From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 21 2000 - 02:36:53 MST
<not an argument>
A great intro to the subject is John Clark's "Waiting for Zed," which is
on the EXI website.
http://www.extropy.org/eo/articles/zed.htm
There you'll find a very solid account of why no purely physical account
of qualia will satisfy us, and a little argument (which didn't convince
me) is given for why we should accept qualia as existing non-physically
anyway. </not an argument>
<meta>
As for why it's considered a dead horse? Because the existence of qualia
is taken to be axiomatic/fundamental/unquestionable by those who accept
their existence. No one that I know of accepts qualia on a "contingent"
basis, but only on a "necessary" basis. No argument can convince a
believer in qualia that there aren't any. (Rorty makes a convincing
argument in _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_ that qualia are by
their very definition the things which [if there are any] we know about
with absolute and incontrovertible certainty).
By this same light, no argument can convince a consistent non-believer
that qualia exist. I take it that there are probably a few thinkers out
there who are making a mistake about what they ought to believe based on
what they take to be necessary, but the rest of them are consistent
believers or consistent non-believers.
Some further discussion may be possible, but, then, maybe not.
</meta>
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:26:56 MST