-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Clements <Ken@InnovationOnDmnd.com>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: Sunday, November 28, 1999 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: Ken Re: >H Dictionary--Advice of Doubtful Merit
>Robert Owen wrote:
>
>> Ken Clements wrote:
>>
>> > Just say "no" to qualia.
>>
>> And say "yes" to what? Surely you don't mean to suggest
>> that "subjective experience" is a quantitative state.
>
>Thank you, Robert, what I meant (and should have written) was:
>
>Just say "no" to <qualia>.
>
>Where <qualia> is the meme that says qualia has any explanatory value.
This is exactly what is so puzzling about them - the brute fact that they
exist, yet do not figure in, at all, to the causal structure of the world. A
world without qualia would be exactly the same in every way to our world,
except for the fact that it wouldn't have qualia. How do you know they exist
then? Simple, just open your eyes.
Qualia are not an explanatory step in explaining consciousness, they are the
end step, they are what is to be explained.