In the off chance that anyone is interested, I just realised that Daniel C. Dennet's controversial article, "Quining Qualia" is available here online.
Completely off topic, a "quine" is a computer program that generates itself as output:
http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm
(now that I think about it, the "feeling of thinking about qualia" is sort of like that...)
In an earlier thread I asked whether Sony made up the term qualia or if it was appropriated. Does this article answer the question?
sorry I/we never answered that directly! the term has been around for awhile. I keep posting the definition hither and yon. Qualia is defined by The Oxford Companion to Philosophy as, "the subjective qualities of conscious experience (plural of the Latin singular quale). Examples are the way sugar tastes, the way vermillion looks, the way coffee smells, the way a cat's purr sounds, the way it feels to stub your toe."
The way the latest hot movies look on a big display screen.
yeah like that. but also the way rice smells when you forget and leave the pot on the stove top for a couple of days.
yeah like that. but also the way rice smells when you forget and leave the pot on the stovetop for a couple of days.
qualia as a term is distinguished from say "perception" or "taste" or "sight" in that it is applied specifically to discussions of consciousness, and so when Dennet denies the existence of qualia he's not saying that people don't actually taste or see anything, but he is attacking the idea of a category of things that are definitively "registered" in consciousness. As I wrote elsewhere: He explains that there is no fixed point when external events are registered in the mind, but rather consciousness is a process; a multi-track continuum. In his book, Consciousness Explained, he presents a fluid model of consciousness, in which, "at any point in time there are multiple drafts of narrative fragments at various stages of editing in various places in the brain."
Dennett also chides us (and his colleagues) for clinging to Cartesian Dualism; the old idea that consciousness resides on some separate special metaphysical plane, distinct from lumpen matter. While most people nowadays agree that the mind is a physical process (adhering to the theory of materialism), many of us still cling to a model of the Cartesian Theatre, in which our perceptions play like film on a screen, a "functional place of some sort where the items of phenomenology are projected." But according to Dennett, "there is no such theatre, there is no such audience." This would still require an entity separate from the system. Rather, he holds that the continuous, multiple narratives running in our brains are all there is to consciousness. So I guess I should try to find his email and see if we can get him to comment on Sony!
the way theory looks on a computer monitor. ow
yeah like that. but also the way rice smells when you forget and leave the pot on the stove top for a couple of days.
So it's not like deja vu, where you might seemingly re-experience wondering if you did, in fact leace rice in the pot on the stove top for a couple of days.
Hm. Just found a pretty old rice pot, that didn't smell bad at all! Granted it was in the fridge, but whey I say pretty old, I mean really really old. That's qualia for you!
Re: "Dennett also chides us (and his colleagues) for clinging to Cartesian Dualism; the old idea that consciousness resides on some separate special metaphysical plane, distinct from lumpen matter. While most people nowadays agree that the mind is a physical process (adhering to the theory of materialism), many of us still cling to a model of the Cartesian Theatre, in which our perceptions play like film on a screen, a "functional place of some sort where the items of phenomenology are projected." But according to Dennett, "there is no such theatre, there is no such audience." This would still require an entity separate from the system. Rather, he holds that the continuous, multiple narratives running in our brains are all there is to consciousness."
Doesn't the attempt to qualify/quantify experience (ie. to articulate or communicate the personal physical process of being) require some kind of a theatre, some level of objectification? How else can experience be expressed? The idea of multple narratives doesn't so much seem to negate the so called Cartesian theatre as much as it proposes a cineplex!
I don't think he is talking about the moment of articulation, but rather the moment of consciousness (which he believes is not a discrete moment).
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In the off chance that anyone is interested, I just realised that Daniel C. Dennet's controversial article, "Quining Qualia" is available here online.
- sally mckay 9-09-2005 7:31 pm
Completely off topic, a "quine" is a computer program that generates itself as output:
http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm
(now that I think about it, the "feeling of thinking about qualia" is sort of like that...)
- rob (guest) 9-09-2005 11:09 pm
In an earlier thread I asked whether Sony made up the term qualia or if it was appropriated. Does this article answer the question?
- tom moody 9-09-2005 11:17 pm
sorry I/we never answered that directly! the term has been around for awhile. I keep posting the definition hither and yon. Qualia is defined by The Oxford Companion to Philosophy as, "the subjective qualities of conscious experience (plural of the Latin singular quale). Examples are the way sugar tastes, the way vermillion looks, the way coffee smells, the way a cat's purr sounds, the way it feels to stub your toe."
- sally mckay 9-09-2005 11:20 pm
The way the latest hot movies look on a big display screen.
- tom moody 9-09-2005 11:34 pm
yeah like that. but also the way rice smells when you forget and leave the pot on the stove top for a couple of days.
- sally mckay 9-10-2005 12:23 am
yeah like that. but also the way rice smells when you forget and leave the pot on the stovetop for a couple of days.
- sally mckay 9-10-2005 12:24 am
qualia as a term is distinguished from say "perception" or "taste" or "sight" in that it is applied specifically to discussions of consciousness, and so when Dennet denies the existence of qualia he's not saying that people don't actually taste or see anything, but he is attacking the idea of a category of things that are definitively "registered" in consciousness. As I wrote elsewhere:
So I guess I should try to find his email and see if we can get him to comment on Sony!- sally mckay 9-10-2005 12:32 am
the way theory looks on a computer monitor. ow
- rusty_k 9-13-2005 1:04 am
yeah like that. but also the way rice smells when you forget and leave the pot on the stove top for a couple of days.
- joester 9-15-2005 11:15 am
So it's not like deja vu, where you might seemingly re-experience wondering if you did, in fact leace rice in the pot on the stove top for a couple of days.
- anonymous (guest) 9-15-2005 6:52 pm
Hm. Just found a pretty old rice pot, that didn't smell bad at all! Granted it was in the fridge, but whey I say pretty old, I mean really really old. That's qualia for you!
- sally mckay 9-15-2005 7:39 pm
Re: "Dennett also chides us (and his colleagues) for clinging to Cartesian Dualism; the old idea that consciousness resides on some separate special metaphysical plane, distinct from lumpen matter. While most people nowadays agree that the mind is a physical process (adhering to the theory of materialism), many of us still cling to a model of the Cartesian Theatre, in which our perceptions play like film on a screen, a "functional place of some sort where the items of phenomenology are projected." But according to Dennett, "there is no such theatre, there is no such audience." This would still require an entity separate from the system. Rather, he holds that the continuous, multiple narratives running in our brains are all there is to consciousness."
Doesn't the attempt to qualify/quantify experience (ie. to articulate or communicate the personal physical process of being) require some kind of a theatre, some level of objectification? How else can experience be expressed? The idea of multple narratives doesn't so much seem to negate the so called Cartesian theatre as much as it proposes a cineplex!
- J at simpleposie (guest) 9-16-2005 6:07 pm
I don't think he is talking about the moment of articulation, but rather the moment of consciousness (which he believes is not a discrete moment).
- sally mckay 9-16-2005 7:33 pm