Is the.article you linked earlier Dennett's "Quining qualia"?

And sos is right. He was quite clear and wasn't the.one who brought up.science.

What I wonder is specifically what is gained or lost by the.idea of qualia.

I think they are as easily.accounted for as anything in a metaphysics including a modeling brain. Models qualify input according to labels. Qualifying input=generating qualia.

BWE wrote:Is the.article you linked earlier Dennett's "Quining qualia"?

And sos is right. He was quite clear and wasn't the.one who brought up.science.

What I wonder is specifically what is gained or lost by the.idea of qualia.

I think they are as easily.accounted for as anything in a metaphysics including a modeling brain. Models qualify input according to labels. Qualifying input=generating qualia.

Qualia implies that there is some common property to these experiences. That there is something beside just being a color that Red and Blue qualia share. In my view there is nothing to be found in common between two experiences after you factor all of the content of the experience out. Every experience is entirely unique.

A further problem is that you never just experience blue. Every moment of experience is filled what would amount to hundreds of 'qualia' with very little to act as a boundary between them.

I prefer to talk about 'actual percepts'. Really things that really happen. Philosophers make a serious error when they try and reduce things like this and then draw inference on the reduction.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

BWE wrote:Is the.article you linked earlier Dennett's "Quining qualia"?

And sos is right. He was quite clear and wasn't the.one who brought up.science.

What I wonder is specifically what is gained or lost by the.idea of qualia.

I think they are as easily.accounted for as anything in a metaphysics including a modeling brain. Models qualify input according to labels. Qualifying input=generating qualia.

Qualia implies that there is some common property to these experiences. That there is something beside just being a color that Red and Blue qualia share. In my view there is nothing to be found in common between two experiences after you factor all of the content of the experience out. Every experience is entirely unique.
...

Why would red and blue need to have more in common than just being colours, to justify calling them "qualia"?

Well, I think you are going more at chalmers' hpoc than just qualia as a descriptive term. I think Chalmers was on to a common reaction to the recognition of what materialism with all the scare noises of isms leads to. But his objection was, I think, dealt with appropriately by neuroscience and dennett style philosophers and cognitive scientists. The problem is, if you're going to use a physical model (sensation) to describe.a problem with using physical models, you've already sabotaged your own effort.

Here's something even weirder which i've actually spent probably 20 hours of meditation practicing. Try being aware of red at the same time you are looking at it. Qualia is almost entirely a reflective quality. The.sweet smell of the rose rather than the sweet smelling. The mental image rather than the act.

BWE wrote:Well, I think you are going more at chalmers' hpoc than just qualia as a descriptive term. I think Chalmers was on to a common reaction to the recognition of what materialism with all the scare noises of isms leads to. But his objection was, I think, dealt with appropriately by neuroscience and dennett style philosophers and cognitive scientists. The problem is, if you're going to use a physical model (sensation) to describe.a problem with using physical models, you've already sabotaged your own effort.

Here's something even weirder which i've actually spent probably 20 hours of meditation practicing. Try being aware of red at the same time you are looking at it. Qualia is almost entirely a reflective quality. The.sweet smell of the rose rather than the sweet smelling. The mental image rather than the act.

I seem to have separated the two things out. If you look at something then close your eyes you can note the fading of the visual stimuli and be left with this wire frame impression of the thing. The wire frame is what i think is actually going on when I recall something. I sort of fill in the qualities but if I try to access them from memory they flit away. This is the adumbrative as opposed to the eidetic I think.

Meditation is actually dangerous for guys like me. You change your brain when you think too much or mediate too much with the purpose of figuring out what's up with experience. So. I am not sure if my introspection is like yours or if it's of any use at all. THAT is a problem.

I came up with the graph idea and now I seem to be able to take note of an experience as it changes over time. So now what I do is apply the physical model to the extent of my knowledge of neuroscience and then try to correlate with my own experience. If it makes sense it's a keeper. Except for that THAT in the last paragraph.

Bottom line is that I can makes some predictions about my perception from knowledge of the science.

BWE wrote:Well, I think you are going more at chalmers' hpoc than just qualia as a descriptive term. I think Chalmers was on to a common reaction to the recognition of what materialism with all the scare noises of isms leads to. But his objection was, I think, dealt with appropriately by neuroscience and dennett style philosophers and cognitive scientists. The problem is, if you're going to use a physical model (sensation) to describe.a problem with using physical models, you've already sabotaged your own effort.

...

I ignore Chalmers' version of qualia, because it is just a re-hash of Schrödinger's non-physical qualia, IMO. We can only link neuronal processes with subjective experiences, not try to explain how that link works. Indeed, the word, "quale" merely expresses the fact that there is a connection between certain kinds of neuronal activity and SE, even though it is not understood how it occurs.

DavidMcC wrote:

Chrisw wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:I criticise him specifically for going along with Schrödinger's mistaken belief that colours (and, by extension, other qualia) don't have any basis in reality, just because he didn't understand how the "yellow" (and, no doubt, "violet") qualia are formed.

That's ridiculous. Dennett is not saying anything similar to Schroedinger. Schroedinger think there are colour qualia (though he would not have used that word as it was not in regular use in philosophy until the 1980s) but that they cannot be physical. Dennett thinks there are no qualia. Not similar at all.

Actually, similar. The idea that qualia are non-physical was likely used by later philosophers to dismiss them altogether, once it was generally realised that there are no non-physical processes in the brain (or anywhere else).

You can't just pick some random guy who has said something vaguely related to qualia that you don't like and then just assume anyone else who talks about qualia in ways you don't like must be saying the same thing.

Can you not even be bothered to read the part of the article that I quoted, where Dennett states his conclusions and outlines his reasons for coming to those conclusions?

SpeedOfSound wrote:I think the main theme for Dennett is that the intentional stance gives us predictive power that no other method avails us. That would be TheoryOfMind territory. As a model it's well-honed and incredibly useful.

Now if we want to take it further and worry it for it's truth value we have problems. It's not about that. It's a useful myth nearly as useful, and most certainly more often successfully used, than our myth of atom-balls.

So far I do not see what anyone could criticize Dennett for.

Dennett is already discussing “intentionality” and a stance which is compatible with evolution and “carries a minimum of metaphysical baggage” (page 19 C and C) in “Content and Consciousness”, published in 1969, well before any of the current work on Theory of Mind (Premack coined the term “theory of mind” in 1978; Robert Gordon’s article on simulation theory was in 1989). As you say, it’s basically the same idea, but I haven’t come across Dennett saying that the intentional stance consists of using one’s own brain processes to predict others. Instead, he speaks of assuming rationality in the other person, e.g. page 21 of the Intentional Stance:

Dennett Intentional Stance p21 wrote:What about the rationality one attributes to an intentional system? One starts with the ideal of perfect rationality and revises downward as circumstances dictate.

In physical terms, this translates to one’s brain starting by assuming the other person’s model of the world is the same as one’s own (since one assumes oneself to be rational), and then modifying the model to account for the other person’s false beliefs.

As Dennett says:

Dennett Content and Consciousness p40 wrote:The task of avoiding the dilemma of Intentionality is the task of somehow getting from motion and matter to content and purpose – and back.

I think, in evolutionary terms, the simplest guess is that early animals with brains set up models of their bodies in the world in order to control those bodies better, then later animals with bigger brains can (through gradual evolution) extend those models in order to reverse engineer what another conspecific’s goals are. For example, if a monkey (a large-brained animal) already has a well-developed system in its brain for modelling and controlling its arm and hand when it reaches out with the goal of picking something up, then when it sees another monkey reaching out towards an object, the watching monkey can reverse engineer the model and work out quickly that the other monkey’s goal is to pick that object up. May I point out here that this is exactly what mirror neurons in monkey brains do ? - or rather, the mirror neurons are at the end point of a chain of processing that gives hard-wired understanding of conspecifics in terms of goals. So monkeys, using nothing but brains following the scientific laws which are described in terms of motion and matter, see each other, at least partially, in terms of purpose. Humans have taken this evolved method of predicting each other much further, with complex attribution of beliefs and world-views on a basis of far more hard-wired low-level perspective taking; we see each other and ourselves as essentially purposeful beings, which is where the problems around consciousness start.

Chrisw wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

Chrisw wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:I criticise him specifically for going along with Schrödinger's mistaken belief that colours (and, by extension, other qualia) don't have any basis in reality, just because he didn't understand how the "yellow" (and, no doubt, "violet") qualia are formed.

That's ridiculous. Dennett is not saying anything similar to Schroedinger. Schroedinger think there are colour qualia (though he would not have used that word as it was not in regular use in philosophy until the 1980s) but that they cannot be physical. Dennett thinks there are no qualia. Not similar at all.

Actually, similar. The idea that qualia are non-physical was likely used by later philosophers to dismiss them altogether, once it was generally realised that there are no non-physical processes in the brain (or anywhere else).

You can't just pick some random guy who has said something vaguely related to qualia that you don't like and then just assume anyone else who talks about qualia in ways you don't like must be saying the same thing.
...

Err, which "random guy" would that be? If you mean Schrödinger, it was because it was he (I think) who coined the term, "quale" in the first place, so hardly "random"! Also, he was an influential scientist in his day, who did early work on colour perception.

DavidMcC wrote:

BWE wrote:Well, I think you are going more at chalmers' hpoc than just qualia as a descriptive term. I think Chalmers was on to a common reaction to the recognition of what materialism with all the scare noises of isms leads to. But his objection was, I think, dealt with appropriately by neuroscience and dennett style philosophers and cognitive scientists. The problem is, if you're going to use a physical model (sensation) to describe.a problem with using physical models, you've already sabotaged your own effort.

...

I ignore Chalmers' version of qualia, because it is just a re-hash of Schrödinger's non-physical qualia, IMO. We can only link neuronal processes with subjective experiences, not try to explain how that link works. Indeed, the word, "quale" merely expresses the fact that there is a connection between certain kinds of neuronal activity and SE, even though it is not understood how it occurs.

That's another way of putting it. My point was though that if qualia are described using a physical model, then a physical explanation is presumed. If someone wanted to make an interesting point about subjective experience, you'd think it would involve some sort of alternate foundational model.

zoon wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:I think the main theme for Dennett is that the intentional stance gives us predictive power that no other method avails us. That would be TheoryOfMind territory. As a model it's well-honed and incredibly useful.

Now if we want to take it further and worry it for it's truth value we have problems. It's not about that. It's a useful myth nearly as useful, and most certainly more often successfully used, than our myth of atom-balls.

So far I do not see what anyone could criticize Dennett for.

Dennett is already discussing “intentionality” and a stance which is compatible with evolution and “carries a minimum of metaphysical baggage” (page 19 C and C) in “Content and Consciousness”, published in 1969, well before any of the current work on Theory of Mind (Premack coined the term “theory of mind” in 1978; Robert Gordon’s article on simulation theory was in 1989). As you say, it’s basically the same idea, but I haven’t come across Dennett saying that the intentional stance consists of using one’s own brain processes to predict others. Instead, he speaks of assuming rationality in the other person, e.g. page 21 of the Intentional Stance:

Dennett Intentional Stance p21 wrote:What about the rationality one attributes to an intentional system? One starts with the ideal of perfect rationality and revises downward as circumstances dictate.

In physical terms, this translates to one’s brain starting by assuming the other person’s model of the world is the same as one’s own (since one assumes oneself to be rational), and then modifying the model to account for the other person’s false beliefs.

As Dennett says:

Dennett Content and Consciousness p40 wrote:The task of avoiding the dilemma of Intentionality is the task of somehow getting from motion and matter to content and purpose – and back.

I think, in evolutionary terms, the simplest guess is that early animals with brains set up models of their bodies in the world in order to control those bodies better, then later animals with bigger brains can (through gradual evolution) extend those models in order to reverse engineer what another conspecific’s goals are. For example, if a monkey (a large-brained animal) already has a well-developed system in its brain for modelling and controlling its arm and hand when it reaches out with the goal of picking something up, then when it sees another monkey reaching out towards an object, the watching monkey can reverse engineer the model and work out quickly that the other monkey’s goal is to pick that object up. May I point out here that this is exactly what mirror neurons in monkey brains do ? - or rather, the mirror neurons are at the end point of a chain of processing that gives hard-wired understanding of conspecifics in terms of goals.
...

Re my bold - what makes you think that it's as complicated as that? Mirror neurons simply allow the monkey to imitate what it sees, without necessarily understanding why the action is occurring.

DavidMcC wrote:Err, which "random guy" would that be? If you mean Schrödinger, it was because it was he (I think) who coined the term, "quale" in the first place.

No he didn't. That's what's so stupid about this. He never used the word, it's a term from contemporary philosophy of mind that you are anachronistically projecting onto what he said. And how would knowledge of the facts of colour perception have any bearing on whether the notion of qualia makes sense? You are doing what you always do: misreading philosophical problems as scientific ones.

Chrisw wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:Err, which "random guy" would that be? If you mean Schrödinger, it was because it was he (I think) who coined the term, "quale" in the first place.

No he didn't. That's what's so stupid about this. He never used the word, it's a term from contemporary philosophy of mind that you are anachronistically projecting onto what he said. And how would knowledge of the facts of colour perception have any bearing on whether the notion of qualia makes sense? You are doing what you always do: misreading philosophical problems as scientific ones.

Whatever.
I still stand by the fact that he was the earliest proponent of the unphysical quale, even if he didn't coin the word. Also, as I am a physicist with an interest in eyes and vision (as he was), it came naturally to me to consider him before others. Also, I can't go through all of them, I had to chose one, and he was the natural choice for me.

Chrisw wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:Err, which "random guy" would that be? If you mean Schrödinger, it was because it was he (I think) who coined the term, "quale" in the first place.

No he didn't. That's what's so stupid about this. He never used the word, it's a term from contemporary philosophy of mind that you are anachronistically projecting onto what he said. And how would knowledge of the facts of colour perception have any bearing on whether the notion of qualia makes sense? You are doing what you always do: misreading philosophical problems as scientific ones.

Whatever.
I still stand by the fact that he was the earliest proponent of the unphysical visual quale, even if he didn't coin the word. Also, as I am a physicist with an interest in eyes and vision (as he was), it came naturally to me to consider him before others. Also, I can't go through all of them, I had to chose one, and he was the natural choice for me.

... Dennett, for example, dismisses qualia, but only because he understands them differently from the way I do.

DavidMcC wrote:... Dennett, for example, dismisses qualia, but only because he understands them differently from the way I do.

What is the differerence?

zoon wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:I think the main theme for Dennett is that the intentional stance gives us predictive power that no other method avails us. That would be TheoryOfMind territory. As a model it's well-honed and incredibly useful.

Now if we want to take it further and worry it for it's truth value we have problems. It's not about that. It's a useful myth nearly as useful, and most certainly more often successfully used, than our myth of atom-balls.

So far I do not see what anyone could criticize Dennett for.

Dennett is already discussing “intentionality” and a stance which is compatible with evolution and “carries a minimum of metaphysical baggage” (page 19 C and C) in “Content and Consciousness”, published in 1969, well before any of the current work on Theory of Mind (Premack coined the term “theory of mind” in 1978; Robert Gordon’s article on simulation theory was in 1989). As you say, it’s basically the same idea, but I haven’t come across Dennett saying that the intentional stance consists of using one’s own brain processes to predict others. Instead, he speaks of assuming rationality in the other person, e.g. page 21 of the Intentional Stance:
...

He actually says what I said he said on page 23. 'it gives us predictive power we can get by no other means'

I don't have qualia.

Chrisw wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:... Dennett, for example, dismisses qualia, but only because he understands them differently from the way I do.

What is the differerence?

TBH, I'm not sure of his rationale any more:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/qualia/#H5

...Daniel Dennett offers related arguments for eliminativism designed to show there is such internal inconsistency in our notion of qualia that we are hopelessly misguided in trying to retain it. According to Dennett, there are no properties that meet the standard conception of qualia (that is, properties of experience that are intrinsic, ineffable, directly and/or immediately introspectible, and private).

I'm not even sure what is meant here by "intrinsic", although the other items on the list are consistent with my understanding, nor do I fully understand the argument here. Suffice it to say that the list (without "intrinsic") does correspond to my understanding, BUT he apparently concludes that this list doesn't make sense. Thus, the property of intrinsicness may be crucial. Pity, therefore, that I don't know what it means!

scott1328 wrote:I don't have qualia.

Ahhh! We know scott. We like you anyway.