I liked the Wittgenstein private language argument because it basically says "why does it matter? we only can connect through our shared experiences/communication, so why do philosophers get all hung up on this concept as some foundational 'truth'?". It smacks of solipsism being smuggled under a different name. I guess I've yet to see an application of the concept without some relation to the external, which makes it seem at best contingent if not entirely irrelevant. When over a quarter of philosophers say they don't think the hard problem exists, it makes me think Wittgenstein has a strong point here.
i don't see how it has anything to do with solipsism, and i also think it matters because qualia are the foundation of all of our other knowledge. we can only access 'objective' measurements through qualia. it is especially relevant when AI bazingas claim their math parrot is 'True Sentient AI'. it is relevant when we consider that our fellow humans and living beings mean more to us than the sum of their physical parts. it is relevant when we experience empathy for another person because we can experience some of their pain internally. Furthermore any argument against exploring an avenue of investigation is to be discarded in my opinion, it amounts to saying 'shut up about it'. Besides, there are just as many financial and egotistical and emotional incentives to promote pure phyiscal realism as much as any alternative. I haven't seen an argument that convinced me personally that the hard problem doesn't exist, so some statistic of academics believing one way or another is not likely to sway me, especially about a topic like philosophy. its not like either side of the philosophical debate has 'work' to show for their efforts beyond published books. and to say that qualia don't exist seems like much stronger of a claim than wittgenstein's "we should stop talking about it". speaking of wittgenstein i was unimpressed by the beetle in a box argument. by nature of the metaphor's qualities, it is quite a different situation than with qualia. the 'beetle' in the box, whatever it is, is already presumed to be a physical object, not a semiotic or logical principle or concept or situation. if we can look into our own boxes we could easily describe the contents in terms of abstract ideas we are familiar with to others, like shape and number and so on. the entire point of qualia is that they are not reducible to physical objects we can describe concretely, they are not an 'object' at all, or even a subject, but the conscious experience of percieved objects and subjects.
Qualia as defined seems to say empathy is inauthentic in all cases, not sure why empathy requires it in anyway whatsoever. Empathy is all about attempting to understand each other's experiences, which is impossible based on this concept.
When you say all knowledge is founded on qualia, that seems extremely solipsistic. Qualia can't be communicated, so I don't follow this wall of text at all.
i'm confused, how did you come to that conclusion about qualia and empathy? Qualia are nothing more and nothing less than internal subjective experiences of phenomena. without those experiences, we could not empathize at all except via pure information processing and automatic reflexive behavior. everyone, presumably, has qualia of some kind, likely similar if they are of the same species. it would be incredibly weird for one to assume that one is the only one that has them, even though every other human and most animals have basically the same central nervous system, especially if one has gone through episodes of unconsciousness or other experiences that prove that consciousness is contingent to some degree on the brain. Qualia can be described, even if they cannot be transmitted. I can describe to you how i feel about various topics, how things look from my perspective, how comfortable or uncomforable i am during a situation, etc. what I mean when I say that all knowledge is founded on qualia, I mean precisely that all objective physical measurements are performed by conscious subjectively experiencing humans, and conscious subjectively experiencing humans are the ones interpreting the results of those measurements. when you or I look at a research paper that contains some kind of data, we are not directly accessing the physical reality of that data, but we are experiencing the qualia of seeing the paper and reading and interpreting the symbols and thinking about the meaning of them, we have our own internal experience of interpreting the data. the scientist looking at an instrument isn't directly accessing the physical reality of what his machine is measuring, he is indirectly accessing it through both the instrument and his own senses and consciousness, and interpreting the data based on his internal subjective experience of it.
the scientist looking at an instrument isn't directly accessing the physical reality of what his machine is measuring, he is indirectly accessing it through both the instrument and his own senses and consciousness
This gets a bit closer to why I think qualia in not useful. Peer review is where the confirmation of the instrument and that of the senses of multiple consciousnesses agree about what has been observed. This is social phenomenon. Qualia does not enter into it because it can definitionally not.
it enters into it because all of the scientists are conscious beings that experience reality in terms of qualia. In fact that is precisely why we need peer review in the first place, because we are not perfect measurement machines but subjectively experiencing entities.
i want to know, do you believe that qualia do not 'exist' (i.e. that your internal experience of reality is 'illusory' or otherwise unreal) or do you think they are simply not useful to talk about?
It is not useful for philosophical discussions, in fact it is a dead end in my understanding of it. It is just a label for the philosophical misunderstanding of consciousness that says 'shut up about it'.
why do you think that discussions involving the hard problem of consciousness and qualia say 'shut up about it'? it really seems quite the opposite considering wittgensteins argument is essentially that. it isn't preventing any neuroscientist from making progress. no serious proponent of the literal mere existence of qualia would argue for less neurological research or anything like that. any serious theory involving the world has to take physical reality into account. we all agree that consciousnes and qualia are contingent on the brain and nervous system. I really don't understand your view of qualia at all, i feel like we are speaking different languages.
I guess the problem is the definitions I've come across are not contingent in the slightest. I was reading the wiki page about it, and even a neuroscientist in support of qualia seemed to contradict the definition.
The conscious mind and its constituent properties are real entities, not illusions, and they must be investigated as the personal, private, subjective experiences that they are. The idea that subjective experiences are not scientifically accessible is nonsense.
I liked the Wittgenstein private language argument because it basically says "why does it matter? we only can connect through our shared experiences/communication, so why do philosophers get all hung up on this concept as some foundational 'truth'?". It smacks of solipsism being smuggled under a different name. I guess I've yet to see an application of the concept without some relation to the external, which makes it seem at best contingent if not entirely irrelevant. When over a quarter of philosophers say they don't think the hard problem exists, it makes me think Wittgenstein has a strong point here.
i don't see how it has anything to do with solipsism, and i also think it matters because qualia are the foundation of all of our other knowledge. we can only access 'objective' measurements through qualia. it is especially relevant when AI bazingas claim their math parrot is 'True Sentient AI'. it is relevant when we consider that our fellow humans and living beings mean more to us than the sum of their physical parts. it is relevant when we experience empathy for another person because we can experience some of their pain internally. Furthermore any argument against exploring an avenue of investigation is to be discarded in my opinion, it amounts to saying 'shut up about it'. Besides, there are just as many financial and egotistical and emotional incentives to promote pure phyiscal realism as much as any alternative. I haven't seen an argument that convinced me personally that the hard problem doesn't exist, so some statistic of academics believing one way or another is not likely to sway me, especially about a topic like philosophy. its not like either side of the philosophical debate has 'work' to show for their efforts beyond published books. and to say that qualia don't exist seems like much stronger of a claim than wittgenstein's "we should stop talking about it". speaking of wittgenstein i was unimpressed by the beetle in a box argument. by nature of the metaphor's qualities, it is quite a different situation than with qualia. the 'beetle' in the box, whatever it is, is already presumed to be a physical object, not a semiotic or logical principle or concept or situation. if we can look into our own boxes we could easily describe the contents in terms of abstract ideas we are familiar with to others, like shape and number and so on. the entire point of qualia is that they are not reducible to physical objects we can describe concretely, they are not an 'object' at all, or even a subject, but the conscious experience of percieved objects and subjects.
Qualia as defined seems to say empathy is inauthentic in all cases, not sure why empathy requires it in anyway whatsoever. Empathy is all about attempting to understand each other's experiences, which is impossible based on this concept.
When you say all knowledge is founded on qualia, that seems extremely solipsistic. Qualia can't be communicated, so I don't follow this wall of text at all.
i'm confused, how did you come to that conclusion about qualia and empathy? Qualia are nothing more and nothing less than internal subjective experiences of phenomena. without those experiences, we could not empathize at all except via pure information processing and automatic reflexive behavior. everyone, presumably, has qualia of some kind, likely similar if they are of the same species. it would be incredibly weird for one to assume that one is the only one that has them, even though every other human and most animals have basically the same central nervous system, especially if one has gone through episodes of unconsciousness or other experiences that prove that consciousness is contingent to some degree on the brain. Qualia can be described, even if they cannot be transmitted. I can describe to you how i feel about various topics, how things look from my perspective, how comfortable or uncomforable i am during a situation, etc. what I mean when I say that all knowledge is founded on qualia, I mean precisely that all objective physical measurements are performed by conscious subjectively experiencing humans, and conscious subjectively experiencing humans are the ones interpreting the results of those measurements. when you or I look at a research paper that contains some kind of data, we are not directly accessing the physical reality of that data, but we are experiencing the qualia of seeing the paper and reading and interpreting the symbols and thinking about the meaning of them, we have our own internal experience of interpreting the data. the scientist looking at an instrument isn't directly accessing the physical reality of what his machine is measuring, he is indirectly accessing it through both the instrument and his own senses and consciousness, and interpreting the data based on his internal subjective experience of it.
Qualia definitionally can not be transmitted.
This gets a bit closer to why I think qualia in not useful. Peer review is where the confirmation of the instrument and that of the senses of multiple consciousnesses agree about what has been observed. This is social phenomenon. Qualia does not enter into it because it can definitionally not.
it enters into it because all of the scientists are conscious beings that experience reality in terms of qualia. In fact that is precisely why we need peer review in the first place, because we are not perfect measurement machines but subjectively experiencing entities.
i want to know, do you believe that qualia do not 'exist' (i.e. that your internal experience of reality is 'illusory' or otherwise unreal) or do you think they are simply not useful to talk about?
It is not useful for philosophical discussions, in fact it is a dead end in my understanding of it. It is just a label for the philosophical misunderstanding of consciousness that says 'shut up about it'.
why do you think that discussions involving the hard problem of consciousness and qualia say 'shut up about it'? it really seems quite the opposite considering wittgensteins argument is essentially that. it isn't preventing any neuroscientist from making progress. no serious proponent of the literal mere existence of qualia would argue for less neurological research or anything like that. any serious theory involving the world has to take physical reality into account. we all agree that consciousnes and qualia are contingent on the brain and nervous system. I really don't understand your view of qualia at all, i feel like we are speaking different languages.
I guess the problem is the definitions I've come across are not contingent in the slightest. I was reading the wiki page about it, and even a neuroscientist in support of qualia seemed to contradict the definition.