(December 23, 2016 at 9:02 am)Mudhammam Wrote:(December 23, 2016 at 3:21 am)bennyboy Wrote: Qualia cannot be shown to exist in any physical system without a question-begging redefinition of the word into physical terms.Do you mean, if I say, "Hey Benny, what color is my shirt?" and you say, "red," what I perceive as "red" may in fact be perceived by you as "green," and thus, I have no way of knowing if my perception of "red" (or any other phenomenal experience) is strictly had within or without the context of a physical system?
No. I mean that I cannot determine whether any physical system, human or otherwise, has the "property" of qualia, since this property is not measurable or in any way observable. In the case of other humans, I make what I feel is a pragmatic assumption: they probably experience qualia, too, and more or less than I do.
In order to "observe" qualia, we have to do something like this:
1) Assume (pragmatically) that other people also experience qualia.
2) Watch their brains to see what states map to what descriptions of experience XYZ.
3) Look for the same brain states in others, and ask them if they are also experiencing XYZ.
The problem with this is that even if the assumption in (1) is true, you can't confidently map it to non-human physical systems. You can't make a computer, claim that it matches human brain states sufficiently, and then claim that your Benotron 2000 experiences what things are like.
