davidsmith73,
The only source of information we have is our experiences. This means that one can always speculate that there is something more to reality than what we experience, or what we can deduce from our experiences. Such additional things are simply unknowable.
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this problem only occurs if you adopt your particular philosophy. If you accept that our experience of red is the true nature of red then this problem disappears. In other words there is no something else to speculate about.
Yes, I already acknowledged that. Unfortunately, such a solipsistic philosophy is completely useless. If there is nothing more to reality than our experiences, then there is no way to construct a reliable method for understanding reality.
I don't. What separation are you talking about? Under materialism, our subjective experiences are a part of objective reality. Specifically, they are physical processes.
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Your problem is that you cannot fully define objective reality (eg, redness).
I can fully define objective reality. I just cannot give a complete description of it. There is a difference.
Indeed, under my proposed philosophy I cannot define, i.e, give a true description of, the reality of redness. The difference is that I have access to the reality through qualia which are undefinable, i.e., cannot be fully described.
Do you have access to reality through the qualia, or are the qualia reality?
Do you not find it compelling that the nature of reality that you say we can never have the necessary informaiton to describe fully, is exactly the characteristic that qualia hold ?
No, because that is not the case. Under my paradigm, the qualia should be possible, at least in principle, to fully understand. It is the hypothetical stuff that does no contribute to our experiences, and which is therefore not represented by qualia, which cannot be understood. This is precisely why I take the logical positivistic view that such hypothetical things cannot be meaningfully said to exist.
It seems that materialism is in a state of denial.
That is because you are grossly misinterpreting what materialism is.
I don't follow you. Saying that the experience is the "stuff" of reality leads absolutely nowhere. It tells us absolutely nothing. If you want a logical description of reality, then you need to assume that there is a reality there to begin with,
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I have assumed that there is a reality. It is our qualia. One realm. Why can't logical descriptions then follow ?
Because we know that subjective bias exists. If reality is logical and consistent, then our direct experiences cannot be an accurate representation of it, because our experiences simply are not logical and consistent. We must either assume that our experiences are an imperfect representation of reality, or that reality itself cannot be understood at all.
Consider that all of the various methods for eliminating subjective bias, and thereby extracting reliable information from our experiences, are fundamentally based on the assumption of reality being something that we experience, rather than the experience itself.
and that it is possible for you to acquire information about it. If we assume that our experiences are all there is, then we can go no further, because verification becomes impossible.
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Verification of what ?
Verification that the information we have extracted from the experience is accurate. Remember that the experience itself doesn't tell us anything useful. It must be interpreted, regardless of your philosophical position.
I don't know what you mean. What does it mean to say that the description has access to the actual reality?
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The description does not have access to the actual reality. A description of redness in terms of a mathematical contruct that we call electromagnetic waves or a description of a pattern of neural activity or whatever description you choose, is not the reality, which is exactly what you are saying too. The difference is that you say the actual reality is not attainable. I say that the redness is the actual reality. Under both our philosophies, the actual reality is not describable so ther is no conflict with regards to how far mathematics can describe reality.
The difference is that under your philosophy, the reality cannot be mathematically described
at all, where as under mine, it can be described in terms of the experience, and that description can be as complete as is possible given the information available.
Without 100% of the information, a complete description is not possible. Under materialism, we are able to get some information, and construct the best description we can with the information available. If we assume that the experience itself is all there is, then we have no method for extracting any reliable information at all!
Mathematics is a language for describing logical relationships between things. Science uses this language to describe the logical relationships between the components of objective reality that we experience, and does so in terms of those experiences.
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Whic is exactly how I define it. Science uses mathematics for describing the logical relationships between the components of reality that we experience - the qualia - and does so in terms of those experiences - other qualia !
This is wrong, for two important reasons.
1) Qualia have been defined to be the experience. One of the axioms of science is that our experiences are not the reality itself. This means that science describes the reality we experience in terms of qualia, but the reality we experience is not qualia.
2) Science can only describe reality in terms of our experiences by extracting reliable information from those experiences, and this can only be done by assuming that the experience is an interaction with reality, and not the reality itself. Thus the above axiom is a necessary one for science to function.
Huh? Mathematical descriptions are not composed of qualia. Mathematical descriptions describe reality in terms of qualia.
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Since I am defining reality to be our qualia then they must be composed of qualia.
You can define reality to be qualia if you want, but that it solipsism, and the scientific method is not compatible with such a position. No mathematical description of reality is possible under your philosophy, because no method exists for extracting reliable information about reality.
They are just a different form of qualia than qualia we associate with our sensory experiences such as redness. In other words, they would be the"feeling"or "meaning" (you see how difficult it is to fully describe them) of addition, subtraction or any other mathematical description. It seems odd to say this but I believe it to be a consistent philosophy.
I don't know whether it is consistent or not, because you cannot fully define it. That means it is incoherent. But in any event, it is incompatible with science, and thus of absolutely no use.
When I say that we do not have access to the necessary information to describe "ultimate reality", I am talking about the information that we would need to describe the hypothetical aspects of it which are not observable. I do not believe that my experiences are the ultimate reality, remember?
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Which is why you run into this problem. I realise that the above is what you are refering to, but this problem occurs because you hypothesise that there is something more to reality than our experiences. So, since we can't experience it, it follows that we can never have direct knowledge about it.
I don't see it as a problem, but rather as a fundamental epistemological limitation. Obviously I can only have knowledge of that which I have information. At least my philosophy gives me access to reliable information. Yours does not.
However, if you start with the idea that qualia is the nature of reality then this problem does not arise. Qualia are the direct knowledge that you refer to.
But under your paradigm, the knowledge is unreliable. There is no method for extracting reliable information about reality from your experiences. Your "knowledge" is nothing more than your subjective interpretation of your experiences, which is demonstrably unreliable.
I think that it is absolutely necessary to make a distinction between experiences and mind. As I have already said, experiences are an interaction between your mind, and other things.
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Could you explain this further ?
It's simple. Your mind is a part of reality. Your mind interacts with other parts of reality, as well as with itself. Some of these interactions are what we think of as "experiences". By eliminating subjective bias, through a variety of methods employed by the scientific method, we are able to extract information both about those other parts of reality, and about our mind itself, from those experiences. That is what science is, a method for extracting reliable information from our experiences. The method is based on the assumption that reality is something that our mind interacts with, and is a part of, and that our experiences are those interactions.
This is, in my opinion, one of the conceptual barriers that idealists and dualists cannot seem to get around. Experiences are not "things", they are processes. It is meaningless to talk about an experience as though it were some ontologically independent thing. It has no existence independent of the process of being experienced.
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I can't give you a description of qualia. I can only induce you to bring your attention to a certain aspect of qualia (redness) and hope that you experience it for yourself. They are indescribable "outside" of their own existence so any descriptive term is going to have problems.
I disagree. I think that what you have described is a practical problem, having to do with everybody's brain being different, rather than a metaphysical one.
There is no dualism here. Just one part of objective reality (your mind), interacting with other parts of objective reality. The experience is the interaction. Things only become confused when you refuse to distinguish between the experience (a process), and the thing doing the experiencing (an object).
In other words, the qualia are the interaction itself. They are not one of the "things" taking part in the interaction.
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Perhaps I should be adding a qualifier. I would differentiate between an experience (qualia) and to experience something - the process, which is a description and not the reality it refers to.
As I said, that is the problem. I do not think that the experience exists as a "thing" at all. There is only the process. It is the belief that the experience is actually some "thing" that leads to dualism, and all the various problems entailed by it. Materialism suffers from no such problems. It simply requires you to get of the intuitive notion of your experiences being some "thing", rather that simply the process of your brain doing what it does.
Dr. Stupid
