incorrigable private evidence

[_Tarski]

Why not if she knows all there is to know about how eyes and brain work down to the tiniest detail (incuding here reactions when so does see color)?
by the way, no one believes Dennett is right before reading his arguments in great detail. It defies intuition!

Read "Consciousness Explained" for some great fun.

She can't know all there is to know about color without experiencing it.

KA

What doesn't she know?

Your intuition about this is almost universal. But......

[_Mister Scratch]

Tarski---

An interesting and intriguing post. I, for one, have noticed this sort of thing a lot amongst Mopologists, where they will use this sort of defense that goes like this: "Well, I am the ultimate authority on my own thoughts, so blah blah blah." (Wade Englund was fond of this, as are DCP, juliann, and countless others.) In any case, my point is that, while this happens on both sides of the fence, it seems more common among TBMs/Mopologists.

[_KimberlyAnn]

Why not if she knows all there is to know about how eyes and brain work down to the tiniest detail (incuding here reactions when so does see color)?
by the way, no one believes Dennett is right before reading his arguments in great detail. It defies intuition!

Read "Consciousness Explained" for some great fun.

She can't know all there is to know about color without experiencing it.

KA

What doesn't she know?

Your intuition about this is almost universal. But......

What am I missing, Tarski? I cannot see that Mary didn't learn something from actually seeing color for the first time. She may understand completely how color is processed, but she never processed it. She wouldn't even know her colors, would she, unless she saw them? She wouldn't know red was red or blue was blue unless she saw them and someone labeled them for her.

It seems to me no one can know much of a sensory nature unless they experience it themselves. I can't adequately describe what a rose smells like to someone who hasn't smelled one before. Or satisfactorily describe sound to a deaf person, even though I may be able to tell them everything about how hearing functions. Are you implying that a deaf person who hears for the first time hasn't learned anything if he already understood perfectly the mechanics of hearing?

I submit perhaps there's a good reason for my intuition being almost universal...

KA

[_KimberlyAnn]

I may check out Dennett's book. I'm considering boycotting him because he's a Bright. ;)

KA

Hey! I registered as a Bright (despite the fact that I, too, do not like the name). Does that mean you're going to boycott me?

Did somebody say something? :P

That won't get you out of getting your butt kicked at Risk, you know.

In your dreams. ;)

KA

[_Gadianton]

From 7 days ago even..

I disagreed with him, and we had a very interesting talk for an hour or so. I said: “No, you’re wrong. Life is wonderful.” Then I made a mistake as far as that conversation was concerned. He said, “How do you know?” I said, “I know!” And he said, “How do you know?”

He had me kind of stumped. How do I know? Well, I asked him, I said, “Do you know what salt tastes like?” And he said, “Yes, of course.” And I said, “What’s it like?” He said, “It’s not sweet or sour.”

“You’ve told me what it isn’t, not what it is!” I said. “Are you sure you know?” He said: “Of course I know! I had some salt when we had dinner.” Then I said, “Then you tell me what salt tastes like.”

He started again, “It isn’t sweet, it isn’t sour.” Now we could talk about the taste of salt because we’ve both experienced it. When you come to the spiritual things and having a spiritual experience — and you probably have — then you understand getting an impression, a prompting. That’s a pattern in our lives.

[_Tarski]

Why not if she knows all there is to know about how eyes and brain work down to the tiniest detail (incuding here reactions when so does see color)?
by the way, no one believes Dennett is right before reading his arguments in great detail. It defies intuition!

Read "Consciousness Explained" for some great fun.

She can't know all there is to know about color without experiencing it.

KA

What doesn't she know?

Your intuition about this is almost universal. But......

What am I missing, Tarski?
KA

A lot!

Try reading this to get a flavor: http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm

By the way, yes Mary would know her colors. She knows more about why people say blue when they look at blue things than you or I. She knows the whole light, brain, word production, emotional reaction story in detail.

[_DonBradley]

[quote="Tarski"]
Fine but then a photelectric cell is aware of light.
[quote]

Nonsense. It reacts to the light, but we have no reason to believe it has subjective experience, whereas our own subjective experience is indisputable, and the foundation of any further inquiry into this or any other subject.

Don

[_asbestosman]

This may be a bit off topic, but I was wondering about the inverted spectrum problem. We often ask what if my red was your blue. However, since our brains consist of two hemispheres, what would it mean if my left hemisphere's red were my right hemisphere's blue? Perhaps a mad scientist rewired my right eye.

Does this questoin have any implications for whether our subjective experiences of qualia are certain?

[_DonBradley]

It depends on what you mean by consciousness. If you suspect that a robot could never be conscious (without somehow gaining some new thing along the way to complexity) then you need to read Dennett.

I'm uncertain whether a robot could be conscious.

And by awareness do you simply mean our ability to navigate the world and talk about it?

No. I mean our experience of a world, or of anything at all. While our experience certainly provides us things to talk about, and information we use to navigate the world, the experience itself, the awareness, consciousness, is a distinct and very basic phenomenon. To say we aren't conscious we be to say that we don't feel or experience, which is absurd. The job of philosophy should not be to tell us that realities we perceive prior to thought itself, and on which thought depends, don't exist. The job of philosophy should be to explore those realities, and perhaps hypothetical counter-realities as well. To doubt one's own existence, consciousness, etc. is the worst of ivory tower abstraction--a luxury of pure fantasy unbound by the constraints of being.

Don

[_Tarski]

Fine but then a photelectric cell is aware of light.

Nonsense. It reacts to the light, but we have no reason to believe it has subjective experience, whereas our own subjective experience is indisputable, and the foundation of any further inquiry into this or any other subject.

Don

How about a sophistcated computer designed to make sophisticated judgements based on input to sensors?
In this case we just have a chain of reactions (or multiple interacting chains).
Perhaps you hold that no machine could ever have subjective experience?