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Show Me Qualia

Dancing David

Penultimate Amazing
Dancing David
Joined
Mar 26, 2003
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Location
central Illinois
Since the other thread is about showing the neural correlates of qualia, and I don't want to spam.

Show me qualia with out a brain, show me qualia with out the physical process that support the brain. Show me how there are just qualia and no external reality. Can you will you, I am open minded, jsut show me.

Peace
 
Everything you experience is just qualia. There is no external reality, except as created by your own subjective experience. It is your subjective experience that exists; the rest is illusion.

A rock has qualia, too, but we can't experience them directly.

~~ Paul
 
Dancing David said:
Since the other thread is about showing the neural correlates of qualia, and I don't want to spam.

Show me qualia with out a brain, show me qualia with out the physical process that support the brain. Show me how there are just qualia and no external reality. Can you will you, I am open minded, jsut show me.

Peace
Click to expand...

David,

You need to demonstrate that it is logically impossible for qualia to exist without a brain, not merely physically impossible.
 
Re: Re: Show Me Qualia

Interesting Ian said:

You need to demonstrate that it is logically impossible for qualia to exist without a brain, not merely physically impossible.
Click to expand...
Why? He's asking to see qualia that does exist without a brain.
 
Re: Re: Re: Show Me Qualia

Upchurch said:
Why? He's asking to see qualia that does exist without a brain.
Click to expand...

In order for materialism to be true, then we're committed to holding that once we have certain physical processes, the qualia are logically necessitated, rather than merely naturally necessitated, as in say epiphenomenalism.

Maybe within this empirical reality qualia only ever occur with concommitant physical processes. However, this doesn't show that such physical processes are one and the same thing as qualia, or that one logically entails the other.

"A" is correlated with "B". How does this demonstrate "A" is "B" or is logically entailed by "B"? If "B" is reducible to "A" we need some reasons to suppose this! Especially if "A" and "B" seem quite characteristically unlike each other.
 
Author,researcher and neurologist, R.S. Ramachandran does what I think is a very good job of defining qualiais his book Phantoms in the Brain. Here, Ramachandran argues "three laws of qualia" which follow coincidentally an empirical framework and not a philisophical or theological. He argues that languageis ultimately to blame for this seeming divide between mind and matter- between the activity (neurochemically and neuroelectrically speaking)
of sensing an object that reflects a 650 nanometer wavelenght and our subjective, third person perception (qualia) of "red." In an effort to solve this conundrum, Ramachandram suggests skipping spoken lanuage as a medium of communication. He writes:
"what if we hook a cable of neural pathways (taken from tissue culture or from another person) fromthe color-processing areas in my brain directly into the color-processing regions of your brain (remember that your brain has the machinery to see color even though your eyes cannot discriminate wavelengths because you do not have color receptors-hypothetically). The cable allows the color information to go straight from my brainto neruons in yourbrain without intermediate translation. This is a farfetched scenario, but there is nothing logically impossible about it.
The following is less of a thought experiment and more of an actual activity slated for investigation:
In the seventeenth centurey the English astronomer William Molyneux poseda challenge. What would happen, he asked, if a child were raised incomplete darkness frombirth to age 21 and werethen suddenly allowed to see a cube? Would he recognize the cube? Indee, what would happen if the child werre suddenly allowed to see ordinary daylight? Would he experience the light, saying, "Aha! I now see what people mean by light!" or would he act utterly bewildered and continue to be blind? According to Ramachandran, the question can be answered scientifically. He writes: Some unfortunate individuals are born with such serious damage to their eyes...they have never seen the world...It is now possible to stimulate small parts of their brains directly with a device called a TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATOR. What if one were to stimulate the visual cortex of such a person with powerful magnetic pulses, thereby bypassing the nonfunctional optics ofthe eye? I can imagine twopossible outcomes. Hey might say "I feel something funny zapping the back of my head... or Oh, my God, this is extraordinary! I now understand what all of you are talking about...that is red!"
 
Thats a great post but it still does not show how qualia can exist without a brain, in fact it supports it by saying that you can stimulate the brain into producing qualia.

Also a child deprived of visual stimulation is going to have atrophy in the visual areas, that is why im The Mary and the Balck and White room scenario, you have to axiom that her brain does not atrophy.

It will take time for you tp process red, I am not sure if a person blind from birth would see color due to brain stimulation.
 
Dancing David
I am not sure if a person blind from birth would see color due to brain stimulation
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Scientific American last month ran an article on synthesia (the disorder of mixed senses, not our favorite poster). They talked about man who is color-blind (has no cones, cannot see red) but still experiences red when he looks at certain numbers.
 
jasonmccoy said:
In the seventeenth centurey the English astronomer William Molyneux poseda challenge. What would happen, he asked, if a child were raised incomplete darkness frombirth to age 21 and werethen suddenly allowed to see a cube? Would he recognize the cube
Click to expand...


It was a cube and a sphere that Molyneux was talking about. If a person was blind from birth he would recognise the sphere and cube by touch. The question was if he suddenly could get to see for the very first time ever, whether he would be able to distinguish the cube and sphere purely from the physical appearance alone. People like Berkeley and Locke said no. I think Liebnitz said yes (but don't quote me!). I, in common with Berkeley and Locke, would say no. I am in agreement with Berkeley that our tactile and visual qualia are heterogenous. Mind you I don't know if this issue has been settled in modern times.
 
My reply to David's original question was in the guise of a mental monist (or whatever the right term is). No one has remarked on that fact. Is that interesting?

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
My reply to David's original question was in the guise of a mental monist (or whatever the right term is). No one has remarked on that fact. Is that interesting?

~~ Paul
Click to expand...

Nah, no-one could tell! :D
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Show Me Qualia

Interesting Ian said:


In order for materialism to be true, then we're committed to holding that once we have certain physical processes, the qualia are logically necessitated, rather than merely naturally necessitated, as in say epiphenomenalism.
Click to expand...

Maybe you're looking at this backwards. Rather than say that certain physical processes entail qualia, you could say that qualia exist because of certain physical processes. The question is whether there are any other physical processes that could produce qualia.

Of course, many people believe there are supernatural processes that could generate qualia (such as self-generating, free-floating qualia), but this is pure speculation and doesn't lend itself to a rational discussion.
 
Wrong thread Ian , this is the thread for the immaterialist to show how qualia could be free floating.

The whole logic thing is specious anyhow, gravity doesn't make any logical sense either. I still am attracted to other masses.

So far.... no qualia... breep,breep,breep
 
Dancing David said:

So far.... no qualia... breep,breep,breep
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Think of it this way: I cannot show you a qualia, nor can you show me a qualia of yours.

We agree what the spectrum "looks like" in that red is red, green is green, yet for all either of us will ever know is that a "grey scale" to me may be what you see as the spectrum. See the problem?

Furthermore, as I understand qualia, it is definitely -- for humans -- based on physical brain function. I certainly don't suggest qualia in human guise exist outside an *I=thought*/*me=perceived as physical* unit.
 
Interesting Ian said:
[/i]

It was a cube and a sphere that Molyneux was talking about. If a person was blind from birth he would recognise the sphere and cube by touch. The question was if he suddenly could get to see for the very first time ever, whether he would be able to distinguish the cube and sphere purely from the physical appearance alone. People like Berkeley and Locke said no. I think Liebnitz said yes (but don't quote me!). I, in common with Berkeley and Locke, would say no. I am in agreement with Berkeley that our tactile and visual qualia are heterogenous. Mind you I don't know if this issue has been settled in modern times.
Click to expand...
Why not do it the other way. Show someone a few unusual and distinct shapes, then blindfold them and ask them to properly identify them. It would be difficult, but the person would probably be able to do it.

Also, interesting aside: blind people use their visual cortexes while reading braile. Google it up for references.
 
Jethro said:
It was a cube and a sphere that Molyneux was talking about. If a person was blind from birth he would recognise the sphere and cube by touch. The question was if he suddenly could get to see for the very first time ever, whether he would be able to distinguish the cube and sphere purely from the physical appearance alone. People like Berkeley and Locke said no. I think Liebnitz said yes (but don't quote me!). I, in common with Berkeley and Locke, would say no. I am in agreement with Berkeley that our tactile and visual qualia are heterogenous. Mind you I don't know if this issue has been settled in modern times.
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Why not do it the other way. Show someone a few unusual and distinct shapes, then blindfold them and ask them to properly identify them. It would be difficult, but the person would probably be able to do it.

Also, interesting aside: blind people use their visual cortexes while reading braile. Google it up for references.
Click to expand...

Yes you could do it the other way. But it wouldn't demonstrate anything whatsoever :rolleyes:
 
Doing it the other way does not support the Knowledge Argument,..
The answer is NO the blind persom would not recognise the shapes because his/her brain still has to learn how to see, give them at least six weeks to learn and they might. Outside of the atrophy of the visual system.
 
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