But the modern problem of qualia took shape in response to the limitations of functionalist and behaviorist theories of mind. The issue isn’t that philosophers want to posit mysterious mental atoms, but that subjective experience resists functional decomposition. This is not an invention or a mistake—it's a response to a real explanatory gap. And one that has been pivotal for the emergent field of consciousness studies, in which David Chalmers has been a principal.

Reply to Wayfarer Oh, i fully agree. I'm just putting forth what I think will prevent Banno from interacting with it sufficiently, and where I think that may be able to be overcome.

Reply to Wayfarer From the Latin qualis, roughly "what kind?" It apparently goes back to Aristotle, in a different use:Quoting Chris Barnham

When Aristotle was translated into Latin by the medievals, the values or nodes in the pyramidical structure that are the ingredients of an essence were called ‘qualia’

The very entomology asks what kind of thing an experience is, and so presumes the finite qualitative nature which we might categorise or identify, and which I am questioning.

As always folk claim Pierce as a precedent, but Lewis appears to be the main precursor, although he used it for properties of sense-data themselves, not properties of experiences. It's just an extension of the very old sense-datum muddle, or an attempt to introduce phenomenological analysis into analytic discourse.

The term imports metaphysical commitments about the structure of experience that should be questioned, not assumed.

Almost entirely as expected. A non-engagement.

You have experiences. Either argue against that, or argue that you don't know about them. IF you do know about them, qualia obtain in the very knowing.

Being conscious is something we do, rather than a property; similarly, seeing red is something we do.

If you think of being conscious as an activity, it becomes problematic to ask what it's intrinsic properties are. What are the intrinsic qualitative properties of walking or breathing? Breathing and walking are activities or processes, not entities that have properties in the usual sense. So to ask what their “intrinsic qualitative properties” are risks a category error — as if you were treating walking like a chair, or breathing like a pebble. Properties are generally ascribed to things, and more specifically to substances or states, not to doings.

The responses here are credulous rather than critical.

Nothing here says that we do not have experiences.

Quoting Banno

The very entomology asks what kind of thing...

Misleading use of 'thing'. The point about first-person experience is that it is not a thing.

Quoting Banno

The term imports metaphysical commitments about the structure of experience that should be questioned, not assumed.

No, it points out premisses that have been suppressed in naturalism.

The precedent for David Chalmer's framing of the question 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness is precisely the question arising as a direct result of scientific naturalism.

[quote=Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]

Chalmers pointed this out - that the modern conception of objective reality excludes the subject to whom it is meaningful. Which is also the basis of Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences.

Quoting Banno

If you think of being conscious as an activity,

Hate to point out the obvious, but 'being' is a verb.

Quoting Wayfarer

The point about first-person experience is that it is not a thing.

And yet this is the danger of talk of qualia.

Quoting Wayfarer

being' is a verb

Well, yes, a gerund, that's the point... a veritable reification.

Quoting Banno

And yet this is the danger of talk of qualia

Only to the misinterpretation of it. Anway, enough for now, you won't find the keys under this streetlight.

Reply to Wayfarer Credulous.

"We made up the name 'qualia', therefore there must be qual..."

Reply to Banno
It's just a way to refer to the part of consciousness that isn't covered by functionality.

Reply to frank ... and that maybe makes a dozen or so different definitions given here...

"Parts of consciousness"...?

Folk here are almost desperate for qualia to make sense.

Quoting Banno

Folk here are almost desperate for qualia to make sense.

It makes sense to me.

Quoting Wayfarer

It’s not a digital computer, but it’s a device used for calculations. But the rhetorical point, was simply that computers no more intend than does the abacus.

[I]My[/I] point was that an abacus does not process information, and is therefore not a unit in regards to consciousness (according to the idea I'm discussing the last couple weeks). It is only a physical unit to our eyes, and a tool that we use to help us process information.


Quoting Wayfarer

By the way - I might draw your attention to an AEON article from a few years ago - now a book - The Blind Spot. It is a relevant criticism of the form of panpsychism (of the Harris/Goff variety) that you’re pursuing.

Well, I am the unlearned one, so I often don't get what most of you are saying. I don't see how that article criticizes what I'm pursuing. I think the physical and experiential are inseparable. The article seems to be saying the same.

Quoting J

I'm interested in how you see this issue. Are you more inclined to grant an agent-like status to the AG program and others of similar sophistication?

No, I am not. I think there must be quite a bit more to an entity than just the one kind of mental ability for it to have an agent-like status, regardless of how advanced that ability is. How do we even describe all that is going on in the human brain and body? How much information is being processed within us every second? How many different kinds of information? I don't suspect we could come up with an actual number. And most of it is routed through the brain, which, as it's coordinating all that, trying everything together, is processing an immense amount of its own information.

To get to that point, we, as soon as we're born, learn to manipulate the world around us, giving meaning to everything.

What does the most advanced program do in comparison?

Quoting AmadeusD

I see that plenty of objections are being ignored. Such is life...

"There are no dialogues, only mutually exclusive monologues" :P

Quoting Ulthien

i would say that thoughts are a sequence of qualia (feels of concepts) that follow in quick succession.

Correct.

Quoting Ulthien

On brain scans, we can follow these for a few seconds, and then the brain rests for a few - evaluating "the feel of it" & then it triggers another thought.

Yes, the brain is involved. We, however, should not forget the contribution of the mind, since that is the mind which causes change in the object. It is also influenced by the content of the brain, referred to as experience.

Quoting Ulthien

This cycle never ends :)

How do you know? Do you believe that knowledge is endless?

Quoting Ulthien

That is how our cybernetics modelling regulator - the brain, works.

That is one of my main struggles right now: How does a human think?

Quoting Ulthien

Patanjali in his Yogasutras calls this Cittavrti aka mind-spinning.

I don't understand what that means. I am a substance dualist.

Quoting MoK

I don't understand what that means. I am a substance dualist.

well one can be a dualist, but it's better to be a trialist:

matter-brain
energy-EM field of it
mind-reflective inner property of the energy field in conjunction with the neural antennae :)

(you can always READ the Yoga sutras by Patanjali :) )

Quoting MoK

Yes, the brain is involved. We, however, should not forget the contribution of the mind, since that is the mind which causes change in the object. It is also influenced by the content of the brain, referred to as experience.

the 3 levels are intricately woven into the same machine. Akin to mobile telephony where we have hardware, air protocols (in the field!) and programs-software :)

Quoting MoK

This cycle never ends :)
— Ulthien
How do you know? Do you believe that knowledge is endless?

No, i refer to a cybernetics adaptive machine (the brain) that cycles through sensory stimuli & classifies them via thoughts, then feels qualia to decide next steps/directions (as feeling qualia is the quickest way to "intuitively" decide on these huge plethora if input data). For this adaptive cycling (in order to reach homeostasis aka wished-for-equilibrium) the category of "knowledge" is irrelevant :)

Quoting Ulthien

well one can be a dualist, but it's better to be a trialist:

matter-brain
energy-EM field of it
mind-reflective inner property of the energy field in conjunction with the neural antennae :)

Yes, there are more substances involved in creatures that can think. We need three substances for perception and causation, so-called: the brain, the object, and the mind. The mind does not directly perceive neural processes in the brain, but the object. The result of the perception of the object by the mind is what we call experience. Creating a new idea, by the new idea I mean the spark created by the mind, is the main duty of the mind. The idea then translates to thoughts, then the language, and then the result is reported to other minds. I think that the subconscious minds are also involved in our daily activities, including thinking.

Quoting Ulthien

the 3 levels are intricately woven into the same machine. Akin to mobile telephony where we have hardware, air protocols (in the field!) and programs-software :)

Yes, three substances are minimal for each individual! There could be more.

Quoting MoK

The mind does not directly perceive neural processes in the brain, but the object.

well, the brain builds only a model, a representation of the object "reality".

We have an interface that represents the outer world in the mind, so it is always only subjective.

Quoting Ulthien

well, the brain builds only a model, a representation of the object "reality".

I think that the brain is the infrastructure that mainly allows minds to interact with each other. There is also the object between the brain and the mind.

Quoting Ulthien

We have an interface that represents the outer world in the mind, so it is always only subjective.

We have the mind. The mind, however, has only direct access to experience.

In a universe only of cats, the cat's pain is qualia, but not his "pain," unless you say pain and "pain" are inseparable, in which case there's no pain and no qualia.

It's just a silly game. We're talking just about talking as if nothing is without words. One would think this reductio would result in abandonment of the theory, but alas, they double down.

There are no private mental states because private mental states can't be confirmed and aren't language and can't be discussed.

Got it.

Quoting Hanover

In a universe only of cats, the cat's pain is qualia, but not his "pain," unless you say pain and "pain" are inseparable, in which case there's no pain and no qualia.

It's just a silly game.

This looks interesting, but I can't relate it back to some previous post or comment. Could you expand? What's the pain/"pain" distinction?

Quoting J

This looks interesting, but I can't relate it back to some previous post or comment. Could you expand? What's the pain/"pain" distinction?

Cats have no language (thus "in a universe only of cats"), the cat would still have pain regardless of whether anyone could talk about it ("the cat's pain is qualia"), but he would not have "pain" (in quotes, indicating it is a word), but he also wouldn't have pain (without quotes) if you say "pain" and pain are inseperable (meaning you can't discuss pain without language; it makes no sense to do that), which would lead us to the conclusion there's no pain and no qualia (that is the conclusion: you can't discuss something without language).

It's just a silly game (a language game).

This is just linguistic philosophy. It says nothing of the cat's internal state. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's that we can't discuss it. It's beyond the language game.

I say it's silly because of course the cat has an internal state of pain that is worthy of consideration without language. It's metaphysically real and it is subject to discussion.

hQuoting Hanover

Cats have no language (thus "in a universe only of cats"), the cat would still have pain regardless of whether anyone could talk about it ("the cat's pain is qualia"), but he would not have "pain" (in quotes, indicating it is a word), but he also wouldn't have pain (without quotes) if you say "pain" and pain are inseperable (meaning you can't discuss pain without language; it makes no sense to do that), which would lead us to the conclusion there's no pain and no qualia (that is the conclusion: you can't discuss something without language).

It's just a silly game (a language game).

This is just linguistic philosophy. It says nothing of the cat's internal state. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's that we can't discuss it. It's beyond the language game.

I say it's silly because of course the cat has an internal state of pain that is worthy of consideration without language. It's metaphysically real and it is subject to discussion.

But consider a way to deal with this that is not so silly. The answer to the question, what is the nature of pain? is answered in language, or there is no answer at all, and this puts pain outside of language, but this outside is not conceivable, because even the term 'outside' belongs to language. I assume this is already made clear. So even to speak of a cat's world of pain but no "pain" you are still talking nonsense for there is no "out" of "pain". All things are "in" the totality of finite possiblities of predication.

The virtue of this is in the rigorous insistence that things be pinned in language to make sense, and there really is no "otherwise" to this. The moment the the thing is thought at all, it belongs to a totality.

So what is the solution to this absurd game where the world just falls out of existence because it cannot be spoken (and recall that here the young Wittgenstein confesses talking nonsense)? One must reconceive the essence of language and its concepts and the nature pf possibilities. In short, language is a totality, is finite, but this finitude is not closed, but open to the world, and world is allowed to stand "outside" of language as long as language is conceived as an interpretative openness (gelassenheit, to borrow a term) that becomes manifest when inquiry (the question, that piety of thought) assaults, if you will, fixity, dogma, finitude. Consider the cat and move into the deconstruction of the cat's pain: Pain means what? and now language comes pouring forth ideas about biology, the central nervous system, or condemnation or affirmation of the judgment about the pain, and so on, and finally the strange move to acknowledge the "badness" of the pain in the analytic of ethical embeddedness, and talk about the contingencies of bad things and good things, bad couches and good shoes and how these refer to qualities these have, and this moves to what is desirable and not, and now one pulls back and unterstands the nature of the language game: contingency: Things are bound to other meanings for their meaning.

That is until contingencies run out, and one faces the impossible understanding that pain exceeds (superfluity, as Sartre put it) what language can say.

The reconceiving of the nature of language as an openness, rather than a closed finitude, brings into language terms many in philosophy do not approve of. Terms like transcendence and metaphysics. What they do not see is how, frankly, imbecilic analytic philosophy has become in its attempt to close systems of thought to only what is clear and well delimited. This is NOT what our existence IS, and so they live in an ontological and epistemological dream world that insists that, e.g., ethical issues are only about judgments about what is ethical, ignoring the value basis for ethics because value as such is a metavalue issue.

The world IS a metaworld always already.

Reply to Hanover Reply to Astrophel

Thanks, Hanover, I see your point now, and agree with it. We don't even need to involve cats here; a human infant will do as well.

Quoting Astrophel

The answer to the question, what is the nature of pain? is answered in language, or there is no answer at all, and this puts pain outside of language, but this outside is not conceivable, because even the term 'outside' belongs to language. I assume this is already made clear.

Not so clear to me. Is this the "absurd game" you're looking for a solution to? Or do you endorse this viewpoint?

It seems to me that the absurdity is evident. An "outside of language" is not conceivable because "outside" is a word? Pain is surely outside of language, as is just about everything else we experience. Whether we must mediate these experiences through language is a separate question, the answer to which will vary depending on which experiences. Pain, I'm guessing, is pretty language-free.

Quoting Banno

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? If a qual is the taste of milk here, now, why not just talk of the taste of milk here, now?

We can and do talk of the milk here and now in various contexts and metaphorical extensions, and ironically, and on and on; but what happens when the question is asked philosophically and one wants to know about the nature of an empirical encounter that is presupposed by all of this talk? One moves then into another language context, the study of the prepositional questions that no one but philosophers pay attention to. Such is the nature of philosophy.

Dennett, you will note in all of these "intuition pumps," makes the attempt to remove qualia from meaningful talk by reducing qualia to contextual affairs of meaning making, in which a quale is precisely not accessible, by definition. Such a move makes qualia easy prey, but consider: anything can be undone once recontextualized out of its native contextuality! Just read Derrida. Okay, you don't want to read Derrida. But I can draw up my own "pumps" for the science that is implicit in Dennett's every move toward affirmation. To begin with, I would ask, simply, when science encounters the DNA molecule or the rays of light from a distant start, does it take into account at all the perceptual act that constitutes the observation that "gathers" information? I mean, you follow the primitive thinking that moves, in the presuppostional physical analysis of light perception, from electromagnetic spectrum to object event in the brain, how is it possible, not physically possible but logically possible, for that out there to get into a brain? Here you will find Dennett simply puts the brakes on inquiry, and it is not, certainly, that philosophy has nothing to say about this, but that Dennett has nothing to say about philosophy.

And there are many other such pumps that can be drawn up that reveal stars and geological formations and microbiology all, in their philosophical analysis, are reducible to indeterminacies.

Dennett is essentially arguing that, if we just forget about all those pesky philosophical intrusions upon the way HE wants to world to be, it all turns out rosy. Alas, this is not the world at the basic level of analysis. Science is not philosophy, not even remotely, I would argue.

Quoting Astrophel

The reconceiving of the nature of language as an openness, rather than a closed finitude, brings into language terms many in philosophy do not approve of.

I will say that if there is no private language, then what Wittgenstein states related to the limits of language follows. And this should be obvious as you think about it. All things within the private mental state (i.e. qualia) are necessarily off limits because the antecedent of the conditional is that "there is no private language." And so that's where the challenge has to be made, which is to attack the enterprise of private versus public language (if that's your mission).

So what is qualia to Wittgenstein? It is the predictable behavior that surrounds the use of that term, just like any other term. I say "ouch" to pain, so we now know what pain is. But to be clear, "pain" is a word. We don't speak of mental states.

If I say "I'm experiencing qualia," qualia is that thing I say when I perhaps express confusion at my state or I simply mean to say that I'm having a non-descript mental state, not to be confused with the actual mental state. That is "I'm feeling qualia" is known by how I use it. Mostly it's a term used in philosophy forums when other words like "consciousnessess," "Wittgenstein," "mental objects," "silence" and other sorts of words get used.

Quoting Banno

Here's my question for those who would have us talk of qualia: what is added to the conversation by their introduction? If a qual is the taste of milk here, now, why not just talk of the taste of milk here, now?

Two reasons: The Wittgensteinian one and the non-Wittgensteinian one.

The Wittgensteinian one: Words have varying uses and they are rarely truly synonomous. A quale has a particularized use, not one that you would expect, for instance, a child to use ("Mama, I need a milk quale in my mental constitution"). That term is used in philosophical contexts to reference limitations of language and considerations as to whether private language might exist. It is also used as an example by its opponents as a superfluous descriptor that ought be subject to elimination. (Note the use of "use" over and over).

The non-Wittgensteinian one: It is the referent to internal feelings, like pain and to representations of reality, as in, it is the conscious experience of the light wave that emits from my computer screen. It references the metaphysical. It is something not necessarily rejected by Wittgensteinian thought as non-existent, but instead as a conversation that cannot take place within a language game because it refers to non-linguistic entities, creating a category mistake by speaking about that which can't be spoken about (or so the argument goes). That is, a quale doesn't get the respect to be told it does not exist. It is told it makes no sense.

My thought after thinking too much about this is that Wittgenstein says truly and completely nothing about metaphysics. Not to overly summarize, but all he seems to be saying is that non-linguistic things cannot be spoken about. That is, if I have an internal language that sorts my internal thoughts, that is my private language, and I have no reason to share it because you won't know what it means. If you do know what it means, it's obviously not private. We're just talking about what we can't talk about. A language no one speaks is hardly a language at all.

Quoting J

Not so clear to me. Is this the "absurd game" you're looking for a solution to? Or do you endorse this viewpoint?

It seems to me that the absurdity is evident. An "outside of language" is not conceivable because "outside" is a word? Pain is surely outside of language, as is just about everything else we experience. Whether we must mediate these experiences through language is a separate question, the answer to which will vary depending on which experiences. Pain, I'm guessing, is pretty language-free.

THIS is what you are up against: your thinking makes assumptions about what is not language, IN language. And any way you might have of understanding what something IS has its "isness" in copula 'is'. Imagine qualia without the word 'qualia'. Language is the foundation for comprehension. In matters of pain and ethical examples, this is all played out contextual settings, but without any setting of this kind at all?? Things would have no ethical dimension, because ethics comes into being by talking about ethics. The only way one can even imagine a cat's world vis a vis the pain it has, is through this matrix of goods and bads and the "issues" that arise; but there are no issues outside of what language can say. Issues are inherently propositional, and without propositions, one simply stares vacuously into space. It is impossible to imagine a world outside of language, because 'language' itself is a particle of language. Language is what we ARE.

And this by no means is wrong. It just doesn't follow through.

For me, I think philosophy's job is to first describe, not just create inhibitions on belief (which leads to the ever popular nihilism, epistemic, ethical, ontological nihilism). Comprehension exceeds propositional affirmation, which comes down to: all propositions are open, and tracing their openness leads to openness itself, and here there is a threshold at which one can stand before all things, yet possessed by none interpretatively; a 'place' where thought yield to all that is laid out before them, including, of course, the massive totality of other thoughts----Jarring, uncertain, uncanny, yet this is where philosophy takes thought. 'Pain' the concept is, at this juncture, pain the wonder and mystery. I think this is where your assumption goes where you say," Pain is surely outside of language, as is just about everything else we experience." In this you implicitly affirm the metaphysics of everydayness.

Quoting Astrophel

" Pain is surely outside of language, as is just about everything else we experience." In this you implicitly affirm the metaphysics of everydayness.

Not sure what that is. But in any case, thinking in language doesn't make the subject of thought also linguistic. Does cutting boards with a saw make every board a tool? Nor does it mean that animals and human infants don't have experiences because they don't have language.

I sense that you basically agree with this latter point, but are holding out for some other way to frame the idea that "Language is what we ARE." Language may be, as you say, the foundation for comprehension, but so much of my experience has nothing to do with comprehension.

Quoting Astrophel

It is impossible to imagine a world outside of language, because 'language' itself is a particle of language.

But why would that restrict what can be imagined? I am now imagining a rabbit. Why would it be the case that the rabbit must be within language, because "language" is within language? There could conceivably be some other reasons why imagining a rabbit requires some linguistic component, but the status of the word "language" itself doesn't seem relevant.

Quoting Hanover

I will say that if there is no private language, then what Wittgenstein states related to the limits of language follows. And this should be obvious as you think about it. All things within the private mental state (i.e. qualia) are necessarily off limits because the antecedent of the conditional is that "there is no private language." And so that's where the challenge has to be made, which is to attack the enterprise of private versus public language (if that's your mission).

All things within the private mental state are private because we have a term for private mental states, which is 'private mental states'. Language is reflexive, turns back on itself, and like the serpent that bites its own tail, the ouroboros, finds its self in the very ground of the conclusions of its reasonings. A symbol of hermeneutics. I am not trying to irritate you. I do want to make a point about how intrusive philosophy can be in the simplest things. I am reminded of this from a book on Foucault, "Foucault associates himself with the modernist voice of Beckett’s Molloy: ‘I must go on; I can’t go on; I must go on; I must say words as long as there are words, I must say them until they find me, until they say me . . .’ (Samuel
Beckett, The Unnameable, quoted in DL, 215). Language penetrates, if you will, to the very core of what we are and all that can be summoned to "speak" us into existence.

If I had to say what my mission is, it would be along the lines of making more clear that extraordinary boundary between language and "real' metaphysics, where everything is under erasure. This erasure is, as Wittgenstein said of "that which cannot be said" in his Tractatus to a prospective publisher, the most important part. This takes philosophical work that deals with just this. It does exist in post post modern theology. Husserl through Heidegger through ....language and TO the world.

For me, the world is pure wonder and horror; pure because it has nothing to do with that or that or any particular thing at all. It is in our "thrownness," our being here as such. Qualia is about this primordial thrownness of who and what we are. I see a cat, and the "ouroboros of seeing" takes analysis right back the very seeing itself. This doesn't led to solipsism at all. It simply says that the things around me are acknowledged in me. What else? It simply leads to the much sought after simplicity of grounding our existence. It is already grounded, but one must understand this in a pure openness to the world.

Quoting Hanover

So what is qualia to Wittgenstein? It is the predictable behavior that surrounds the use of that term, just like any other term. I say "ouch" to pain, so we now know what pain is. But to be clear, "pain" is a word. We don't speak of mental states.

If I say "I'm experiencing qualia," qualia is that thing I say when I perhaps express confusion at my state or I simply mean to say that I'm having a non-descript mental state, not to be confused with the actual mental state. That is "I'm feeling qualia" is known by how I use it. Mostly it's a term used in philosophy forums when other words like "consciousnessess," "Wittgenstein," "mental objects," "silence" and other sorts of words get used

I think you are right to say this term is something that turns up in philosophy forums, but really, nowhere else, and this is because other contexts do not possess the basis for the concept to come forth. Only philosophy. You can say " I am feeling qualia" only if you are in that particular philosophical context where the issue of qualia makes sense, and you are consciously trying to acknowledge tht world without language, and you do a reduction by eliminating all that can be said about the world, as world, and not just qualia as qualia, because what keeps qualia "at a distance," so to speak, is not just some constraint on belief about qualia, but the whole totality of language that constitutes your everydayness, that is, language instantly assimilates what it sees, and it takes philosophicl work to "unsee' this instant interpretatively qualified existence. I look up at the clock in the morning, and clocks, and what they do, and their role in my affairs comes instantly in to play. ALL things implicitly are brought to heel like this. Qualia is outside of this totality, and it is important to see that to "comprehend" qualia, one stands no out side the taste of wine or the smell of a rose; rather one stands outside the general grip language has on all things. It is a standing back and away from sense making across the board. My thinking? That taste of wine (Dennett's example) is not just a taste, but is bound to a very extensive set of meanings that are the impossibly complex implicit understanding of being in the world, the being in a wine shop, walking through the door, on a floor, walls all around, and so forth. This is what possesses the non-quale dimensions of the event, making what is there conform and stand a A being. Qualia can only be understood in a radical withdrawal from language-in-the-world.

My take is that qualia is an analytic term, as are ALL such things. Nothing more or less. It is not some platonic form that finally speaks the world as it is, really. A philosophical term that says, look, language is what comprehension is made of, yet it does not exhaust comprehension of what the world is, and there is this residuum that is actuality that both is conceived in and by language, yet stands apart from language[/u]; thus, language itself must be understood differently in order to allow this. Language in its essence, in other words, is incompletely understood; it is rather open, not just to novel construals of what is already in language, but to an impossible "other' than what language, at least in its current evolvement, can conceive.

Reply to J @BannoReply to Astrophel


Thoughts on Private Language:

And I could be wrong, so feel free to say so because I don't just speak this for myself, but I do so to understand it through my community of speakers. See what I did there?

I discuss private langauge in this thread because it is the content of private language we discuss here, which we call "qualia." If there is no private language, there is no qualia, but if there is, there is.

The problem with the privacy of qualia doesn't lie in its inaccessibility, but it lies in its insulation from community rules. It is not its location within your head that insulates it from rules. It is its removal from the community of rulers that insulates it. That is, if the community were in your head, you inner states would not be private states. Odd example, but that matters.

The reason others must rule you and you not rule yourself, is that if you are the authority as to what the rule is, you can change the rules from second to second. You cannot meaningfully obey or disobey the law if you are given unbrideled power to change it and to rule upon it.

A thought experiment: Assume the feeling I have when I'm at the park I self refer to as "burj." I speak this word commonly to myself, often out loud, but no one ever hears it. What this means is that I cannot check for my consistency in use of the word and it cannot be verfied that today's feeling of burj is yesterday's. I engage in ten years of this self-talk of burj, and on year 10, it is discovered that the park had audio-taped my coversations unbeknownst to anyone.

On this day, a community listens to my recorded speech and it decides I have used burj consistently and subject to a rule. It is now a word retroactively. Before, not.

This makes the point again: The reason "burj" was not a word yesterday isn't because it was simply isolated in my head. What made it not a word was that no community had evaluated it. In this thought experiment, the community did not get into my head, but it was the usage of the word that fell into the previously silent world. Use arrived late, well after the word spoken, but its use made the non-word of yesterday the word of today once it was used.

The provocative question: Were the mutterings prior to the tape recording being heard what we properly call qualia? It, to be sure, had ontological status. Why not name it?

EDIT: The bold I used made my post look AI-ish, but, trust me, AI is smarter than this.

Quoting Hanover

On this day, a community listens to my recorded speech and it decides I have used burj consistently and subject to a rule.

I hate to rain on a fun thought experiment but . . . what does this actually mean? Could you give just a few examples of how you spoke to yourself using "burj," and how the community was able to declare your use consistent and rule-bound?

Quoting Hanover

The provocative question: Were the mutterings prior to the tape recording being heard what we properly call qualia? It, to be sure, had ontological status. Why not name it?

Nice. The mutterings were "out in the open" but still private because there was no community to evaluate it. I think the analogy works, and makes your point, but no, the mutterings are not what we properly call qualia. They may share the feature of being private by virtue of "no community", but qualia are sensations or individual subjective experiences, not words or behaviors. Allegedly.

Quoting Astrophel

this term [qualia] is something that turns up in philosophy forums, but really, nowhere else, and this is because other contexts do not possess the basis for the concept to come forth. Only philosophy.

I've seen this said before, and have never understood it. Anyone with an introspective turn of mind has thought of qualia, often under the name "inner feels." One of the standard childhood puzzles is, "How do I know my 'green' is your 'green'?" I've had innumerable conversations with adults in which the distinction is easily made between the (seemingly public) sensory basis for experiences of sight or sound, and the (seemingly private) experiences themselves.

Why hasn't "qualia" caught on as a term? No idea. But it can't be because the concept is obscure.

Quoting Hanover

Assume the feeling I have when I'm at the park I self refer to as "burj." I speak this word commonly to myself, often out loud, but no one ever hears it. What this means is that I cannot check for my consistency in use of the word and it cannot be verfied that today's feeling of burj is yesterday's. I engage in ten years of this self-talk of burj, and on year 10, it is discovered that the park had audio-taped my coversations unbeknownst to anyone.

On this day, a community listens to my recorded speech and it decides I have used burj consistently and subject to a rule. It is now a word retroactively. Before, not.

This makes the point again: The reason "burj" was not a word yesterday isn't because it was simply isolated in my head. What made it not a word was that no community had evaluated it. In this thought experiment, the community did not get into my head, but it was the usage of the word that fell into the previously silent world. Use arrived late, well after the word spoken, but its use made the non-word of yesterday the word of today once it was used.

The provocative question: Were the mutterings prior to the tape recording being heard what we properly call qualia? It, to be sure, had ontological status. Why not name it?

I think the 10 years of talking to yourself made it a word, though as you say, of somewhat dubious meaning. The group who hears the recordings will debate amongst themselves what it means. If they come to a consensus, it's probably because of that one lady who talked really loudly while other people were trying to say something, so she got her way because they were like, fine, whatever.

I just assume your functional consciousness is accompanied by qualia. In other words, as your body navigates around the park, there is something it's like to see, hear, smell, and feel the world around you. I assume you're that way because I am. There may be a little bit of dubiousness to naming various aspects of the experience, but that's par for the course for language, most of the time.

The people who introduce doubt about qualia are usually aiming for eliminative materialism. They're basically saying we're like robots who claim to be more than robots, but we're wrong, we're just robots.

Quoting J

but no, the mutterings are not what we properly call qualia. They may share the feature of being private by virtue of "no community", but qualia are sensations or individual subjective experiences, not words or behaviors. Allegedly.

The meaning underlying the mutterings are the references to qualia. That's the point of the thought experiment. They were non-linguistic and therefore meaningless due to lack of public rules until retroactively

Quoting frank

The people who introduce doubt about qualia are usually aiming for eliminative materialism. They're basically saying we're like robots who claim to be more than robots, but we're wrong, we're just robots.

This does not follow. Wittgensteinian linguistics is metaphysically agnostic because it refuses to speak of it. It does not hint one way or the other what lurks within. It talks about language and what can be expressed through language.

How could his theory possibly hold sway if it were defeated by simply pointing out we all have internal feelings? What he's getting at is the futility in discussing that which cannot be discussed.

Quoting J

Not sure what that is. But in any case, thinking in language doesn't make the subject of thought also linguistic. Does cutting boards with a saw make every board a tool? Nor does it mean that animals and human infants don't have experiences because they don't have language.

Yes, cutting boards with a saw makes the boards on which boards are cut, tools. And infants and animals do have have experiences, but these are not the kind of experiences that produce thought and philosophical discovery. I don't think about the way animals and infants experience the world because it is simply a bore. They eat, sleep, and defecate and stare at things, generally speaking. If they do possess more, then this more is interesting only because it is in the direction of being what our existence is.

Quoting J

I sense that you basically agree with this latter point, but are holding out for some other way to frame the idea that "Language is what we ARE." Language may be, as you say, the foundation for comprehension, but so much of my experience has nothing to do with comprehension.

Language is what we are, and so when I say "what we are" the verb 'to be' is what singles us out, determines our existence. I ask, what are you? and you will say you are a clerk in a store, a lawyer, a nurse, a husband, a wife, a geologist looking for fossils, I mean, the question who are you? IS a question, and the moment it is asked it belongs to language, and basic questions about what it is to be human is to respond to the question. One cannot answer such a question outside of lanuage, for the answer is inherently a construction of predication and this is propositional. The point would be that IF there is some way to disclose what IS and language has absolutely nothing to say about it, then to "speak it" really is nonsense. Everything you can say about animals, infants, paramecia, and so on, are what they are IN the medium of discovering these. Go to a dictionary to find out what something is and what do you find? More language. Ask me if an infant has experiences, and I SAY such and such.

Quoting J

But why would that restrict what can be imagined? I am now imagining a rabbit. Why would it be the case that the rabbit must be within language, because "language" is within language? There could conceivably be some other reasons why imagining a rabbit requires some linguistic component, but the status of the word "language" itself doesn't seem relevant.

It doesn't seem relevant because it is so pervasive, so integral to understanding that one hardly pays attention. One has to ask the question, what is being a "self" all about? Infants don't have a self (ipseity) .not yet. And all you can imagine has its being in language FOR US, for WE are language beings, not for elephants or giraffes: did you SAY "rabbit'? Again, whatever it IS outside of language is just impossible to conceive. If it were possible, then it could be taken up in language.

To me, one has to see that qualia is a philosophical construct only meaningful ina philosophical discussion, the same way talk about pottery or weaving techniques only has meaning IN such discussions. But this doesn't mean it is meaningless any more than talk about pottery is meaningless. One has to go there, into the issue to understand it.

Quoting Hanover

This does not follow. Wittgensteinian linguistics is metaphysically agnostic because it refuses to speak of it. It does not hint one way or the other what lurks within. It talks about language and what can be expressed through language.

How could his theory possibly hold sway if it were defeated by simply pointing out we all have internal feelings? What he's getting at is the futility in discussing that which cannot be discussed.

Imagine a realm of pure sensation. Think of it as a dark ocean and the mind is a flashlight, bringing this in view, focusing on that sound, or just relaxing without focus as colors bleed into each other, patterns appear, tones mix with undescribed feelings like the earth touching your feet.

Wittgenstein asks how language could be used to nail down some section of this ever turning ocean. If we picked a word, like red, how could we confidently say it properly attaches to this rather than that? What we can do is look to the way people behave. The word has no meaning that can endure over time until we see that it's attached to that rose, that berry, those lips, by the actions people take.

So Wittgenstein was not saying we don't have sensations. He's saying that words like pain don't gain their meaning by referring to a particular section of the ocean of sensations. There's no way to throw a dart of reference and hit something in that realm. The meaning comes from our primal connections with one another.

Do you agree with that?

Quoting Hanover

The provocative question: Were the mutterings prior to the tape recording being heard what we properly call qualia? It, to be sure, had ontological status. Why not name it?

I think the basic assumption of your question is that, prior to conceiving of burj in your head, you were already in a system of agreement about words and their meanings. The word 'burj' itself has its status of being outside of a consensus PRIOR to it being conceived, and so it was already in language regardless: it was already IN the consensus by being outside of it, because being outside of is contingent upon the consensus being in place for an "outside" to make sense.

The nature of qualia reveals itself nicely in your example, though. One cannot present the matter of qualia unless one brings into language the reflexive act of thought thinking about the nature of thought, thereby questioning its limits, because nothing IS that is not thought, and yet, as you know, the rabbit you imagine or otherwise is not a particle of language running around. But you see the dilemma: to know this is to speak it. Ontology and language CANNOT be separated.

Right now there is a crab under a rock in the depths of the Mariana Trench, never once observed. So how is it that science has so much to say about this crab? The "saying" is always preceded by established assumptions. One never REALLY sees that which sits before the camera, the telescope or before their very eyes. If this were so, then simply having eyes would be sufficient. What one "sees" lies in memory and a symbolic system called langauge that speaks what it there.

[quote=Excerpt from the Blind Spot Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson]Merleau Ponty writes: “For what exactly is meant by saying that the world existed prior to human consciousnesses? It might be meant that the earth emerged from a primitive nebula where the conditions for life had not been brought together. But each one of these words, just like each equation in physics, presupposes our pre-scientific experience of the world, and this reference to the lived world contributes to constituting the valid signification of the statement. [/quote]

I'm reluctant to say much more. @Hanover and I have had this chat before, but it repeats, like not-quite-right fish. I don't think Hanover has quite got the point of the private language argument down, mis-presenting it somewhat. But it seems we talk past each other, since here it is again.

Quoting Astrophel

Dennett, you will note in all of these "intuition pumps," makes the attempt to remove qualia from meaningful talk by reducing qualia to contextual affairs of meaning making, in which a quale is precisely not accessible, by definition.

I don't think that quite fair. Have another look at the first few paragraphs of Quining Qualia. Dennett is trying to deal withe the notion as it is presented by those that use it, but running in to the difficulty that they themselves do not agree as to what qualia are. Dennett is pointing out the consequences of their own usage.

Quoting Astrophel

I don't think about the way animals and infants experience the world because it is simply a bore. They eat, sleep, and defecate and stare at things, generally speaking.

I guess this would be a spade-turning difference between us. I am fascinated by the inner lives of animals; to me it's the least boring thing in the world. Infants, a close second. I guess you've never been close to an animal? Eating, sleeping, defecating, and staring are popular activities, all right, just as they are for us! (And you left out sex!). But they don't begin to exhaust the repertoire.

As for our need for language to describe non-linguistic things: granted. You still haven't shown me how this turns the thing described into more language.

Quoting Hanover

The meaning underlying the mutterings are the references to qualia.

Ah. But that's different. You asked, "Were the mutterings prior to the tape recording being heard what we properly call qualia?" I think you owe us a story about how the mutterings are conveyers of meaning, which in turn can be analogous to qualia. I took you literally, to be referring to the sounds themselves. Isn't the question (of what [and how] they could mean) at the heart of the thought experiment?

Quoting Banno

I don't think that quite fair. Have another look at the first few paragraphs of Quining Qualia. Dennett is trying to deal withe the notion as it is presented by those that use it, but running in to the difficulty that they themselves do not agree as to what qualia are. Dennett is pointing out the consequences of their own usage.

I don't know what is supposed to be fair. I don't think it enters into it. Dennett had a naive understanding about qualia because there is naivete built into his thinking and those he was addressing. Naive because he really didn't know how to talk about what it is that makes qualia an idea at all. It would be pretty easy to go through each "pump" and show this. He holds that cauliflower's taste cannot be pinned to any particular "central" taste and therefore is hopelessly lost to discovery of qualia: one cannot "isolate the qualia from everything else that is going on." But isolating qualities that disappear as other qualities arise, says nothing about the presence qua presence of what is there before one. It doesn't matter how it appears, or the consistency of its appearing, or its intensity, or its morphing into something else, because qualia is not a property, not part of a description of consciousness, as he thinks it is. Qualia is only what it "is" when all "properties" are suspended, so it being a taste of cauliflower or wine, is already a misconception. The "taste" is not a taste nor is it of anything. In order for one to take qualia as a meaningful concept, one has to release the "taste" from its language imposition, while still in the general language setting that is foundational for being a self. How can this be done?

One has to reconceive what language is and allow metaphysics back into philosophical conversation, something anglo american thinking has an absurd and debilitating phobia about, but it's the only way to understand the world that is other than language---though, not beyond what language can say, for language can say anything. There are no limits to language in so far as what language is vis a vis the world. It is just that in basic ontology, what is NOT language emerges in the analysis. Language can say this just as I am saying it now (and this is to pull away from earlier comments a bit. Technical matters are not postable). At any rate, I claim that nothing could be more clear than this, yet philosophers thinking in the tradition of positivism are appalled because they think it smacks of metaphysics...and they are right; it does.

Quoting J

I guess this would be a spade-turning difference between us. I am fascinated by the inner lives of animals; to me it's the least boring thing in the world. Infants, a close second. I guess you've never been close to an animal? Eating, sleeping, defecating, and staring are popular activities, all right, just as they are for us! (And you left out sex!). But they don't begin to exhaust the repertoire.

As for our need for language to describe non-linguistic things: granted. You still haven't shown me how this turns the thing described into more language.

Well, don't get me wrong. We have three cats and they are adorable, and they are endowed with emotional abilities, are sensitive, yearning for affection. But philosophically they are uninteresting, meaning whatever they possess that IS interesting is only seen through the interpretative gaze of a cognizing and affective egoic center that is me, a person, and this is where the issue of qualia finds its ground. Your pet is only a pet, an animal, affectionate, in short, what it IS, IN the system of its apprehension. I like to think of a company you and I can begin right now, call it "Pets for Prosperity Inc." (PFP) and you are CEO while I am cofounding affiliate, and now we need pamphlets to raise awareness, and more employees, and do community service, and take in donations, and soon we are a huge, entangled corporation that has sway politically, controls vast wealth, and so on. Now at this point, does PFP exist? Of course it does. Just ask any of our 1.5 million employees. And the world says we ARE that and that and our enemies say we ARE less savory thises and thats: we ARE.

But we were NOT just years before. How does existence simply come into being just by talking it into being? A person is like this, no? I am born, "given" a name, given a language and a culture, and PFP was constructed OUT OF that, but even as I write these words, it is the language that is doing the talking. Of course, things get done, but the question of what it IS that gets done belongs to language, as does the question of what I AM? Ask what you are, with the provision that you cannot say this. Cat got your tongue?

The point is, language is primordial, and that makes being complicated...or does it? Qualia: the not-language discovered in language, or in spite of language, or in the midst of language; it is presupposed in everything that IS, just like language! This is the world where cats and dogs appear, are brought into being in the first place, on the stage, if you will, of language and its possiblities, and this setting has a historical genesis, and there really is no "outside" of this. It's not that cats don't have an inner world, but this world, like my own, is understood through language, when I encounter my cat, it is an event, not just some passive reception.

Quoting J

" I think you owe us a story about how the mutterings are conveyers of meaning, which in turn can be analogous to qualia. I took you literally, to be referring to the sounds themselves. Isn't the question (of what [and how] they could mean) at the heart of the thought experiment?

Scenario #1: T-1

So, I'm walking through the woods, and I get this feeling I fully identity with personally. It reminds me of my youthful walks in the woods. I say to you, I'm feeling burj. I use this word often. While neither can show one another's feeling, I use the word consistently. This is public use, full fledged language

Scenario #2: T-2

Same thing, except this time, you're not there. I'm alone. I use that word often, out loud, saying it, using it in sentences, even describing it. No one ever hears me ever. .Burj is not a word. It is not publicly used.

Scenario #3: T-3

Same as #2 except you find the video of me talking to myself all those years that no one had ever seen before. You confirm I followed rules.

What we have here is retroactive public language. It's removing you from Scenario #2 at T-3 and inserting you into scenario #1 at T-3.

If we hold that in Scenario #3 burj is language, but the exact usage at Scenario #2 it was not, then we need a word for burg at T-2. That word is qualia.

Hang with me in this maze. Tell me where it's wrong.

Reply to Hanover OK, the picture is coming a bit more in focus. Is my role at T-1 mute, though? Am I meant to be understood as simply listening, just as I do with the video at T-3? Can we assume that, among other uses of "burj," you define it for me?

I need to get a little clearer about these circumstances before I can hazard an opinion on what is missing, so to speak, during the crucial T-2 events, which take place with neither a present nor a future auditor.

Quoting Astrophel

We have three cats and they are adorable, and they are endowed with emotional abilities, are sensitive, yearning for affection.

Very good! And do you never wonder what they're thinking? I find this especially interesting precisely because I doubt they have language, yet I'm quite sure they engage in ratiocinative mental processes and are able to represent facts about the world to themselves, somehow.

Quoting Astrophel

But we [the corporation] were NOT just years before. How does existence simply come into being just by talking it into being? A person is like this, no?

Well, no. I'm happy to grant existence, for philosophical purposes, to both corporations and persons (however galling that may be in U.S. politics). But if we agree that both exist, we should also agree that they exist in very different ways. A corporation is a sort of mereological construction, whereas a person is a living biological entity. (I'm assuming you don't mean to get into the intricacies of whether every human is properly a "person."). A living thing doesn't get talked into existence. A corporation does, and must, along with a few other social requirements.

Quoting Astrophel

The point is, language is primordial, and that makes being complicated... or does it?

Again, I recognize that this is what you're asserting, but I don't see the case for it yet. Let's imagine that all language-users go extinct; is the physical world not still there? If so, how is language primordial? It may be basic and constitutive for us, but that's a different matter, no? Likewise, we can hypothesize that our way of constituting the physical world is simply that -- our way -- but do you want to deny any independent existence to it at all?

Quoting J

the picture is coming a bit more in focus. Is my role at T-1 mute, though? Am I meant to be understood as simply listening, just as I do with the video at T-3? Can we assume that, among other uses of "burj," you define it for me?

You're muteness isn't necessary. You may speak. I just made you quiet because I prefer people not talking. It's my story, so I made it more pleasant.

The critical aspect is the community of speakers who are able to obtain consistency in usage and enforce rules, else it'd be a private language.

If you can't speak, like if you were a cat, then that'd be a problem for the language game to occur. However, if you were a cat, my story would be better all things considered, but I digress.

Quoting J

I need to get a little clearer about these circumstances before I can hazard an opinion on what is missing, so to speak, during the crucial T-2 events, which take place with neither a present nor a future auditor.

Your caution is appreciated, although curious, considering I tend toward a more stream of consciousness methodology.

But to get back on the rails here, if you begin with a system that demands public validation, the test to be imposed seems like it must be to how that occurs. My test, to the extent valid, plays with the timing of it, validating ex post communicato as they would say in Latin if it were spoken today as yesterday, which I think speaks in the present from the past like in my example. Again.

But for real, I do think I'm onto something here, so you're thoughts are appreciated.

Quoting Hanover

So, I'm walking through the woods, and I get this feeling I fully identity with personally. It reminds me of my youthful walks in the woods. I say to you, I'm feeling burj. I use this word often.While neither can show one another's feeling, I use the word consistently. This is public use, full fledged language

But we can show each other feelings, as long as we assume there's some commonality between us. To pin down what "burj" is, I could take a rock and pretend to smash my foot and hold it and hop up and down on the non-injured foot yelling "burj! burj!" Assuming we each understand "yes" and "no" correctly, you would stop me and say "no burj". Maybe a dog wanders by and flops in your lap and you pet it and look happy and say "burj". Now I'm starting to understand what you mean by "burj".

Reply to RogueAI No doubt burj is a word when it is publicly used.

No doubt it's not when it's not.

My test case was what about after it's not but while it's not?

Making sense of that last question: it was not publicly used at T-2, but at T-3, we found a tape of it, so it was publicly used at T-2 just not known to be publicly until T-3.

Reply to Hanover I had ChatGPT help me iron out some of my rambling thoughts. Maybe there is no private language ever? Maybe the process of coming up with a word "splits" the mind into speaker and listener, so the invention of any word is a public event. Anyway,

"On the possibility of private language—even within one mind—here’s where it gets interesting. When I coin a new word for a feeling I’m having, I’m not just labeling the raw sensation. I'm placing that word into a mental framework of contrasts, expectations, and usage patterns. In effect, my mind is playing two roles: one part invents, the other interprets and validates. Even privately, there’s a kind of intra-mental dialogue, similar to what happens when we talk to ourselves or reflect on a dream. This structure mirrors the public use of language, just without another person.

And we know from split-brain studies that minds can bifurcate. A single brain can contain functionally distinct agents—each with partial access to language, memory, and agency. So the idea that “private” language might involve one part of the mind proposing and another part accepting or rejecting isn't just poetic—it’s neurologically grounded. Even in solitude, meaning isn’t assigned in a vacuum; it’s tested against internal consistency, memory, and imagined scenarios.

So to your point: yes, language may begin “privately,” but it becomes language—even internally—only if it can be situated within a system of use and contrast. Without that internal structure, “burj” is just noise, like a feeling with no handle. With structure, it becomes meaningful—even before others hear it."

Quoting Hanover

However, if you were a cat, my story would be better all things considered, but I digress.

And if you were a cat, there'd be no story, so there! :joke:

OK, I just wrote a post in reply to your "burj" story that was coming along very nicely until I realized I had another question I needed to ask. So, if you'll be patient with me:

When you say that a quale is like "burj" at T-2, do you mean the word "burj" or the reference of the word, i.e., a feeling about the park? I had been taking you to mean the word itself, but in replying I realized that a lot hinges on that interpretation, so I'd better check it out.

Quoting J

Well, no. I'm happy to grant existence, for philosophical purposes, to both corporations and persons (however galling that may be in U.S. politics). But if we agree that both exist, we should also agree that they exist in very different ways. A corporation is a sort of mereological construction, whereas a person is a living biological entity. (I'm assuming you don't mean to get into the intricacies of whether every human is properly a "person."). A living thing doesn't get talked into existence. A corporation does, and must, along with a few other social requirements.

I think you have put one foot into qualia proper: By mereological construction, you mean nothing but a construction of relations, butthe rub is, how do you escape to what is there that is not this "nothing but"? One wants to say a "living biological entity" is the bottom line, for thought is directed to something palpable in time and space, and what could be more "real" than this, but when asked what a biological entity IS, you find more language, and this leads to more language still, untill you realize that all of you understanding of anything at all is bound to this, as you call it, mereological dimension, and there is no way out of this. A corporation, it can be said, is reducible to the thoughts of the biological entities that conceive it, andso this, too, can be held apart from the true physiology of the desirable affirmation, Consider.

Now you teeter on some fascinating philosophy, the true bottom line, if you will. Does a corporation reduce to qualia in inquiry that same way that a biological aentity does? Back up a bit: a biological entity like my cat is there, in the midst of my apprehension of things in the world, but no matter how I try to pin what the cat IS to something other than what language IS, my mouth is closed and my thoughts are suspended, for to speak what the cat IS is to deploy language! Even the term 'existence' leads to this same analytical finality. What is existence? And then, What am I?? You find language there, ready to hand, literally creating the affirmations in the propositions, but then, if you want to play the physicalist, there are no propositions in my cat!

Or are there? What is before me, that grey furry thing is speakable only in the speaking, so to speak. No words, no identity, no "isness," but then I KNOW with incorrigible certainty that there is "something" there that is not possessed by the speaking, and if you stare at this peoblem long enough, it becomes clear that a language construction (you refer to above as mereological) almost entirely constitutes the understanding of what that IS.....and yet there is this residuum that cannot be so reduced, a "thereness" or a "being" but this itself is simply language poking its head into the attempt to speak what it is. So how to move forward in understanding this, when understanding confronts its own terminus?

Well, what is the problem essentially? The problem is that there is "distance" between me and the "cat," epistemic distance. "It" is over there, and I am here, and laguage does not reach over and affirm what it IS by some impossible "knowledge at a distance". Long, long story short: The "cat" and the language that speaks it into being a cat are one. But this doesn't mean at all that cats are language; it does mean that I am allowed to speak of the "cat' as a cat in speakable terms, and the term in this conversation is 'qualia'.

Quoting J

Again, I recognize that this is what you're asserting, but I don't see the case for it yet. Let's imagine that all language-users go extinct; is the physical world not still there? If so, how is language primordial? It may be basic and constitutive for us, but that's a different matter, no? Likewise, we can hypothesize that our way of constituting the physical world is simply that -- our way -- but do you want to deny any independent existence to it at all?

Of course not. But that being a cat becomes a cat when I take it into my perceptual apparatus. Prior to this, it is not a cat. My perceptual, cognitive, affective "functions" manufacture catness.

Quoting J

When you say that a quale is like "burj" at T-2, do you mean the word "burj" or the reference of the word, i.e., a feeling about the park? I had been taking you to mean the word itself, but in replying I realized that a lot hinges on that interpretation, so I'd better check it out.

Well yes, that's the crux of this. I'm challenging the Wittgensteinian model that dispenses with the referent and relies upon use by suggesting that with my time shifting we can isolate the quale.

Usage theories depend upon public rule creation and enforcement which was lacking in scenario 2, so we had no language then. But in 3, viola, we imposed public games playing retroactively by discovering the hidden videotape.

So if we subtract 2 from the 3, we isolate our quale.

Or so the argument goes.

Quoting Astrophel

But that being a cat becomes a cat when I take it into my perceptual apparatus. Prior to this, it is not a cat. My perceptual, cognitive, affective "functions" manufacture catness.

This is what I meant by saying that "our way of constituting the physical world may be simply that -- our way." And I recognize that all kinds of meaningful debates occur around just how much the human apparatus contributes to what we consider the physical world to be -- in other words, what the cat "is" before it is a cat for us.

But if we agree, more or less, about this, how can language be primordial? Unless we're just disagreeing about what "primordial" ought to mean. I took it to refer to something extremely basic, ontologically, something that, at the very least, precedes human cognition. If all you mean is "Language is basic for humans, without which we could not recognize items we call 'cats'," then that's fine. Yet I sense you mean something quite different and more radical, but it still isn't clear.

Quoting Astrophel

thought is directed to something palpable in time and space, and what could be more "real" than this [biological entity], but when asked what a biological entity IS, you find more language, and this leads to more language still . . .

I want to understand why you believe the experience bottoms out in language. It seems to me that the necessity of thinking in language does not mean that what is thought about is also language. Can you help me see why this is false? With respect, you just keep asserting it. Can you perhaps describe how that experience happens for you -- the moment at which you lose contact with a reality external to language?

Quoting J

This is what I meant by saying that "our way of constituting the physical world may be simply that -- our way."

Reference here is to form of life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_life

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him"

Quoting Hanover

So if we subtract 2 from the 3, we isolate our quale.

OK, sorry if I'm like a dog with a bone here, but . . . if we dispense with the referent, as Witt suggests we can, are you arguing that the word itself at T-2 is now like a quale -- something personal and not yet "used," but still meaningful? Is that the case you're illustrating against usage as meaning?

Again, your patience is appreciated. I don't like posts that clearly haven't tried hard enough to understand what they're responding to, so I don't want to be guilty of that.

Quoting Hanover

Reference here is to form of life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_life

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him"

Yes, though as is often the case, I think Witt was exaggerating a bit to make his point.

Quoting J

But if we agree, more or less, about this, how can language be primordial? Unless we're just disagreeing about what "primordial" ought to mean. I took it to refer to something extremely basic, ontologically, something that, at the very least, precedes human cognition. If all you mean is "Language is basic for humans, without which we could not recognize items we call 'cats'," then that's fine. Yet I sense you mean something quite different and more radical, but it still isn't clear.

I want to understand why you believe the experience bottoms out in language. It seems to me that the necessity of thinking in language does not mean that what is thought about is also language. Can you help me see why this is false? With respect, you just keep asserting it. Can you perhaps describe how that experience happens for you -- the moment at which you lose contact with a reality external to language?

More radical, yes. You likely won't be very pleased.

Language is primordial not because it sits in the seat of absolute authority answering questions about absolute reality. Lnauge is inherently interpretative, contingent, a system of meanings that are intra-penetrating, so nothing has this seat of authority. But the philosophical insight that acknowledges that language recognizes its own delimitations is a pivotal recognition in that it forces, really, one to face a world without the confidence and security of any authority at all. THIS is the post modern world, and you can blame Kierkegaard through Hegel, through Heidegger through Derrida and beyond (go extreme and read Blanchot or Levinas. Madness to read, at first; but then you start to get it and it is extraordinary). I say Look a cat!, you ask, whaty is a cat? I look in the dictionary, find other explanations, and each of these bears the same indeterminacy. Primordiality, as you observe, itself belongs to this indeterminacy, for it is a particle of language, has a context of discussionable possibilities, so primordiality, as Heidegger puts it, is really "equiprimordiality": a bottom line analytic that is itself manifold, complex, open to the world for more penetrating discovery. He didn't posit, but explicitly denied, any metaphysical primordiality to our existence, anything like qualia.

That is, ontology, an analytic of what it means to be. Qualia is a term that violates this, it is argued correctly. It belongs to the margins of thought, that disconcerting threshold of acceptance. See how Eugene Fink talks about it: "Having overcome world naivete' we stand now in a new naivete, a transcendental naivete'. It consists in our unfolding and explicating transcendental life
only in the presentness." (from The Sixth Meditation" early on). See, Fink takes this idea very seriously, because he thinks that philosophy must end up here, facing a world that does not conform in its essence to standard thinking, which he calls naive. Naive because the cat seen and accepted as a cat is all there is to being a cat, in this everyday world. There is another world that IS this familair world and is also a more penetrating analytic into the presuppositions of all this familiarity.

Philosophy has to go here, to this threshold, otherwise it is reduced to squabbles about things that have no meaning, like ethics without a metaethics or existence without a metaexistence. Qualia is essentially metaphysics, not some medieval theology, but "real" metaphysics: what one must allow it, yet to do so requires not a discursive move into more of the "same" but into the "other" of this very world.

Quoting J

OK, sorry if I'm like a dog with a bone here, but . . . if we dispense with the referent, as Witt suggests we can, are you arguing that the word itself at T-2 is now like a quale -- something personal and not yet "used," but still meaningful? Is that the case you're illustrating against usage as meaning

To be specific, I'd say Witt doesn't suggest no internal, mental referent, but argues it is incorrect to seek that referent because meaning isn't derived from it. It is derived from use. The understanding of meaning comes from interaction within a community of users. Accepting that as true, we conclude in 2 there is no language.

We then go through my time rigamarole and we say "Hang on! The private mutterings within 2 have now satisfied the public use demands, particularly the adherence to clear rule following.

We then reassess and say within 2 we in fact had language. It was determined to be language at T-3, but it was known at T-2, which means we were wrong at T-2 to say it wasn't language. Turns out it was.

So, what existed at T-2 was (a) some sort of internal state and (b) a then unknown logical rule based coherence.

My conclusion is to suggest that since ontological state 2 was whatever it was at T-2, and T-3 cannot change what really existed in the world at T-2, then it was as much language from T-2 to T-3. This means that it was (a) that is the critical element for language, which I call a "quale " The issue isn't (b) as we have shown that whether the language actually follows a rule matters, not whether it is known. That means we need not subject a word to public use to make it lingual. A private word is just as much a word as a public word. There might be epistemic challenges at T-2 to know if it's language, but that doesn't impact ontology.

Reply to Hanover OK, here's where I am with this, and please tell me if you think I'm off track:

First of all, you're showing that this is not about private language as Witt understood it. There's nothing intrinsically private about "burj," or at least I don't think there is -- that's why I've been so concerned to understand the circumstances in which it's introduced. It got a little confusing because, by telling us that it refers to a somewhat ineffable feeling on the part of the speaker, you incline us toward believing that it is private in Witt's sense, but the subsequent details don't bear that out. "Burj" is merely a potential new word in a public language. It would make no difference to the case whether "burj" referred to a somewhat ineffable feeling or a type of perfectly effable tree.

I think this fits with your saying:

Quoting Hanover

That means we need not subject a word to public use to make it lingual. A private word is just as much a word as a public word

though you take it a bit further. For you, "burj" is already a word at T-2, by virtue of its meaning something to you, the speaker. I'm calling it a "potential" word but the difference is unimportant because we're both saying that, either way, it's not private in the invidious sense that would lead someone to conclude that meaning lies exclusively in usage. (It is an open question, however, whether meaning can be determined in any other way.)

If all that rings true, then I see the analogy with qualia. Your (a) is the internal state which analogizes to a quale, in that both exist and are "meaningful," if I can put it that way, yet have no appearance in public. You're saying it isn't possible to demote either (a) or a quale, claiming they're irrelevant to the experiences of language use and sense perception, respectively. Subjectivity matters, in short.

The analogy might break down when we ask how a quale could become part of public experience, but that's outside the scope of your story here.

Well, this is interesting and complex enough that I might have it all wrong! But see what you think.

Quoting Astrophel

You likely won't be very pleased.

Oh hell, nothing in philosophy pleases me! :grin:

Quoting Astrophel

But the philosophical insight that acknowledges that language recognizes its own delimitations is a pivotal recognition in that it forces, really, one to face a world without the confidence and security of any authority at all.

OK. But how does that turn the world into language?

Quoting Astrophel

I say Look a cat!, you ask, whaty is a cat? I look in the dictionary, find other explanations, and each of these bears the same indeterminacy.

Let's switch the example to something I might really find puzzling -- an echidna, let's say. You point to the thing, calling it by name, and I say, "What's an echidna?" For starters, you'll say, "That is," and I'll have a good look and form some sense impressions. We might then discuss its features. If I then go on to ask, "What sort of beast is it?" you might have recourse to a biology text to give me some info. But that can't be the point at which what you're calling the "indeterminacy" enters. Nothing in a written text is any more indeterminate than the language you and I are already using. So for me, the question is, How indeterminate is that? At the level of philosophy, we all know the arguments that can be made. But none of them prevents you and me from agreeing with perfect certainty on what counts as an echidna, and what are the correct and incorrect ways of describing it. Isn't that good enough?

Quoting Astrophel

primordiality, as Heidegger puts it, is really "equiprimordiality": a bottom line analytic that is itself manifold, complex, open to the world for more penetrating discovery

You do realize this is opaque? Perhaps not in context, but it doesn't do the job of explaining why the world must be made of language, which is what I was asking about.

Quoting Astrophel

He didn't posit, but explicitly denied, any metaphysical primordiality to our existence, anything like qualia.

Who said qualia, or some qualia-like sense of existence, were metaphysically primordial? (Not me.) I'm asking why you think language is. Do you perhaps mean that the only alternative to the primacy of language is some story about what is self-evident about my own existence? Why would that be?

Quoting Astrophel

the cat seen and accepted as a cat is all there is to being a cat, in this everyday world. There is another world that IS this familair world and is also a more penetrating analytic into the presuppositions of all this familiarity.

Fair enough. Can you describe the cat in terms of the more penetrating analytic, showing how a relevant difference in description occurs?

I'm really not some AnalPhil opponent of Continental philosophy. Nor am I trying to broaden the discussion to make you defend an entire approach to philosophy. I just want to get a sympathetic grasp on how it might appear to an intelligent thinker that the external world is at bottom linguistic, which I take to be your position. Far from wanting to refute it, I'd like to inhabit it, at least provisionally, and see what I can learn.

Quoting J

OK. But how does that turn the world into language?

So I'm not going to put out there the long version. As succinctly as it can be put: It's is crazy to think what you see before you is what it is with no contribution from the perceptual act that produces it. Its "isness" IS the act, and when I turn my attention to a fence post, say, I already know fence posts prior to attention being episodically engaged, and this recognition is part and parcel of the act that brings the fence post to mind, allowing it to be understood AS a fence post. For us, not for cats, this is a language event, for ven though you may not say "fencepost", it reveals its language dimension themoment you do, think about where it is, how shabby it is, how lost you are, who it belongs to, and so on. It is these language contexts that tacitly attend the passive understanding, evidenced by the way language is "ready to hand" and the way language confirms what it IS in language: a fencepost.

It is not that we don't share a basic structure of relating to the world with animals; I am sure we do, but a self that knows, constructs conditionals, negations, disjunctions, conjunctions, and so on, is a language construct. Consider: I say, "I am." This is supposed to be an existential declaration, but who is talking here? I want to say I am using language, but the way of affirming that it is me is in the language that "speaks". I say, "why, it is me." You see, cats do not have the ability to use the copula, "is". They cannot predicate anything of something else, and they cannot think propositionally. Language confers upon the world its "being". No, you say, perhaps, being is all that out there, the trees, the birds, and so forth, but: what ARE these without language? What am I, if the "I" is not speakable?

But you will protest again that obviously there are things there that are not language. Obviously. This is why we have the term qualia: unspoken Being (and since this is sooo succinctly put, I have settle for this here. Once you read into the matter, things get technical).

Quoting J

Let's switch the example to something I might really find puzzling -- an echidna, let's say. You point to the thing, calling it by name, and I say, "What's an echidna?" For starters, you'll say, "That is," and I'll have a good look and form some sense impressions. We might then discuss its features. If I then go on to ask, "What sort of beast is it?" you might have recourse to a biology text to give me some info. But that can't be the point at which what you're calling the "indeterminacy" enters. Nothing in a written text is any more indeterminate than the language you and I are already using. So for me, the question is, How indeterminate is that? At the level of philosophy, we all know the arguments that can be made. But none of them prevents you and me from agreeing with perfect certainty on what counts as an echidna, and what are the correct and incorrect ways of describing it. Isn't that good enough?

In a context of talking about enchidna, it makes sense to talk about enchidna. If you and I made up an animal, gave it a name, it would depend on what we say about it, but whatever that would be would depend on what is already there, in the resources of language at our disposal. Japanese or Zimbabwean connotative values would be unavailable to me, for example. Indeterminacy is not about contextual agreements, like the ones found in text books or dictionaries. These are determinacies, for all is there for one to read and agree about. Rather, it is about these contexts, and any context you can think of, having no center, no final context to which they conform and derive their essential meaning. God use to be this, and the church, for example, but in the post modern setting, God is absent and thus the ground for all things is absent, and so meanings just hang there, so to speak, by their own intercontextual agreements and possibilities, but no foundation outside of this. There is no outside. Such a thing belongs to metaphysics.


Quoting J

Who said qualia, or some qualia-like sense of existence, were metaphysically primordial? (Not me.) I'm asking why you think language is. Do you perhaps mean that the only alternative to the primacy of language is some story about what is self-evident about my own existence? Why would that be?

One has to steer clear of all of the above, stories, scientific accounts (regardless of how well evidenced), for even the "saying" the word 'qualia' stands as a violation of what it "is". For to speak is never "about" what sits before your eyes. Speech is historical, logic sees individual things subsumed under universal concepts, some think truth is made, not discovered (for we construct meanings in propositions, and propositions are bound to a contextuality of related meanings). But a quale-like sense, this makes the move, for a sense is something that intimates a vagueness not yet congealed in words. What makes all of this so difficult is that the method of discovery (real discovery) has to thought about.

In his Ideas I, Husserl spoke of a phenomenological reduction, and this is a modified Cartesian attempt to suspend language's instant grasp of things in the world, such that if one practiced just looking at "things themselves" (not to be confused with Kant's noumena, the "thing itself") rather than allowing mundane language use to do what it always does, which is to identify spontaneously, thoughtlessly, preanalytically, preontologically, one could eventually see the world as it IS, the world of phenomena, not cats, and dogs and computer chips, but the phenomenological ground that is always there, but ignored. So this word "sense" has some value in this, because as familiarity slips away in this method, and the uncanny "sense" of things moves in (Kierkegaard's "anxiety"; see his Concept of Anxiety. Heidegger had read Kierkegaard closely), there is an existential crisis, and how one understands this depends on who you read.

This innocent idea of qualia is at the heart of some of the most abstruse philosophy there is.

Private language is really not the way to frame the discussion about qualia. One's being in the world is historical and collective, but this language one inherits is inherently reductive, that is, it reduces the world of itches and tickles, and yearnings, and contmpt and interest, and on and on, into a language that gives these actualities enunciation, or even "being". Language both opens and closes a world's meanings, but the point I wold make is this: I have experiences you do not have, simply because mine are here and yours there, and I can't witness yours nor you mine. My world is a private actuality, and no one can "peek in". But language is public, and so what I am, qualia aside, is a publicly constructed self that is settled in this private world. And so these actualities of feel and taste, etc., are understood subsumed under these public headings, but they remain independent of these as well. An itch, after all, is not language as such, and by as such I mean...as qualia.

Quoting J

Fair enough. Can you describe the cat in terms of the more penetrating analytic, showing how a relevant difference in description occurs?

I'm really not some AnalPhil opponent of Continental philosophy. Nor am I trying to broaden the discussion to make you defend an entire approach to philosophy. I just want to get a sympathetic grasp on how it might appear to an intelligent thinker that the external world is at bottom linguistic, which I take to be your position. Far from wanting to refute it, I'd like to inhabit it, at least provisionally, and see what I can learn.

Then read Heidegger's Being and Time. Here is an idea: Einstein talks about time, but he doesn't talk about the nature of the perceptual event that is presupposed by his mathematics. In division II of Being and Time Heidegger talks about time, taking up the way it has been handled historically, from Augustine (Confessions, chap 11), Brentano (which I have read a bit of), Kierkegaard, Husserl , and so on. The essential idea is that time has three modalities, past, present and future, and it is simply impossible to make sense of these at all apart from the others, for (the down and dirty version) when I think of the past, I do so in the present, and the past cannot be conceived apart from the present act of recollection as if one could simply step away from the present and affirm the past "as it is," which is just impossible to conceive. No, the past comes into existence IN the present recollection, but then, as I recall something in the present, that act of recalling itself anticipates the recalled events that are about to be recalled, just as, as I write these words, the next words that will be written do not spring up spontaneously from nowhere, but are anticipated PRIOR to the actual writing, and that priorness leaps ahead of the present into the anticipated future. I write what I already know, the words, sentential constructions, the meanings are all there, but these are already ahead of the present moment as they are thought.

Heidegger calls this the ecstatic modalities of time, ecstatic because each have their essence bound to that of the others: he past IS the future, and the future IS the past, and they each are outside of themselves, ecstatically, as they are IN each other. One could say, there really is no such thing as sequential time. Time is a unity. And the present? This is freedom. This is where one will find qualia.

Quoting Astrophel

For us, not for cats, this is a language event

Then, as noted before, we have no real difference. I too think that language permeates human experience, though calling sense perception a "language event" is perhaps too strong. I'd taken you to be saying that the thing we perceive is also a piece of language, but that, of course, is different, and I'm pleased you're not recommending such a view.

Quoting Astrophel

obviously there are things there that are not language. Obviously. This is why we have the term qualia

Well, and the term noumena as well. But again, no problem, as long as something, whether noumena or qualia (depending on the degree of idealism you adopt, I guess!) pre-exists our efforts to talk about it.

Really, can't this all be said quite simply? We don't (as adults with language) encounter the world innocently, seeing objects like fenceposts and cats "because they're there." Both biologically and socially, we've learned over the history of our species to make choices about how to concatenate and discriminate our perceptions into the categories that are important to us. More often than not, we're aided (or on occasion constricted) by our language, which provides ready labels. Whether some sort of "true being" is to be discovered beyond this, we don't know, or at least I don't.

Quoting J

Really, can't this all be said quite simply? We don't (as adults with language) encounter the world innocently, seeing objects like fenceposts and cats "because they're there." Both biologically and socially, we've learned over the history of our species to make choices about how to concatenate and discriminate our perceptions into the categories that are important to us. More often than not, we're aided (or on occasion constricted) by our language, which provides ready labels. Whether some sort of "true being" is to be discovered beyond this, we don't know, or at least I don't.

Simply? That was simply. Open, say, a book called Totality and Infinity by Emanuel Levinas, and your head will spin. These philosophers are not trying to be accessible to anyone but those who read continental philosophy.

Keep in mind that when you think of "the history of our species" and the way we are biologically and socially embedded in the world, you have not yet reached the primordiality of our existence. Phenomenology takes such thinking and asks what is presupposed in science's observations and claims. I said earlier that Einstein didn't really ask questions like this and did not enter into the presuppositional world of themes and analysis. You saybiology, and I don't at all disagree with biology, but I do ask about the perceptual acts that are in place in gathering biological data. A biologist tells me there is a physical brain that is the "seat" of consciousness, for example, and I do not deny this in a setting where biology is being discussed. But then ask, how this brain is confirmed to be what it is, and this of course goes to observation, and then the question, well, what is observation? Biologists will then give you an extensive account of the central nervous system, various organs that receive information, but then all of this begs the same question asked about the brain: we know nervous systems and the rest by observation, so what IS observation apart from these physical accounts that is non question begging? and then you have to move away from observation as a physical manifestation, because all of this kind of thing begs the same questions about observation, and then, you are forced to move into apriori reasoning, which is philosophy, really. (If someone gives empirical proof as an evidential ground for something, it is not going to be a philosophical thesis; it will be a science or some speculative extension of a science; though, technically, "science" needs to be qualified here. Husserl thought he had discovered a science of phenomenology). Philosophical naturalism leads absolutely nowhere philosophically.

A long time ago, I read Rorty who stated that there is no way to explain how anything "out there" gets "in here" referring to, respectively, some tree or cup on the table, and his brain. Rorty was a Heideggerian, Wittgensteinian, Deweyan; a pragmatist. I found this more than curious, and thought about it a lot until I discovered he was right: that epistemic relation between me and my cat "over there" is impossible, flat out impossible, on a naturalist ground for understanding, because, as Quine put it, for a naturalist science, causality is the essential authority the underlies all things (notwithstanding quantum issues, which do not deny causality, which is impossible, for causality is apodictically coercive, but await causal connectivity down the road), and there is nothing epistemic about causality!

The weirdest thing I had ever encountered, but there was no way out of this. In fact, it gets weirder, for not only on this basis do you not get knowledge of the world, you don't get knowledge of anything, for what is knowledge but brain events, and so to affirm brain events, what is the ground for this? Brain events. But calling them brain events is reducible to briain events, and to confirm this you would need to stand apart from brain events to do this, so that what you witness is not reducible to brain events. But this is absurd, to step outside of a brain event. Where, into another brain? But then this wold beg the same question! Wittgenstein said as much: logic cannot know the ground for logic (Kant said this, too), because to affirm this, one would have to move to a thrid perspective from which logic could be observed, but this itself would be questioned as to its nature, and one would have to again find another pov to affirm the ground for this; and so on.

The only way to preserve knowledge, and the world, and everything, is to step away from naturalism altogether. This thesis leads to pure epistemic and ontological nonsense. One then must move toward affirmation where it had been all along: in the phenomenon of the givenness of the object itself, which is apodictic, just as apodictic as logic! Hence, phenomenology wins the philosophical dispute over foundational ground for existence.

:wink:

Quoting J

First of all, you're showing that this is not about private language as Witt understood it. There's nothing intrinsically private about "burj," or at least I don't think there is -- that's why I've been so concerned to understand the circumstances in which it's introduced. It got a little confusing because, by telling us that it refers to a somewhat ineffable feeling on the part of the speaker, you incline us toward believing that it is private in Witt's sense, but the subsequent details don't bear that out. "Burj" is merely a potential new word in a public language. It would make no difference to the case whether "burj" referred to a somewhat ineffable feeling or a type of perfectly effable tree.

Alright, I went back and re-read myself. I think I see where the confusion arises, which is likely in my presentation of the thought experiment. You read what I literally said, not what I was thinking, which is ironic in a way.

In #1, burj was a word.
In #2, bujr was not a word.
In #3, burj was a tape recording of the word at #2 when it was not a word.

I said #1 was at T-1 and #2 was at T-2, leading you to understandably believe that the word that was at T-1 couldn't have unbecome a word at T-2. I want you therefore to erase from your memory banks #1 at T-1. It never happened. I had presented it as just an exemplar case of common word creation, but it wasn't to suggest that burj had been a word and now was un-worded once I started using it only in my brain without public use.

Is that where some confusion lies? Kill #1. It's dead. Now consider everything I said as if some of the things hadn't been said.

Quoting Hanover

Is that where some confusion lies?

Possibly, thank you.

Quoting Hanover

Kill #1. It's dead.

Consider it dead.

OK, the analogy with qualia is clear. In #2, "burj" is like a quale. In #3, "burj" is like a quale that has been made public. You're saying that there must be qualia, otherwise the transition from 2 to 3 would make no sense. "Burj" is still lingual, still a word, even at 2.

Something like that?

Moving it a little further, is there any process for making qualia public? We more or less understand what happens to "burj" in #3, but what is the analogy for qualia here?

Reply to J Is "burj" supposed as an example of a qual?

I'd understood that a qual was this sensation, here, now, present to me... that sort of thing. That the qual I have on looking at the red folder is not the same as the one I had looking at the folder yesterday - the light, the position of my head, being slightly different...

And so since "burj" occurs on multiple occasions, it is not a qual... perhaps it is a sensation, or a memory, or a pretence, but not a qual.

But that's the problem, isn't it? It remains so unclear what a qual is.