Juno_Watt comments on The Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 April 2008 11:16PM

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Comment author: nawitus 01 August 2009 10:39:26PM 0 points [-]

There are many valid arguments or reason to believe in the existence of qualia, you can't simply say that because we cannot use qualia to predict anything at this point, then you can just ignore qualia. Qualia is "mysterious" in the same way the universe is, we don't know it's properties fully.

Comment author: thomblake 01 August 2009 11:24:38PM 2 points [-]

you can't simply say that because we cannot use qualia to predict anything at this point, then you can just ignore qualia

In fact, I can and did. Furthermore, if a hypothesis doesn't predict anything, then it is a meaningless hypothesis; it cannot be tested, and it is not useful even in principle. An explanation that does not suggest a prediction is no explanation at all.

Avoid mysterious answers to mysterious questions

Comment author: Juno_Watt 26 August 2013 01:11:04AM 0 points [-]

"qualia" labels part of the explanandum, not the explanation.