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gjm comments on Zombies Redacted - Less Wrong
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It seems like you and VAuroch have a disagreement about how to use the word "qualia".
Your usage seems very modest, in the sense of not committing you to anything much. Are you sure that the way you actually use the word is consistently that modest? If having qualia just means experiencing things in some way, then you aren't entitled to assume
without some further argument that explores the nature of qualia in more detail.
(I suspect that VAuroch may have in mind some more-specific meaning of "qualia" that does entail particular positions on some questions like those. Or perhaps he merely doubts that there is any really satisfactory way to define "qualia" and is pushing you for more detail in the expectation that doing so will reveal problems?)
I am not sure what you mean by "things" when you say that I can't assume there are such things as qualia. I say that there are ways we experience things, and those are qualia. They are not things in the way that apples and dogs are things, but in another way. There is nothing strange about that, because there are many kinds of things that exist in many kinds of ways.
I don't make any assumption about the structure of experiences, but try to figure it out by looking at my experiences.
I personally assume there is a direct relationship between our experiences and physical phenomena in the brain. I have no reason to think I disagree with VAuroch in that respect. I disagree that it follows that "qualia do not exist," is a reasonable description of the resulting situation.