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Philosophy

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    Re "The idea is that the one who is seeing blue calls it 'red' ...": Are you assuming that there is one "correct" blue where you write "one who is seeing blue"? Otherwise, which blue are you referring to? Commented Apr 13, 2023 at 22:51
  • @DanielAsimov No I don't think the old idea assumes that there is one correct blue. I have edited the question to make that clear. Thanks for the feedback. Commented Apr 14, 2023 at 0:03
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    A common view is that the question does not make sense even if qualia do exist. The whole point of them is that they are accessible to the subject only, but to ask the question one needs to "objectify" them so that different subject can "import" other's qualia to compare and contrast them with theirs, as if they were just another object. The conception behind the question is thereby incoherent. The idea that things have strictly non-relational "qualities", which, by definition, cannot be shared and hence compared, goes back at least to Kant, if not scholastics. Commented Apr 14, 2023 at 0:31
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    There is a version of the question which is more meaningful, it involves the same subject experiencing inversion of the spectrum (so the color qualia of tomatoes and cucumbers swap places, for example). That one goes back to Malebranche and Locke, but logical positivists (e.g. Schlick in 1932) once dismissed it as meaningless as well, based on their verificationism, see SEP, Inverted Qualia. However, verificationism is out of fashion nowadays. Commented Apr 14, 2023 at 1:19
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    @MatthewChristopherBartsh having extensively read and listened to both Frankish and Dennett since you first raised the question, my view is that they use other words- illusion etc- to refer to the mental experiences that other philosophers label or attribute to qualia, but they do not deny the experiences. You can have an illusion of red which is different from your illusion of blue, and neither might correspond to the illusions that I label with those words. Commented May 6, 2023 at 12:22