Dennett's Quining Qualia Argument

In this famous article, Quining Qualia, Daniel Dennett argues against property dualist views that advocate for the existence of qualia.

This is part of Prof. Matt McCormick's (Department of Philosophy, California State University, Sacramento) Philosophy of Mind class.

[IsaacOwen-kfyj]

Simply because we lack direct access to PAST qualia (because of possible memory fallibility) does not mean we lack direct access to the felt experience, or qualia, of the PRESENT. Similarly, we may not know HOW our qualia have changed (whether like Chase or Sanborn), but we can still be certain that they have indeed changed. Understanding the qualia's physical, causal correlates in the brain, taste buds, retina, etc. and which of these correlates change IS NOT required to have access to the qualia itself.

[funkmasterjones]

Excellent! Thank you!
(louder volume next time please)

[plasmaballin]

These are interesting arguments, but I don't find them at all convincing. The first two arguments only show that we don't have direct access to or incorrigible knowledge of qualia that we experienced in the past. This doesn't seem to have any bearing on any conception of qualia that I've ever heard of. No one thinks we have direct access to qualia that we are no longer experiencing - we can only access those through memory, which everyone knows is fallible. At any given moment, we only have direct access to the qualia that we are experiencing at that moment, and Dennet's argument that we can't reliably compare these qualia to ones we've had in the past doesn't seem to undermine this direct access at all.
The second argument shows that we don't always experience the same qualia after drinking beer, but I don't see how this is supposed to prove that qualia themselves change or are relational. All it shows is that "the qualia you experience when drinking beer" doesn't refer to the same thing in every situation, which is completely commonplace and doesn't disprove the reality of anything.

[philippeingels]

Dennett does not take into account that our qualia are part of an integrated system.
If your taste of beer changes, it simply means that your neural activity is now accessing a different set of qualia. So the fact that the taste changed did not change the fundamental nature of that qualia just which one is being accessed.
He also does not consider that qualia can "blend". E.g. Blueness and Redness can blend into an emergent experience of Purpleness.
Getting back to the taste of beer it means that the taste is a collection of qualia, not just one, which gives us a range of different possibilities in terms of experience.
He also does not take into account that qualia can be experienced in different magnitudes. E.g. from feeling mild pain to severe pain.
So within the collection of qualia making up the taste of beer, you would have even more variability as the intensity of the different blended qualia shifts due to you state of mind.
It's not a rigid, on/off, super simplistic system, child-toy system as Dennett makes out.

[pawkudi]

What Dennett proves is that he didn't understand concept of qualia

[rumidude]

Sound is too low for my hearing deficit to be able to understand.

[NertoFurity]

Dennett got everything so wrong I don´t understand how this article became famous. It was painful for me to read how he thinks qualia doesn´t exist for reasons like not being able to have perfect memory via direct access, duh. Thanks for the video! louder volume would be awesome.

[jefflee]

I fought against Dennett in my own mind for years sometimes quite irritated or angry with Dennett. But I kept reading and thinking. He finally won me over. By the way, Jackson himself has essentially crossed over to Dennett's side on this.

[healthdoc]

I think the problem of understanding consciousness is semantics. There are things that we perceive that are not necessarily in our immediate ‘consciousness’. The word itself is confounding. Multiple elements are necessary to understand the thing we finally call consciousness. First is perception. This gives us the raw evidentiary data (not unique to us). Next is the fundamental mental activity of naming or classification of all this sensory input (not unique but rare). We do this ‘subconsciously’ and while dreaming. Next introduce the concept of imaginative memory, the process of integration by way of creative narrative development (the difference maker). We have the ability to remember sensory input and then creatively manipulate it into the narratives we perceive as real time awareness.

[johngadd]

Can't hear what's being said

[solomonherskowitz]

Oooh comments please open the comment section on all your videos thanks.

Great lectures BTW.

[nickmorris]

~ 25:30 - I'm not sure why this shows that qualia aren't private. The outside help would be investigating your memories and visual system wiring but couldn't your qualia detector be separate from those? Therefore, figuring out the cause of your strange experiences could be a combination of the knowledge given to you by the outside helper and your private qualia of your experiences of the world. Or maybe I'm not understanding it properly...

[kedarguruu]

I'm struggling to wrap my head around Dennett's arguments. Our inability to adequately explain the nature of qualia in meaningful first-person language doesn't mean that we should eliminate qualia from our theories of the human mind, or that qualia does not exist in any way. The contents of consciousness are clearly present in a way that is distinguishable from a state of unconsciousness, whether or not we can successfully communicate anything meaningful about those contents. This just seems so obvious from introspection that I cannot see how it could possibly be false. Someday I hope to understand Dennett's illusionism.

[Ndo]

Dennett is expecting too much from things that have qualia. If you take the role of the surgeon and mess around with someone else's qualia by injecting them with a series of new mystery drugs, you could observe a change in their outward behaviour, but you could never have any idea of their internal private experience unless you took the same drugs yourself and had comparable physiologies.

[mArsxh]

But when you drink beer you do not experience the qualia "beerness" but you experience a qualia that you experience when drinking beer which changes according to your history. You might at some point taste something which tastes exactly like the first beer you drank, this is the same qualia but it is not related to a specific object.

[herge]

he seems to try and designate empirically induced categories contingent on time to an inherently a priori state both spontaneous and immediate and potentially incongruous with time.

[notexactlyrocketscience]

How can they be well-ordered bijective functions (perceiving subject <-> object, and even subject <-> subject) if they're subjective and different for everyone? Chances for this well-ordering are 0. Well-ordering is required or else there would be multiple or missing sensations for certain stimuli - or very odd cross-sensations. Or one person describing a sensation would represent an entirely different sensation for someone else. Using colours in painting wouldn't work. Therefore every person who can physiologically perceive red, perceives the same red. Your red is my red, and your pepper taste is my pepper taste by virtue of using the same physiological mechanisms and the same brains to evaluate those signals (except in the presence of deformities or injury, etc.)

[JayQuigleyPlayQuickly]

Your schedule link seems to be broken.

[null.och.nix]

sound really sucks! cant watch this.. good paper though!! ;D

[richardbennett]

So when the eliminative materialist formulation or explanation is complete, we will no longer need the ontological category which is occupied by qualia? So when can we expect that to happen? I have an idea, how about NEVER.
What Dennett is putting forth as his "Quining" is actually more like whining. That is, Dennett is whining about the inescapable fact that qualia do not fit into his eliminative materialist ontology. So he reasons, that because he can't account for them, nobody else has a rational foundation to find the concept of qualia to be a useful category of ontological "reality". Lame, lame, lame and unconvincing nonsense Mr. Dennett