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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The raw-experience dogma: Dissolving the “qualia” problem - Less Wrong
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I think simply fully accepting materialism clears up all hard philosophical problems related to consciousness, including "qualia." We can simply go and look at the how the brain works, physically. Once we understand all the physical facts (including e.g. the physical causes of people talking about qualia) there are no other facts to understand.
As such, I feel like someone treating "qualia" seriously is a big red (ha) flag. Either they have not embraced materialism, or they are worrying about whether a falling tree that no one hears makes a sound.
Even if examining the brain will make you less confused someday, correctly believing that proposition does not make you any less confused right now.
Or, at least, it doesn't make you not-confused right now. Correctly propagating that belief eliminates the common class of confusion along the lines of "My brain is inherently incomprehensible, why can we comprehend other things but not the brain? Reductionism fails, we must invent new physics to account for mental experiences."
Granted.
can you clarify what a crossed-out "Granted" means in this context?
Crossed out = retracted comment.
You do this by clicking a "Retract" icon below your comment. It means: just ignore this comment. It could mean that author does not agree with their previously made comment, or don't feel the comment is useful for discussion, or something else.
It is something like deleting the comment, except that it is not deleted technically. So you can for example look at the replies to this comment, and they still make sense.
Once retracted, the comment cannot be un-retracted.
Made the comment, realized it didn't add anything.