Qualia: Mary’s Room

Please familiarize yourself with the following: Mary’s Room Done? Okay. The first objection to that thought experiment is that it postulates an entity with complete knowledge of an event, which logically requires complete knowledge of the entire universe. And that’s impossible from within the universe. ‘Complete scientific knowledge’ requires strong omniscience, which I am reasonably […]

Removing the Head, or Destroying the Brain: Qualia, Part IV

The final twig on this branch of the discussion. Several years ago, I read an account of a researcher who was trying to create a device that is to olfaction what cameras are to vision. Chemical sensors of various types would be wired to a learning neural net. At first, this researcher’s team worked hard […]

Removing the Head, or Destroying the Brain: Qualia, Part III

As discussed previously, there is a problem with the concept of qualia, roughly analogous to the problems with the concept of the nonphysical. Thing is, though, it’s an even worse problem. We could, if we wished, call one limited understanding ‘physics’ and everything outside of it ‘non-physical’; there’s nothing forcing us to create a more-inclusive […]

Removing the Head, or Destroying the Brain: Qualia, Part II

Take a closer look at the Wikipedia discussion on the definition of ‘qualia’. Certain terms are so poorly defined that this can become an anti-criticism feature. No matter how thoroughly one meaning is shown to be nonsense / invalid / useless, people can just switch to the ‘true’ meaning of the word and go on […]

Removing the Head, or Destroying the Brain: Qualia, Part I

Qualia If any of you would like to add or extend the discussion of qualia linked above, or contest any of the discussion therein, now would be the time.