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aaronde comments on The raw-experience dogma: Dissolving the “qualia” problem - Less Wrong
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Um, those are all tautologies, so I'm not sure how to respond. If we define "qualia" as "what it feels like to have a feeling", then, well - that's just a feeling, right? And "qualia" is just a redundant and pretentious word, whose only intelligible purpose is to make a mystery of something that is relatively well understood (e.g: the "hard problem of consciousness"). No?
Erm, sorry for the snark, but seriously: has talk of qualia, as distinct from mere perceptions, ever achieved any useful or even interesting results? Consciousness will continue to be a mystery to people as long as they refuse to accept any answers - as long as they say: "Okay, you've explained everything worth knowing about how I, as an information processing system, perceive and respond to my environment. And you've explained everything worth knowing about how I perceive my own perceptions of my environment, and perceive those perceptions, and so on ad infinitum - but you still haven't explained why it feels like something to have those perceptions."
Ha! That's actually not far off. But it's because I'm a total nerd who tries to eat healthy and avoid unnecessary expenses - not because of how I feel about qualia. I think that happiness should be a consequence of good things happening, not that happiness is a good thing in itself. So I try to avoid doing things (like drugs) that would decouple my feelings from outcomes in the real world. In fact, if I just did whatever I felt like at any given time, I would end up even less outgoing - less adventurous.
a) I thought you were denying "pains hurt" b) "food tastes" isn't. c) The others can be rephrased as "injuries hurt" and "atmospheric compression waves sound like something".
d) All words are inidivdually redundant e) If you think you can make the Hard Problem easy by tabooing "qualia", lets see you try.
Well, you haven't. And there is something.
Do you send disadvantaged kids to Disneyland, or just send them the brochure? Even if you don't personally care about experiencing things for yourself, it is difficult to see how you could ignore its importance in your "good outcomes".
Not at all. I'm denying that there is anything left over to know about pain (or hurting) after you understand what pain does. As my psych prof. pointed out, you often see weird circular definitions of pain in common usage, like "pain is an unpleasant sensation". Whereas psychologists use functional definitions, like "a stimulus is painful, iff animals try to avoid it". I believe that the latter definition of pain is valid (if simplistic), and that the former is not.
I did that here, on another branch of this conversation. Again, this is simplistic, probably missing a few details, maybe slightly wrong. But I find it implausible that there is a huge, important aspect of what it is to be in pain that this completely misses.
Depends on the kid. I would have preferred a good book to Disneyland (I don't like crowds or roller coasters). Again, it's about preferences, not qualia. And what someone prefers is simply what they would choose, given the option. (And if we want to get into CED, it's what they would choose, given the option, and unlimited time to think about it, etc...)
Woah, did I say that? Just because I don't value feelings in themselves doesn't mean that I can't care about anything that involves feelings. There's no meta-ethical reason, for example, why I can't prefer to have a perpetual orgasm for the rest of my life. I just don't. On the other hand, I am a big fan of novelty. And if novel things are going to happen, then something has to do them. That thing may as well be me. And to do something is to experience it. There is no distinction. So I certainly want to experience novel things.
I don't have to like either definition, and I don't. The second definition attempts to define pain from outside behaviour, and therefore misses the central point of a feeling--that it feels like something, subjectively, to the organism having it. Moreover, it is liable to over-extend the definition of pain. Single celled organisms can show avoidant behaviour, but it is doubtful that they have feelings.
Putting things on an objective basis is often and rightly seen as a Good Thing in science, but when what you are dealing with is subjective, a problem is brewing..
I find it obvious that there is a huge, important aspect of what it is to be in pain that that completely misses. There is nothing there that deals at all, in any way, with any kind of subjective feeling or sensaton whatsoever. You have decided that pain is a certain kind of behaviour dsiaplyed by entities pother than yourself and seen from the outside, and you have coded that up.
I inspect the code, and find nothing that relates in any way to how I introspect pain or any other feeling.
But I suspect we will continue to go round in circles on this issue until I can persuade you to make the paradigm shift into thinking about subjective feelings from the POV of your own subjectivity.
It's about both, because you can't prefer to personally have certain experiences if there is no such thing as subjective experience.
Would you want to go on a holiday, or climb a mountain, and then have your memories of the expereince wiped? You would still have done it.
You're right, we're starting to go around in circles. So we should wrap this up. I'll just address what seems to be the main point.
This is the crux of our disagreement, and is unlikely to change. But you still seem to misunderstand me slightly, so maybe we can still make progress.
No, I have decided that pain is any stimulus - that is, a feeling - that causes a certain kind of behavior. This is not splitting hairs. It is relevant, because you keep telling me that my view doesn't account for feelings, when it is all about feelings! What you really mean is that my view doesn't account for qualia, which really just means I'm being consistent, because I don't believe in qualia.
Here for example, you seem to be equivocating between "experience" and "subjective experience". If "subjective experience" means the same thing as "experience", then I don't think there is no such thing as subjective experience. But if "subjective experience" means something different, like "qualia", then this statement doesn't follow at all.
P.S. This may be off-point, but I just have to say, this:
...is because the code has no capacity for introspection - not because it has no capacity for pain.
Edit: maybe this last point presents room for common ground, like: "Qualia is awareness of ones own feelings, and therefore is possessed by anything that can accurately report on how it is responding to stimuli."?
I don't accept that all stimuli are feelings. A thermostat is stimulated by changes in temperature, but I don't think it feels the cold.
It is about "feelings" as you define the word, which is not general usage.
Which is itslef consistent with the fact that your "explanations" of feelign invariabel skirt the central issues.
However, I am never goign to be able to provide you with objective proof of subjective feelings. It is for you to get out of the loop of denying subjectivity because it is not objective enough.
"subjective experience" means "exprerience" and both mean the same thing as "qualia". Which is to say, it is incoherent to me that you could deny qualia and accept experience.
I don't think introspection is sufficient for feeling, since I can introspect thought as well.
Okay, I've tabooed my words. Now it's your turn. What do you mean by "feeling"?
The conscious subjective experience of a sensation or emotion.
How do I know whether I am having a conscious subjective experience of a sensation or emotion?
You're conscious. Being conscious of things kind of goes with the territory.