How does the neural correlate = qualia ?

[Janus]

Then they're not using it in the correct sense! Who are these people?

How does any of this make the redness of red the very same thing as a physical process??

Again I’m in too much of a hurry to cite sources; its not important who tho'. The issue what quala are suppose to be. I see phrases like `the redness of red' allot, but they don't mean anything to me (your last line confuses me more than I confuse you). I need some sort of framework that I can slot them in to.

Anyway it sounds like quala can't be reduced to information. If so, then what is so special about them that make this true?

 

[synaesthesia]

I find this very interesting.
I feel different types of qualia (sound,color, temperature) simultaneously.
For me this is a indication of a possible reduction, or that maybe I am putting the same name (qualia) to different phenomena.

In some senses I obviously agree with you. There is something that it is like to feel experiences, and we could call this qualia.

But remember that people often think of qualia as being intrinsic, infallible and ineffable. The problem obviously arises that these two types of 'qualia' are different. One is uncontroversial, one tends to be incoherent.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Reading two of the papers I cited above lead me to realize that I don't seem to understand what qualia are. I always assumed that a quale was what it was like to experience redness when not looking at something red. In other words, the redness quale is redness disembodied from actually seeing red. These papers discuss the qualia that arise when you actually look at something red. That problem seems even less interesting than the problem I thought we were discussing.

Anyhoo, quinqual.htm is Dennett's paper suggesting there ain't no such thing as qualia. LUCS58.pdf is de Leon's paper critiquing and disagreeing with Dennett. Philosophers sure do talk funny.

~~ Paul

 

[gentlehorse]

Reading two of the papers I cited above lead me to realize that I don't seem to understand what qualia are. I always assumed that a quale was what it was like to experience redness when not looking at something red. In other words, the redness quale is redness disembodied from actually seeing red. These papers discuss the qualia that arise when you actually look at something red. That problem seems even less interesting than the problem I thought we were discussing.

Anyhoo, quinqual.htm is Dennett's paper suggesting there ain't no such thing as qualia. LUCS58.pdf is de Leon's paper critiquing and disagreeing with Dennett. Philosophers sure do talk funny.

~~ Paul

I think of qualia as the living, moment-by-moment experiences we have. I look at a red barn and experience the redness of red directly. It doesn't matter that any number of great thinkers may have defined qualia out of existence when I'm directly experiencing their existence. When I stand close enough to the red barn, I experience a field of red. It's right there. What is this experience that corresponds to the brain processes which accompany it? It exists to the same extent that I do, regardless of whether or not it's been defined out of existence.

I don't have any answers, but I find it odd that folks would say that qualia are fiction. Perhaps I don't understand what qualia are at all.

 

[Tricky]

I think of qualia as the living, moment-by-moment experiences we have. I look at a red barn and experience the redness of red directly. It doesn't matter that any number of great thinkers may have defined qualia out of existence when I'm directly experiencing their existence. When I stand close enough to the red barn, I experience a field of red. It's right there. What is this experience that corresponds to the brain processes which accompany it? It exists to the same extent that I do, regardless of whether or not it's been defined out of existence.

But all the time you are "experiencing" your brain is busily sending neural impulses, writing to memory, and doing all sorts of things which may (someday) be quantified. Yeah, I know it removes the romance, but it is certainly going on. Don't get me wrong, though. I love the experience, but I don't feel cheated if it comes down to "chemicals". I am not picky about the particulars.

I don't have any answers, but I find it odd that folks would say that qualia are fiction. Perhaps I don't understand what qualia are at all.

I'm not sure either. They seem like a human construct to describe something indescribable. I mean, how could you ever describe "redness" without comparing it to something else red? Why do we need to assume that redness is anything other than our perception of something compared to something else. Everything is correlation.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
If we have A and B with thier states being correlated with each other, but which appear to be utterly characteristically different from each other, then why would A be something special and mystical by supposing that it is distinct (albeit perhaps dependent) on B?

Hans

I don't know, you tell me. But what has this to do with qualia?

I want to know why qualia is special and mystical.

II
They are not the feeling of fear. That's the outward manifestation of fear.

Hans
They are certainly also the feeling.

They most certainly are not.

Let us not bicker about details; are you seriously saying you can not describe how you feel when you feel fear??

You certainly don't describe it by what you said! Emotions can only be understood because oneself has also experienced such emotions.

II
Just to say here that there's 2 different types of roundness which you appear to be conflating. There's roundness as experienced, or the qualia, which certainly isn't an abstract property. Then there is the mathematical roundness. It's the same with all other things in the world eg redness as experienced and the physical definition of redness etc.
Hans
Sorry, but I don't see your point. Mathematical roundness can be experienced, described, learnt, like subjective roundness.

It can be experienced?? What do you mean by that. This is not the visual or tactile sensation of roundness, so what other experience of roundness is there??

Where is the special property? It is all just different levels of abstraction.

No, the physical world is a fiction.

Hit youself on the head with a hard object and say that again. (if you're still not convinced, let ME hit you on the head )

... pretty strong fiction, I'd say.

I would say qualia is a pretty strong fiction. Indeed I cannot discern any meaning in declaring qualia is a fiction.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Again I’m in too much of a hurry to cite sources; its not important who tho'. The issue what quala are suppose to be. I see phrases like `the redness of red' allot, but they don't mean anything to me

I just mean the experience of redness. I only say the experience of redness because physicists have this propensity of describing a certain wavelength of electromagnetic radiation as being red. This just causes confusion. When I say red I mean red as experienced

Anyway it sounds like quala can't be reduced to information. If so, then what is so special about them that make this true?

Why should there be anything special about qualia because they can't be reduced to information? The physical world is ultimately information. Qualia is not anything physical.

 

[Interesting Ian]

In some senses I obviously agree with you. There is something that it is like to feel experiences, and we could call this qualia.

But remember that people often think of qualia as being intrinsic, infallible and ineffable.

Yes they obviously are. How could it conceivably be denied?

The problem obviously arises that these two types of 'qualia'

What 2 types?

are different. One is uncontroversial, one tends to be incoherent.

How could qualia conceivably be incoherent? Why should one type be coherent the other incoherent. What 2 types of qualia are you talking about?

 

[Interesting Ian]

Reading two of the papers I cited above lead me to realize that I don't seem to understand what qualia are. I always assumed that a quale was what it was like to experience redness when not looking at something red. In other words, the redness quale is redness disembodied from actually seeing red. These papers discuss the qualia that arise when you actually look at something red. That problem seems even less interesting than the problem I thought we were discussing.

Anyhoo, quinqual.htm is Dennett's paper suggesting there ain't no such thing as qualia. LUCS58.pdf is de Leon's paper critiquing and disagreeing with Dennett. Philosophers sure do talk funny.

~~ Paul

What do you mean no such thing as qualia?? Obviously people have the experience of redness. Isn't that qualia?

 

[Tricky]

What do you mean no such thing as qualia?? Obviously people have the experience of redness. Isn't that qualia?

One of the things I heard long ago is that the peculiar toxin of the stonefish makes the unfortunate victims who step on it feel hot as cold and cold as hot. I suspect that with the proper electrodes in the proper places, a person could be made to experience red as blue.

It is all activity in the brain. If you can manipulate the brain to change the "experience", then qualia do not effectively exist. In fact they are only a philosophical construct. Qualia are essentially useless as a tool of science. Their only use is in providing philosophy students with thesis material.

 

[MRC_Hans]

II:

Youck, this multiple quoting sure becoms complicated. I have taken the liberty to abbreviate earlier quotes:


*Snip*

II
I want to know why qualia is special and mystical.

We agree then; I dont find them special or mystical. However some people with mighty fine credentials seem t othink they are.


II
They are not the feeling of fear. That's the outward manifestation of fear.

Hans
They are certainly also the feeling.

II
They most certainly are not.

How do you distinguish between the feeling and its manifestations? I mean, a sharp distinction. Of course, if I feel feeverish, I might be in love or I might have flu, but with the whole picture, I'm rarely in doubt

*snip*
II
You certainly don't describe it by what you said! Emotions can only be understood because oneself has also experienced such emotions.

Agreed! Likewise with colors, pain and everything else. But that's what I'm saying: Everything is about fitting things into templates that exist in our memory, either as a result of previous experience or as fixed programming in form of the relatively few instincts we have.

*snip*

Hans
Sorry, but I don't see your point. Mathematical roundness can be experienced, described, learnt, like subjective roundness.

II
It can be experienced?? What do you mean by that. This is not the visual or tactile sensation of roundness, so what other experience of roundness is there??

I can imagine a perfect circle and understand how it is shaped, and I can draw a good approcimation and see it. That's what I mean. Probably beside the point, though.

II
No, the physical world is a fiction.

*snip*

II
I would say qualia is a pretty strong fiction. Indeed I cannot discern any meaning in declaring qualia is a fiction.

Physical world=fiction .... Qualia=fiction ..... Qualia=fiction=meaningless

Uhh sorry, you've completely lost me now

Hans

 

[Peskanov]

synaesthesia,

I think the properties "intrinsic, infallible" does not discard possible reduction.
About "ineffable" I would say that this has never stopped us to try to analize any phenomena. I can't imagine some electromagnetic events, though I know his formal descriptions.
Are you sure it is commonly accepted that qualia is not reducible?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:

What do you mean no such thing as qualia?? Obviously people have the experience of redness. Isn't that qualia?

You gotta read Dennett's paper, although it's a truly horrific slog. I think that he is saying that the qualities we assign to qualia that make them magical, such as ineffability, are not really qualities of qualia. So qualia as we think of them are incoherent.

He's not arguing that there isn't some complex conscious experience of red going on. He just doesn't think qualia are a good concept.

Just more fodder for my opinion that we have to wait this one out and give the neurophysiologists time.

~~ Paul

 

[c4ts]

Excuse me, but what the hell is a qualia?

 

[Dancing David]

I agree please define qualia.

I thinl that they are learned rather than inherent.

Peace

 

[synaesthesia]

Reading two of the papers I cited above lead me to realize that I don't seem to understand what qualia are.

Exactly, the deeper you look into the philosopher-speak meaning of qualia, the less coherent it becomes with the rest of our world-knowledge and itself.

 

[Dancing David]

In fact from reading in the context of all the posts I can say that qualia are learned attributes that we place upon our perceptions, which if we go back to Mary in the balck and white box, perceptions are learned at a processinf level.

There are no qualia outside of learning.

Peace

 

[davidsmith73]

I can easily describe the feeling of fear (beating heart, queasy stomack, sweaty hands, etc.). You can also describe the condition pathologically (increased blood pressure, contraction of small blood vessels, release of adrenalin, etc.). These are outside references, of course, but can you describe anything without outside references?

You have described fear but you could not convey what fear actually feels like to someone who has not experienced fear for themselves.

I don't see the problem. The template is created by learning. As an infant, I am taught what round means. First time you tell an infant that "this is round", it won't know that "round" is a qualia, but later as it is presented to many different objects and patterns and is told that they are "round", it understands that "round" is an abstract property that can apply to many things, so it gets stored under abstract templates.

I think you are missing the point. The first time you tell an infant "this is round" you are merely giving the infant a label that will be associated (the learning part) with his/her experience of roundness. You surely must agree that regardless of whether or not the infant is taught to use language to label certain aspects of his experience, he must still first have preceived experiences !

How these experiences are equated with a physical process within a materialistic interpretation is the real question at hand.

Pain. I feel pain and react to it; later I learn the word for it, so if somebody tells me "don't walk barefoot on a sunny beach, you will burn your feet", I will be able to imagine what it feels like, even if I never tried it: The template has been established.

You started by saying "I feel pain and react to it". This is the point I am addressing. The raw feelings - the qualia - are supposed to be equivalent in some explanatory way to the physical neural processes in the brain. In what way are they equivalent if the raw feelings and corresponding physical processes manifest in such different ways to our consciousness?

 

[davidsmith73]

It is perfectly possibly to describe fear from an objective viewpoint. The description looks different from a description from a subjective viewpoint, but describes the same thing.

Qualia are a fiction.

I don't fully understand your distinction between an objective description and a subjective one. Furthermore, the "same thing" these descriptions of fear refer to seems to me to be the actual feeling of fear itself - the qualia. How you can then go on to state that qualia are a fiction escapes me. Could you explain your reasoning further ?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

DavidSmith said:

I think you are missing the point. The first time you tell an infant "this is round" you are merely giving the infant a label that will be associated (the learning part) with his/her experience of roundness. You surely must agree that regardless of whether or not the infant is taught to use language to label certain aspects of his experience, he must still first have preceived experiences !

Ah, but this is a tricky business, isn't it? We still wonder whether the infant perceives roundness immediately, or has to learn what roundness is. And we wonder how much of the qualia of roundness is dependent on the label that we teach the child. After all, when you think about "roundness," some of the things you think about is the word round and a list of things we label as round and various other linguistic aspects of roundness. It's all of a piece.

A really neat example of learning qualia is size constancy. Someone did an experiment with the Ba Mbuti tribe that lives in thick jungle: They took them out of the jungle and showed them a car in the distance. The tribespeople asked what kind of insect it was.

~~ Paul