I recommend really understand what is said at the 0:44 mark because that is the definition. The entire video is important in giving the definition the context because we are establishing it's ontology. For instance: Inverted qualia spectrum. Person A. Stimulus. Person B Qualia Seeing grass. Qualia GREEN. RED Behaviour Behaviour Pointing at Pointing at the grass saying the grass saying "Green". "Green" Qualia Seeing Blood. Qualia RED. GREEN Behaviour Behaviour Pointing at Pointing at the blood saying the blood saying "Red". "Red" A person's Qualia is a person's experience. Hence you can only understand a person's Qualia unless you are that person.
@@walnoemispoyt5604 I'm really trying to understand here, I just don't get it. Are you saying person B sees what person A would identify as the color green when they see blood, but to person B that's just what the color red looks like to them?
@@bargainbuilds5422 Yes you have it correct with respect to the inverted qualia experiment. The whole idea is that the qualia I experience will always be different from your experience of qualia. Another way to think of it are people with Synaethesia because if I were to hear the sounds I would just hear and feel vibrations but for those people they are actually experiencing and can see colours associated with those sounds. That's an extreme case of inverted qualia but Thomas Nagel was really pushing the idea that "we cannot know what it is like to be a bat unless you are the bat" and it is true we cannot know what it is like to be a bat.
Try having a mysterious physical pain, and you will know how important and difficoult it is to talk about it, because there won't be any proof. People won't hesitate to say that it is just your imagination, while pain certainly feels and seems very real.
Pain is definitely real! The philosophical question is whether it’s in any way reducible to physical events, or whether there’s something essentially nonphysical going on.
I appreciate the video, but I think you could have done a better job here at getting across what’s so weird about qualia. Why exactly we want it explained so badly. I think if I was to give it a go, I’d start with describing a simple system, like a rock falling down the hill. Notice that, if we really wanted to, we can explain all of that with different quantities alone. Like the slope of the hill, and the position and momentum of the rock. Or even the position of every atom, each atoms momentum, etc etc. It’s just a rock falling down a hill. Now let’s move to a more complicated system, like a video game, let’s say minecraft. Notice how they’re are so many interacting systems going on, we could say this is very complex stuff going on. But still, we could just explain it with different quantities, positions of atoms in your computer, 0s and 1s flipping electrically with transistors, the RGB pixels of ur screen having different values, or quantities etc. The minecraft code is also just a bunch of 0s and 1s. So now we also have complex stuff going on, that we can fully describe with quantities. Something more complicated, your immune system. It dynamically increases the amount of white blood cells when fighting infection. It does a bunch of very complicated stuff, but we can still describe it fully with quantities, numbers. With the different electron shells, interacting via chemistry, causing all this biological complexity to be going on. But notice how it *feels* to drink that hot coffee, or how it *feels* to see that color green. There’s *quality* to the warmth, or the green-ness, that you would really struggle to capture with numbers alone. Imagine you had an advanced AI robot, which could react dynamically with the world around it, just as you do. But it would measure heat and color with different values, numbers, not with the quality of green-ness or warmth. Notice how it really could do every action you do, but without *feeling* anything. So that extra *feeling* we have, that’s what we can’t explain purely by physical stuff, quantities of stuff. Because we can explain everything you’re doing now only using numbers, and it would be a perfect description, except for the fact that it wouldn’t account for what it *felt* like to be you.
I would define quale as fundamental intrinsic features of subjective experience which can't be reduced further. Example - Redness , shape-ness, distance-ness , witnessing sounds , tasteness ,etc ...
Well, if you *define* them as not further reducible, then you make dualism true (and physicalism false) by definition. But it's supposed to be at least in theory an open question which is true, to be settled by some combination of argument and evidence.
@@AtticPhilosophyi think dualism means they say that there are two realms but pansychism is considered as monism , where the world is one but every matter has some proto consciousness... . But I am just agnostic ,i am exploring possibilities, I don't rejected dualism , materialism or other theories except illusionist who just deny it
I guess, as a start, I would consider qualia = relationships. Probably highly complex relationships between physical states of affairs. Whether I can say this and not resort to a concept such as 'emergent' is another matter - but I suspect that the initial factoring out of the extrinsic in the definition of qualia may be partially creating a conceptual problem where there isn't one.
That’s an interesting take. Physicalists have to say something like that, that qualia are ultimately physical properties of objects, or relations to a person’s mind.
you're currently teaching me the MKE module and i love that you're doing these videos alongside our content!! they're so useful. i also love all of ur other vids slay
Not the same. Qualia is the "feel" of an experience. Sense-data is whatever is present to your mind in perception. Exactly what sense-data are depends on your theory of perception - either info about physical objects, or (more commonly) your internal mental representations of them.
It’s only a problem if you insist that an opinion, can never be so complete, that it creates reality. If you interview somebody about his perceived qualia, while looking at an orange, he will all the way to hysteria claims that his color orange experience is real, and unexplainable non-material. If you do some research into his brain, you soon realize that it is a board-computer, and one that is multi-task-fully evolved in a rather dangerous environment. And it’s clear some areas are specialized in handling specific sensory information, by making sure that all other areas are very much informed about current information. In other words, these sensory brain areas, are in such a way connected with other brain areas, that the activity might rightfully be called an opinion about the situation, as far as it knows about. This opinion is strong. It must be, because it must result in care. Not caring enough about the specific-ness, is not functioning good, which is a bad habit for evolving board-computers in a challenging environment. This made opinion about a specific-ness, is not only strong; it is complete, and without doubt. Doubt is not-caring enough. An evolutionary death end. Such formed opinions are rather unique entities in the material world. They are actually the only entities of the “this is the case”, so of the metaphysical primary variety. Now back to the person who you are interviewing. What else than his opinion about the specifics he is telling you about? Can he say anything else than what he does? No; he is not thinking about his opinion, his opinion is responsible for/equivalent with, specific thoughts and speech. He knows nothing else, then that the specifics of this orange are what-is, and so his reality. Then you might ask: But why is orange-ness for myself so specific, as it is perceived? The answer is: Because an opinion is made, that this specific surface quality is the case. Orange-ness is specific. Hence you experience specific-ness. The fact that it is another experience than that of blue, comes with specific-ness. Colors have no other features than that they are specific. Then you say; but they are not only specific, they are also real, and that needs an explanation. Yet again, you are only pointing out, that the formed opinion is doing its job; making you believe without doubt that specific-ness is what is the case. There is only your formed opinion about what is real, and these are equivalent to perceived reality, because it is the same thing. That’s how your brain necessarily works.
@@AtticPhilosophy I dare defenders of physicalism to explain how they can have this problem, while there thoughts about a qualia are logically created by their evolved brains; not by some hypothetical observer. Where do I go wrong in my story above, trying the explain that these thoughts are a brain-opinion about specific-ness, that they existentially have this opinion, and that they cannot un-have it?
@@castheeuwes1085 It's probably the main objection. to physicalism. So if it's not a problem, physicalists would be happier! The problem is to explain, in purely physical terns, why a feeling feels the way it does, rather than some other way, or like nothing at all.
@@AtticPhilosophy It's not for me to start nagging about it to you, however feeling-the-way-it-does, is equivalent to specific-ness. The question why a specific experience is specific, makes no sense. Brain need an opinion about sensory input, if not, that input is useless. The formed opinion is a reality. You can't think "free" about what is going on. Brain makes all thoughts, and so also the introspective "this is specific", without offering other intrinsic features. If you don't believe me, tell me what else you can say about any quality, than that it-is-specific. Opinion is a physical term, and without acknowledging what the consequences are of that fact, qualia will remain magical. The question Why is there not nothing at all, goes back to evolved awareness. Not making opinions is not an option for any animal.
@@castheeuwes1085It's not just about "specificness". Describe the neural activity in your brain right now as specifically as you like, and there's still a gap in explaining what the world *feels* like to you. That's the "explanatory gap". Not all philosophers of mind think it's a problem (or a big problem), but the vast majority do. If you want to read further, David Chalmers's The Conscious Mind is a great resource on this.
Still don’t know what qualia are but it’s a great scrabble word
I recommend really understand what is said at the 0:44 mark because that is the definition. The entire video is important in giving the definition the context because we are establishing it's ontology.
For instance:
Inverted qualia spectrum.
Person A. Stimulus. Person B
Qualia Seeing grass. Qualia
GREEN. RED
Behaviour Behaviour
Pointing at Pointing at
the grass saying the grass saying
"Green". "Green"
Qualia Seeing Blood. Qualia
RED. GREEN
Behaviour Behaviour
Pointing at Pointing at
the blood saying the blood saying
"Red". "Red"
A person's Qualia is a person's experience. Hence you can only understand a person's Qualia unless you are that person.
Nerd fukers chat gpt bots be like
Nerd fuker chat gpt bot be like 😊
@@walnoemispoyt5604 I'm really trying to understand here, I just don't get it. Are you saying person B sees what person A would identify as the color green when they see blood, but to person B that's just what the color red looks like to them?
@@bargainbuilds5422 Yes you have it correct with respect to the inverted qualia experiment.
The whole idea is that the qualia I experience will always be different from your experience of qualia.
Another way to think of it are people with Synaethesia because if I were to hear the sounds I would just hear and feel vibrations but for those people they are actually experiencing and can see colours associated with those sounds. That's an extreme case of inverted qualia but Thomas Nagel was really pushing the idea that "we cannot know what it is like to be a bat unless you are the bat" and it is true we cannot know what it is like to be a bat.
In the middle of writing my philosophy of mind term paper, this was a great help, thanks mate!
Good your new lighting setup! Makes a better Attic Philosophy Qualia
Clearest of explanations....thanks!
Thanks!
Try having a mysterious physical pain, and you will know how important and difficoult it is to talk about it, because there won't be any proof. People won't hesitate to say that it is just your imagination, while pain certainly feels and seems very real.
Pain is definitely real! The philosophical question is whether it’s in any way reducible to physical events, or whether there’s something essentially nonphysical going on.
I appreciate the video, but I think you could have done a better job here at getting across what’s so weird about qualia. Why exactly we want it explained so badly.
I think if I was to give it a go, I’d start with describing a simple system, like a rock falling down the hill. Notice that, if we really wanted to, we can explain all of that with different quantities alone. Like the slope of the hill, and the position and momentum of the rock. Or even the position of every atom, each atoms momentum, etc etc. It’s just a rock falling down a hill.
Now let’s move to a more complicated system, like a video game, let’s say minecraft. Notice how they’re are so many interacting systems going on, we could say this is very complex stuff going on. But still, we could just explain it with different quantities, positions of atoms in your computer, 0s and 1s flipping electrically with transistors, the RGB pixels of ur screen having different values, or quantities etc. The minecraft code is also just a bunch of 0s and 1s. So now we also have complex stuff going on, that we can fully describe with quantities.
Something more complicated, your immune system. It dynamically increases the amount of white blood cells when fighting infection. It does a bunch of very complicated stuff, but we can still describe it fully with quantities, numbers. With the different electron shells, interacting via chemistry, causing all this biological complexity to be going on.
But notice how it *feels* to drink that hot coffee, or how it *feels* to see that color green. There’s *quality* to the warmth, or the green-ness, that you would really struggle to capture with numbers alone. Imagine you had an advanced AI robot, which could react dynamically with the world around it, just as you do. But it would measure heat and color with different values, numbers, not with the quality of green-ness or warmth. Notice how it really could do every action you do, but without *feeling* anything. So that extra *feeling* we have, that’s what we can’t explain purely by physical stuff, quantities of stuff. Because we can explain everything you’re doing now only using numbers, and it would be a perfect description, except for the fact that it wouldn’t account for what it *felt* like to be you.
this is the best explanation ive seen thank you so much I've been struggling with this as a 2nd year student in my philosophy of mind class
Awesome video...do you think the universe is metaphysically Necessary?
Will you ever cover mathematical platonism?
I cover it briefly here: th-cam.com/video/teLsXczfeNM/w-d-xo.html but I'd definitely like to make a more detailed video sometime soon
Unit of subjective experience
Does experience come in units?!?
1-100`G (Gild unit).
Julian casablancas brought me here
That’s hard to explain
2:43 "my mind"...."my body" So, if this is your mind and your body, then who are you?
I’m the person with this mind and this body.
I know this one! They're a bit like a small chicken!
You’ve got it! Hard problem of consciousness solved, and no foul play!
I would define quale as fundamental intrinsic features of subjective experience which can't be reduced further. Example - Redness , shape-ness, distance-ness , witnessing sounds , tasteness ,etc ...
Well, if you *define* them as not further reducible, then you make dualism true (and physicalism false) by definition. But it's supposed to be at least in theory an open question which is true, to be settled by some combination of argument and evidence.
@@AtticPhilosophyi think dualism means they say that there are two realms but pansychism is considered as monism , where the world is one but every matter has some proto consciousness... .
But I am just agnostic ,i am exploring possibilities, I don't rejected dualism , materialism or other theories except illusionist who just deny it
I guess, as a start, I would consider qualia = relationships. Probably highly complex relationships between physical states of affairs. Whether I can say this and not resort to a concept such as 'emergent' is another matter - but I suspect that the initial factoring out of the extrinsic in the definition of qualia may be partially creating a conceptual problem where there isn't one.
That’s an interesting take. Physicalists have to say something like that, that qualia are ultimately physical properties of objects, or relations to a person’s mind.
?? Qualia is based on intrinsic factors, though. It's based off of subjective experience, not objective experience...
you're currently teaching me the MKE module and i love that you're doing these videos alongside our content!! they're so useful. i also love all of ur other vids slay
Thanks Casey! I hope they're helpful for the module.
Do you lean towards to this view that the universe is necessary?
Look at you socialising people into confused ways of thinking about the issues of mind! Philosophical pseudo-things ;)
haha! Well, in fairness, an awful lot of philosophers believe in qualia.
@@AtticPhilosophy qualias does exist !
Is qualia the same as sense-data? And what exactly does sense-data mean in Russellian sense??
Not the same. Qualia is the "feel" of an experience. Sense-data is whatever is present to your mind in perception. Exactly what sense-data are depends on your theory of perception - either info about physical objects, or (more commonly) your internal mental representations of them.
It’s only a problem if you insist that an opinion, can never be so complete, that it creates reality.
If you interview somebody about his perceived qualia, while looking at an orange, he will all the way to hysteria claims that his color orange experience is real, and unexplainable non-material.
If you do some research into his brain, you soon realize that it is a board-computer, and one that is multi-task-fully evolved in a rather dangerous environment. And it’s clear some areas are specialized in handling specific sensory information, by making sure that all other areas are very much informed about current information.
In other words, these sensory brain areas, are in such a way connected with other brain areas, that the activity might rightfully be called an opinion about the situation, as far as it knows about.
This opinion is strong. It must be, because it must result in care. Not caring enough about the specific-ness, is not functioning good, which is a bad habit for evolving board-computers in a challenging environment.
This made opinion about a specific-ness, is not only strong; it is complete, and without doubt. Doubt is not-caring enough. An evolutionary death end.
Such formed opinions are rather unique entities in the material world. They are actually the only entities of the “this is the case”, so of the metaphysical primary variety.
Now back to the person who you are interviewing. What else than his opinion about the specifics he is telling you about? Can he say anything else than what he does? No; he is not thinking about his opinion, his opinion is responsible for/equivalent with, specific thoughts and speech. He knows nothing else, then that the specifics of this orange are what-is, and so his reality.
Then you might ask: But why is orange-ness for myself so specific, as it is perceived?
The answer is: Because an opinion is made, that this specific surface quality is the case.
Orange-ness is specific. Hence you experience specific-ness.
The fact that it is another experience than that of blue, comes with specific-ness. Colors have no other features than that they are specific.
Then you say; but they are not only specific, they are also real, and that needs an explanation. Yet again, you are only pointing out, that the formed opinion is doing its job; making you believe without doubt that specific-ness is what is the case.
There is only your formed opinion about what is real, and these are equivalent to perceived reality, because it is the same thing. That’s how your brain necessarily works.
The problem of qualia is usually viewed as a problem by both defenders & objectors to physicalism about the mind.
@@AtticPhilosophy I dare defenders of physicalism to explain how they can have this problem, while there thoughts about a qualia are logically created by their evolved brains; not by some hypothetical observer.
Where do I go wrong in my story above, trying the explain that these thoughts are a brain-opinion about specific-ness, that they existentially have this opinion, and that they cannot un-have it?
@@castheeuwes1085 It's probably the main objection. to physicalism. So if it's not a problem, physicalists would be happier! The problem is to explain, in purely physical terns, why a feeling feels the way it does, rather than some other way, or like nothing at all.
@@AtticPhilosophy It's not for me to start nagging about it to you, however feeling-the-way-it-does, is equivalent to specific-ness. The question why a specific experience is specific, makes no sense. Brain need an opinion about sensory input, if not, that input is useless. The formed opinion is a reality. You can't think "free" about what is going on. Brain makes all thoughts, and so also the introspective "this is specific", without offering other intrinsic features. If you don't believe me, tell me what else you can say about any quality, than that it-is-specific. Opinion is a physical term, and without acknowledging what the consequences are of that fact, qualia will remain magical.
The question Why is there not nothing at all, goes back to evolved awareness. Not making opinions is not an option for any animal.
@@castheeuwes1085It's not just about "specificness". Describe the neural activity in your brain right now as specifically as you like, and there's still a gap in explaining what the world *feels* like to you. That's the "explanatory gap". Not all philosophers of mind think it's a problem (or a big problem), but the vast majority do. If you want to read further, David Chalmers's The Conscious Mind is a great resource on this.
Cheers Mark
Thanks!