What if we just stick to working out whether Qualia exist or not? Aren't you putting the horse before the cart? Either there is a phenomenon Qualia or there is not
Nope. The way qualia are defined, we can't even say that. That's why it's such a train wreck of a concept.
For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has.
Is there nothing that 'rings true' about this description? Do you not recognize the subjective experience of what it is like to be X Y or Z?
When I run my fingers over sandpaper, nerves fire and there's a burst of neural activity across my brain.
When I smell a skunk, nerves fire and there's a burst of neural activity across my brain.
When I feel a sharp pain in my finger, nerves fire and there's a burst of neural activity across my brain.
When I seem to see bright purple, well, there's a burst of neural activity in my brain anyway.
When I become extremely angry, there's a burst of neural activity in my brain (focused in one particular region) and an associated broader physiological response.
This is what we observe.
I can consistently and accurately report a subjective state that corresponds with the observed patterns of neurological activity, which indicates that the subjective and objective measures are measuring the same thing. (Which means that the subjective is just a perspective on the objective, and there
is no mind-body problem.)
This we also observe.
But your presumption here seems to be that a phenomenon must explain something in order to exist?
No, not at all. You're presuming that qualia are a phenomenon. I'm just looking at qualia the
concept.
Surely something is either there or it isn't?
Only if it's meaningful in the first place.
You say that they contradict everything we know about everything, but either they are a real phenomenon or they are not.
Only if it's meaningful in the first place.
The fact that they contradict everything ‘we know’ is only true if they do not exist, otherwise they would be known, so it rather begs the question.
Only if it's meaningful in the first place.
Perhaps Qualia are a real phenomenon that don't explain anything within the Materialist worldview? Why is this impossible?
What does that even mean?
Explain the difference between 'fundamentally true' and 'effectively true'.
Well, I already did.
We observe the Universe. It behaves as though materialism were true. Always. Never fails.
I said, and you agreed, that this doesn't deducitively prove that materialism is true. But it's
effectively true, because we can't tell the difference between the Universe we observe and a universe where materialism really is true.
Maybe down below it's all just mathematics. Or information. Or computation. Or a simulation. Sure. But what we observe - materialism. (Again, properly, this is metaphysical naturalism.)
But here your argument of, “I demonstrate it thus’, to paraphase, does not prove Materialism as you readily admit. That the universe behaves that way, does not seemingly have anything to say about whether the phenomenon of qualia is real or not.
...
Huh?
If qualia are - as is often argued - irreducible and non-physical, and everything we observe
is physical, then we don't observe qualia.
That's the whole problem with qualia. It's inherently a dualistic concept. If we're trying to find a crack in materialism where it can fit, well, by definition there isn't one. The best you can do is reduce it to a physical concept, at which point it is superfluous and can be discarded.
