Hi, I was doing research on consciousness-related discussions, blah blah blah, 3 months old, would just like to reply to a few things you mentioned.
I know for certain that consciousness and qualia exist. I used to 'fall for' arguments that defined consciousness/qualia/free will as delusions or illusions because they were unobservable. Then, years later, I finally understood that I had some doublethink, and that these words actually were referring to something very simple and clear with my internal experience. I believed that the words were "meaningless" philosophy/morality words - for me, the lack of understanding WAS the 'gap' and they were referring to simple concepts all along.
The confusion of 'defining' these words even within philosophy creates lots of synonyms and jargon, though. I have gotten my definitions from the simplicity of what the concepts refer to, so I am almost certain I have not invented new complicated ways to refer to the concepts (as that would make communicating with others unnecessarily difficult and subjective).
These words refer to something that does indeed seem to be circular, because they all try to refer to something beyond the physical. I believe the people trying to define these words as something that relates to only physical things are the ones confused.
Why not think “I’m confused and probably wrong” as a first pass?
There is nothing confusing about what the concept is that the words are trying to communicate, but it's impossible to get across because they are trying to describe something that can't be replicated.
Part of the issue here is to avoid thinking of consciousness as either a discrete capacity one either has or doesn’t have, or even to think of it as existing a continuum, such that one could have “more” or “less” of it.
I'm not sure if you're supporting/against this idea, but I know of consciousness as the sum of all of someone's metaphysical experiences. Someone could have more or less amounts of senses/abilities, but it is metaphorical talk to say someone is "less conscious" because they are blind and deaf.
The relevancy of a metaphysical consciousness doesn't come from philosophical mass mistakenness and navelgazing. It's because it actually exists (but again, it's individual, so I am never certain if it exists for anyone else).
I think the other replier did not answer the "redness"/"chocolateyness" question as I would have liked. Colors are the most common example because they seem to be the most 'pure' and consistent types of qualia. Are you familiar with the color-swapping thought questions like "if your senses of red and blue were switched, it would be a notably different experience just besides some words being used to refer to different concepts", or "if you never saw green your entire life even if you read about green objects, then actually saw green, you gain new information"? Have they ever resonated or did they just seem confusing to you?
Its persistence could be due to quirks in the way human cognition works. If so, it may be difficult to dispel certain kinds of introspective illusions.
Yeah, it's possible to imagine a gap that isn't there (I mean, you've heard about people believing in spirits and magic and all that). Free will actually could be an illusion, although it strongly doesn't feel like it. I know that from your perspective, unless you were extraordinarily confused and did have qualia, it seems you would still believe that other people were under illusions rather than experiencing something special.
If many individual people talked about feeling these experiences even without being excessively primed with other people's philosophical discussions, would it make you 'believe in qualia', if you didn't have it?
Hey, glad you saw my post and all that. Yes, I know about religion and people having unexplainable supernatural experiences. I don't have anything like that, and I think people who daydreamed up a supernatural experience shouldn't have literal certainty, just high confidence. (you'd also expect some high inconsistency in people who recount supernatural events. which unfortunately is probably true for qualia currently too, due to similar levels of how society spreads beliefs)
There is irony in using 'convert' when I was unconverted from believing these things by philosophical confusion, and then later untangled myself. Yes, you could go swap out any 'certainty' claim with any other words and mock the result. Sure, I guess no one can say 'certain' about anything.
"I think I would appreciate if someone else suggested to me, hopefully kindly, that perhaps my declaration that I know something for certain serves more to convince myself than to convince others." My use of certainty is about honestly communicating strength of belief etc., not being hyperbolic or exaggerating. Yes I understand that many people exaggerate and lie about 'certain' things all the time so I trust other people's "for certain" claims less. It doesn't mean I should then reduce my own quality of claims to try to cater to the average, that makes no sense. (like, if I said it wasn't certain, wouldn't that be room for you to claim it's a delusion anyway?) Like, the nature of consciousness/qualia is that someone who's conscious/has qualia is never "uncertain" they are conscious (unlike with free will where there isn't that level of certainty).
I think I mentioned it before but it seems perfectly rational if someone who doesn't have qualia is confused by the whole thing. A "robust philosophical argument" isn't possible, only some statistical one. (the same way that, if you didn't understand some music's appeal while a majority of other people did, the response to try to convince you could never be a robust philosophical argument.)
Despite that, I wish to convey that consciousness-related stuff is really about something meaningful and not a religious dream, and that it is very likely possible to make "more accurate predictions", even though the actual topics relating to those predictions are usually really insignificant. (if consciousness had a major role to play in intelligence, for example, the world would still exhibit that with looking at intelligence only and there'd be likely other correlations to notice, although you might not be able to draw the connection to consciousness directly.)
debating this subject seems ultimately not very relevant to people's actions or prosperity, yes.
nah