David Nyman wrote:
> On Oct 11, 5:11 am, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > > But it isn't possible to determine by inspection that they are
> > > conscious.Are you claiming it's impossible in principle, or just that we don't know how?
>
> It may be impossible in principle (i.e. 1-person experience is
> ex-hypothesi incommunicable) and we certainly don't know how to.
So if I see a square, I can't communicate it?
Colours and Shapes: Exactly What Qualifies as a Quale ?
Because qualia are so often used to argue against physicalism (or at
least physical communicability), it is often assumed that they must be
mysterious by definition. However Lewis's original definition pins
qualia to the way external objects appear, and it least some of those
features are throughly unmysterious,such as the shapes of objects. A
red square seems to divide into a mysterious redness and an
unmysterious squareness. This does not by itself remove any of the
problems associated with qualia; the problem is that some qualia are
mysterious. not that some are not.. There is another, corresponding
issue; not all mysterious, mental contents are the appearances of
external objects. There a re "phenomenal feels" attached to emotions,
sensations and so on. Indeed, we often use the perceived qualaities of
objects as metaphors for them -- sharp pains, warm or cool feelings
towards another person, and so on. The main effect of this issue on the
argument is to hinder the physicalist project of reducing qualia to the
phsycally-defined properties of external objects, since in the case of
internal sensations and emotional feelings, there are not suitable
external objects.
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Received on Wed Oct 11 2006 - 20:21:56 PDT