1. Defining the problem: The inverted spectrum
A. Attempted solutions to the inverted spectrum.
B. The “substitution bias” of solving the “easy problem of consciousness” instead of the “hard problem.”
2. The false intuition of direct awareness
A. Our sense that the existence of raw experience is self-evident doesn’t show that it is true.
B. Experience can’t reveal the error in the intuition that raw experience exists.
C. We can’t capture the ineffable core of raw experience with language because there’s really nothing there.
D. We believe raw experience exists without detecting it.
3. The conceptual economy of qualia nihilism pays off in philosophical progress
4. Relying on the brute force of an intuition is rationally specious.
Against these considerations, the only argument for retaining raw experience in our ontology is the sheer strength of everyone’s belief in its existence. How much weight should we attach to a strong belief whose validity we can't check? None. Beliefs ordinarily earn a presumption of truth from the absence of empirical challenge, but when empirical challenge is impossible in principle, the belief deserves no confidence.
They wouldn't be novel. I don't mean further instances of the same kind.
Do they? Surely they make arrangements of existing qualia types.
That's no good for novel qualia.
Nope.
What do you mean, then ? I'm still rather confused. Sure, it's interesting to imagine what it'd feel like to have bat sonar (although some people apparently don't have to imagine), but, well, we don't have a sonar at the moment. Once we do, we can start talking about its qualia, and see if our predictions were right.
That's kind of a broad question. Why do we have eyes at all ? The answer takes a few billion years...
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