Singularities and Qualia

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John Jones

Singularities and Qualia

Post by John Jones »

If we think that scientists don't have the intelligence to invent convenience terms to hide their conceptual shipwrecks then think again:

1) A singularity describes the something/nothing boundary
2) A quale describes the matter/mind boundary.
Both are metaphors for the same object:

A "singularity" is one of those quaint objects that scientists have invented to make it look as though they have a handle on the boundary between something and nothing, between existence and non-existence.

Likewise, "qualia" is another magical object that the scientists have conjured up to help drown out the babble they make when attempting to describe the gulf between mind and matter.
Belinda
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Post by Belinda »

I understand neither term. Please tell me more!
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lifegazer
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Post by lifegazer »

Isn't 'qualia' a philosophical term?
John Jones

Post by John Jones »

lifegazer wrote:Isn't 'qualia' a philosophical term?
Any philosopher who inventd that term is a closet scientist and will be the first against the wall.
existential yellow snow
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Re: Singularities and Qualia

Post by existential yellow snow »

John Jones wrote:Likewise, "qualia" is another magical object that the scientists have conjured up to help drown out the babble they make when attempting to describe the gulf between mind and matter.
You have not provided any sufficient reasoning at all. You simply stated a common-view point without elaborating upon it... The word "qualia" actually denotes something substantive. Qualia only work when one takes it in context with the first-person perspective; it is totally conceivable how some have experienced a quale, yet cannot convey it through adequate words (e.g., religious or psychedelic experiences). Edward Feser states, "It seems arguable then that the key difference between qualia on the one hand and such physical phenomena as functional organization, neurophysiology, and behavior on the other, is that the former are irreducibly subjective, 'private,' and first-person in character while the latter are inherently objective, publicly accessible, and third-person. The dualist concludes that since the two sorts of phenomena have such irreconcilable essential properties, the former cannot be accounted for in terms of the latter - in which case materialism, which claims that everything real is explicable in terms of objective, third-person physical phenomena, must be false" (107).

Take the Mary the Neuroscientist thought-experiment. Mary has lived in a black and white room all of her life, she knows everything about the neuroscientific underpinnings of color experience from a black and white textbook. However, she has never experienced color herself. You cannot explain to her how color looks like, for she she has not ever experienced such a thing. You cannot even reference orange or other colors! When she finally leaves the room she gains new knowledge on how red looks like this. Many philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers explain she gains a newfound knowledge unexplainable in physical terms:

“It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. That is, the properties of experience (phenomenal properties, or qualia) systematically depend on physical properties according to some lawful relation. There are two key questions about this relation. The first concerns the strength of the laws: are they logically or metaphysically necessary, so that consciousness is nothing "over and above" the underlying physical process, or are they merely contingent laws like the law of gravity?" (1).

Works Cited

Chalmers, David. "Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia." Web. 18 Feb 2010. <http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html>.

Feser, Edward. Philosophy of Mind. Oneworld Pubns Ltd, 2007. Print.
Belinda
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Re: Singularities and Qualia

Post by Belinda »

John Jones wrote:If we think that scientists don't have the intelligence to invent convenience terms to hide their conceptual shipwrecks then think again:

1) A singularity describes the something/nothing boundary
2) A quale describes the matter/mind boundary.
Both are metaphors for the same object:

A "singularity" is one of those quaint objects that scientists have invented to make it look as though they have a handle on the boundary between something and nothing, between existence and non-existence.

Likewise, "qualia" is another magical object that the scientists have conjured up to help drown out the babble they make when attempting to describe the gulf between mind and matter.
Then a singularity is some event for which there is as yet no explanation , in other words an atheist's god of the gaps.
And a quale is an attempt to make matter the cause of mind.
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John Jones

Re: Singularities and Qualia

Post by John Jones »

existential yellow snow wrote:
John Jones wrote:Likewise, "qualia" is another magical object that the scientists have conjured up to help drown out the babble they make when attempting to describe the gulf between mind and matter.
You have not provided any sufficient reasoning at all. You simply stated a common-view point without elaborating upon it... The word "qualia" actually denotes something substantive. Qualia only work when one takes it in context with the first-person perspective; it is totally conceivable how some have experienced a quale, yet cannot convey it through adequate words (e.g., religious or psychedelic experiences). Edward Feser states, "It seems arguable then that the key difference between qualia on the one hand and such physical phenomena as functional organization, neurophysiology, and behavior on the other, is that the former are irreducibly subjective, 'private,' and first-person in character while the latter are inherently objective, publicly accessible, and third-person. The dualist concludes that since the two sorts of phenomena have such irreconcilable essential properties, the former cannot be accounted for in terms of the latter - in which case materialism, which claims that everything real is explicable in terms of objective, third-person physical phenomena, must be false" (107).

Take the Mary the Neuroscientist thought-experiment. Mary has lived in a black and white room all of her life, she knows everything about the neuroscientific underpinnings of color experience from a black and white textbook. However, she has never experienced color herself. You cannot explain to her how color looks like, for she she has not ever experienced such a thing. You cannot even reference orange or other colors! When she finally leaves the room she gains new knowledge on how red looks like this. Many philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers explain she gains a newfound knowledge unexplainable in physical terms:

“It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. That is, the properties of experience (phenomenal properties, or qualia) systematically depend on physical properties according to some lawful relation. There are two key questions about this relation. The first concerns the strength of the laws: are they logically or metaphysically necessary, so that consciousness is nothing "over and above" the underlying physical process, or are they merely contingent laws like the law of gravity?" (1).

Works Cited

Chalmers, David. "Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia." Web. 18 Feb 2010. <http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html>.

Feser, Edward. Philosophy of Mind. Oneworld Pubns Ltd, 2007. Print.
A "private" (qualia) object and a "third person" object describe physical objects. The only difference between them is that private objects (qualia) are permenantly hidden, while third-person objects are sometimes hidden. But experiences are not like that, they are not "qualia". The private/objective distinction doesn't work, it's insufficient for the task.
Apeiron
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Post by Apeiron »

Nice observation. I think an infinite complex boundary (such as that displayed by the Manderbolt Set) suggest that one can at least conceive of a boundary between "something and nothing". If such a boundary only exist mathematically then it's hard to see how both something and not something can coexist. However, if such a boundary does exist then no minimum sized "particle" exist; which is a "bummer" for most string theorists' hope for a theory of "everything".
Belinda
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Post by Belinda »

My #6 is nonsense and I want to revise it.

Existential yellow snow quoted
Edward Feser states, "It seems arguable then that the key difference between qualia on the one hand and such physical phenomena as functional organization, neurophysiology, and behavior on the other, is that the former are irreducibly subjective, 'private,' and first-person in character while the latter are inherently objective, publicly accessible, and third-person. The dualist concludes that since the two sorts of phenomena have such irreconcilable essential properties, the former cannot be accounted for in terms of the latter - in which case materialism, which claims that everything real is explicable in terms of objective, third-person physical phenomena, must be false" (107).
Re; the last sentence. The third choice of theories of existence is not idealism(which is simply the reverse of the physicalism-materialism coin) but dual aspect monism in which both the subjective qualia and the objective neurophysiological facts are true. There is no reason why the two aspects, the subjective and the objective, cannot both be true.In other words, it's the coin itself that is true, there is no need to need to select against one side or the other side of it.

quoted by Existential yellow snow I think from Chalmers;
“It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. That is, the properties of experience (phenomenal properties, or qualia) systematically depend on physical properties according to some lawful relation. There are two key questions about this relation. The first concerns the strength of the laws: are they logically or metaphysically necessary, so that consciousness is nothing "over and above" the underlying physical process, or are they merely contingent laws like the law of gravity?" (1).
In the case of dual aspect existence, the relation is lawlike, i.e. the relation is logically and metaphysically necessary. In the case of idealism and physicalism-materialism as theories of existence, the relation is contingent like the law of gravity: the body depends causally on the mind, or the mind depends causally upon the body.

I am not sure about substance dualism. Maybe there is a bias towards mind as the cause of body, since I suppose most substance dualists are theists who place spirit above body, the Creator is a spirit.
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existential yellow snow
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Post by existential yellow snow »

I see... Do you buy eliminative materialism, Belinda?

- Sepehr G.
(post about Hard Problem of Consciousness quoted)
existential yellow snow
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Post by existential yellow snow »

I see... Do you buy eliminative materialism, Belinda?

- Sepehr G.
(post about Hard Problem of Consciousness quoted)
Belinda
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Joined: July 10th, 2008, 7:02 pm
Location: UK

Post by Belinda »

Please, what is eliminative materialism?

If by 'eliminative materialism' is meant that the material is ontologically primal, then I dont buy eliminative materialism. This is because mind exists and body exists: each depends upon the other for its existence. But not 'depends' as in a simple cause and effect way, I mean 'depends' in a wholistic lawlike way.
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Rhiny
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How about lost science

Post by Rhiny »

If we think that scientists don't have the intelligence to invent convenience terms to hide their conceptual shipwrecks then think again:

Hi John,

How interesting, Science use to mean "truth the discovery of" so when, opinion here, science looses it's way the labeling machine comes out and after all a label is still better than nothing, what an incredibly naive and distortion of what science needs to represent.

Science may not be lost but I suspect that some or it's practitioners are in the dark and have lost the end of the string.
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