The study of atoms in the brain doesn't explain the redness of red;Materialism = FAKE

[JoeMorgue]

The OP, I think, would read "Qualia exist and cannot be explained by materialism, therefore materialism is a false description of reality" if it were more coherently stated. One possible reason why it wasn't is that it's an argument from ignorance in the purest form.

Dave

Well that and you will never, never, absolutely never get a defintion of whatever the goddamn chuff "qualia" that doesn't define them as "The part of the human experience that science can't explain."

We could grab someone who talks about qualia, show them every step from the photon hitting the eye at wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres, being detected by the rods and cones, sent to the brain via the optic nerve, and triggering a specific set of neurons and they'll still go "No there's something missing, that's not the same thing as EXPERIENCING red."

"What's Qualia?"
"It's an unexplained part of the human experience."
"Okay but what it is?"
"It's the part of the human experience we can't explain."
"Okay but... what... is... it?"
"Okay it's the feeling of the breeze on a summer day, the taste of an apple, the feel of silk..."
"All of that is simple neurological functioning."
"No. That doesn't explain all of it."
"What part can it not explain?"
"The Qualia."
"And what is the qualia?"
"It's the part that science can't explain."

20 GOTO 10.

Qualia is defined as the part of our experience we can't explain, and the explained part of our experience is qualia.

There's no question to be answered here. The qualia isn't in the garage right next to the invisible dragon.

 

[Darat]

We do keep hitting a problem in this thread and I think that is because there isn't a single agreed definition of "qualia" and I suspect several of us are talking past each other because we are using different definitions.

Given the opening post and the thread title I've been discussing what I think is the most well known or infamous formulation. Which is the one in which someone apparently learns "everything" there is about "red" but only when they see "red" for the first time do they "experience" redness so there was something "extra" that couldn't be learned from having "red" described to you.

That extra is taken by some to be a "non-physical" element, which is what I have assumed the opening post was on about given the "atoms can't explain redness" malarkey.

And this is why I was saying when we do tell someone/describe in sufficient detail (via hardware and software) red* to a sufficient degree someone will "experience redness". In other words the "non physical" extra doesn't exist.




*Same caveat to where we are actually up to in regards to the technology I previously mentioned.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

The OP, I think, would read "Qualia exist and cannot be explained by materialism, therefore materialism is a false description of reality" if it were more coherently stated. One possible reason why it wasn't is that it's an argument from ignorance in the purest form.

Dave

I stopped paying attention to the OP when I saw the Steven Crowder photo. I'd agree that materialism hasn't yet explained qualia, but I would say that strong statements of the form "X cannot explain Y" require a proof by contradiction. Which I am sure is nowhere to be found.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Well that and you will never, never, absolutely never get a defintion of whatever the goddamn chuff "qualia" that doesn't define them as "The part of the human experience that science can't explain."

We could grab someone who talks about qualia, show them every step from the photon hitting the eye at wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres, being detected by the rods and cones, sent to the brain via the optic nerve, and triggering a specific set of neurons and they'll still go "No there's something missing, that's not the same thing as EXPERIENCING red."

"What's Qualia?"
"It's an unexplained part of the human experience."
"Okay but what it is?"
"It's the part of the human experience we can't explain."
"Okay but... what... is... it?"
"Okay it's the feeling of the breeze on a summer day, the taste of an apple, the feel of silk..."
"All of that is simple neurological functioning."
"No. That doesn't explain all of it."
"What part can it not explain?"
"The Qualia."
"And what is the qualia?"
"It's the part that science can't explain."

20 GOTO 10.

Qualia is defined as the part of our experience we can't explain, and the explained part of our experience is qualia.

There's no question to be answered here. The qualia isn't in the garage right next to the invisible dragon.

Probably better if the whole thread just substitutes 'consciousness' for 'qualia' since they're so closely related and qualia are causing so much confusion.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Probably better if the whole thread just substitutes 'consciousness' for 'qualia' since they're so closely related and qualia are causing so much confusion.

The confusion is a feature, not a bug. There's a reason 99% of street level coffee shop "philosophy" can't survive actually being clearly stated.

And changing it to "consciousness" would change nothing. It would be the exact same discussion.

 

[shuttlt]

Probably better if the whole thread just substitutes 'consciousness' for 'qualia' since they're so closely related and qualia are causing so much confusion.

It will probably just go on talking about consciousness as equivalent as to data processing and consciousness being an emergent property.

 

[Dave Rogers]

It will probably just go on talking about consciousness as equivalent as to data processing and consciousness being an emergent property.

You could always try to break the deadlock by posting some other, non-physical, mechanism for consciousness, along with the evidence supporting it.

Dave

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

It will probably just go on talking about consciousness as equivalent as to data processing and consciousness being an emergent property.

I know it would, but there would at least be (slightly) fewer discussions about defining the term or people who had never even heard it before, which it seems like has been most of the past several pages.

 

[MRC_Hans]

What is meant by the term quale and qualia are the actual experiences of seeing red you all are having when you're having them.

Really? Damn. Back to square one: Quale is just a fancy name for a certain profile of neurological signals. ... Oh well.

If you gain a memory experience and visualize it in your mind's eye, that's also a quale when you are doing the actual visualizing. For example, I can tell someone to visualize blue and they'll visualize blue. Then I can ask them whether it is more of a sky blue or a VISA credit card blue, or a SKYY vodka bottle blue. What we're discussing are aspects of the quale.

Uh, but you just said .... Sorry, lost me again.

Another way to think of it for most people is they feel that they exist somewhere behind their eyes. They call this entity "I" or "me". I think this entity is an illusion of sorts, but that is a digression. So this self has first person impressions and experiences almost as if it's watching a move of reality or something similar. These are what are called qualia. Sometimes we know they're not representative of reality, as in optical illusions or in the case where a 'red' sweater looks a different color under different lighting. Some of us, unlike Darat if we understand each other correctly, can play a made up movie on our own like in the example of blue which i gave above. These are also qualia because we are having the experience of seeing red, but without actually seeing red. In other words, there is nothing red in the external world we are looking at.

So, qualia is basically whatever we want them to be? Well, OK.

If you're familiar with the work of Kant, he referred to the noumenal word (or things as they really were) versus the phenomenal world (things as we directly experience them, mediated by our senses). We know the phenomenal world is not the same as the noumenal world. Not by a long shot.

Kant notwithstanding, that is sort of what science is about: Mapping our senses to the real world.

Hans

PS: I know. I'm a really lousy philosopher. I have learned to live with it.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Probably better if the whole thread just substitutes 'consciousness' for 'qualia' since they're so closely related and qualia are causing so much confusion.

Hah, good one! So you have never been in a discussion about what 'consciousness' is? There you will see confusion.

Hans

 

[JoeMorgue]

The confusion is a feature, not a bug.

Again that fact that 90% of this discussion is "What the hell are you even trying to say?" everytime we have it isn't a coincidence.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

The confusion is a feature, not a bug.

Again that fact that 90% of this discussion is "What the hell are you even trying to say?" everytime we have it isn't a coincidence.

Why don't you go ahead and explain consciousness then.

 

[JoeMorgue]

We don't invoke the names of people from 200, 500, 2 thousand years ago as subject matter experts when we're talking science or medicine or politics. We talk about them for context, for greater understand for conceptualizing the history of how we obtained the knowledge we have, stuff like that sure.

But if you're being wheeled into the OR with a gaping gunshot wound none of the doctors are grabbing books by Hippocrites off the self as actual reference.

Because even as much as we can learn from and should respect those ancient learned people, who have to accept that they thought the way they did because they didn't know about the world as much as we do.

Why does those "Philosophy" not do this? Immanuel Kant died in 1804 before the discovery/acceptance of germ theory, the atomic model, the planet Neptune, plate tectonics, the molecular structure of DNA, electromagnetism, evolution, genetics, radioactivity, quantum mechanics, vaccines, the Human Genome Project, and about a hundred plus years of advancement in neurology.

His view of the world is not sacrosant. Someone who didn't know that maggots couldn't spontaneously form in rotting meat does not get to dictate reality to us just because he's an "estemed philosopher." Philosophy does not get a pass on intellectual progress.

Whatever his subject matter of expertise was, we've learned stuff since then about it. His view is no longer our litmus test and if the guy who didn't live in a world with electricity disagrees with the scientists with the LHC, I'm siding with the scientists with the LHC.

And it's not just Kant. If anything Kant is a goddamn spring chicken. Half of the time we're supposed ignore everything we've learned because someone in ancient Greece said something between Diogenes running through the room with a plucked chicken and naked Archimedes running through screaming about discovering water displacement.

Here's a radical idea. Maybe we know more now then people did in the past. That's why the stuff they thought doesn't count anymore.

I don't care what the guy who lived before we discovered neurology thinks about "The mind body problem."

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why don't you go ahead and explain consciousness then.

Ah yes the "Oh so you explain the thing I'm trying to convince you exists" argument. Classic.

I don't think it exists in any form it is used in philosophical debates, because in philosophical debates it's always codeword for "soul" and souls don't exist.

Simple neurological self awareness is piss easy to explain.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And see, exactly what I said was gonna happen happened.

"Consciousness" is the same thing as qualia, an intentionally not-defined variable to plug at random to whatever you don't want claim "science just doesn't understand."

It's right next to God in the same gaps.

Now Consciousness is a little different because it does have some useful meaning in certain context, but like I said any philosophical debate it's always code word for "soul."

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

We don't invoke the names of people from 200, 500, 2 thousand years ago as subject matter experts when we're talking science or medicine or politics. We talk about them for context, for greater understand for conceptualizing the history of how we obtained the knowledge we have, stuff like that sure.

But if you're being wheeled into the OR with a gaping gunshot wound none of the doctors are grabbing books by Hippocrites off the self as actual reference.

Because even as much as we can learn from and should respect those ancient learned people, who have to accept that they thought the way they did because they didn't know about the world as much as we do.

Why does those "Philosophy" not do this? Immanuel Kant died in 1804 before the discovery/acceptance of germ theory, the atomic model, the planet Neptune, plate tectonics, the molecular structure of DNA, electromagnetism, evolution, genetics, radioactivity, quantum mechanics, vaccines, the Human Genome Project,

His view of the world is not sacrosant. Someone who didn't know that maggots couldn't spontaneously form in rotting meat does not get to dictate reality to us just because he's an "estemed philosopher." Philosophy does not get a pass on intellectual progress.

Whatever his subject matter of expertise was, we've learned stuff since then about it. His view is no longer our litmus test and if the guy who didn't live in a world with electricity disagrees with the scientists with the LHC, I'm siding with the scientists with the LHC.

And it's not just Kant. If anything Kant is a goddamn spring chicken. Half of the time we're supposed ignore everything we've learned because someone in ancient Greece said something between Diogenes running through the room with a plucked chicken and naked Archimedes running through screaming about discovering water displacement.

Here's a radical idea. Maybe we know more now then people did in the past. That's why the stuff they thought doesn't count anymore.

I don't care what the guy who lived before we discovered neurology thinks about "The mind body problem."

What a bizarre rant.

If someone is new to a subject and asking questions about scientific terms such as "genes", "natural selection" we'll mention the definitions and discoveries of Mendel and Darwin, who didn't know what an iPhone 5 was, let alone an iPhone X.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Ah yes the "Oh so you explain the thing I'm trying to convince you exists" argument. Classic.

Cool. You don't think consciousness exists. Got any further insights about that, or should we just all take your word for it?

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

And see, exactly what I said was gonna happen happened.

"Consciousness" is the same thing as qualia,

No, they're not. It's easy for many of us to understand. Why not, I don't know, read a book or something?

It's fine if you don't care, don't want to understand, or think it's stupid. But why are you so emotionally invested?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Cool. You don't think consciousness exists. Got any further insights about that, or should we just all take your word for it?

Ah there's the good stuff. "Oh so you're saying the thing I can't define doesn't exist? Care to prove that?"

I'm going to go to the garage and check on my dragon, think I'm gonna need him in a minute.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Ah there's the good stuff. "Oh so you're saying the thing I can't define doesn't exist? Care to prove that?"

What was the chain of reasoning you used to determine I couldn't define consciousness?