( … )
REGARDING THE PSEUDOSCIENCE OF QUALIA
—“You categorize like an engineer”—
(As if that was an insult rather than compliment beyond measure.)
I categorize and articulate as a scientist who prosecutes pseudoscience and pseudo rationalism: in operational language.
And that is because science has adopted operational language to prevent the fictionalisms: pseudoscience, pseudo rationalism, pseudo-wisdom-literature.
And that is because operations provide a universally commensurable standard of measure, that is free of pseudoscience (pretense of causality), pseudo-rationalism (inflation, conflation, loading, framing, suggestion, obscurantism), pseudo-wisdom literature (mythology, supernaturalism), and the various deceits of the self and others in exchange for attention and signals.
In mathematics there exists a pseudoscientific practice in that we call positional names ‘numbers’, to maintain the fiction that the square of two exists, when it cannot except for the name of a function (operation in a context).
In economics there exists a pseudoscientific practice by in the use of the term ‘Utilis’ as a label by which the incommensurable is rendered to the commensurable.
In philosophy, during that era in which philosophers attempted to ascend philosophy from reason, to logic, to science, we saw a host of attempts to formalize logic into mathematics, rather than to restore mathematics to language (grammar and semantics).
All of these disciplines categorize ficitionaly in order to obscure the triviality of the underlying phenomenon that they describe.
Qualia is, as i stated, a fictionalism ascribing to states that which consists of the neural persistence of vision of accordant and discordant state changes in continuous time.
Qualia can no more exist than nothing, since nothing requires something to contrast with.
Qualia developed out of wittgenstein’s attempt to cast the mind in the form of movie consisting of frames, rather than the persistence of vision between a host of fragments.
Dennett proposed four criteria for Qualia:
1 – ineffable; that is, they cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience.
This is false because we both share the same experiences but often lack introspective vocabulary to transmit xperiences. We can however, as in all forms of communication, construct complex experiences from universally simplistic forms. (this is the function of all storytelling).
2 – intrinsic; that is, they are non-relational properties, which do not change depending on the experience’s relation to other things.
This says precisely nothing other than the our senses provide us correct information about the real world, at human scale, within th elimits of our ability to act (because it would be an evolutionary disadvantage to have senses beyond one’s ability to act. Hence why we lack thermal vision.)
3 – private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.
This is false otherwise we could not empathize. If one says, that the range stimuli and excitement(intensity) that I experience from similar sensations, and the associations in memory that are stimulated by that experience, then yes, they are not identical but they are both marginally indifferent AND communicable. The problem is that we are usually unwilling to pay the high cost of that communication given the low value of stimulation beyond marginal indifference.
4 – directly or immediately apprehensible in consciousness; that is, to experience a quale is to know one experiences a quale, and to know all there is to know about that quale.
This is a definition Scope limitation) rather than a description, in that he’s stating that he’s demarcating those experiences open to self reflection from those not. And it is this last that informs us to the real purpose that philosophers are trying to achieve: a literature of experience. However, we have that literature of experience: the novel.
And that is precisely what has occurred in the 20th century:
Math is the rather trivial study of positional relations (the logic of ratios) – a grammar of positional relations.
Logic has been found to be a grammar in which we study litte more than constant relations of some subsets between states (phrases).
Science consists of measurement in constant relations in the grammar of action.
Law consists of measurement of investments decided by reciprocity.
Economics consists of measurements of the consequences of reciprocal exchange, and the process of removing frictions to that exchange by the use of institutions.
And The novel (Of which Dostoyevsky and Orwell are probably the greatest example man has produced ) the study of experiences.
And we have seen philosophy, starting with Kant’s attempt to reject anglo empiricism by conflation of the experiences and measurements, and continuing with the anti-empirical evolution of the Continental > Boazian > Marxist > Freudian > Postmodern schools, descend into pseudoscience and fictionalism in desperate attempt to preserve what is no more than the literature of pseudoscience, false wisdom lit, and anti-real (destructive) mythos.
We know why philosophy is attractive: it’s cheap, and it lacks means of falsification against reality within perceivable time frames, and as such, causes the orator to attract attention from those who commiserate, and those who disapprove, and those who defend against such falsehoods.
There is a reason operational (Scientific) language has evolved into the universal language of truthful speech. Because it is the only language of universal commensurability that prevents the great deceits of ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion (loading), obscurantism(framing), fictionalism (pseudoscience, pseudo rationalism, and pseudo-wisdom-literature/myth).
Truthful statements are possible and small in number. But fictionalisms are endless means by which those who cannot tolerate reality create a fiction to describe it on their terms.
Literature is at least honest.Economics is finally fairly honest – although some of us work to correct what remains. But it is more honest than all political philosophy that has come before it. Law is at least honest, even if legislation and regulation are not. Science has spent a century preserving its social status, by incrementally suppressing pseudoscience.
However, philosophy has been descending – at least since kant, into nothing more than a conflation of pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, and pseudo-wisdom literature.
It is little more than moral fictions to entertain those who are unsatisfied by the reality of reality: the markets for association, cooperation, reproduction, production of goods, services and information, production of commons (politics), production of group evolutionary strategy (nation and civilization).
Hence why it is increasingly unfunded, and relegated to theology – even classified with theology in libraries and book stores.
As far as I know the disciplines are approaching completeness given the operations we describe at increasing scales, and as such the domain of philosophy is not simply empty verbalisms by which we attempt to signal wisdom we do not possess, but the determination of personal preference, and communal good, given the resources (choices) made available by the disciplines that measure that which is not preference, but truth: science.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
