Maybe I'm not quite grasping the concept, but it also seems to me that qualia would be more of a challenge than a support to a dualistic view of humans. Qualia, as I understand them, are basically pure sensory input with the tinge of emotion you've attached to the stimulus, independent of language. Under this definition, nearly any mammal would be capable of experiencing qualia. Do cows have souls as well? (I suppose that some would say they do...)
Either way, Lodge's discussion of qualia is relevant because he also goes on to describe poetry as man's most successful attempt to describe qualia, which fits in with our primary readings of Keats' poetry. I find Lodge' s characterization of poetry and qualia amusing when paired with Keats' "When I have fears that I may cease to be". I interpret the poem as Keats' acceptance of the fact that there is no afterlife, and no therefore no separate soul. He sends this message using mainly sensory perceptions, qualia, which are supposed to be proofs of a soul of some sort.
In the poem, Keats basically says that he fears the day his existence will end, though he may be surrounded by and currently experiencing all of the things which seem to matter during our lives - but no matter our capacity for reflection on this, we will still cease to be when we die, and so too will all of the things that we previously cherised. The last two lines of the poem state that
| "Of the wide world I stand alone, and think | |
| Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink." |
Just wanted to get the comments started...
ReplyDeleteHi, Tim--
Ah, qualia. I happen to agree with you personally in not seeing qualia as a problem for a materialist, brain-based model of consciousness. But quite a few others disagree so it’s worth the effort to understand the debate. The problem has a fancy name: the hard problem of consciousness. (For more on this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness or http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#3
Basically, I think the question Lodge, Damasio, and others thinking about qualia pose is a slightly different one than the one you and I begin with. They ask, not whether qualia somehow disproves brain-based theories of mind, but what a theory of consciousness must prove to be counted as successful? Must it be explanatory? What must it be able to explain? Must it explain properties of consciousness such as qualia? If our answer is yes, that any theory should offer an explanation for how we make the leap from neurons to consciousness, we may be back with Cavendish. That is, we might agree that the mind/brain is materially embodied but unable to “square” the circle of thought--or here, of qualia. If we don’t care about that particular sort of explanatory power, so be it.
To my view, the fact of qualia doesn’t disprove a nothing-but-neurons model (To be more accurate, we should probably say a “nothing-but-neurons-grey-matter-white-matter-and-cerebral-spinal- fluid" model.) Nor does it prove that thought exceeds brain matter. But it does raise an interesting (and central) question about what a brain-based theory of consciousness would need to explain in order to have theoretical power.
I’m quite interested by your idea that qualia would be more of a challenge than a support of a dualistic view of the human mind-brain. Perhaps it lies in your definition of qualia: “Qualia, as I understand them, are basically pure sensory input with the tinge of emotion you've attached to the stimulus, independent of language.” Your definition seems to rely on a stimulus + emotion model? It’d be great to hear more about why this would help (or hinder) a dualistic theory of mind/brain either in class, or later in the blog...
One last query: I couldn’t quite see the link you were trying to create between your interesting questions about qualia and the final literary passage you chose from Keats: “Of the wide world I stand alone, and think/ Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.” What were you thinking here? I’m intuiting that there’s something here assuming Keats is using a brain-based theory of mind—which, without a separate soul, would no longer exist in the afterlife? If you can, spell out the links one way or another, so that we can see how your thoughts are moving. (On a more trivial note, for future posts, be sure to draw on one of the literary readings from the next week’s readings—in this case, it’d have been Swift, Sterne, or Cavendish. I think you’d find interesting material for the investigation of qualia as “sensory input plus tinge of emotion” in any of these three. It’s always fine to refer back, but make sure you’re reaching ahead as well).
great start...