Is there a qualia of qualia?

>it invalidates my understanding of what a qualia even is if the term cannot apply to itself without falling into tautologous meaninglessness

First, tautologies aren't meaningless.

Second, how would the term applying to itself be a tautology anyway?

Third, why would such a tautology (provided you can show that a tautology exists here) invalidate qualia?

And what if there really isn't anything else to it all except evolution? What then?

What kind of cartoon quack land living in that the reality outside your window can be somehow reduced to "beings evolve gradually over time as their genetic code accrues random mutations in the process of fulfilling their biological directive to reproduce"? How is any of that mutually exclusive with anything but the most pleb-tier creationisms? Is, like, Hermeticism refuted by Darwin? Do you really think the human experience can be reduced to the biological urge to propagate our genetic material, instead of what it obviously is: an articulation and expansion of basic drives into a properly human, conscious dimension?

>properly human, conscious dimension

Our minds you mean which are the product of natural selection?

This is a decent argument against any sort of qualia being real.

>How can there be no "true" essence of the very thing that allows us to have a concept of "true" and "false", "reality" and "illusion"?

Because your assumed premise isn't true. Qualia isn't what allows you to have concepts of true, false, reality, or illusion. Take the philosophical zombie argument that gets used to try to convince people qualia are real. Now suppose we're all philosophical zombies. That's qualia-free reality. Everything still works fine, all that's required is our brains make us behave in reference to abstract placeholder things that aren't really there, which is perfectly within the realm of things the brain is capable of doing and actually does do on a regular basis.

Is my experience of a Beethoven symphony anything less than what it is because my ability to appreciate it has been evolved? Why would I possibly consider the mind LESS of a miracle in these circumstances? Do you think I have to believe in some immaterial ectoplasm piloting my body to be overwhelmed by beauty, or love? Or do you think it's more proper to consider the mind a staggering miracle precisely because it is a bunch of dead stuff that somehow evolved the capacity to love and experience?

How is "irreducible subjective experience" a definition that falls into tautological meaninglessness?

I mean, the experience of the color red is not identical to the physical characteristics of light at a given wavelength. If it was, there would be no distinction between our mind and what we observe.

>This is a decent argument against any sort of qualia being real.
mindless p-zombie detected

Not him but obviously if you take material reality to be derivative of human mental reality then evolution would be a product of our minds and not the other way around - natural selection is the manner in which we presently make sense out of our bodies current physical existence but is not the actual cause of our mental lives.

But desu this sub-debate is fruitless. You're a materialist, other dude is not - you're not gonna settle argument today on a taiwanese-school-girl-pussy-gif-forum.

>which is perfectly within the realm of things the brain is capable of doing and actually does do on a regular basis.

So question begging my sides split

>using an argument that supports the hard problem to refute the hard problem

wew lad

so even zombie me would be typing this exact post. okay, I grant you that, then it's on you (as a good scientist, of course) to explain to me:

1) what biological automata are doing acting like subjects, shitposting on a Malaysian horseshoe repair tutorial board and all that

2) what consciousness is doing here even in the first place if its totally extraneous to our actual empirical behavior

thanks

Do you really give a shit if it jus werks?

>That natural selection can give us beauty, and love, and the arts and all that shit pretty much proves it's not the whole story.

So dumb lol
The truth of Natural Selection is dependent upon the truth of the things we perceive in space/time. So if those things are illusions then so is natural selection. lmao

It's not less, it's not more. It just is. Another person might not enjoy it at all, an alien intellect might find it to be nothing but noise

Whatever Beethovens music actually is might not even be constant, it might be something unique to every listener.

Pretty sure you getting me to try and see The Light with evolution itt is you trying to make it "less" than what it is. yes, it's a product of natural selection, it's also a product of my having a really bad day and hearing some dope fucking music. You're right, it just is, so why is evolution taking center stage again? why not the will to life that natural selection is essentially the refinement of?

Love, and beauty, and all that shit, are irreducible to their biological substrates. This is a fact. My love is not "just" chemicals, its chemicals + my actual conscious experience of being in love. Subjectivity's always-already here, you can't put the horse back in the barn no matter how many Dennett books you read

>Subjectivity's always-already here, you can't put the horse back in the barn no matter how many Dennett books you read

/thread

There would be a reality and our false perception of it would be an advantage for whatever reason.

We don't see certain spectrums of light, maybe because it would distract us, make our brains do more work but gain nothing in return.

Hoffman just stretches the concept to lengths which are borderline insane and very hard to grasp.

Except our understanding of evolution would just be as illusory as any religion ya dingus, how do you not get this? If his thesis is "we can never see behind our own back", then why is this guy the exception?

Our understanding of evolution is mathematical not philosophical. Mathematics isn't being disputed.

>Our understanding of evolution is mathematical
what an asspull
you must be getting desperate

>literally everything is an illusion except our own methodology
>you gotta fight tooth and nail to prove anything beyond 1+1 = 2 is real but mathematical Platonism or whatever is axiom #1

ok m8

Back to Veeky Forums you two. You won't feel threatened by ideas there.

>Qualia are real because they just are!
>Also I don't like Daniel Dennett.

wtf I'm a dualist now.

You're seriously doubting whether your brain is able to make you believe things that aren't true?

>an argument that supports the hard problem

No. Like I said, it's an argument that gets used to *try* to support it. But like most everyone else who doesn't buy into the "qualia are real things in themselves and need some new field of science to explain them" bullshit, I don't see it as an argument that succeeds in supporting it. And in fact, it works pretty well in demonstrating the opposite argument when you follow it through to its logical conclusion. The problem is most people don't play by the argument's rules, like this guy:

Who's under the impression philosophical zombies would behave differently from non-zombies. Which defeats the entire attempted purpose of the argument, that purpose being setting up an example that's EXACTLY like reality in every way except for the alleged qualia crap it's meant to isolate as a real thing. Most people naturally assume these zombies will behave differently precisely because behavior is the real thing, not qualia. If you make a world where behavior (and non-external physiological functions) is (/are) identical to ours, you make a world that's identical to ours.

>alleged qualia crap
are you claiming you don't actually experience anything?

>If you make a world where behavior (and non-external physiological functions) is (/are) identical to ours, you make a world that's identical to ours.
are you saying that consciousness isn't actually a part of this world?

No, Chalmers was calling attention to how insufficient current models are in their proposed explanation of consciousness as a "mere" epiphenomenon or illusion. If the zombies would act the same - which Chalmers readily admits - then the presence of consciousness is even more problematic. Why should an internal experience of the world accompany behaviors that would have been performed by my zombie counterpart, anyways?

Answer this post please:

Physical phenomena are the world. "Consciousness" / "qualia" are behavioral tricks. It wouldn't work very well if we actually had to reference all the very complicated little physical details that happen from moment to moment between our bodies / sensory organs and the rest of the world. So the brain doesn't do that. It makes use of abstract substitutes for these details that cover in broad strokes what's important for us to behave in reference to while omitting all those details. And we're compelled to behave in reference to these abstract substitutes as though they were actual things when really they aren't, in much the same way we work with the abstract objects of money or numbers.

>If the zombies would act the same - which Chalmers readily admits

I already said that. You're not contradicted what I explained. The argument as Chalmers outlined it requires that they act the same, and the problem is most people fail to comply with that requirement precisely because it's behavior that really matters and all these people know it on some level or another.

>Answer this post please:

>what biological automata are doing acting like subjects, shitposting on a Malaysian horseshoe repair tutorial board and all that

Why wouldn't they? Also there's a distinction between instinctual behavior and higher level non-instinctual behavior. This distinction doesn't require "qualia" being a real thing. It's just that our everyday social behavior for example isn't as directly automatic as the behavior you get when you tap someone on the knee with a mallet to test their reflexes. There's a much more elaborate neurological system behind social behavior that involves countless many little interactions between stored associations of internally held information and feedback from new externally transmitted information. Running close to the character limit so I'll respond to the next part in a separate post.

>what consciousness is doing here even in the first place if its totally extraneous to our actual empirical behavior

First I need to differentiate between "consciousness" the trick and "consciousness" the thing the trick makes you believe is there. The latter isn't "here" at all. The former is this:

>abstract substitutes for these details that cover in broad strokes what's important for us to behave in reference to while omitting all those details

And it's perfectly useful despite compelling us to behave in reference to something that isn't literally there in the physical world. Imagine trying to get by without the concept of numbers. Forget this conversation for starters since you wouldn't get anywhere close to harnessing electricity or building a network of computational devices to communicate with others about this topic. And yet numbers aren't in the real world. Not being in the real world isn't the same as not useful or not important. In a lot of ways the stuff our brains operate in terms of that aren't in the real world are much more important for our own well being than the real world itself is. There's a lot about the real world that's totally irrelevant to our daily functioning, and there's a lot about the behavioral tricks our brains engage in that are absolutely essential to our daily functioning.

I really don't know why you typed all that. Consciousness is precisely what "opens up" when the brain can't see behind the back of its circuitry. Besides, if consciousness is merely the system's internality, extraneous to the objective world, how do you explain the decisions I make FROM and based precisely ON this internality, ie decisions based on my knowledge of myself as a biological machine with a ticking clock, bound by causality, determined by forces inside and outside of me, etc.? Certainly the "I" is a model the brain constructs for its own purposes... but is it any less of an "I" for that? Come on, there is absolutely no reducing my experience of a poem or whatever to some mysterious, physical component parts off somewhere "else", all you're doing is overlaying abstraction onto an irreducible immediacy. No one's denying consciousness is what the brain "does", what we are denying is that it's somehow not precisely what it is - the actuality of subjective experience, right here, right now.

>First I need to differentiate between "consciousness" the trick and "consciousness" the thing the trick makes you believe is there.
How can consciousness be just "a trick" to make "me" believe something when the lack of "real" consciousness means there is no "me" to trick

>Consciousness is precisely what "opens up" when the brain can't see behind the back of its circuitry.

That's your conclusion, not an argument for your conclusion. I know that's what you believe, the thing in question is why you believe it.

>if consciousness is merely the system's internality, extraneous to the objective world,

Consciousness isn't "extraneous to the objective world." There are two different things here, the act of abstraction and the abstract object. The abstract object isn't a real thing at all and the act of abstraction is what's actually happening. "Consciousness" as the abstract object isn't extraneous, it just isn't there at all. "Consciousness" as the act of abstraction isn't extraneous, it's very much there as a real physical process.

>how do you explain the decisions I make FROM and based precisely ON this internality, ie decisions based on my knowledge of myself as a biological machine with a ticking clock, bound by causality, determined by forces inside and outside of me, etc.?

Having processes run in reference to abstractions doesn't require an appeal to a magical extra-physical entity that can't be explained by objective science. Part of the problem here is all these processes operate in much the same way stage magic does, where you're led to believe and behave in terms of things that aren't there while the things that really are there operate unnoticed from your various behavioral routines. The concept of "I" is a good example of this. The self isn't really doing any of what you're saying it does. The self's purpose is giving you yet another abstract object for behaviors to reference / interact with. There's a double meaning issue again here: "self" as the abstract thing that isn't really there vs. "self" as the narrative process that is there and leads you to behave as though the former were really there. Might add more to this in a second post, character limit again.

There is nothing you're telling me I don't already know.

Once again:

>No one's denying consciousness is what the brain "does", what we are denying is that it's somehow not precisely what it is - the actuality of subjective experience, right here, right now.

You're embossing the immediacy of experience with abstractions. Consciousness is the autonomous center of the system - it is the output of god knows how much deep-order processing, but it is an output nevertheless and exists, regardless of how hard you try to abstract away from it. I agree with everything you're saying. And yet consciousness remains consciousness. it is irreducible. It is irreducibility par excellence, as soon as you start giving me all these objective descriptions of what consciousness "really" is behind the curtain you're already positing that consciousness is something over and above mere physical mechanics precisely through the complexity of those same mechanics.

the physical, somehow, some way, all by itself, gives rise to the non-physical. no souls required. accept it. you want proof? look in the mirror. are you an energy being? okay then.

>How can consciousness be just "a trick" to make "me" believe something when the lack of "real" consciousness means there is no "me" to trick

Processes without "qualia" can be and are frequently tricked. By "tricked" I'm just referring to something that isn't there being passed off as something that is there. If you can make a fingerprint lock open by reproducing the desired behavior that follows a fingerprint match without actually putting a finger on it, you've tricked it in the same way this "qualia" trick works. The only difference is this "qualia" trick is a beneficial and regularly occurring trick rather than a one-off exploit. It's a trick that's useful to the point where a massive amount of the systems that make up our minds ended up being built around it. "What it's like to see red" isn't really there any more than the finger was there in the fingerprint lock example, but you get the useful behavior out of having the trick so it's good to have it. Instead of only behaving in terms of pure one to one reflexes, we can behave in more complicated ways in response to abstractions that aren't really there in the physical world but are supported through placeholders our brains keep track of.

>And yet consciousness remains consciousness. it is irreducible. It is irreducibility par excellence

I know this is your conclusion. I'm not seeing an argument for that conclusion. Just saying it's a real, irreducible, non-physical thing isn't an argument in support for the conclusion that it might be a real, irreducible, non-physical thing.

If we're talking about consciousness, then "consciousness is irreducibility itself" what do you think the support would be? Consciousness, precisely because if it is irreducible its irreducibility would be self-evident, which it precisely is: my experience of the sunset, while "technically" this or that, is, at the end of the day, my experience of a sunset. do you deny this? It is both illusory and not, it is both physical and clearly not, a system makes decisions based precisely on the experience of its subjective reality. "Illusion" loses all meaning when you're calling illusory our very sense of reality in the first place. Objectively, is it illusory? Sure. Does it matter? There is no magical noumenal "there" out there m8, it's only ever been subjectivity 's "here". And outside of subjectivity of course it's just the void of particles bumping into each other, so what?

>self-evident

If it were self-evident there wouldn't be an argument in the first place.

>Objectively, is it illusory? Sure.

Well, that's what I'm arguing so I guess I'm done here.

It astounds me you think it's not self-evident that your consciousness, right this fucking instant, can actually be reduced to noumenal building blocks from which we can satisfactorily and intuitively - not correlatively - derive the raw experience of music, or the feeling of sunlight on your skin, or seeing someone you care about. astounding

None of what you're talking about can't be explained in terms of your brain compelling you to believe what you're talking about. Your brain compels you to believe in things that aren't true about a million times each day, it's not like this is out of character for what we already know the brain does. You could say:

>It's so vivid and immediate!

But all that means is you're being compelled to believe it's very vivid and immediate. Intensity of belief isn't evidence that belief is true.

My man, if it wasn't immediate, I'd be in the void right now. Do you not know what immediacy means?

NoDon't you get consciousness is always-already irreducible to its physical foundation as soon as you have to start twisting yourself into pretzels to explain it away? If it was "just" chemicals, we wouldn't exactly even be capable of thought, let alone arguing, now would we? Consciousness is physical, it is not "just" physical, end of story.

You didn't actually address my question. First of all because I asked about consciousness, not qualia, secondly because I didn't ask you to define what you mean by "trick". What I actually asked you was:
How can consciousness be just a trick that makes "me" believe that "real" (not-a-trick) consciousness exists when the fact that there is no real consciousness would mean that there is no "me" to trick in the first place?

>I asked about consciousness, not qualia

"Consciousness" is a term that gets used for a lot of different things. I used "qualia" instead of "consciousness" to be more specific. The stuff that isn't "qualia" but does get referred to as "consciousness" isn't stuff I'm disputing e.g. I don't dispute there's a state other than the state you're in when you're in a coma or dead. Or at least I thought that was the case, but it sounds like you're arguing now that the concept of "self" is something beyond what can be explained by ordinary physics, in which case I'd dispute that too.

>How can consciousness be just a trick that makes "me" believe that "real" (not-a-trick) consciousness exists when the fact that there is no real consciousness would mean that there is no "me" to trick in the first place?

This is a language problem, not a neurology problem. The answer is the same reason why geocentrism doesn't need to be true just because we still today use words that are premised on geocentrism being true (sunrise and sunset). There's a sense of the words "trick" and "illusion" that are premised on the idea of there being a real "self" that's getting tricked or subjected to illusion, and all that means is the same thing it means for geocentrism with sunrise and sunset. It's exactly because this stuff is illusory that we have language premised on the false belief the illusory thing is real. That aside, the thing/s being tricked are the physical processes in the brain, which is why I brought up the fingerprint lock analogy to show how physical processes could be tricked. Physical processes in the brain behave in response to other physical processes in the brain that serve as placeholders for the abstract objects of "qualia" that don't actually exist in physical reality. This lets the brain do things in response to illusory placeholders in the same way it does things in direct response to actual external input.

>That aside, the thing/s being tricked are the physical processes in the brain, which is why I brought up the fingerprint lock analogy to show how physical processes could be tricked.
"Processes" can't be tricked, regardless of what definition of "trick" you use because according to your own worldview that only the physical is real, processes don't actually exist. They're illusions. All that is going on is that a bunch of matter and energy is reacting to other matter and energy according to the laws of physics.
And even if we accept that processes do exist, you can't trick them. As in, you can't pass off something that isn't there as something that is there, to use your definition of tricking, because in order to pass something off as something else, there needs to be an expectation for that something else in the first place. But to expect something is something that only a consciousness can do, so processes can't expect anything at all. Even in your example of a fingerprint lock being "tricked", all the lock is doing is taking an input and giving an output, which is the only thing that processes can do. You can't trick them any more than you can trick the equation "x+3=y".