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Maelin comments on Mental Clarity; or How to Read Reality Accurately - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think I was able to understand the first two, but the third one just seems to be asserting (unconvincingly: why should a hearer, if it exists, be able to hear itself?) that we are all p-zombies. I'm pretty damn sure that I, as a conscious, introspective, qualia-having, thinking entity, exist, and that is because I have an awareness of myself, and I do not accept that things that don't exist could have properties such as 'awareness of self'.
I obviously and definitely exist, because nonexistent entities can't do the things that I do.
To assert that we are p-zombies was not the intention. You could shoot a p-zombie without causing any suffering, but you will certainly (even under the third theory) cause suffering if you shoot somebody.
Let me try to condense the third one into a few short sentences, and see if that helps convey the underlying intuition better: "Brains implement cognitive algorithms, which upon being run, produce qualia. But these qualia are not observed by any particular person - to the extent that they can be said to be observed in the first place, they 'observe themselves' and then vanish."
To elaborate a little on that: if a qualia was observed by somebody, that implies that that person would experience the qualia of observing a qualia. And since qualias were presumed to be observed by someone, somebody would then have to observe the qualia of observing a qualia of observing a qualia... leading to an infinite regress. The only way (it seems to me) for that regress to bottom out is by positing that qualia aren't observed by anyone - they just are.
That makes a bit more sense, but I still disagree. We don't have any problems with infinite regresses elsewhere that require such drastic denials of our own existence. I can think about a thing, and then I can think about thinking about the thing, and then I can think about doing that, and so on. But we don't feel compelled to say "actually the thinking is happening without anything doing it" to rectify this. The infinite regress doesn't seem to cause any problems, and in that case it's an actual infinite regress occurring in my brain, not just a semantic infinite regress occurring in our definitions of 'qualia'.
It seems like the problem can be just as easily solved by saying that the qualia of observing a qualia is the qualia itself. Why should they need to be separate? You experience the sensation of redness, and the experience of experiencing that sensation of redness is precisely the experience of the sensation of redness.
experience[experience[redness]] = experience[redness]
But that's not an actual infinite regress - you can go up however many levels you like, but it's still a finite number.
I'm not sure how your "the qualia of observing a qualia is the qualia itself" is different from my "a qualia observes itself".
The difference, I think, is that there is an observer having the qualia, rather than just a qualia happening by itself without a qualia-haver to have it.
This is starting to feel very nebulous and free-floaty. I feel like the words we are using are not locking on very strongly to robust concepts in my mind. It may not be a productive line of discussion.
Agreed - I'm not even sure whether we actually disagree or are just using different terminology.