David Nyman wrote: > On Oct 11, 5:11 am, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
