Not my bag

[richardthinks]

Over the last few years we have allowed our kids' birthday parties to creep into ever more elaborate and demanding territory. Add an unusual level of work panic and I think we may have hit the Malthusian threshold for such things this past weekend.

Anyway, I can now say from personal experience that the hangover from a kids' party of 14 mostly 4-5

Comments

[st_rev]

When I see the word 'agency' I stop reading.

(When I see the word 'qualia' I reach for my pistol.)

[richardthinks]

are you averse to discussing sense impressions altogether, or do you just dislike the word?

I'm not a big fan of phenomenology myself.

[st_rev]

Oh, sense impressions are an important topic of discussion. However, using the term 'qualia', except to criticize it, is a sure sign that the speaker has nothing of value to contribute.

Dennett does a pretty good job demolishing the term, if I recall correctly.

[st_rev]

Yeah:In Consciousness Explained (1991) and "Quining Qualia" (1988),[19] Daniel Dennett offers an argument against qualia that attempts to show that the above definition breaks down when one tries to make a practical application of it. In a series of thought experiments, which he calls "intuition pumps," he brings qualia into the world of neurosurgery, clinical psychology, and psychological experimentation. His argument attempts to show that, once the concept of qualia is so imported, it turns out that we can either make no use of it in the situation in question, or that the questions posed by the introduction of qualia are unanswerable precisely because of the special properties defined for qualia.