Emile comments on Rationality quotes: August 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Cyan 03 August 2010 12:16AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 03 August 2010 03:58:49PM 4 points [-]

Perhaps you simply do not have qualia or subjective experience. Some people do not have visual mental imagery, strange though that may seem to those of us who do. Similarly, maybe some people do not have anything they are moved to describe as subjective experience. Such people, if they exist, are the opposite of the logically absurd p-zombies. P-zombies falsely claim that they do have these things; people without them truthfully claim that they do not.

You might just be Socratically role-playing, but even so, there may be other people who actually do not have these things. That is, they would express puzzlement at talk about "the redness of red", "awareness of one's own self", and so forth (and without having been tutored into such puzzlement by philosophers arguing that they cannot be experiencing what in fact they do experience).

Is there anyone here who does experience that puzzlement, even before knowing anything of the philosophical controversy around the subject?

Comment author: Emile 03 August 2010 05:16:11PM 1 point [-]

There is this example:

To the best of my knowledge — which isn’t saying much: I’m not well-read in philosophy — I am in a minority of one on the subject of free will.

The discussion is always: do we have it, or don’t we?

My considered view is that some of us have it while the rest don’t. Like perfect pitch.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have free will; but I’ve encountered people who I’m pretty sure do have it.

I see that as a cheap way out, I think "do I have free will ?" is just a confused question whose answer depends of the way you unconfuse it. I'm just in the minority of humans who refuses to answer that confused question - I'd like to say I refuse to answer all confused questions, but that's probably not true.

Still, it is possible that confusion and disagreement about "qualia" and "free will" are just due to differences in personal experience, not to different interpretation of those labels.