Okay, now that the dialogue is finally building about the qualia question, I'm going to make the question clearer. Here is Dennett on the qualia problem:
"Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? Everything real has properties, and since I don't deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. I grant moreover that each person's states of consciousness have properties in virtue of which those states have the experiential content that they do. That is to say, whenever someone experiences something as being one way rather than another, this is true in virtue of some property of something happening in them at the time, but these properties are so unlike the properties traditionally imputed to consciousness that it would be grossly misleading to call any of them the long-sought qualia. Qualia are supposed to be special properties, in some hard-to-define way. My claim--which can only come into focus as we proceed--is that conscious experience has no properties that are special in any of the ways qualia have been supposed to be special."
Quining Qualia
I share Dennett's exacerbation with "qualia." I also share Dennett's postion that I do not deny the existence of experience. I am simply amazed at the claim that "qualia" are special. I also share with Dennett the perception that "qualia" are elusive, and perhaps, deliberately so.
"What are qualia, exactly? This obstreperous query is dismissed by one author ("only half in jest") by invoking Louis Armstrong's legendary reply when asked what jazz was: "If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know." (Block, 1978, p.281)
This amusing tactic perfectly illustrates the presumption that is my target."
Apparently, I also share with Dennett, the (more than) inkling that "qualia" are a ruse, a tactic to define experience in such a way as to make it "special" and "personal," and so, as Ian claims, not subject to science. All the remaining claptrap then falls into place. "Qualia" are then, obvious, and then, obviously wholly subjective and, obviously, disconnected from underlying physical processes and then, obviously, from some ethereal, metaphysical-fog-laden plane. Right. Obvious.
When you define "qualia" this way, it is clearly a gamesmanship. It will serve well as a final escape hatch when all the physical correlates of consciousness are otherwise nailed down. "Qualia" are the final thin reed on which the dualists will remain hanging because "science will never know what red is like
to me."
So when I ask for a falisifcation of "qualia," it is this definition for which I want one of the dualists to tell us - now - how we would ever be able to muster evidence against the notion. Now, not later, because the stage is clearly set for a russian dolls set of No True Scotsman maneuvers, each NTS layer revealing yet another NTS within. If they make the bald assertion that Ian makes, then there's no point arguing with them because they have stepped squarely outside of philosophy and squarely into a fundamentalist religion stance. If they can offer a better definition of "qualia" so that the test for physical correlates can, in principle, be devised, then we've got a concept with which to work.
But we've seen, so far, the quality of qualia answers, haven't we? I'm still waiting for something better than Ian's feint.
