Definition of quality

[Ginkgo]

Ginkgo:

Again, it depends on who who you talk to.

In this instance, I was talking to the participants here present. None - to date - have answered the simple questions.

If you ask a physicalist such as Dennett then he would tell you that no subjectivity is required when we,"encounter" an object. Subjectivity can be explained in terms of matter in motion.

But matter in motion doesn't invariably culminate in a "we" that's capable of encounter and experience. Subjectivity may not be required for an encounter, but there it is anyway. And I didn't introduce the problem of subjectivity, because I don't believe it's relevant.

The physical working of the brain accounts for our subjective perspective.

Well, obviously! What else could?

. Your experience of the 'redness' of an apple is much the same as mine. But it isn't exactly the same. Our 'redness' is a unique intuitive experience.

That doesn't change the apple.
Hence its objective reality and the unyielding fact that it can't be substituted for a baby or a steam engine, no matter how subjective each person's perception of them might be.

By this I was meaning depending on the philosopher and or scientist you ask. Penrose for example would answer your question in terms of, "objective reduction" of the probability wave. No one is required to be watching in order to collapse the wave function. It does it all by itself.

My mistake. What I actually should have said was that, "the physical workings of the brain account for consciousness" Substance dualists would disagree and argue that consciousness is distinct from the physical workings of the brain. So when you die this mean that consciousness (soul) lives on in some other world or dimension. In other words, they are saying that the physical brain is distinct from consciousness.

People such as Dennett reject this idea and believe that the perceiving individual is nothing special.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater

From the physicalists point of view the difference between a apple and a steam train is not a problem. All your need is an objective reality of physical things and a perceiving individual. Objectivity can be explained in terms of science and the subjective individual can be explained in exactly the same terms. It's all a neat packaged explanation.

Is this what you are getting at?

[Skip]

From the physicalists point of view the difference between a apple and a steam train is not a problem. All your need is an objective reality of physical things and a perceiving individual. Objectivity can be explained in terms of science and the subjective individual can be explained in exactly the same terms. It's all a neat packaged explanation.

Is this what you are getting at?

I suppose it must be. I was asking the questions, not of Penrose and Dennet and whoever-else isn't here to speak for his own experience and use of language, but of James Markham, Ginkgo, Spheres of Balance and HexHammer, who are.

HexHammer seems to think that my reluctance to grate a steam engine and feed it to an apple or hitch a baby to a train is somehow delusional, but won't state his own definitions, the source of his word-labels or his rationale for deployment of the objects in question.

It's quite possible that I make no sense, but I am definitely not guilty of making up a philosophy.



[shudder]perish the thought [/shudder]

[HexHammer]

HexHammer seems to think that my reluctance to grate a steam engine and feed it to an apple or hitch a baby to a train is somehow delusional, but won't state his own definitions, the source of his word-labels or his rationale for deployment of the objects in question.

You never asked me to define anything.

[Skip]

Not personally and individually, no. Perhaps I should have, but it's too late now.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Spheres, thanks for the reply, although my post may appear to suggest I have chosen in favour of quality being a distinction projected onto objective reality, I must say it is only tentively that I make this claim, I'm not sure I know either way at this stage.

I think critically, if quality was an inherent attribute, then there would be some sense in which the charictaristical aspects of objects would prevail beyond their acknowledgement as such. So with this in mind, can you think of any objective charictaristical that is defined by objective criteria, as opposed to subjective evaluation.

OK, let me put it this way: To deny the objective, means to deny the big bang, and all that led to the human mind resultant, so that it is subjective, unless of course you believe in a necessary god, then I suppose that it's been his subjective experience all along. The truth of the absolute objective reality, whatever it's characteristics, is automatically proven with any truth in evolution, unless one is to believe that life sprang into existence from nothing instantaneously, giving subjective characteristics to all universal objective reality. That's some awfully powerful primordial ooze, or wait, I made a mistake, it would then be that the first organism gave objective reality to that which it was suspended within. Or so it would surely seem to me, unless I am talking of apples while you are talking of oranges.