Eliminating Qualia

[ruby sparks]

The outside 'hinges on' what we experience/observe?

Dictionary says: "If one thing hinges on another, the first thing depends on the second thing or is very influenced by it"

So the outside depends on our experience?

 

[Subsymbolic]

Subsymbolic, maybe I didn't say it over and over, but I did mention it a few days ago and just yesterday before you commented on this,

So we start with acquiring information with observation, not just scientific information but much of our total information. Now, that information does not carry with it the existence of observation. We start noticing that there is no observer/experience in all of the information that we processed. But we forget it was the observation that brought about the information in the first place.

We start with observation. That's what reality is to us. It is only through subjective experiences do we begin to understand the outside. The outside hinges on the incoming information that we gather.

That's it. If you agree with my premises it's irrefutable.

I don't agree with your premises or your logic. We don't start as some sort of Lockean tabula rasa that creates itself out of observation. We start with basic physics creating something that evolves and then a very very long period of evolution that eventually sets up something that interacts with the world. That interaction always involves a system leaning into the information. There's no such thing as pure observation it's always a relation. By the time we get around to the birth of Ryan everything about him has evolved (for a start) in relationship with the world and isn't even evolved with a utility function of accuracy, merely survival. Now go and read two dogmas. Even if you disagree, you need to accommodate it.

http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

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The outside 'hinges on' what we experience/observe?

Dictionary says: "If one thing hinges on another, the first thing depends on the second thing or is very influenced by it"

So the outside depends on our experience?

That's the problem with primary and secondary properties - it usually leads to to idealism.

 

[ryan]

The outside 'hinges on' what we experience/observe?

Dictionary says: "If one thing hinges on another, the first thing depends on the second thing or is very influenced by it"

So the outside depends on our experience?

Well what we think the outside is depends totally on our experience. How could it be any different?

 

[ruby sparks]

The outside 'hinges on' what we experience/observe?

Dictionary says: "If one thing hinges on another, the first thing depends on the second thing or is very influenced by it"

So the outside depends on our experience?

Well what we think the outside is depends totally on our experience. How could it be any different?

I'm ok with that. But 'what we think the outside is' is not the same as 'what the outside is'. You said the latter is what depends on experience.

 

[ryan]

I don't agree with your premises or your logic. We don't start as some sort of Lockean tabula rasa that creates itself out of observation. We start with basic physics creating something that evolves and then a very very long period of evolution that eventually sets up something that interacts with the world.

Unless you were tricked by some advanced beings that have your brain in a vat, but you couldn't be tricked into having experiences. What does that tell you about where your level of certainty is with your mind compared to what your mind thinks is going on outside?

That interaction always involves a system leaning into the information. There's no such thing as pure observation it's always a relation. By the time we get around to the birth of Ryan everything about him has evolved (for a start) in relationship with the world and isn't even evolved with a utility function of accuracy, merely survival. Now go and read two dogmas. Even if you disagree, you need to accommodate it.

You bite the hand that feeds you.

 

[ryan]

The outside 'hinges on' what we experience/observe?

Dictionary says: "If one thing hinges on another, the first thing depends on the second thing or is very influenced by it"

So the outside depends on our experience?

Well what we think the outside is depends totally on our experience. How could it be any different?

I'm ok with that. But 'what we think the outside is' is not the same as 'what the outside is'. You said the latter is what depends on experience.

I meant what we think the outside is.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'm ok with that. But 'what we think the outside is' is not the same as 'what the outside is'. You said the latter is what depends on experience.

I meant what we think the outside is.

Ok. I think I agree then.

 

[ryan]

I'm ok with that. But 'what we think the outside is' is not the same as 'what the outside is'. You said the latter is what depends on experience.

I meant what we think the outside is.

Ok. I think I agree then.

Then now I can go to bed.

 

[ruby sparks]

Ok. I think I agree then.

Then now I can go to bed.

I'm currently experiencing just having gotten up. I guess we're in different parts of the spacetime block.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I don't agree with your premises or your logic. We don't start as some sort of Lockean tabula rasa that creates itself out of observation. We start with basic physics creating something that evolves and then a very very long period of evolution that eventually sets up something that interacts with the world.

Unless you were tricked by some advanced beings that have your brain in a vat, but you couldn't be tricked into having experiences. What does that tell you about where your level of certainty is with your mind compared to what your mind thinks is going on outside?

I think you need to take a very long hard look at you premises on both sides of your argument. First can you tighten up your language so that it's clear what you are trying to argue, because applying Grice to everything you say is getting dull. I assume you are not trying to say that 'you couldn't be tricked into having experiences', because you obviously can. I assume that what you are trying to do is repeat Descartes' claim from the cogito that "this proposition: I am thinking, therefore I am/exist, whenever it is uttered from me, or conceived by the mind, necessarily is true". Of course as anyone who has studied Descartes knows, this argument has been blown out of the water many times, by a wide range of people, on several grounds. My favourites are Bernard Williams and Søren Kierkegaard, but there are plenty of others. Descartes, in his state of doubt, has access to neither an I nor the inferential tools he needs. That's the problem with universal doubt. It's universal - Descartes cannot pick and choose for his convenience. If you are trying to say anything other than this please state it clearly and we can argue that instead.

Second, exactly how do you envisage these aliens getting my brain in a vat for the entirety of the process of evolution that leads to my highly structured and encultured brain? If these aliens nabbed me one day and stuck my brain in a vat, then they'd still be relying on my brain being set up by evolution and so on to make sense of the incoming information. Remember, you are defending the position that:

So we start with acquiring information with observation, not just scientific information but much of our total information. Now, that information does not carry with it the existence of observation. We start noticing that there is no observer/experience in all of the information that we processed. But we forget it was the observation that brought about the information in the first place.

And so brain in vat cases don't really help you.

That interaction always involves a system leaning into the information. There's no such thing as pure observation it's always a relation. By the time we get around to the birth of Ryan everything about him has evolved (for a start) in relationship with the world and isn't even evolved with a utility function of accuracy, merely survival. Now go and read two dogmas. Even if you disagree, you need to accommodate it.

You bite the hand that feeds you.

I have no idea what you mean by this?

 

[Kharakov]

Unless you learn the exact symbols which cause spacetime degredation between eternal qualia stores and your local non-experience field, and the way they are connected, you are limited to random chance of symbols that unleash qualia being created by the symbols already ensnared in patterns of their own creation, .which are called particles/fields. This random chance drives evolution in beings with quale and memory feedback loops.

 

[ryan]

I think you need to take a very long hard look at you premises on both sides of your argument. First can you tighten up your language so that it's clear what you are trying to argue, because applying Grice to everything you say is getting dull. I assume you are not trying to say that 'you couldn't be tricked into having experiences', because you obviously can.

How? How could I possibly be tricked into having an experience? I am very interested what you come up with.

I assume that what you are trying to do is repeat Descartes' claim from the cogito that "this proposition: I am thinking, therefore I am/exist, whenever it is uttered from me, or conceived by the mind, necessarily is true". Of course as anyone who has studied Descartes knows, this argument has been blown out of the water many times, by a wide range of people, on several grounds. My favourites are Bernard Williams and Søren Kierkegaard, but there are plenty of others. Descartes, in his state of doubt, has access to neither an I nor the inferential tools he needs. That's the problem with universal doubt. It's universal - Descartes cannot pick and choose for his convenience. If you are trying to say anything other than this please state it clearly and we can argue that instead.

Sort of.

Second, exactly how do you envisage these aliens getting my brain in a vat for the entirety of the process of evolution that leads to my highly structured and encultured brain? If these aliens nabbed me one day and stuck my brain in a vat, then they'd still be relying on my brain being set up by evolution and so on to make sense of the incoming information. Remember, you are defending the position that:

So we start with acquiring information with observation, not just scientific information but much of our total information. Now, that information does not carry with it the existence of observation. We start noticing that there is no observer/experience in all of the information that we processed. But we forget it was the observation that brought about the information in the first place.

Why would the brain in the vat have to evolve? Why can't they just reconstruct it if they had the knowhow?

That interaction always involves a system leaning into the information. There's no such thing as pure observation it's always a relation. By the time we get around to the birth of Ryan everything about him has evolved (for a start) in relationship with the world and isn't even evolved with a utility function of accuracy, merely survival. Now go and read two dogmas. Even if you disagree, you need to accommodate it.

You bite the hand that feeds you.

I have no idea what you mean by this?

You don't give the proper credit to the very source of all your information, not a source but your source, your mind. This includes the ideas and theories posted above that you created all in your mind.

What is most certain to you is your subjectivity, because that's all you have.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

 

[ruby sparks]

What is most certain to you is your subjectivity, because that's all you have.

And as that interesting video posted by koy coincidentally points out, certainty and truth are not necessarily the same thing. So, for example, our subjectivity, while being arguably our only certain thing, may be a very unreliable guide to the truth of anything else, iow it may be wrong (about us and the world). As such, where do we go from saying subjectivity (of itself) is certain?

 

[Kharakov]

I imagine a brain evolving in vatro to interact with itself and the consciousnesses it created wouldn't necessarily need external support. Is someone proposing that the universe needs an external environment to evol?ve

 

[ryan]

What is most certain to you is your subjectivity, because that's all you have.

And as that interesting video posted by koy coincidentally points out, certainty and truth are not necessarily the same thing. So, for example, our subjectivity, while being arguably our only certain thing, may be a very unreliable guide to the truth of anything else, iow it may be wrong (about us and the world).

I agree. So my observations/experiences, illusions/deceptions or not, should be the most certain things there are for me. Everything I observe and the conjectures I make from my experiences should be at best secondary to the certainty of what facilitates them.

As such, where do we go from saying subjectivity (of itself) is certain?

I am not sure. Do you mean what can we conclude that is just as certain? If so, I have no idea. We might need another Descartes for that one.

 

[ruby sparks]

I agree. So my observations/experiences, illusions/deceptions or not, should be the most certain things there are for me. Everything I observe and the conjectures I make from my experiences should be at best secondary to the certainty of what facilitates them.

Yes, but 'most certain' does not mean 'most accurate'. Which, I think, means that we may have to consider that things which are less certain can be more truthful. Now, these other things may indeed be 'secondary' in terms of certainty, but oddly, they may be primary in terms of truth.

It is one thing to say that we can be certain of something (for example that there are thoughts) but another thing to ask what that can make us certain of.

In a way, it feels to me as if this is why science is so useful. It forces us to at least partially give up on, or at least be willing to discard, some of the things we are most certain of. That we have to manage to try to do this via underlying subjectivity, by interpreting the shadows on the back wall of the cave as it were, is an apparently unavoidable hindrance, obviously.

As such, where do we go from saying subjectivity (of itself) is certain?

I am not sure. Do you mean what can we conclude that is just as certain?

No, I think I meant the above.

So for example, rather than start to lean towards anything resembling the idealism end of the spectrum, just because we mistake the certainty of experience for truth about the world and end up according subjectivity more importance than it may deserve, we should perhaps more humbly take the line that the reality of the universe probably trumps our puny and oh-so-recently evolved subjectivity, even if we must, it seems, perceive it via that subjectivity. Depose certainty from its vanity throne, in other words. Lean more towards realism than idealism, even if it means accepting our own relative insignificance, and quite possibly powerlessness, though we don't necessarily need to get into free will, but it seems to me to lurk nearby when we give primacy of importance to our mental experiences and capacities.

I am not certain of any of this, by the way.

It's just my tuppenceworth. I don't have a set or certain phiosophical stance, I don't think, though I do have leanings.

 

[ryan]

Yes, but 'most certain' does not mean 'most accurate'. Which, I think, means that we may have to consider that things which are less certain can be more truthful.

absolutely

Now, these other things may indeed be 'secondary' in terms of certainty, but oddly, they may be primary in terms of truth.

They might be. But if they contradict each other, why go with something that is less certain. If they don't contradict each other, then you may as well move on with the "secodary".

It is one thing to say that we can be certain of something (for example that there are thoughts) but another thing to ask what that can make us certain of.

In a way, it feels to me as if this is why science is so useful. It forces us to at least partially give up on, or at least be willing to discard, some of the things we are most certain of. That we have to manage to try to do this via underlying subjectivity, by interpreting the shadows on the back wall of the cave as it were, is an apparently unavoidable hindrance, obviously.

agreed

I am not sure. Do you mean what can we conclude that is just as certain?

No, I think I meant the above.

So for example, rather than start to lean towards anything resembling the idealism end of the spectrum, just because we mistake the certainty of experience for truth about the world and end up according subjectivity more importance than it may deserve, we should perhaps more humbly take the line that the reality of the universe probably trumps our puny and oh-so-recently evolved subjectivity, even if we must, it seems, perceive it via that subjectivity. Depose certainty from its vanity throne, in other words. Lean more towards realism than idealism, even if it means accepting our own relative insignificance, and quite possibly powerlessness, though we don't necessarily need to get into free will, but it seems to me to lurk nearby when we give primacy of importance to our mental experiences and capacities.

I am not certain of any of this, by the way.

It's just my tuppenceworth. I don't have a set or certain phiosophical stance, I don't think, though I do have leanings.

 

[ruby sparks]

But if they contradict each other, why go with something that is less certain. If they don't contradict each other, then you may as well move on with the "secodary".

There is probably only a pragmatic answer to this. And I don't even know if I know it but I'll have a go.

Imagine you are one of a hundred people dropped into a forest with no idea where you are. You are only given the co-ordinates of where you must get to (where the food and shelter are) and you are given a compass. But your compass is not helping you because unbeknownst to you it is liable to be askew (its north is not necessarily true north), as is the case for the compasses of the other 99. All you are certain of is that 'you have a compass' (this is meant to be analagous to 'there is thinking' or 'there is observation'). So what happens is that scientists check the compasses of, say, the 10 people who get to the destination, see that all their compasses correspond (lucky them, it just so happened that their compasses randomly pointed a certain way) relay this information to you somehow and you adjust accordingly, even though it contradicts your compass.

This is not objective information, because even the relayed correction arrives through your subjective experience.

I guess that science (and possibly some forms of rigorous theoretical philosophy) only gives us a shot at something more than personal subjectivity without reaching objectivity. Similarly, scepticism and doubt can only partially assist us in getting glimpses of non-subjective possibilities.

It is the case that my 'compass' is strongly indicating to me that I have an 'I', that there is a mind/body duality and that 'I' have or observe experiences and have some sort of free will (though we don't need to get into the latter necessarily), but if I accept that my compass may be faulty, then I am open to correction.

Not sure how much if anything that adds or clarifies.

I guess my philosophy, such as it is, starts with the premise, the working assumption, that there objectively is a real world, of some sort, that my mind has not completely created. After that, after effectively rejecting idealism, it's relatively easy not to necessarily trust my mind, or if you like not necessarily trust in the consequences of the very bare certainty that there are thoughts.

 

[steve_bank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

"In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are defined to be individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term qualia derives from the Latin neuter plural form (qualia) of the Latin adjective quālis (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkʷaːlɪs]) meaning "of what sort" or "of what kind" in a specific instance like "what it is like to taste a specific orange, this particular orange now". Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to "propositional attitudes",[1] where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.

Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett once suggested that qualia was "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us".[2]

Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Consequently, the nature and existence of various definitions of qualia remains controversial due to qualia not being a pragmatically verifiable matter."

Reading the entire link it sounds like metaphysical gymnastics.

One definition of the state of Samadhi is the state where the knower and that which is known become one without intervening layers of thought, direct perception. Before language did the sense of taste exist, did something taste good or bad? The chemicals in an orange interact with the tongue and is sensed by the brain and stored categorically regardless of the existence of language and words. Grizzly bears learned what is good to eat and passes on the knowledge by moma bear demonstrating for cubs.

Concepts are not needed.