Episteme - July 7th - Qualia
Day 1 - Qualia
Why Qualia?
One of the things I've been meaning to research more was about thoughts. I was actually going to do it on a thought experiment - Mary's room to be specific - but I got sidetracked by the amount of words I didn't know the meaning to, so I decided I should explore things slowly but surely. Then I saw a link to this Wikipedia article on Mary's room's webpage, and recalled when I opened that page as a way to explain MBTI Si and never got to reading it. Thus I decided this was a good way to start.
Qualia
Qualia is described as subjective, conscious experience. As compared to Se, which takes in reality objectively and interprets it into a singular objective view, this is alike to Si as it takes an individual's unique perspective (though perspective is a wrong word, to be honest. Sensation?)
According to Wikipedia, the word derives from the Latin word qualis, which means "of what sort" or "of what kind". Subjective experience seems like the best way to describe it - it's so unconscious and engrained into a person that it's hard to project a certain quale (yes, quale is singular) to other people, because they may experience it differently.
Is qualia used only for tangible items? Like, how about different interpretations of the word qualia itself, which is what is discussed by several philosophers, thus all the sections in the wiki? Would that be considered subjective too?
I'm reading on the definition of qualia right now, and they describe the "redness" or a shade of red as a form of qualia. Like, here. This red may be different to you as it is to me - I see it as a rich maroon. Which reminds me of that theory I proposed to my father years ago - and discovered it was a popular theory online too - where each person sees different colors because something (which I now learn are cone cells) is different in each of us, leading us to see different things, and we wouldn't even question it because that's how we grew up, and there's no way to actually prove it.
Some dude called C.S Peirce was the first to introduce this term:
"There are recognizable qualitative characters of the given, which may be repeated in different experiences, and are thus a sort of universals; I call these "qualia." But although such qualia are universals, in the sense of being recognized from one to another experience, they must be distinguished from the properties of objects. Confusion of these two is characteristic of many historical conceptions, as well as of current essence-theories. The quale is directly intuited, given, and is not the subject of any possible error because it is purely subjective."
Frank Johnson's definition resonates with me though. For the main reason that that's exactly what Si is and all that goes through my head is MBTI.
"...certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes"
Se sees the object itself, without connecting it to a past memory, while Si sees the object and associates it with a certain instance. Like for me, a certain Si user, it's easy for me to find connections between objects, which sucks because now that I did that, I can't undo that and separate my own personal thoughts from it. Like a profile on PDB... is just a profile. But if something happened there, I'd probably avoid it avidly.
Though it is possible to make an analogy, such as "red looks hot", or to provide a description of the conditions under which the experience occurs, such as "it's the color you see when light of 700-nm wavelength is directed at you", supporters of this kind of qualia contend that such a description is incapable of providing a complete description of the experience.
I like this description. It's the next part which confuses me.
the perception of the taste of wine is an ineffable, raw feel, while the experience of warmth or bitterness caused by that taste of wine would be a cooked feel. Cooked feels are not qualia.
Oh, actually, I think I get it now.
Si vs Se again. The taste of wine is what you experience objectively, with your five senses, in the moment. A raw feel is sort of what you think the experience is? But you're not experiencing it currently to be able to make an accurate judgement. When I went to New York once, we went to this huge chocolate shop and they handed out free Hershey's. They were one of the best Hershey's I've ever tasted - rich, smooth, chocolatey. I can't get my point across properly because, you know, it's subjective, and as much as I use adjectives to tell you what I remember, you won't imagine the same sensation as what I describe. When I came back to Malaysia I wondered what had stopped me all this time from buying these Hershey's if they were so good, so my mom brought us to the grocery store. They tasted horrible. Not necessarily horrible, but just wrong.
Anyways, I went off-topic. But after thought, I think I know what they mean.
Experiments
I'm probably going to try to summarize each experiment, because they are their own Wikipedia pages. If I want to explore them more I can read on them later.
Anyways, qualia can't be proven, because it's so subjective that it is difficult to convey. Thus, it would be difficult to argue for too.
In my opinion... there's a way for qualia to not be real? Maybe it's the difference between Si and Se users but I cannot imagine not being able to associate a memory to a physical object. Maybe they mean something else, such as the fact that the word or experience is so obvious that it becomes sort of redundant.
What is it like to be a bat?
An argument often cited is by this dude called Thomas Nagel. "Consciousness has a relatively subjective character" possibly means that the very being of each organism or being has an identity? Like, to be a bat, you can say they have features like echolocation, good eyesight (yes, blind as a bat is a lie), feed on nectar, etc. But to actually be a bat would be something we'll never know.
"if we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue about how this could be done." This is making me think about how much I don't know, and my vocabulary is limited. I'm both a first-language speaker and a foreign speaker. Ha.
Anyways, with more seriousness, this is probably attributed to the fact that evidence is concrete? Qualia leaves behind no evidence, thus it is unable to be proven, but identifying the qualia itself is possible? I'm really not good at this. Hopefully doing these writeups every day improves my ability to comprehend.
I'm not really simplifying anything - I'm just taking statements and trying to comprehend and break it down into something I can understand, which makes me realize that I'm writing this for myself. Which I knew. Because no one technically is going to read this.
Inverted spectrum argument
Basically a hypothetical situation of "what would happen if the colours of everything around us got inverted", inverted meaning the color now holds the opposite value of the colour wheel (this definition is for myself)
"Metaphysical identity holds of necessity.
If something is possibly false, it is not necessary.
It is conceivable that qualia could have a different relationship to physical brain-states.
If it is conceivable, then it is possible.
Since it is possible for qualia to have a different relationship with physical brain-states, they cannot be identical to brain states (by 1).
Therefore, qualia are non-physical."
I age the further I go down this page, but this is such Ti reasoning as it breaks things down deductively according to their logical framework. "If something is not this, it is that"
Philosophical zombies
For reference: phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness from the experience of a first-person's point-of-view.
Here the hypothesis is: "what if we duplicated people into zombies?" except zombies don't necessarily mean dead people, but more so people with the same physical qualities without the consciousness and subjective experiences characterized by humans.
Daniel Dennett, who argues against qualia, argues against this hypothetical hypothesis (heh) by saying:
"Are zombies possible? They're not just possible, they're actual. We're all zombies: Nobody is conscious"
I've decided to skip to the arguments against.
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Okay but first, random thought. The word qualis evolved to qualia, but if you think about it, it probably gave birth (yes) to the word quality as well. So like, in Business Studies, quality is defined as being able to meet customer expectations. But like, quality itself is subjective.
I don't really know where I'm going with this so I'll move on.
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Against
I'm not going to summarise everyone but I am going to try to talk about Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
So this dude strongly believes that qualia is an illusion or somewhat. I searched up on PDB and wanted to see if he had Si in his stack, but he's apparently an ENTP. Inferior Si, but nonetheless, Si. I won't trust PDB too much though.
He disagrees with qualia for the reason that when you try to apply it practically, the definition breaks down. So he does a series of experiments to actually prove his point about qualia. He believes the definition of qualia is so imported (what does that mean? Has it been passed down for so long that its meaning has been lost? Or does it just mean "obsolete" because that's what my brain filled the blank with though I'm not sure that's accurate) that 1) it's practically useless in terms of situation, and 2) questions about qualia are unanswerable precisely because they're about qualia.
To him, if qualia were to be taken seriously as a component of experience:
- You have to know a change in qualia has taken place
- There's a different between a change in qualia and a lack of qualia.
This part is an interesting way of putting it though:
"we cannot satisfy (a) either through introspection or through observation, and that qualia's very definition undermines its chances of satisfying (b)."
It indeed does seem a little misleading that the answer to questions about qualia as it is too subjective and intangible to be able to define. The mind is a fickle thing.
To be able to study more about qualia though, Mary's Room has to be investigated. He provides interesting insights to counterargue what qualia actually is, and admittedly he voiced my doubts on the experiment too. Here are the thoughts as paraphrased by Wikipedia, as it's 1 am.
Actually I'll paraphrase it lol.
Anyways, so the experiment is like this: Mary, a scientist, is taught everything about colour by being given descriptions of colour (I think? I'll have to read the article but this is the gist I got) but she stays in a room of only black and white and has never actually experienced colour. The hypothesis tested is whether Mary will learn something new if she leaves the room and actually sees colour.
According to Dennett, if she actually knew everything about color, it would includewhy and how it causes us to sense its "quale". Which sounds both... obvious and complicated at the same time, because everything is an umbrella term, so of course something has to be missed out. Basically, she didn't actually know everything about the color, since it's a lot deeper and intuitive than that.
"Perhaps Mary's failure to learn exactly what seeing red feels like is simply a failure of language, or a failure of our ability to describe experiences. An alien race with a different method of communication or description might be perfectly able to teach their version of Mary exactly how seeing the color red would feel. Perhaps it is simply a uniquely human failing to communicate first-person experiences from a third-person perspective. Dennett suggests that the description might even be possible using English.
He uses a simpler version of the Mary thought experiment to show how this might work. What if Mary was in a room without triangles and was prevented from seeing or making any triangles? An English-language description of just a few words would be sufficient for her to imagine what it is like to see a triangle – she can simply and directly visualize a triangle in her mind. Similarly, Dennett proposes, it is perfectly, logically possible that the quale of what it is like to see red could eventually be described in an English-language description of millions or billions of words."
This is interesting. So it's basically a vocabulary problem.
Actually, thinking about it, he isn't wrong per se. It's basically a problem of we don't know enough to communicate this experience with words. Which isn't wrong, since we don't know everything, and proper, perfect articulation that can be understood by everyone can also be a form of high-level knowledge. So we just need to advance the English language. Tons of languages have words for feelings unable to be fully described in English. Schadenfreude is German for "a feeling of satisfaction upon the failure of your peers". A Filipino friend of mine taught me a word in Tagalog: tampo, meaning the isolation or withdrawal from the person or source of your unhappiness momentarily because you're hurt, often used for kids. Both these words don't have English equivalents. So yeah it could be a language problem.
For
Ramachandran and Hirstein
Both of these philosophers proposed four laws (initially three - the fourth was an addition) relating to qualia:
1. Qualia are irrevocable and indutitable
2. Once a representation is created, there are infinite possibilities of what to do with this qualia. The input is rigid and automatic, but "if you have the percept of an apple you can use it to tempt Adam, to keep the doctor away, bake a pie, or just to eat."
3. Short-term memory. Representation is created as an input to be stored in the memory. If criteria is not fulfilled, then it's just a reflex arc.
4. "Attention. Qualia and attention are closely linked. You need attention to fulfill criterion number two; to choose. A study of circuits involved in attention, therefore, will shed much light on the riddle of qualia."
They also proposed that if two brains were connected with wires together in "a cable of neurons", we'd be able to experience each other's qualia. Which doesn't sound too unsound. It is just a hypothesis after all, but it would be interesting is it were all tangible (makes me think of that virtual world younger me dreamt of - building a machine at which when you enter, the imagination experienced in the conscious mind takes form and you're able to explore it with your five senses) (which is the most professional-sounding description I've given it bahaha).
I didn't get to finish everything on the page but skimming through rapidly, things that caught my attention were:
- agnosics is the word for people who are brain-damaged, literally not-knowing, and should be able to have these sensations without recognizing them.
- Schrodinger (I don't know how to put those dots on these o's) believes in qualia.
- His first name is also Erwin
- I like Ramachandran and Hirstein's perspective of qualia. Might do an extra paragraph for them.
- Marvin Minsky, who's against qualia, thinks we might just be confusing complexity for simplicity
Anyways, it was insightful to get some insight from modern philosophers. (Obviously it was insightful to get insight are you stupid). I'm way too inexperienced in philosophy to be able to make a judgement in someone else's (especially if they're older and have researched this for years) work, so all I can do at the moment is take it in objectively and try to understand their point of view. I'm still not certain what it exactly is, but I know enough applicable terms to be able to put it across, so yeah. That's it for today's Episteme challenge, and stay tuned for tomorrow :)
Notes
Explanations for the tags.
I think sorting what I've learnt by topic (in this case, philosophy) is helpful for me in the future if I want to see how much I've learnt.
Incomplete means I didn't actual get to touch on the entire Wikipedia page (but I was close - other than various other philosophers who argued for/against, all I had left were other arguments of factors to consider in determining or criticising qualia) so if I actually want to continue in the future, I could (highly doubt it though.)
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