[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[Brent Allsop]

At 02:48 AM 11/25/2005,  Marc Geddes wrote:


>it is still an open question whether qualia are illusions (i.e they 
>are really material processes) or whether qualia have a reality over 
>and above the physical processes which gave rise to them.

This is a stupid thing to say.  Daniel Dennett made the same stupid 
mistake when he said: "we don't have qulia - it only seems we do" in 
"Consciousness explained."

An "illusion" is information that doesn't accurately represent its 
referent.  When we look at the pencil in a glass of water, it appears 
bent to us because water refracts the light resulting in our 
conscious knowledge being bent or not like the real pencil which is 
not bent.  But this doesn't change the reality of our "bent" 
knowledge and what it is really like.

When we are talking about qualia or phenomenal properties we are 
talking about the final representation and their natures - not 
whether these representation are mistakenly not like themselves or 
something.  Our knowledge of the pencil is really bent - this is the 
seeming.  But what we are asking is - what is the nature of this bent 
pencil that is our conscious knowledge.  The fact that it is 
different from the real pencil has nothing to do with this conversation?

To say a quale is an illusion and hence do not exist is to say we 
have a qualia or our knowledge, that doesn't accurately represent 
something (what?).  This is absurd because it is the phenomenal 
property itself and its qualities that we are talking about in the 
first place.  We are not talking about whether these phenomenal 
properties improperly represent something else.

Though an illusion is conscious knowledge that doesn't accurately 
represent something - it is still very real and like what it is 
like.  And what this very real knowledge is like is what we are 
talking about here.  Conscious knowledge is what it is - it can't be 
an "illusion".  Even if a quale was an illusion - we would be talking 
about whatever it is that is this incorrect "seeming" - not the fact 
that it was - if it only some how could be - incorrect.

Brent Allsop