Attempting To Identify The Psychology Of Qualia And The ''hard Questions''

[QuantumTantrum]

The Binding Problem, Qualia and the Hard Problems of Consciousness

 

For a while, it has been known that the way consciousness binds reality together seems to be a bit of mystery. In fact, it is such a problem, it has in fact been dubbed as one of the ''Hard Problem of Consciousness'' 

Qualia are the things that consciousness attaches to ''raw feelings''. Such examples may be the color blue associated to the sky, maybe the taste of a specific cheese to even perhaps the kind of drug-induced effects we may experience from taking a drug is a question, are qualia attached with a physical meaning? Erwin Schrodinger did not seem to believe so, as he is quoted saying:

 

"The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so."

 

In fact, so odd is this problem of consciousness that qualia are often used in arguements against the physical nature of consciousness, or more specifically, the mind-body problem. Daniel Dennett has identified four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. These are:

 

ineffable; that is, they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience.

intrinsic; that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience's relation to other things.

private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.

 

directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness: that is, to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.

 

Another problem of consciousness related to qualia results from the question, how can the eye collect just as much information from a written text to one who simply hears it? But what if the experience of seeing a color does not hold all the relevant information that someone who simply listens to an experience can know everything there is to know about the said experience? For instance, if someone see's the color blue they may be unable to attach some experience to this perception, yet someone who is simply hearing about the experience can in theory know everything there is to know about the experience.

 

The Inverted Spectrum Argument is perhaps the best way to explain whether a quale is a physical manifestation or not. In this argument, proposed by John Locke explains that if you woke up one morning and found all the colors of nature had inverted, such as the grass had turned red, but no physical change has been found in the brain, then it would stand to reason that qualia would seem to be a subjective phenomenon, one part of our perception and experience alone rather than being tied to a physical explanation.

 

It must be noted that some take this arguement very seriously, while other's find it difficult to comprehend an explanation for qualia which requires a purely imaginative thought experiment, which, can never in principle be measured. However, I believe it is an important argument.

 

I contend that qualia are not physical. They are part of the experience of a human observer. One could explain this as part of a specific ''conditioning'' of reality, that we tune into the specific kind of experiences we all agree on, because that has been the way we have been taught. We don't for instance, assume the color blue is a warm color normally, yet, if someone had been brought up believing this, then surely it is possible to condition someone to that erroneous fact. Assuming also you keep out of their way, any associations between the color blue and the de facto that it is usually attributed to cold experiences.

Qualia therefore, arise from three arguments:

 

1) Conditioning

2) Experience (personal attachment which will affirm the attribution between the qualia in question)

3) Self-consistency (a recurrence of the same experience which will solidify the original experience)

 

If we woke up one morning and found out that every color had indeed inverted, then this would violate 3) and would soon effect 1) and 2). Thus, things do not invert in color, we know certain qualia because of a conditioning of our upbringing. After being told about something, we may come to experience, or we may experience it first then be told about it. And finally, to make sure that it remains a consistent experience, it must be one which occurs again and again.

Edited June 1, 2015 by QuantumTantrum