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In university, my professor said that his position is that there are no qualia. He acknowledged that non-philosophers can find this position bizarre, but did not explain the rationale behind why he thought this. So what is the rationale behind this position?

J D
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Shannon T
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    Sounds like your professor was channeling Dennet et al., see [SEP, Eliminative Materialism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/#EliMatPhe):"*Dennett suggests our qualia concepts are fundamentally confused and fail to correspond with the actual inner workings of our cognitive system... Illusionism claims that introspection involves something analogous to ordinary sensory illusions; just as our perceptual systems can yield states that radically misrepresent the nature of the outer world*". – Conifold May 20 '20 at 10:09
  • Are you looking for an explanation of the term " qualia" ? Or for an explanation of why some philosophers do not believe in qualia? –  May 20 '20 at 10:20
  • See e.g. [Qualia](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/) – Mauro ALLEGRANZA May 20 '20 at 10:25
  • Consider this exchange. Particularly, Wehler's distinction between the first and third person POV, https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/31516/how-is-conceptual-irreducibility-of-the-mental-possible-given-a-physicalist-onto/31534#31534 – gonzo May 20 '20 at 16:59
  • Physicalist-materialism is perfectly compatible with qualia - as weakly emergent, and so in that sense subjectively irreducible, but objectively reducible ie. strange loops, Integrated Information theory. The really damning argument against qualia is The Private Language Argument. – CriglCragl May 21 '20 at 01:13
  • @gonzo -- Whehler did not actually distinguish between 1st and 3rd person POV. The observations we use to compare physical world tests are all 1st person, same with the checks of logic, analysis validity, etc of infometics. What we have done, though is characterized our 1st person experiences in language, and shared them, so that we cold compare our commonality of response. This can be done with qualia as well, they clearly are not "ineffable", else we could not discuss color intensity, where it falls in a color chart, wine flavor, afterimage transparency, etc. – Dcleve May 21 '20 at 15:30
  • @Dcleve. Gotcha. In fact, your comment actually brought this recent post to mind: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/73007/to-say-that-something-is-a-logical-consequence-is-always-a-subjective-statement, which post brought Kripke’s early 1980’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language [outlining the purported rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language] to mind. – gonzo May 21 '20 at 16:39
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    @Dcleve Ineffability is not about not being able to talk about something. This would be quite strange, because then the word would not exist. But one would be quite mistaken if one assumed that what we talk about (and with, ie. words) were the same as the experience itself. There is some irreducible aspect to bodily experience that no description or movie etc. is able to get hold of. On the other hand, it is correct to cast doubt on qualia being ineffable in general. That's an aspect of the straw man Dennett built in order to be able to "explain qualia away". – Philip Klöcking May 21 '20 at 21:24
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    @PhilipKlöcking -- Dennett claimed that one can dispose with 1st person empiricism, and do all psychology in the 3rd person, because "reports" are a 1:1 analog of the 1st person. This is untrue, for all internal experiences for two reasons. Our experiences have considerably more bandwidth than our "reports", and all experiences have aspects that translate poorly to "reports". Pragmatically nothing we experience is entirely ineffable, and nothing has no translation shortfall. This refutes W's "private language argument", all language is private, with only occasional partial "report" checks. – Dcleve May 24 '20 at 01:17
  • @Dcleve It seems you have missed the point of the argument in the first place. It's certainly not about there not being conceptually structured, "private" streams of consciousness (thoughts in language). Its against the idea that something that **actually is** *language* could be *categorically ineffable* at the same time. In other words: As long as there is more to experience than thought and effability - which you just conceded - Wittgenstein is correct. – Philip Klöcking May 24 '20 at 05:41
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    @PhilipKlöcking -- Routledge, Philosophy Now, and 1000 word philosophy all agree that W argued that no language that does not have external checks on meaning, context, structure, etc, can be intelligible. IE, language must be 100% report. https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/private-language-argument/v-1 https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Private_Language_Argument https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2014/07/14/wittgensteins-private-language-argument/ We agree language is not 100% report, so W is wrong. His view also says the last speaker of Etruscan did not actually know it. – Dcleve May 24 '20 at 06:30
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    @Dcleve Wittgenstein often dramatized, which results in singular assertions being plain wrong, yes (in the case of Etruscan, there's still memory). But if, as eg. Sellars held, the meaning of language usage outside of reports (where I take report to mean public language usage), ie. in thought etc., is based on or analogous to, ie. derivative of report language, saying that the private language argument failed is a bit like saying Newton's Laws failed because they are based on absolute space-time. There is a very important point on the limits of language made. – Philip Klöcking May 24 '20 at 07:07
  • @PhilipKlöcking -- we have gone too far afield -- I have opened a chat room to discuss Private Language further. :-) – Dcleve May 26 '20 at 15:26

1 Answers1

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The position is that of eliminative materialism, or of delusionism, relative to consciousness. The two are somewhat different.

Qualia are often cited by non-physicalists as direct evidence against physicalism. Many physicalists try to accommodate qualia and physicalism, and argue that the reasoning from qualia to non-physicalism is in error. For a committed physicalist who finds these arguments to be invalid, there is a problem:

IF one is convinced of the truth of physicalism, AND that the various efforts by philosophers to reconcile or explain qualia physically fail, THEN in order to continue to hold by physicalism, one must deny the reality/existence of qualia.

Note, this POV relies upon the presumption that physicalism is so well supported, that any apparent evidence against it must be an observational error.

This reasoning is rarely admitted to by its advocates. The only explicit statement of this reasoning process I have found was in Susan Blackmore's A Very Short Introduction to Consciousness. For Blackmore qualia was one of many observations or evidences about consciousness which she argued that physicalist explanations failed to explain/predict/accommodate. The accumulation of problems/failures, she considered provided a sufficient justification to depart from the more common physicalist view that consciousness is somehow an aspect of matter or processes, to the much less intuitive one that consciousness, and all the challenging data including "qualia" that are bundled with that term, does not actually exist.

Blackmore's excellent summary is only a summary. Works that spell out non-qualia/non-consciousness views in significantly more detail would include Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett, The Engine of Reason The Seat of the Soul by Paul Churchland, and The Astonishing Hypothesis by Francis Crick. Crick and Churchland argue a reductionist eliminativism, in which they suppose that better and better neurological characterization of the brain will eventually remove any need to think about "consciousness" as opposed to specific neurological states. Dennett does not rely upon reduction, but instead takes a behaviorism/functionalism approach in which behavior can be explained physically, so the only issue is that the pesky internal experiences can't -- and his work presents mental frameworks to try to make his denial of internal experience more plausible to his readers.

Dcleve
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    What is the difference between qualia and sense-data? – Ameet Sharma May 20 '20 at 16:42
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    @AmeetSharma the SEP article on qualia provides a useful discussion. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ Qualia == sense-data is the 2nd definition described. Sense-datum theory was at one point the default view of sensing, but is not widely accepted among philosophers today, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/. The reasons to reject it -- appear to focus primarily on the compatibility between sense-datum theory (and indirect realism) with dualism. – Dcleve May 20 '20 at 17:14
  • @AmeetSharma Sense-data usually is a technical term describing immediate, infallible knowledge via perception, oftentimes tied to the term impression (of sth being so and so). This idea is dead since Sellars' essay *Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind* where he dispels the Myth of the Given. Qualia in general are sensible qualities like smell, pain, colours, etc. Here, you do not have to state anything about the epistemic status, it is basically about the fact that our senses present the world to us in a certain way. Qualia are the only medium via which we consciously perceive the world. – Philip Klöcking May 21 '20 at 21:04
  • @PhilipKlöcking - Was Sellars attacking the idea that there are some specific aspects of experience such as sense-data that are "given" in a way that other aspects of experience, like conceptual beliefs about sense-data, are not? "Qualia" nowadays can be understood to encompass the totality of what a conscious being is experiencing at a given moment, including conceptual thinking as well as sensory information, and not giving any privileged role to the latter--would Sellars' argument go against the idea that I have access to a unique truth about what my whole experience is at a given moment? – Hypnosifl May 21 '20 at 23:07
  • @Hypnosifl -- here are two PhilSE questions discussing Sellars, one specifically on qualia https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/34176/understanding-sellars-the-myth-of-the-given-rigorously https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/23307/qualia-and-the-myth-of-the-given – Dcleve May 22 '20 at 01:18
  • @Hypnosifl Sellars was opposed to the idea that we are given (conceptually structured) knowledge directly via perception, ie. to any form of 'immediacy'. He was not opposed to there being sensory input of some kind, nor empirical knowledge. It is mainly about there being a necessary processing with a qualitative hiatus between the phenomenal and the conceptual. – Philip Klöcking May 23 '20 at 08:52
  • @PhilipKlöcking - So it sounds like he wouldn't necessarily be opposed to the "broad" notion of qualia in [this SEP article](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#AdvTheQua): *When used in a broad way, “qualia” picks out whatever qualities a state of mind has which constitute the state of mind’s having the phenomenal character it has. In this broad sense, any conscious state of mind has qualia. ... Used in a narrow way, however, qualia are non-intentional, intrinsic properties of experience: properties which have no intentional or representational aspects whatsoever.* – Hypnosifl May 23 '20 at 10:02
  • @Hypnosifl As the author of the article points out, it is hard not to acknowledge the *epistemological* relevance and 'existence' of qualia, which does not necessarily imply an *ontological* relevance and 'existence'. Philosophers I hold in high esteem have consequently discarded any kind of 'serious' metaphysics due to their epistemological status (cannot be known). I would count Sellars to those who reject a 'hard' ontology even though he says that science gives us epistemological means to come closest to how 'the World' actually is. Long story short: Depends on how you understand opposition – Philip Klöcking May 23 '20 at 16:38
  • @Hypnosifl -- The primary argument that Sellars deployed is that knowledge requires the ability to use a concept in reasoning, and experience alone does not provide that. This is a very suspect claim, pretty effectively refuted by the studies of decision logic and the knowledge we operate on detailed in Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. System 2 is the only one which uses explicable reasoning, and sometimes the explanations it gives are false. Sellars ALSO rejected qualia as ontology because they would conflict with physicalism. The justification for this can be found in Papineau's (more) – Dcleve May 23 '20 at 18:01
  • @PhilipKlöcking also "atting" PK. The Rise of Physicalism essay. TRP explains that the failure of Vitalism vs. biochemistry, and the general attraction of reductionism, was the justification to take exception to the universal application of Indirect realism, and the inference that qualia and abstract objects have ontology. This was a Latakian progressive Research Programme justification. However, the reduction program has now been abandoned in science (see SEP Scientific Reduction), physicalism can be shown to need abstracts (causation, relation, state sequence, logic) to work IN physics, – Dcleve May 23 '20 at 18:16
  • (more) physicalism cannot be defined nor shown to be causally closed (see Hempel's Dilemma and Stoljar's Physicalsim), and the theoretical physicists who take reduction seriously are thinking physics reduces to -- math, and Kim says that the non-reductionists have won in philosophy of mind. This is enough exceptions to the physicalist Research Programme that its call for an exception to indirect realism -- is not justifiable. Neither Quine nor Popper thought it strong enough even before its flaws were articulated -- so Sellar's appeal to "science" was not justified even then. – Dcleve May 23 '20 at 18:23
  • @AmeetSharma I would say that sense data is the "package" of nerve signals, information conveyed by those signals and extracted by the brain, and also the subjective experience of that information. Qualia are the subjective experience, not only of sense data, but of all other conscious mental constructs including emotions. – Guy Inchbald May 24 '20 at 08:58