Qualia?

[Furrowed Brow]

This is a subject I return to from time to time in one form or another. Today I’d like to talk about Qualia. A philosophical term with a loose definition. Roughly speaking the word invokes the raw feel of sensations/experiences. This Wiki page goes into more detail.

I tend to shy away from definitions of Qualia that use words like mental states, universals, a feature of sensation, subjective or private experience. Basically I don’t like any single definition supplied on the Wiki page. So I’d like to work with this definition:

Qualia is a word that invokes the raw feel of pain, smelling a rose, seeing a blue belle, the sensation of fur, the taste of salt, the sound of a humming bee, the feeling of ennui or anxiety, and so on......

You might wonder how "seeing" can be a feel. But I am trying to avoid using the phrase "subjective experience" because that is fraught with connotatons I wish to avoid. I do not want to debate how I might see a blue sky that you experience as red. And what you call blue is red, and what I call blue is some other experience.

We could dispense with the word 'qualia' all together and just say raw feel and in a way I prefer this because there is less chance of invoking a metaphysics of raw feels, than there might be for quale; if only because as soon as you invent a philosophical word a metaphysics is sure to follow.

Questions:

• 1/ Why do we experience qualia/raw feel. What is their point? Especially from an evolutionary and functionally perspective.
  2/ How are qualia produced? What causal mechanisms could possible generate a feel?

I ask the second question because I do not believe there is any causal mechanism involved. In fact I’d go so far as to say that is an illogicality? But let’s get your input to the questions first.

5 rouble bet QED posts first.

[Nameless]

First, I'm going to tell you that your red herring ad hom of trying to stuff me into some easily dismissed 'solipsist' box is boring and your insistance is getting annoying sufficiently (starting to sound pathological) for me to 'move on'. The words of this post could not come from the lips of a 'solipsist';

Dintionary.com 1. Philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
So that be knowledge of both an outside world and other minds is unjustified

(You obviously didn't cut and paste, did you..)
My theory is that everything exists. Existence is Context/Definition. If something has context and/or definition, it exists. You exist and I exist. So does Donald frikkin Duck! Clear? Understand?
Nothing can be 'proven' to exist but by definition that "everything exists". I exist as Perspective, you exist as Perspective...
So, that is an end to that, if you continue on this tack, you will do nothing but demonstrate an emotional need rather than a rational response. I won't discuss this anymore with you. Get over it.
Now...

All 'this' simply goes to illustrate that subjective Perspective is essential. You are arguing due to perspective.

Nope. I am arguing due to the logical implication of the definitions you supplied, implications explained by the additional quotes I supplied.

When you say 'implication' there must be someone, a perspective to perceive an 'implication'.

You have no. as far as I have seen, justified your (meaningless) notion of 'qualia'.

This is true. Problems with language have been a major concern for me. Whilst the qualitative feel of experience is very real, the language we use to convey and explain these feels are loaded with conceptual connotations that I do not trust. To try and negotiate a streamlined definition around these connotations is….difficult.

I have no problem with waiting until you are able to conceptualize your word into 'meaning'. Then, if you can offer me enough 'definition/context' that I, too, can conceptualize what you are describing, then, your 'word' will have existence beyond its present status of just a 'meaningless' word, for me.

If I present a rock for examination, we can all see it (from our perspectives of course), hold it, measure it... Your 'qualia' is your notion (and from wherever you took it) and so far, has no real existence on the 'table'.

Your 'notion' is it's existence (for you).

You don't seem to be able to make it real enough for others to see and 'measure'.

That is for 'them' to 'see' if they can. What is 'real' to us is what accept to be real to us. No one else can do that.

The qualitative feel of experience is very real, the problem is the language we use to explain the feel of it. But your point is totally right. I want to avoid concepts that cannot be measured such as 'thoughts', "mental states', and 'subjective experience'.

So, for something (everything is conceptualized) to be of 'value' to you, it must be able to be 'measured'?

These words have defintions, and people use them in a consistent agreed way. In this sense they have meanings. But these meanings are cultural.

You would have to demonstrate that 'meaning' exists beyond the individual's mind. There are no rocks in the field with a tag attached explaining it's 'meaning', if any. Meaning is utterly perspectival and personal. If I tell you that my poem means this or that, you will still either make the decision to accept my words at face value for your own reasons. Someone else might say that what they see in it is such and such, in opposition to my intent... 'Meaning' is all 'personal'.

The words otherwise fail to signify anything -

As much as any words that there are definitions and concepts for in people's minds. Unlike your 'qualia' which is starting to sound like something that the FSM eats for dinner.

for the reason they invoke nothing that can be measured.

Ahh, again with that ruler hanging out. And, besides, your 'measurements are, again, uniquely personal. Life is unstable, unsafe and there are no guarrantees.

So when I attempt to work around these kinds of words the reaction is as if I'm the one who is a tad befuddled and can't be saying anything meaningful.

It appears to me that you are artificially truncating your methods and options of inquiry. But, thats my perspective, at this moment.

Whilst a satisfactory definition of qualia is elusive, I see this as a result of words like ‘subjectiveness’, ‘mental state’, ‘thought’ carrying with them their own baggage.

All 'concepts' have their own 'associations' to the individual conceiving (note that a solipsist couldnt utter that statement!*__-). You are creating a straw man.

Now, I am starting to feel uncomfortable with the tenor of this conversation. I don't engage in common arguments (gets too emotional and irrational and ugly), and this is starting to feel like one.
I stated my perspective rather cogently. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, and I have nothing to defend.
You see things your way. Thats the nature of Perspective.
Enjoy your's.
Any further conversation on this subject can be continued in a PM, if anyone's that interested.
Peace

[Beto]

How about quantum's finding of 'Consciousness' being the "ground of all being" (Copenhagen interpretation)?

Whoa there! The Copenhagen interpretation don’t take you that far by any stretch. The (probabilistic) wave function is collapsed by the act of observation, and the thus the observation cannot be separated from the event.

In the "double slit", if we have a machine measuring which slit the particle goes through, the wave function collapses without "conscious observation" of the event, isn't that right?

As for Qualia, I think Hameroff's and Penrose's theory of quantum consciousness is quite elegant in accounting for "a unitary sense of binding, non-computational aspects of conscious thinking, difference and transition between pre-conscious and conscious processing, (apparent) non-deterministic free will and the essential nature of our experience" that computational approaches can't tackle.

[Nameless]

How about quantum's finding of 'Consciousness' being the "ground of all being" (Copenhagen interpretation)?

Whoa there! The Copenhagen interpretation don’t take you that far by any stretch. The (probabilistic) wave function is collapsed by the act of observation, and the thus the observation cannot be separated from the event.

In the "double slit", if we have a machine measuring which slit the particle goes through, the wave function collapses without "conscious observation" of the event, isn't that right?

No, that is incorrect. Nothing 'happens' without 'conscious observation'. There must be 'conscious observation, for instance, of the 'machine'. It is by 'observation' alone wherewith any wave function is 'actualized'. Ultimately, even your 'machine' is also 'actuated wave function', by conscious awareness.

[Beto]

How about quantum's finding of 'Consciousness' being the "ground of all being" (Copenhagen interpretation)?

Whoa there! The Copenhagen interpretation don’t take you that far by any stretch. The (probabilistic) wave function is collapsed by the act of observation, and the thus the observation cannot be separated from the event.

In the "double slit", if we have a machine measuring which slit the particle goes through, the wave function collapses without "conscious observation" of the event, isn't that right?

No, that is incorrect. Nothing 'happens' without 'conscious observation'. There must be 'conscious observation, for instance, of the 'machine'.

Wouldn't "machines" need a "consciousness" to perform "conscious observations"?

[Nameless]

Wouldn't "machines" need a "consciousness" to perform "conscious observations"?

Please clarify?
Machines perform no conscious operations in themselves.
There are no machines in themselves, but by our observation they exist.

[Beto]

Wouldn't "machines" need a "consciousness" to perform "conscious observations"?

Please clarify?
Machines perform no conscious operations in themselves.
There are no machines in themselves, but by our observation they exist.

I have to make a distinction between a machine's "observation", in the sense that it records the point at which an eigenstate is chosen, and a human "conscious observation" of the data recorded by the machine. When we say that a machine "observes" we're personifying it, imbuing a quality of consciousness it obviously doesn't possess. You don't make that distinction about "observation"?

Hypothetically, what pattern do you expect to be produced, in a room where a fully automated double slit experiment is being run, with the device "observing" the quantum event, and no humans present? Interference or non-interference?

[QED]

Nameless appears to prefer the notion that cats remain in superposed states of being simultaneously alive and dead until someone actually looks at them! If it takes some kind of magical, conscious observer to actualise all potential states then we are denying an objective existence for everything that is yet to be consciously observed (including the observers own foundational states)*. It would then be a matter of taste if we preferred this interpretation over others, such as the many worlds interpretation in which each observation takes place along a private world-line singling out realities from all other potentials as the entire universe (including the conscious observer but not her most recent experience) undergoes a form of cosmic mitosis

Alternatively (as do most serious spectators of the quantum enigmas) we could suspend judgement on the proper interpretation until such time as one or other of the many theories (including those yet to come) distinguishes itself over the others in the time-honoured scientific tradition.


*Note that by hypothesising an omniscient conscious observer to 'fix things up' here makes the role of mere mortal observer's consciousness fully redundant.