Re: What are qualia...

From: Thomas Buckner (tcbevolver@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jan 22 2005 - 17:53:29 MST


--- Eliezer Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com>
wrote:

> Qualia are the modern version of a very, very
> old mistake, that of reifying
> a mystery as a substance. Cognitive
> phlogiston.
>
I think I agree, or maybe I just think the
definitions are circular. "You feel qualia
because qualia are all the things you feel." I
find myself not needing the idea of qualia to
understand things any better than I would anyway.
It's like an odd-sized bolt in the toolbox that I
just never seem to reach for. On the other hand,
if you took away everything I learned from
reading Godel Escher Bach, my toolbox would be
reduced to spit and baling wire.

Tom Buckner

        
                
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