How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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GE Morton wrote: January 16th, 2022, 7:53 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 3:19 pmAbstract objects—i.e. ones which are nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatiotemporal, and noncausal—are incompatible with my materialist worldview. Materialism includes concretism, the view that everything real is concrete.
Well, that would confine you to a very restrictive concept of "reality," and force you to such absurdities as, "love is not real;" "laws are not real;" "values are not real;" "theories are not real." Or would you count all those as "concrete"?
In my view, materialism/physicalism is an all-encompassing worldview that isn't only about concrete reality but about reality simpliciter. So I don't define it as the thesis that everything concretely real is material/physical, but that everything real is material/physical.

Love doesn't exist as a universal, but it is real in the form of particular (physically reducible) emotional states of love. If natural or legal/moral laws are abstract propositions, then I regard them as unreal. Values and theories qua abstracta aren't realities either. I think all abstracta are ficta; all abstract objects are fictional objects, and as such they are nonexistent intentional objects of real mental states.

(By the way, Steven French has written a book titled There Are No Such Things As Theories.)
GE Morton wrote: January 16th, 2022, 7:53 pmBTW, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything that is "nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatiotemporal, and noncausal." Anything we can think of or name is at least a concept, and thus not "non-mental."
You're confusing concepts (qua mental representations) with what they are concepts of. When I think of a unicorn, I don't think of the concept <unicorn> but of an object falling under this concept. And unicorns don't exist as concepts, because they exist as nothing, which is to say that they don't exist at all. And even if unicorns existed, they would exist as animals, and not as concepts. For nothing can exist as a concept unless it is a concept.

As for the ontology of concepts themselves, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/

Again, if concepts are abstracta, I think there are no such things. Note that concepts qua types of mental representations are abstract items too!
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Very interesting conversation!
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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GE Morton wrote: January 16th, 2022, 8:03 pmA "set" is just that class of entities that satisfy some definition. There is no invisible lasso. Are classes, groups, collections, pluralities, etc. unintelligible?

Nor are sets abstract; they are quite concrete. But that depends upon how you define "concrete." I take it to mean, "Well defined." You may be taking it to mean "having mass and spatio-temporal location and extent."

I take a set to be well defined if we can easily determine, for any given thing, whether it is or is not a member of it.
I've been using the abstract-concrete distinction in the ontological sense:

Abstract Objects: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/

Platonism in Metaphysics: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/

As for the ontological intelligibility and status of "classes, groups, collections, pluralities, etc.," it depends on what exactly these things are supposed to be. Mere pluralities or multitudes of (concrete or abstract) things are many things qua many things, and there is nothing unintelligible or ontologically problematic about them as such.

But we also think of pluralities of things as many things qua one thing, i.e. as unities. We often don't regard them as mere, i.e. non-unified, pluralities of things but as one unified collection, collective, set, class, sum, or group of things.

The ontological question is whether those unities of many things are things in addition to and distinct from the pluralities whose unities they are. Ten eggs as a mere plurality are ten eggs and nothing more: There is no eleventh thing that is their unity. But according to the set-theoretic conception of collections, a set or class of ten eggs is an additional eleventh thing that is different from the ten eggs. Moreover, a set or class of ten eggs is abstract despite their members all being concrete.

What about the mereological conception with its sums or fusions of things? Many think that "composition is identity", such that a sum of things is identical with the things (taken together) whose sum it. As David Armstong would put it, a mereological sum of many things is itself "no addition of being". And such a sum of concrete things is concrete itself. However, others doubt that mereological composition is ontologically innocent. They argue that a sum of ten eggs is an eleventh thing, and as such it is "an addition of being"; for otherwise it would be no different from a mere plurality of ten eggs. This is a tricky mereological&ontological issue.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
GE Morton
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pm
I have a blue T-shirt that doesn't look blue at night, but isn't it still blue at night? Does it cease to be blue during sunset and become blue again during sunrise?
No, but only because we infer from our percepts an external object, project the color we perceive upon that inferred object, and by convention, assume that object exists with its projected properties when not being perceived. That convention is "common sense realism," and it is pretty useful for communicating our experiences.
Anyway, from my perspective of reductive materialism, all phenomenal or "secondary" qualities such as colors must be reducible to some (complexes of) primary, physical qualities, which are internal or external to central nervous systems.
They are reducible in a causal sense, but not a qualitative sense. That is, we can prove that only light in a specific range of wavelengths produces a "red" sensation (in trichromatic animals), but not why it produces the specific sensation it does (we can't even describe that sensation, in order to determine whether the sensation it produces in you is the same as the one it produces in me).
GE Morton wrote: January 12th, 2022, 11:42 pmIt is if those representations are the only world we are able to perceive and analyze.
This is just an "argument from incredulity", but I cannot believe that I am a "windowless monad" without any perceptual access to realities beyond the contents of my mind.
Well, I think that if I am unable to demonstrate any access beyond the contents of my mind, then I will be forced to believe I have none.
Ontological categories are objects of thought, since we think and talk about them; but construed realistically, a category scheme represents (or purports to represent) the fundamental division of Being (rather than merely of Thought).
Indeed it does so purport. The issue at hand just is whether that claim, assumption, is rationally defensible. (I think it is, but only on pragmatic grounds, i.e., it is useful). Something certainly exists beyond ourselves and our percepts and concepts (else we could not explain our own existence). Presumably, whatever is "out there" provokes the sensations we experience. But we have no means of knowing how accurately those sensations represent that external something, or even whether they resemble it at all. (But we have ample pragmatic grounds for so assuming).
An object in the narrow ontological sense is not defined relatively as an object of, for, or to anything or anybody, but as an object in itself; so being an object in this sense is not the same as being an intentional object, an object of thought or some other mental or linguistic representation. Moreover, the ontological sense is not so narrow that objects are by definition material or concrete. All bodies are objects, but not all objects are bodies.
Well, that leaves "object" even more problematic. What are the definitive criteria? Your "narrow ontological sense," BTW, is somewhat question-begging; it seems to presuppose materialism. But an ontology is any theory of existents; how they are to be defined and classified. An idealism which denied "material" existents would still have an ontology.

I think there is no other way to understand "objects" other than as "intentional objects" --- as objects of predication in cognitive propositions (propositions having determinable truth values). In other words, as whatever things we can fruitfully talk about (which is how we actually use that term in ordinary conversation). We can then sub-classify those objects, according to whatever ontological theory we favor, into material (spatio-temporal) objects, abstract objects, mental objects, etc.
Those who include universals in their ontology use the terms "particular" and "individual" to refer to objects or substances; but those—like me—who don't regard properties and relations as universals but as particulars or individuals too can't alternatively use these terms as synonyms of "object" or "substance".
What is your objection to universals? The term merely denotes properties per se, which may attach to numerous objects, as opposed to when attached to some particular object. Since we can speak of the color "red," distinguish it in thought and speech from "green," it is an existent of some sort, and an "object" in the above sense of that word. We can then assign it to some ontological class, depending upon the ontology we adopt.

We have to consider terms such as "thing" and "object" pre-ontological, belonging to "meta-ontology" --- natural language terms upon which we're forced to rely even to do ontology.
What one could do is coin a new word that doesn't carry any ambiguous semantic baggage: The Latin word for "thing" is "res". The noun "reality" is etymologically rooted in "res", but it already has other meanings. Real objects/things are realities, but not all realities are objects/things. However, one can form a new noun "reity" (pl. "reities") that can mean "thinghood", but can as well be used in ontological discourse to refer to individual things in the narrow ontological sense (like e.g. "deity" can be used to refer to individual gods). Actually, I'm not the first to suggest this new term:

"…they are things (res: “reities,” I would call them)…"

(Schmitz, Kenneth L. "The Ontology of Rights." In Rethinking Rights: Historical, Political, and Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Bruce P. Frohnen and Kenneth L. Grasso, 132-152. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009. p. 152)
"Object" and "thing" pretty well serve that purpose already. "Object," especially, does have baggage it's accrued via various ontological theories. But we should be able to use it in the meta- sense without confusion, and then go on to define and speak of whatever class objects we wish to consider.

(That paper, BTW, is here:

https://lawreview.avemarialaw.edu/wp-co ... right1.pdf

I haven't read it carefully yet, but his goal of grounding the notion of "rights" in "the very roots of being" does not sound promising.)
GE Morton wrote: January 12th, 2022, 11:42 pm
Consul wrote: January 8th, 2022, 6:03 pmWhen I see or smell a rose, I don't perceive a mental construct of it but the rose itself.
Oh, but you do perceive a mental construct. That is all you perceive. But you infer an external entity which gives rise to those percepts, and project those perceived properties --- those qualia --- onto that inferred entity.
I don't think there are logical inferences involved in sensory perception as such. Perceiving isn't reasoning.
That is a good point. I spoke earlier of conscious experience as consisting of a model of "reality" we construct from sensory data. But there are actually two interacting models, the "phenomenal world model" described by Metzinger, and the conceptual model erected on top of that by science. Construction of the phenomenal world model occurs non-consciously; what appears to consciousness is the finished product. There are inferences involved in constructing that model, but no conscious reasoning. So when we perceive a tree that assemblage of qualia already appears to us as a unity, a distinct object.
I think it's a basic mistake to identify the inner appearing of a thing with the appearing thing. We perceive transexperiential entities by means of sensory experiences; but these are just the (perceptually transparent) media of perception and not its (direct or primary) objects.
Well, you're now creating a new "thing," an "appearing." But you're right to not confuse that "appearing" with the thing which appears. The latter is the construct our brains have created to represent a certain complex of sensory data. The "appearing" is the event of beholding that constuct.
Chalmers calls his view about qualia "naturalistic dualism"; but, as far as I can see, he doesn't endorse a substratum theory of sense-data (with its postulation of additional mental objects which have sense-qualia rather than being ones). But I'm afraid I don't even know which theory of sensory perception he affirms. Do you?
I've read most of what Chalmers has written (all of his papers are --- or were --- available on his web site), but I don't recall how he links sensory information with qualia or other conscious phenomena, or even where he takes up that question. Or even how he could, since he rejects "physicalism." He merely says that conscious phenomena (somehow) "supervene" on certain physical systems.
Okay, there is a difference between epistemological and ontological external-world skepticism; and, indeed, Kant (as opposed to Berkeley) doesn't deny the existence of an external, nonmental reality. He just regards it as "noumenal", i.e. as unperceptible and uncognizable (unknowable). Empirical phenomena are well-founded, because they are regularly caused by or grounded in perception-transcendent noumenal realities.
Yes. Or so we assume, an assumption we can't avoid, since cause and effect for Kant is a fundamental category, built-into our cognitive apparatus. If there is an effect, e.g., a percept, then it must have some cause. If we assume otherwise the percept is inexplicable, and we'll never be satisfied with that.
But I reject Kant's unbridgeable separation of phenomena and noumena, because I think the "things-in-themselves" aren't the things that never appear, but the things (veridical) appearances are appearances of, such that appearing things can very well be appearing things-in-themselves.
Oh, yes. They very well can be, but we have no means of demonstrating that they are.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote: January 17th, 2022, 4:52 pm
As for the ontological intelligibility and status of "classes, groups, collections, pluralities, etc.," it depends on what exactly these things are supposed to be. Mere pluralities or multitudes of (concrete or abstract) things are many things qua many things, and there is nothing unintelligible or ontologically problematic about them as such.

But we also think of pluralities of things as many things qua one thing, i.e. as unities. We often don't regard them as mere, i.e. non-unified, pluralities of things but as one unified collection, collective, set, class, sum, or group of things.

The ontological question is whether those unities of many things are things in addition to and distinct from the pluralities whose unities they are. Ten eggs as a mere plurality are ten eggs and nothing more: There is no eleventh thing that is their unity. But according to the set-theoretic conception of collections, a set or class of ten eggs is an additional eleventh thing that is different from the ten eggs. Moreover, a set or class of ten eggs is abstract despite their members all being concrete.
Well, if "thing" is the universal noun (as it is in common speech), then the set is a thing. It is also an "object," if that word is used as synonymous with "entity," as the SEP author suggests. But the critical point is that how those terms are defined has nothing to do with "reality," if by "reality" we mean some realm of external phenomena independent of our percepts and concepts. Those definitions only concern how we wish to speak about "reality," in order to make ourselves understood and communicate useful information to someone else. Locke got it right: "“It is plain, that General and Universal, belong not to the real existence of things; but are Inventions and Creatures of the Understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether Words or Ideas.”

All ontological questions are questions of that type --- about how we wish to conceive, characterize, classify --- model --- the kaleidoscope of experience, in order to communicate effectively about it and accurately predict future experience. No ontological theorizing will reveal a thing about "reality" not immediately given via the senses or deducible therefrom.
What about the mereological conception with its sums or fusions of things? Many think that "composition is identity", such that a sum of things is identical with the things (taken together) whose sum it. As David Armstong would put it, a mereological sum of many things is itself "no addition of being". And such a sum of concrete things is concrete itself. However, others doubt that mereological composition is ontologically innocent. They argue that a sum of ten eggs is an eleventh thing, and as such it is "an addition of being"; for otherwise it would be no different from a mere plurality of ten eggs. This is a tricky mereological&ontological issue.
It is only an unsettled verbal issue. It is a question only of how we wish to speak of the eggs; it has nothing to do with the nature of eggs.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pm I have a blue T-shirt that doesn't look blue at night, but isn't it still blue at night? Does it cease to be blue during sunset and become blue again during sunrise?
No, but only because we infer from our percepts an external object, project the color we perceive upon that inferred object, and by convention, assume that object exists with its projected properties when not being perceived. That convention is "common sense realism," and it is pretty useful for communicating our experiences.
There are sophisticated philosophers such as David Armstrong, who are materialists and objectivists about colors. If they are right—I'm not saying they are—, then my T-shirt is blue even when no one sees it.

QUOTE>
"The theory that I would like to uphold is that the secondary qualities are to be identified with the properties of objects as they begin to be revealed to us by the advance of scientific knowledge. Consider the blue surface of the mouse pad that I have beside my computer. It presents itself as a fairly uniform darkish blue surface with very small white specks in the pattern. I want to accept that the surface is for the most part blue. Perception presents us with the blueness as an objective property of something in the world and I think we should accept this, accept that the blue colour is in the world qualifying the pad. Science presents us with an apparently very different account involving light waves interacting with the fine structure of the physical surface of the pad reflecting light waves into my eyes. But I want to identify the colour surface with what the physicists tell us is going on there. It is a second identity theory alongside the identity of mental processes with brain processes."

(Armstrong, D. M. Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. pp. 109-10)
<QUOTE

Reductive Color Physicalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/color/#ReduColoPhys
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmAnyway, from my perspective of reductive materialism, all phenomenal or "secondary" qualities such as colors must be reducible to some (complexes of) primary, physical qualities, which are internal or external to central nervous systems.
They are reducible in a causal sense, but not a qualitative sense. That is, we can prove that only light in a specific range of wavelengths produces a "red" sensation (in trichromatic animals), but not why it produces the specific sensation it does (we can't even describe that sensation, in order to determine whether the sensation it produces in you is the same as the one it produces in me).
As for the why-question, there will be brute facts of nature about the production or constitution of secondaries by primaries that defy further explanation.

"Causal reducibility" isn't ontological reducibility, since effects aren't reductively identifiable with their causes. If sensations are caused or produced by, but not composed of or constituted by physical (or neurological) processes, then we have a quality dualism of primary qualities and secondary ones; and then we get into trouble with the causal closure of the physical sphere if sensations are regarded as non-epiphenomenal.
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pm This is just an "argument from incredulity", but I cannot believe that I am a "windowless monad" without any perceptual access to realities beyond the contents of my mind.
Well, I think that if I am unable to demonstrate any access beyond the contents of my mind, then I will be forced to believe I have none.
I don't think so, because it does seem to me that I have (direct or indirect) access to nonmental reality; and I don't feel forced by counterarguments to believe that this is just an illusion. I doubt that my sensations prevent me from perceiving nonsensations. On the contrary, they are what enables me to perceive nonsensations. A sensory experience isn't an appearance at all if there is nothing transexperiential which appears through the experience, since an appearance of nothing is a nonappearance.
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmOntological categories are objects of thought, since we think and talk about them; but construed realistically, a category scheme represents (or purports to represent) the fundamental division of Being (rather than merely of Thought).
Indeed it does so purport. The issue at hand just is whether that claim, assumption, is rationally defensible. (I think it is, but only on pragmatic grounds, i.e., it is useful). Something certainly exists beyond ourselves and our percepts and concepts (else we could not explain our own existence). Presumably, whatever is "out there" provokes the sensations we experience. But we have no means of knowing how accurately those sensations represent that external something, or even whether they resemble it at all. (But we have ample pragmatic grounds for so assuming).
If sensations aren't presentations but only representations of nonmental things or events, then there is the question of how they represent them. Berkeley argues that ideas (including sensations qua "sensory ideas") cannot resemble any nonideas but only other ideas. If this is true, sensory representations of nonmental things cannot be "icons", to use Charles Peirce's semiotic term for signs which represent things by virtue of resemblance or similarity. A paradigmatic example of iconic signs are photographies.

If sensory representations aren't [url=http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/icon]icons[/url], they are [url=http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/index]indexes[/url] or [url=http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/symbol]symbols[/url], to use two other terms of Peirce's semiotics.
(Note that Peirce doesn't use "symbol" and "sign" synonymously, because for him symbols are just one kind of signs among others!)

Do we not have very accurate (mathematically precise) scientific theories of nature that are based on sensory observations of it? From the perspective of scientific realism, there is no reason to be pessimistic in principle about the epistemic accessibility of nonexperiential reality.
(Note that if there are nonconscious minds or mental events/states, then parts of our minds are parts of nonexperiential reality too!)

As for fundamental ontological theories (category schemes) of reality, these are much more abstract and general than scientific theories; and so it is hardly possible to subject them to empirical or experimental tests. Unavoidably, ontological theorizing is more or less speculative.
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmAn object in the narrow ontological sense is not defined relatively as an object of, for, or to anything or anybody, but as an object in itself; so being an object in this sense is not the same as being an intentional object, an object of thought or some other mental or linguistic representation. Moreover, the ontological sense is not so narrow that objects are by definition material or concrete. All bodies are objects, but not all objects are bodies.
Well, that leaves "object" even more problematic. What are the definitive criteria? Your "narrow ontological sense," BTW, is somewhat question-begging; it seems to presuppose materialism. But an ontology is any theory of existents; how they are to be defined and classified. An idealism which denied "material" existents would still have an ontology.

I think there is no other way to understand "objects" other than as "intentional objects" --- as objects of predication in cognitive propositions (propositions having determinable truth values). In other words, as whatever things we can fruitfully talk about (which is how we actually use that term in ordinary conversation). We can then sub-classify those objects, according to whatever ontological theory we favor, into material (spatio-temporal) objects, abstract objects, mental objects, etc.
All nonexistent objects are intentional objects (objects of thought), but the narrow ontological concept of an object is different from the broad psychological concept of an object of thought, perception, or discourse.

However, the narrow ontological concept of an object is so basic or primitive that it is very difficult or even hardly possible to define it informatively by means of other concepts which are even simpler and easier to understand. Objects in this narrow sense are things in the narrow sense; and, for example, Jonathan Lowe defines a thing as "any item falling under a sortal concept supplying a criterion of identity for its instances. Thus shoes and ships and sealing-wax are things, but certainly not sakes and probably not propositions."

(Lowe, E. J. "Things." In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed., edited by Ted Honderich. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 915)

Is this an adequate definition?

(By the way, is "sealing-wax" really a sortal concept or count/non-mass noun? Isn't "wax" a noncount/mass noun like "gold" or "milk"?)

In another book he presents the following definition of "object":

"An object is a property-bearing particular which is not itself borne by anything else: in traditional terms, it is an individual substance." (p. 10)

"Objects, I have said, are property-bearing entities of order zero, having a certain kind of ontological priority over property-bearing entities of higher orders (if such there be), and are also individuals, having determinate identity and countability." (p. 76)

"[T]here are two independent ways in which property-bearing entities may lack individuality and so fail to qualify as objects in my recommended sense: they may lack it either by lacking fully determinate identity conditions or they may lack it by lacking intrinsic unity and hence countability." (p. 76)

(Lowe, E. J. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.)

Note that given Lowe's definition, "form-indifferent" masses of stuff do not count as objects (or things). So a cup of tea is an object or thing, but the tea in it is not. However, if a mass of tea is fundamentally composed of elementary particles and these are things, then why shouldn't a mass of tea or any other kind of stuff count as a thing as well?

Another problem with Lowe's definition is that given Donald Davidson's conception of events, these are "property-bearing entities of order zero" too; but we want to have a definition of objects which distinguishes them from events. Some say that what distinguishes objects from events is that the former exist, while the latter occur, happen or take place. Then one could make Lowe's definition more precise by saying that objects are "property-bearing entities of order zero" which are existents rather than occurrents.
(William Johnson calls such non-occurring entities "continuants".)

The ontological relationship between things (objects) and events, and between things and stuffs is a complicated issue (that is off-topic here).

Events: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/events/

The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meta ... ssexpress/
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmWhat is your objection to universals? The term merely denotes properties per se, which may attach to numerous objects, as opposed to when attached to some particular object. Since we can speak of the color "red," distinguish it in thought and speech from "green," it is an existent of some sort, and an "object" in the above sense of that word. We can then assign it to some ontological class, depending upon the ontology we adopt.
There's a distinction between (spacetime-)transcendent or Platonic universals, and (spacetime-)immanent or Aristotelian universals. Transcendent universalism is supernaturalistic, and I'm a naturalist; so it's not my cup of tea.

Anyway, it makes no sense to me to say that the properties of a concrete or material object or substance existing somewhere in spactime exist separately from it in some mysterious non-spatiotemporal realm, and yet spatiotemporal objects "instantiate" or "participate in" their non-spatiotemporal properties qua transcendent universals.

For example, it is an empirical fact that I can see the sphericity of tennis balls; but how could I do so when their sphericity is a transcendent universal existing in an imperceptible non-spatiotemporal realm?

Furthermore, transcendent universalism usually includes the incredible claim that universals can exist uninstantiated. For example, sphericity is said to be able to exist even if nothing spherical exists—apart from sphericity itself perhaps, which might be "self-instantiating".

QUOTE>
"If universals can exist uninstantiated, then they must apparently be abstract objects, in the sense…[that] they must be entities which do not exist ‘in’ space and time. Universals thus conceived are often described as ‘transcendent’ universals, or universals ante rem, as opposed to ‘immanent’ universals, or universals in rebus. And there is undoubtedly a problem in supposing that concrete objects, which exist ‘in’ space and time, could have as their properties only transcendent universals. For when we perceive an object, we perceive some of its properties—how else, in the end, could we know what properties objects have? And when objects interact causally with one another, the manner of their interaction is determined by their properties. Indeed, since perception itself is at bottom just a species of causal interaction between one object (the perceiver) and another (the object perceived), the first point is embraced by the second. And then the problem is that entities which do not exist ‘in’ space and time the objects of mathematics being the paradigm examples—are necessarily causally inert, so that transcendent universals cannot play the role in perception and causation that at least some of the properties of objects are required to play."

(Lowe, E. J. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 98)
<QUOTE

The central problem I have with immanent universalism is that it is incoherent with its postulation of universals which are wholly located at different places at the same time:

QUOTE>
"According to what I shall call the ‘strong’ doctrine of immanence, universals exist ‘in’ space and time in the sense that they may be quite literally ‘wholly present’ in many different places at the same time. That is to say, the very self-same universal redness which is exemplified both by this flower and by that different flower is, according to this view, located in its entirety both in the same place as this flower and in the same place as that flower. It is not, then, that part of the universal is located in the one place and (another) part of it in the other place, for the universal is not considered to have parts in this sense. However, it is difficult to understand how anything meeting this description could literally be true. For the two flowers are undoubtedly in wholly different locations. And yet we are to suppose that all of the first flower coincides spatially with all of the universal and, at the same time, that all of the universal coincides spatially with all of the second flower. (I am, of course, assuming for the sake of the example—I take it uncontroversially—that both flowers are wholly red in colour.) But then it is hard to see how the first flower could fail to coincide spatially with the second flower. It is no use just insisting that this need not be so, on the grounds that universals behave quite differently from particulars where matters of spatiotemporal location are concerned. For it needs to be explained to us how they can behave so differently, despite genuinely being located in space and time. And I have never yet come across a satisfactory explanation of this purported fact. As it stands, then, it seems to be nothing more than a piece of unsupported dogma."

(Lowe, E. J. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 98-9)
<QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pmWe have to consider terms such as "thing" and "object" pre-ontological, belonging to "meta-ontology" --- natural language terms upon which we're forced to rely even to do ontology.
Metaontology is about the philosophical discipline called ontology; but the terms "object" or "thing" are "preontological" in the sense that a basic concept of perceptible concrete, material objects or things (i.e. bodies or organisms) is non-reflectively formed during childhood.
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmI don't think there are logical inferences involved in sensory perception as such. Perceiving isn't reasoning.
That is a good point. I spoke earlier of conscious experience as consisting of a model of "reality" we construct from sensory data. But there are actually two interacting models, the "phenomenal world model" described by Metzinger, and the conceptual model erected on top of that by science. Construction of the phenomenal world model occurs non-consciously; what appears to consciousness is the finished product. There are inferences involved in constructing that model, but no conscious reasoning. So when we perceive a tree that assemblage of qualia already appears to us as a unity, a distinct object.
Okay, no conscious reasoning in perceiving as such, just non-/preconscious cognitive processing of sensory information before perceiving.

QUOTE>
"Phenomenal Directness:
One dimension of directness, emphasized by Reid (1785), notes that perceptual judgments are phenomenally noninferential, in the sense that they do not result from any discursive or ratiocinative process; they are not introspectibly based on premises. This noninferentiality is usually understood loosely enough to allow for perceptual beliefs’ being based on things other than beliefs (in particular, on experiential states, as we will see below) and also to allow for the possibility of unconscious or subpersonal inferential involvement in the formation of perceptual beliefs, so long as the agent is not deliberately basing these perceptual beliefs on other beliefs. Without these two allowances, claims of noninferentiality would quickly run afoul of standard views in epistemology and psychology, respectively. To claim that perception is phenomenally direct is to claim that it is noninferential in this sense."

Epistemological Problems of Perception: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-episprob/
<QUOTE
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 11:12 pmI think it's a basic mistake to identify the inner appearing of a thing with the appearing thing. We perceive transexperiential entities by means of sensory experiences; but these are just the (perceptually transparent) media of perception and not its (direct or primary) objects.
Well, you're now creating a new "thing," an "appearing." But you're right to not confuse that "appearing" with the thing which appears. The latter is the construct our brains have created to represent a certain complex of sensory data. The "appearing" is the event of beholding that construct.
Appearances qua appearings of things aren't things themselves (qua objects or substances) but events, which I think are perceptually transparent rather than opaque "veils of perception".

Percepts and concepts qua mental representations are cerebral "constructs", but I still reject the view that mental "ideas" are the only (possible) objects of perception, such that we are perceptually incarcerated in our own minds. If this were true, sensory perception would be no different from introspection, i.e. from innerly perceiving or observing the subjective sensory contents of consciousness.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

Post by Consul »

Consul wrote: January 19th, 2022, 5:13 pm"An object is a property-bearing particular which is not itself borne by anything else: in traditional terms, it is an individual substance." (p. 10)

"Objects, I have said, are property-bearing entities of order zero, having a certain kind of ontological priority over property-bearing entities of higher orders (if such there be), and are also individuals, having determinate identity and countability." (p. 76)

"[T]here are two independent ways in which property-bearing entities may lack individuality and so fail to qualify as objects in my recommended sense: they may lack it either by lacking fully determinate identity conditions or they may lack it by lacking intrinsic unity and hence countability." (p. 76)

(Lowe, E. J. The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.)

Note that given Lowe's definition, "form-indifferent" masses of stuff do not count as objects (or things). So a cup of tea is an object or thing, but the tea in it is not. However, if a mass of tea is fundamentally composed of elementary particles and these are things, then why shouldn't a mass of tea or any other kind of stuff count as a thing as well?
What I find strange is that Lowe regards "quantum particles" such as electrons and photons as "property-bearing entities of order zero", but not as objects, because he thinks they lack determinate identity (individuality) conditions. He argues that they are countable in the sense that it makes sense to speak e.g. of two electrons or photons; but it is impossible to tell which one is which, so they aren't individual entities (individuals).

For more, see: Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote: January 19th, 2022, 5:13 pm
GE Morton wrote: January 17th, 2022, 9:18 pm I think there is no other way to understand "objects" other than as "intentional objects" --- as objects of predication in cognitive propositions (propositions having determinable truth values). In other words, as whatever things we can fruitfully talk about (which is how we actually use that term in ordinary conversation). We can then sub-classify those objects, according to whatever ontological theory we favor, into material (spatio-temporal) objects, abstract objects, mental objects, etc.
All nonexistent objects are intentional objects (objects of thought), but the narrow ontological concept of an object is different from the broad psychological concept of an object of thought, perception, or discourse.

However, the narrow ontological concept of an object is so basic or primitive that it is very difficult or even hardly possible to define it informatively by means of other concepts which are even simpler and easier to understand. Objects in this narrow sense are things in the narrow sense…
Until the 18th century the term "subject" ("subiectum" in Latin) wasn't predominantly used by metaphysicians in the psychological sense, in which subjects are mental subjects, subjects of mentality (experience/consciousness). On the contrary, subjects were regarded quite broadly and generally as mind-independent objects and objects (obiecta) as mind-dependent intentional objects. Subjects (subiecta) in this old sense are substantial substrates (substrata), and as such they are (zero- or first-order) possessors of attributes (havers/bearers of properties and relations). Objects qua "existential" (*, non-intentional objects can then be defined as substantial or substance-like subjects of attributes. By adding "substantial" or "substance-like", objects or things are distinguished from events, which are occurrence-like entities rather than substance-like ones. Nonsubstances such as events, processes, states (of affairs), and facts can all be subsumed under the umbrella term "occurrence" (or "occurrent", to use William Johnson's term).

(* By "existential objects" I simply mean objects in the narrow ontological sense—"objects-in-themselves"—, not necessarily existent/existing objects. For instance, I believe abstract objects are nonexistent objects, but I do regard them as existential objects.)
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote: January 19th, 2022, 6:44 pm…Objects qua "existential" (*, non-intentional objects can then be defined as substantial or substance-like subjects of attributes. By adding "substantial" or "substance-like", objects or things are distinguished from events, which are occurrence-like entities rather than substance-like ones.…
By doing so, objects are also distinguished from attributes (properties or relations), which are neither substances nor occurrences, but "adherences" (as Bernard Bolzano says) or "inherences" (as the medieval philosophers say).

By the way, I just found this:

"Objects, i.e., the non-attribute subjects of attributes."

(Mertz, D. W. On the Elements of Ontology: Attribute Instances and Structure. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. p. 73)

He calls such objects/subjects per se subjects, because they are subjects of attributes which are not attribute themselves, such that they aren't subjects of any higher-order attributes.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote: January 19th, 2022, 7:02 pmHe calls such objects/subjects per se subjects, because they are subjects of attributes which are not attribute themselves, such that they aren't subjects of any higher-order attributes.
Footnote: Higher-order attributes are attributes of attributes; and they are not to be confused with higher-level attributes, which are first-order attributes of composite/complex objects or substances.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote: January 19th, 2022, 6:44 pmObjects…be defined as substantial or substance-like subjects of attributes
However, arguably, not all objects are properly called substances; so I'd rather call abstract objects (such as sets and numbers) quasi-substantial subjects, with the prefix "quasi-" meaning "kind of; resembling or simulating, but not really the same as, that properly so termed." (Oxford Dictionary of English).

Moreover, there are philosophers such as John Heil, who—following Leibniz—argues that all substances are mereologically simple, i.e. not composed of any other substances. If this is the case, most objects (including all biological organisms) aren't substances, but merely "quasi-substances" or "substances by courtesy", as Heil calls them. The Leibniz-Heil conception of substances is different from e.g. Aristotle's, who accepts nonsimple, i.e. composite/complex, objects as genuine substances.

17th Century Theories of Substance: https://iep.utm.edu/substanc/

P.S.:
I'm so sorry! I know all this is way off-topic here, but I didn't know where else to put it.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote:
Moreover, there are philosophers such as John Heil, who—following Leibniz—argues that all substances are mereologically simple, i.e. not composed of any other substances. If this is the case, most objects (including all biological organisms) aren't substances, but merely "quasi-substances" or "substances by courtesy", as Heil calls them. The Leibniz-Heil conception of substances is different from e.g. Aristotle's, who accepts nonsimple, i.e. composite/complex, objects as genuine substances.
Whether mereologically simple or composite/complex, both substances and events emerge from analyses but not from nature. Nature does not analyse. Evolution by natural selection, despite that it points to an entire picture, is analytical. Science analyses in order to explain, and we need explanations.

It's therefore an error to think of qualia as mereologically simple, or even as composite/complex, as 'each' quale is not isolated but is related to preceding and circumstantial qualia.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

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Consul wrote: January 12th, 2022, 9:13 pm
GE Morton wrote: January 12th, 2022, 8:36 pm So the ontology of sense data is quite mundane; it has the same ontological status as, say, radio signals. But I agree with Price as his remarks apply to qualia:

"Thus the term sense-datum is meant to be a neutral term. The use of it does not imply the acceptance of any particular theory. The term is meant to stand for something whose existence is indubitable (however fleeting), something from which all theories of perception ought to start, however much they may diverge later."
Well…

"There has never been a single universally accepted account of what sense-data are supposed to be; rather, there are a number of closely related views, unified by a core conception. This core conception of a sense-datum is the idea of an object having real existence, which is related to the subject’s consciousness. By virtue of this relation the subject becomes aware that certain qualities are immediately present. This means that sense-data have the following basic characteristics:

(a) Sense-data have real existence – they are not like the intentional objects of thoughts and other propositional attitudes; that is, they are concrete (as opposed to abstract) items, and the manner of their existence takes a different form from the existence of the content of a person’s thought;
(b) The subject’s act of awareness involves a unique and primitive kind of relation to the sense-datum: this relation is not one that can be further analyzed;
(c) The sense-datum is an object that is distinct from the act of awareness of it;
(d) Sense-data have the properties that they appear to have;
(e) The act of awareness of a sense-datum is a kind of knowing, although it does not involve knowledge of a propositional kind;

In addition, sense-data have often been claimed to have the following characteristics:
(f) Sense-data have determinate properties; for example, if a sense-datum is red, it will have a particular shade of red;
(g) Sense-data are (usually) understood as private to each subject;
(h) Sense-data are (usually) understood to be distinct from the physical objects we perceive."


Sense-Data: https://iep.utm.edu/sense-da/

"The technical term “sense data” was made prominent in philosophy during the early decades of the twentieth century by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, followed by intense elaboration and modification of the concept by C. D. Broad, H. H. Price, and A. J. Ayer, among others. Although the promoters of sense data disagreed in various ways, they mainly agreed on the following points:

1. In perceiving, we are directly and immediately aware of a sense datum.
2. This awareness occurs by a relation of direct mental acquaintance with a datum.
3. Sense data have the properties that they appear to have.
4. These properties are determinate; in vision, we experience determinate shapes, sizes, and colors.
5. Our awareness of such properties of sense data does not involve the affirmation or conception of any object beyond the datum.
6. These properties are known to us with certainty (and perhaps infallibly).
7. Sense data are private; a datum is apprehended by only one person.
8. Sense data are distinct from the act of sensing, or the act by which we are aware of them."


Sense Data: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sense-data/
Price has sense data right. It stands for "something whose existence is indubitable (however fleeting), something from which all theories of perception ought to start." The analyses and the objections to those analyses that follow come from unsympathetic sources that confuse the underlying issues.

I suspect that sense-data were originally motivated by post-Kantians to attempt to clarify Kant's division of noumena and phenomena which smacks of anti-realism. But as Price suggests, sense data are neutral with respect to the ontological nature of noumena. However, epistemologically they uncover a basic flaw in naïve realism which is that we can only assert that real objects we name exist on insufficient grounds. There will be some evidence but not enough to overcome doubt. This flaw is carried over to noumena but personal perceptions are isolated from physical uncertainties. They are indubitable, even when false.

From a philosophical perspective there are overwhelming advantages to sense data. There is subjective indubitability. But most noticeably there is the fleeting, momentary character of a glimpse that freezes action and makes sense data properly subject to propositional logic. This is because sense data are discrete and can be said to either exist or not objectively. Analyses that fail to mention this need to be ignored as fundamentally flawed.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

Post by Bluemist »

Belindi wrote: January 20th, 2022, 5:47 am Nature does not analyse. Evolution by natural selection, despite that it points to an entire picture, is analytical. Science analyses in order to explain, and we need explanations.

It's therefore an error to think of qualia as mereologically simple, or even as composite/complex, as 'each' quale is not isolated but is related to preceding and circumstantial qualia.
Exactly. Qualia are not needed at the physical sensory level, whatever that may be, but at a higher perceptual level that synthesizes sensation with inclinations, intents, and subconscious mental habits. Qualia are events described as objects and are always subjective and subject to doubt.
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Re: How Useful is the Concept of Qualia?

Post by GE Morton »

Consul wrote: January 16th, 2022, 8:39 pm
GE Morton wrote: January 16th, 2022, 7:53 pm
Consul wrote: January 13th, 2022, 3:19 pmAbstract objects—i.e. ones which are nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatiotemporal, and noncausal—are incompatible with my materialist worldview. Materialism includes concretism, the view that everything real is concrete.
Well, that would confine you to a very restrictive concept of "reality," and force you to such absurdities as, "love is not real;" "laws are not real;" "values are not real;" "theories are not real." Or would you count all those as "concrete"?
In my view, materialism/physicalism is an all-encompassing worldview that isn't only about concrete reality but about reality simpliciter. So I don't define it as the thesis that everything concretely real is material/physical, but that everything real is material/physical.
Then "concretely real" is not a sub-category of "real," but an entirely disjoint realm (since your latter clause there would seem to include the former)? And you're still left in the awkward position of denying that theories, laws, etc., are "real." That also seems to conflict with what you said above, i.e., "everything real is concrete."
Love doesn't exist as a universal, but it is real in the form of particular (physically reducible) emotional states of love.
Well, if love is a particular, distinctive, subjective emotional state, a then it is not reducible to physical phenomena, any more than "red" is (which is not to deny that it has a physical cause). And I think you're loading up "universals" with too much spurious ontological freight. A universal is just a property which may attach to many objects. The trouble with denying that they (and laws, theories, et al) are "real" is that such a claim entails that they don't exist, i.e., "unreal"="does not exist," per the common understanding of that term. And, of course, all those things certainly do exist. You're trying to restrict the term "real" to a particular class of existents, which conflicts with its ordinary meaning (and thus renders communication difficult), but adds nothing (that I can see) to our understanding of experience.
If natural or legal/moral laws are abstract propositions, then I regard them as unreal. Values and theories qua abstracta aren't realities either. I think all abstracta are ficta; all abstract objects are fictional objects, and as such they are nonexistent intentional objects of real mental states.
"Real mental states"? Isn't that an oxymoron, per your understanding of "real"?
(By the way, Steven French has written a book titled There Are No Such Things As Theories.)
Heh. A self-refuting claim, like "I don't exist." The latter is belied whenever it is uttered. So are theories which deny the existence of theories. (Though I'm sure French chose that title just because it was catchy).
GE Morton wrote: January 16th, 2022, 7:53 pmBTW, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything that is "nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatiotemporal, and noncausal." Anything we can think of or name is at least a concept, and thus not "non-mental."
You're confusing concepts (qua mental representations) with what they are concepts of. When I think of a unicorn, I don't think of the concept <unicorn> but of an object falling under this concept. And unicorns don't exist as concepts, because they exist as nothing, which is to say that they don't exist at all. And even if unicorns existed, they would exist as animals, and not as concepts. For nothing can exist as a concept unless it is a concept.
But the claim of yours I was addressing was, "Abstract objects—i.e. ones which are nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatiotemporal, and noncausal—are incompatible with my materialist worldview." That would seem to include the concept of a unicorn, as well as the (non-existent) animal. Doesn't it?
Again, if concepts are abstracta, I think there are no such things. Note that concepts qua types of mental representations are abstract items too!
Indeed they are. So, concepts don't exist? Do we need to purge that term from the language?
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