From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 06:18:47 MST
> I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sick of seeing such basic and
> grevious conceptual errors as the above being made.
> It's identical to for instance, stating that chocolate is an organisation of
> humans and machines mixing various compounds. This is of course ridiculous.
> The organisation of humans etc.. BRING ABOUT the chocolate - but they ARE
> NOT *IT* !!!!! DAMMIT!
No, I think you're the only one who's quite this upset. ;)
Seriously, though, that claim is definitely a misreading of Dennett's own
argument, which is eliminitivist, not reductivist. That is, he thinks
that there ARE no qualia, not that qualia are "really" physical phenomena.
However, the reductivist and the eliminitivist arguments are really just
two different rhetorical approaches to materialism. If you agree that
materialism is right and that therefore qualia can't be NON-physical, it's
only a matter of definition/semantics whether you decide to call some
physical phenomena qualia or whether you decide not to call anything
qualia.
Perhaps the stronger point to be made here is that nobody's making a
conceptual error. The reductivist/eliminitivist/materialist argument
usually begins by establishing that qualia can't be non-physical.
Certainly, then, the eliminitivist isn't making a mistake: he takes it
that qualia are, by definition, non-physical, and therefore, since nothing
non-physical exists, no qualia exist. But the reductivist isn't making a
mistake either: she can argue that certain physical phenomena have enough
properties in common with qualia that almost all of the sort of things
that we say about qualia are also true of the chosen physical phenomena.
If you believe that enough of these properties are shared, you might be
convinced to say that the physical properties could inherit the name
"qualia," since its original definition is empty.
It all resolves around the inherent problem that there's no way (even in
principle) to tell which of the following two claims are correct:
1) Almost everything you say about X is wrong, but is true of Y; you must
REALLY be talking about Y.
2) You're talking about X alright, but everything you say about it is
wrong.
Example: "Of course I know what a horse is. A horse is a rounded edible
fruit, coming usually in either red or green. Fresh ones make a crunch
noise when you eat them." Am I talking about horses or not?
Reductivism, then, just assumes 1 is right with regards to your claims
about qualia. You're not REALLY talking about the non-physical, she
argues: you're REALLY talking about these physical phenomena.
> Is this blatantly obvious to anyone else?
Only if you take it as a definition that you're right. ;)
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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