Gareth wrote: << . . . "I don't deny the reality of conscious experience", [Dennett] says. Do you think he's lying? Or so stupid that he simply can't understand the obvious truth that "qualia" == "conscious experience"? . . .
No, I don't think he's lying, at least not deliberately. When I originally posted about this, I had not, by the way, grasped that Dennett claims he is not denying the existence of conscious experience. But I still maintain that no matter how many words one uses to describe what qualia means, it still boils down to conscious experience. (Qualia is the plural of quale.) People talking about qualia are trying to decompose conscious experience into little pieces that typically make sense (the commonest example being the experience of a color). Of course, conscious experience has subtleties that transcend language's ability to describe things, but I would not disqualify qualia from existence on that basis. So what if people experience colors differently? I know they must, since even my two eyes experience the same color a bit differently. That just means you can't necessarily predict one's experience purely on the basis of the apparent stimulus. I would like to know just what Dennett claims he is disproving, however. --Dan _____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele