Show Me Qualia

[Tricky]

Thats what the materialist is talking about when they refer to the "neural correlate of consciousness" ie. conscious perception
That is what the debate is all about isn't it ?

I thought it was about the question of whether qualia exist as something apart from the physical universe.

From a materialistic perspective, the first time you sense (are conscious of) something, a particular physical neural process somehow generates qualia. We are talking about a physical process generating or being equivalent to qualia. Recalling the qualities of redness at a later date to me is irrelavent to the original perception with regards to this debate.

The first time, and any time, you perceive redness, you are sensing it. If you recall it later, you are reading memories. I don't see in what way qualia, as you are describing them, are any different from sense and memory. Why do we need this extra word?

According to the materialistic view of course. And this is why I started the other thread, to try to get someone to explain how this can be so. How can such a intuitively different thing - redness - be generated from a "physical process".

I'm guessing that it is because your intuition is lying to you. You may think that redness is different from the physical processes that produce (and remember) it, but it isn't really. Intuition is an unreliable source for information.

You can't describe redness without comparing it to something else to anyone ! The only way to find out if someone has experienced it is to do the comparison

And that indicates to me that "old redness" (meaning "not currently being sensed") is a product of memory. That's why shades of red are often named things like fire engine red or blood red because it is the memory of what these things look like that make sense to you.

Also remember that according to mental monism, a blind person does not exist as physically separate from your experiences.

I'm not sure I quite understand you. If you are saying "red doesn't exist to a blind person", I'd agree. All of your senses and memories are personal. In fact, my wife and I argue all the time over what certain shades of things are. Do we perceive them differently, or do we simply define them differently, based on what we individually learned that "charcoal gray" meant?
I think the latter.

I'm not sure what the implications of that are in light of what you have said. Let me think it over !

I'll think about what you said too.