dfranke comments on Three consistent positions for computationalists - Less Wrong

5 Post author: dfranke 14 April 2011 01:15PM

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Comment author: Perplexed 15 April 2011 05:45:14PM 0 points [-]

Not really helpful (though I don't see why it deserved a downvote). It is not that I object to the term 'qualia' because I think it is a residue of discredited worldviews. I object to the term because I have never seen a clear enough exposition of the term so that I could understand/appreciate the concept pulling any weight in an argument.

And, as I stated earlier, I particularly object when philosophers offer color qualia as paradigmatic examples of atomic, primitive qualia. Haven't philosophers ever read a science book? Color vision has been well understood for some time. Cones and rods, rods of three kinds, and all that. So color sensation is not primitive.

And moving up a level from neurons to mind, I cannot imagine how anyone might suggest that there is a higher-level "experience" of the color green which is so similar to an experience of smell-of-mothballs or an experience of A-major-chord so that all three are instances of the same thing - qualia.

Comment author: dfranke 15 April 2011 05:54:17PM 0 points [-]

Yes, I agree that this kind of atomism is silly, and by implication that things like Drescher's gensym analogy are even sillier. Nonetheless, the black box needs a label if we want to do something besides point at it and grunt.

Comment author: Perplexed 15 April 2011 11:36:56PM 0 points [-]

I'm saying that there wasn't a box until someone felt the need to label something. The various phenomena which are being grouped together as qualia are not (or rather are not automatically) a natural kind.