Does sweetness exist, really, or does it only taste that way to us?

[Touchstone]

It does not follow that, since, without our constructing “cuteness” in a baby, that therefore “cuteness” does not exist in the baby. This train of logic would lead us to conclude that, if a tree fell in the woods, and no one saw it, therefore no tree fell in the woods.

No, that wouldn’t be at all analogous. The features of the baby that the human mind construes as “cute” exist – they are objective phenomena, and a baby, unobserved by anyone else is just as cute then as it is a moment later when someone comes into the room and gets her out her crib, admiring her cuteness. The basis for our deciding “big eyes are cute” is not because there’s some “intrinsic cuteness” to big eyes, but rather that is a salient feature that has evolutionary rewards attached to it. The environment rewards humans who find their babies attractive, and worthy of love, affection, nurturing. That is a pattern that promotes survival.

There isn’t any controversy about the existence of phenomena or percepts here. The issue is just noting that our “folk understanding” gets undermined by the science if we look closely at the evidence and the model.

The properties in a given phenonmena do not have to be sensed in order to exist. They only have to be sensed by us in order to be known to exist by us.

Sure. And Mt. Elbert is the tallest mountain in Colorado. So there.

Now back to the thread…

I note in passing that this model cannot account for free choice. This is because, ultimately, the strongest desire in any situation is what produces the following action, and all desires are derived from evolution.

Only in a tautological sense. If I suggest that “sometimes, the desire is to choose against our typical desires, just for a change”, then we could agree that just because that is chosen it is by definition our strongest desire. If you define “strongest desire” as “that which one chooses”, than your point is trivially true. But beyond that, nature is fuzzy and unpredictable at low levels – Laplacian determinism imploded with the advent of QM. If some of our choices just draw on, or tip due to stochastic features in our cognition, we are free in the “unpredictable” sense, free in the “can’t apply a deterministic model and get routinely accurate prediction” sense. But, that’s more than warranted here for so far off topic.

Leaving that aside, here’s an important question: so what? If it were to eliminate free choice, totally and necessarily, what of it? Does this discount the accuracy of the idea as a description of the world, necessarily for you? I can’t see how that would be a performative flaw or a counterfactual at all – as opposed to something we may just resist for emotional or psychological reasons. What is the impact of a “yes, it annihilates free choice” on the idea’s performance, in your view?

My response is appropriate because you seem to be claiming that a thing cannot exist in itself unless it is known by humans to exist.

Reading back, I can’t find a hint of that, let alone anything explicit towards that end. Manifestly, many properties obtain “at the source”. Electrons have “spin-ness”, the property we call “spin”, and this obtains in the physical nature of the electron. We don’t ascribe “spin-ness” to it as a construct selected by evolution. It has “spin” no matter if a human is measuring it, a baboon is watching the instrumentation, or no one is paying attention to it at all.

That just wasn’t a subject in the video, or my comments. I guess it’s relevant in a negative sense – “cuteness” is not like “spin”, not a property that inheres in the structure of a baby the way “spin” is intrinsic to an electron. This is a common “folk” perspective, nonetheless, and that’s what Dennett is bringing to our attention – that science is a useful lens for identifying misconceptions humans are prone to in their casual imaginations about the world around them.

Hence, you say, cuteness or sweetness cannot exist in things because humans only know those things by their intellects. Yet this because is not a proper therefore. There is nothing in the antecedent (cuteness cannot exist in a thing) that garners the necessity of your consequent (because humans only know cuteness by an intellect.) It does not follow that, simply because our knowledge of a thing gives rise to our knowledge of x, that, unless we have knowledge of x, x does not therefore exist.

Again, you must be confusing me with some other post. I don’t even faintly recognize this as responsive to anything I’ve claimed here. If I’m mistaken, some quotes that make that claim of mine clear would be good to see.

I might as well retort that Mt. Harvard is the second tallest peak in Colorado. So there.

-TS

 

[The_Exodus]

No, it wouldn’t affect it at all. The epistemic weight of a scientific theory obtains wholly from its performance, from its execution on accounting for empirical evidence, making successful, novel predictions, and avoiding falsification, while still being liable to it. The provenance of the idea in light of its performance on those criteria is perfectly irrelevant, and can’t undercut the achievement garnered through any account of its origins. That’s the beauty of science as the overthrow of insular, purely subjective philosophy – it’s not attached to “pedigrees”, but is merit-based. The scientific is not judged by the “color of its skin”, but by the content of its character, so to speak.

-TS

This highly rhetorical language has done nothing to prove your point: that sweetness cannot exist outside a human intellect comprehending its existence. The burden of proof is on you to show that in order for a thing to exist, it need be known by a human intellect. As you say below:

“Cuteness” in a baby is not a property of the baby itself.

To which my reply still stands: It does not follow that, since, without our constructing “cuteness” in a baby we cannot know a baby as “cute”, that therefore “cuteness” does not exist in the baby. This train of logic would lead us to conclude that, if a tree fell in the woods, and no one saw it, therefore no tree fell in the woods.

The properties in a given phenonmena do not have to be sensed in order to exist. They only have to be sensed by us in order to be known by us to exist.

 

[Touchstone]

If qualia can’t be described in physical terms, ever, then they are not in themselves physical. It’s very simple. Just try to explain to me what sweetness is and you’ll see that no amount of physical facts can accurately portray what sweetness truly is in itself. But in materialism, all facts are physical facts. If there is something non-physical, then materialism is false.

This reads as a beg to the question at hand, positing one’s conclusion that qualia are immaterial facts as the premise. On materialism, qualia are physical phenomena, brain states (or functional states, for a functionalist) as electro-chemical activity.

That seems a fair reading since you say “no amount of physical facts can accurately portray…”, a clear beg to the question. What would be your criterion for determining if a portrayal, materialist or no, was complete and accurate? If we have some kind of super fMRI machine decades hence that can isolate and chart your cognitive activities that correspond to “redness”, how would that be judged “inaccurate” as a portrayal?

It seems to me that one must just rule it out by definition, which is what you’ve done. But that is to beg the question.

Your analogy is not what I mean. The problem was a lack of knowledge about the physical causes for lightning. In our example, Mary knows everything about the physical causes of sweetness, but she’s still missing some knowledge, namely, the non-physical quale.

What’s the problem with this competing idea: Mary is missing some knowledge of the mechanisms of her physical qualia?

It seems to me to have the strong advantage of being distinctly parsimonious with respect to the dualist idea. A whole “sphere of reality” we don’t need for our explanation.

Now, I can’t keep going on and on. I’m really not trying to be rude in saying all of this, but if you don’t understand the problem or what its ramifications are, you may want to look up “Mary’s room” in Wikipedia.

What a curious response. If you just read the page you are referring to, you have all the pointers you need to the various objections and problems raised against the argument, including an extended treatment by none other than the subject of this thread, Daniel Dennett.

If one is just getting acquainted with this subject, the IEP page is a much higher quality resource. The ontic status of qualia is an open question, which is why you don’t find “no amount of physical facts can accurately portray” begs to the question in either case.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

This highly rhetorical language has done nothing to prove your point: that sweetness cannot exist outside a human intellect comprehending its existence. The burden of proof is on you to show that in order for a thing to exist, it need be known by a human intellect. As you say below:

To which my reply still stands: It does not follow that, since, without our constructing “cuteness” in a baby we cannot know a baby as “cute”, that therefore “cuteness” does not exist in the baby. This train of logic would lead us to conclude that, if a tree fell in the woods, and no one saw it, therefore no tree fell in the woods.

The properties in a given phenonmena do not have to be sensed in order to exist. They only have to be sensed by us in order to be known by us to exist.

Well, here’s a test for your connection, then. Would another kind of observer who happened upon a baby observe its “cuteness”. Would the baby appear “cute” to an approaching boa constrictor, for example?

If your answer is no, then you have a problem locating “cuteness” in the baby. Same baby, just different kinds of observers. If “cuteness” is not a mental construct serving evolutionary priorities, but is instead an intrinsic feature of the baby, the “cuteness” of the baby is just as manifest to the boa as the human (snakes’ inability to speak in such a way as to relay that to us notwithstanding). That would be “objective cuteness”, or “cuteness located in the baby proper”, the way what we call “spin” is located in the electron.

If the boa doesn’t find the “cute” baby (our view) cute, then we have a defeater for our intuitions of “intrinsic cuteness”; we must locate the cuteness in such a way that humans identify the baby as cute, and the boa identifies the baby as lunch.

In either case, the “cuteness” is perfectly real in the concrete, physical sense. It’s just located in the evolution-driven psychology of humans, and not in the baby. This was never about existence of the cuteness phenomena, but about its location.

-TS

 

[awatkins69]

This reads as a beg to the question at hand, positing one’s conclusion that qualia are immaterial facts as the premise. On materialism, qualia are physical phenomena, brain states (or functional states, for a functionalist) as electro-chemical activity.

That seems a fair reading since you say “no amount of physical facts can accurately portray…”, a clear beg to the question. What would be your criterion for determining if a portrayal, materialist or no, was complete and accurate? If we have some kind of super fMRI machine decades hence that can isolate and chart your cognitive activities that correspond to “redness”, how would that be judged “inaccurate” as a portrayal?

It seems to me that one must just rule it out by definition, which is what you’ve done. But that is to beg the question.

What’s the problem with this competing idea: Mary is missing some knowledge of the mechanisms of her physical qualia?

It seems to me to have the strong advantage of being distinctly parsimonious with respect to the dualist idea. A whole “sphere of reality” we don’t need for our explanation.

What a curious response. If you just read the page you are referring to, you have all the pointers you need to the various objections and problems raised against the argument, including an extended treatment by none other than the subject of this thread, Daniel Dennett.

-TS

I’ve read the Wikipedia page. Dennett simply claims that she would not learn anything new. In effect, he claims that explaining redness in terms of physical facts would exhaust knowledge of redness. Jackson simply claims it *must *be wrong, and Ramachandran and Hubbard support our claim.

Now, I’m not sure what your fMRI machine has to do with this. They don’t really describe anything at all. All it would tell us essentially is that, currently, the type of chemical reactions that accompany certain experiences of qualia are taking place. It doesn’t tell us anything about the qualia.

If qualia are wholly electro-mechanical activity then describing qualia in wholly electro-mechanical terms should wholly describe qualia. This is a double application of what is called modus ponens. Again, even Dennett understands this. This is why he simply asserts that her actually seeing red would not provide her with new knowledge.

I love the Stanford encyclopedia. They lay the question out nicely:
(1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision before actually seeing red.
(2) But there is some information about human color vision that she does not have before actually seeing red.
(3) Not all information is physical information.

Dennett denies 2. What do you deny? All the best.

 

[Windfish]

I know when I’m past my intellectual capabilities. Can anyone recommend some reading on this subject???

 

[roveau]

I know there is another conversation going on here but I’m just going to respond to the original question.

Animals, including humans, some birds and many insects have evolved or been created to find sweetness very desirable. Apart from artificial sweeteners it is a pure form of energy which is readily absorbed and used by the body.

I conclude that sweetness really exists for for us… and all creatures whether they find that sweetness attractive or not.

 

[croix_de_fer]

Rather, our brains create the taste of sweetness because sugar is a source of energy. In this way, our brains “trick” us into eating sugar for energy.

youtube.com/watch?v=TzN-uIVkfjg&feature=related

Sugar is not the source of energy therefore his (or your) premise is wrong. Carbohydrate, fats and protein are the sources of energy. Sugars make up carbs but not all carbs are sugars. This explain why pasta does not taste sweet but it is one of the most abundant sources of carbs and is an efficient source of energy. Approximately only 1 gram of sugar makes up about 45-50 grams of carbs in pasta.

There is an intrinsic sweetness. The chemical reaction involved with the taste buds causing a sense of sweetness requires the source(s) of this sweetness. The source(s) of the sweetness are merely chemicals themselves with its own molecular structure(s). This structure gives a nature to itself.

 

[awatkins69]

I know when I’m past my intellectual capabilities. Can anyone recommend some reading on this subject???

Check out “Philosophy of Mind” by Dr. Edward Feser. It’s a nice introduction to contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind. Have fun!

 

[wanstronian]

I will jump in here and suggest that you have obviously miss awatkins’ point with your analogy: First, sweetness has never been considered ‘supernatural.’ Second, lightning as a natural phenomenon is obviously just like sweetness: there are the physical facts and the allegedly non-physical facts (the qualia).

As for ‘experiential knowledge’, i.e., knowledge that must be gained by means of qualitative experience since it cannot be reduced to physical facts/the ‘performance’ of mathematical models aiming to capture those facts… I’m not sure how this is supposed to be an argument against awatkins’ view. (Hopefully he will understand.)

I think you’re dead right - I spent some time thinking about this last night and realised my post was a bit ropey. The analogy I presented is wrong, and i see awatkins has responded downthread. Hopefully this post will clarify.

I think what I’m trying to say, is that there is no argument regarding the physical process of taste (to use awatkins’ example. This process is, in theory at least, fully explainable in terms of its physical process.

None of which, of course, allows a third party in possession of all these facts to understand what it’s like to experience sweetness. From that perspective, the experience is non-physical - physics, after all, is all about explaining a process.

I believe that the experience is the brain’s interpretation of all these chemical/electrical processes. From that point of view the experience is purely physical, even if describing the process doesn’t provide the experience.

Note that physicalism is not the same as materialism. The former holds that all “reality [whatever that means] must eventually be expressible in the language of physics;” the latter is “the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications” (both from the OED). However, awatkins has been using the term ‘materialism’ when he perhaps should have used ‘physicalism.’

Experiential knowledge does not deny materialism.

 

[Betterave]

That seems a fair reading since you say “no amount of physical facts can accurately portray…”, a clear beg to the question. What would be your criterion for determining if a portrayal, materialist or no, was complete and accurate? If we have some kind of super fMRI machine decades hence that can isolate and chart your cognitive activities that correspond to “redness”, how would that be judged “inaccurate” as a portrayal?

It seems to me that one must just rule it out by definition, which is what you’ve done. But that is to beg the question.

I think you badly misunderstand the nature of the problem here. It is not that “no amount of physical facts can accurately portray, e.g., sweetness”; it’s that no amount of physical facts even begin to portray sweetness, including, obviously, an fMRI scan.

 

[Betterave]

Of course not, it was anthropic language, is all. We are inclined (some of us, anyway), to think that a baby is “cute”, because it is “intrinsically cute” – possessed of some traits that make it objectively “cute”, independent of the observer. We just happen to notice and appreciate its “cuteness”…

On evolution, the environment shapes our preferences, and the appreciation of a baby obtains through expedience, as a matter of practical necessity rather, and focused on whatever it happens to be that aids our attachment/affection/protection as a means of promoting survival and genetic propagation. It matters not what the particular features are – relatively large eyes for a baby, perhaps, as one “attraction point” of babies – but only the pragmatic effects of that attraction. It’s only as “cute” as the feature is functional in service to our genetic imperatives.

That’s the long form of “sweet choosing us” or “cute choosing us”, and this was Dennett’s point in the video. “Cute” is as real and efficacious as ever, it’s just not grounded in the baby’s features, but instead as a survival-serving response by our cognitive wiring. If all the “cute features” of a baby were changed into something we would now call “ugly” or “grotesque”, we would treasure that grotesqueness as “cute” if that’s how evolution had selected for our development. Beady eyes and gaunt, bony features would be just as adorable in that scenario, so long as that served the evolutionary imperative.

Again, you badly misunderstand the problem. The question is about the ontological status of sweetness or cuteness. You can certainly claim that these entities or qualities have played a role in the evolution of life, but that does nothing to explain what they are. Thus your curious use of anthropic language is grounded in the need to explain the fact that sweetness really is something in itself, beyond a generic functional operator in evolutionary theory - but you are unable to explain that in a way that doesn’t sound absurd. But you don’t care about that, for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.

I resist the term “prove” for science – it signals a basic misunderstanding of scientific epistemology, or at least shows a recklessness toward confusion about it. The explanation Dennett lays it is just bread-and-butter evolutionary theory, and it’s a theory that’s been so successful, there aren’t even any serious competitors out there at this point. The evolutionary application here isn’t controversial; Dennett is just observing that the knowledge we have accumulated in this are has some “overturning” implications for our “folk wisdom”, “common sense” and other intuitions.

Your resistance to the term “prove” signals a basic misunderstanding of the philosophical and scientific uses of the term and a stubborn inclination to strain out imaginary gnats while swallowing camels. You, or Dennett, can’t “overturn” any implications of “folk wisdom”, etc., when you have failed to even understand the problem that you’re facing.

I don’t even need to control the terms. I will just point out that this is a model which performs empirically, and that’s enough. If “conforms to experience, objectively” isn’t enough grounds for you to call it “truth”, knock yourself out. I can’t be bothered. Just noting the performance, that which is conspicuously lacking in other models, religious and otherwise, is sufficient for me, here.

In other words: “I don’t need to prove, or even explain, anything. I will just insist on my dogmatic viewpoint and continue to ignore the problems with it.”

It’s right there to grab if you want to.

Sure it is - show me.

 

[Touchstone]

I think you badly misunderstand the nature of the problem here. It is not that “no amount of physical facts can accurately portray, e.g., sweetness”; it’s that no amount of physical facts even begin to portray sweetness, including, obviously, an fMRI scan.

This is the same beg to the question that awatkins was invoking. To test this, consider the criterion you would apply to determine if an explanation was accurate, or more extremely, if it began to explain the sense of sweetness in question. What would the principle be that affirmed or denied the explanation as accurate?

If it’s “it just can’t possibly be accurate, just because”, that’s a problem.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

This is the same beg to the question that awatkins was invoking. To test this, consider the criterion you would apply to determine if an explanation was accurate, or more extremely, if it began to explain the sense of sweetness in question. What would the principle be that affirmed or denied the explanation as accurate?

If it’s “it just can’t possibly be accurate, just because”, that’s a problem.

-TS

I wonder if you know how begging the question works? Question begging means that the premises of an argument assume the truth of its conclusion. Please tell us what the question-begging argument is, as you see it.

 

[Touchstone]

I wonder if you know how begging the question works? Question begging means that the premises of an argument assume the truth of its conclusion. Please tell us what the question-begging argument is, as you see it.

1. Material descriptions cannot account for qualia.
2. “redness” is a quale
   Ergo: Material descriptions cannot account for “redness”.

This rests on an answer in (1) to the very point in dispute.

If you do not subscribe to 1, then we should understand what the criterion is for accepting a material description of a given quale. What is that criterion for you, if you are not begging the question?

-TS

 

[JohnDamian]

1. Material descriptions cannot account for qualia.
2. “redness” is a quale
   Ergo: Material descriptions cannot account for “redness”.

This rests on an answer in (1) to the very point in dispute.

If you do not subscribe to 1, then we should understand what the criterion is for accepting a material description of a given quale. What is that criterion for you, if you are not begging the question?

Hmm…

Redness is predicated in quid; not in quale;-- red is predicated in quale.

When we predicate as a participle we predicate in quale; but when we predicate as a noun we predicate in quid.

So; semantically speaking redness is predicated in quid as it is used as a propositional noun; insofar as it is a real predicate as to the object towit it is predicated; and if the object inhered in a genus of materials; that predicated to it materially must also be material; but only if the predication is identical in form as the species is differentiated from its prior genus.

Redness describes a quidditative property which is instantiated in material individuals; and also has an existence contingently upon the instantiation of suitable light to an object; by consequence the in quid predicate redness is contextually actualised by an external; although existent in an object even when unmanifest.

 

[Betterave]

1. Material descriptions cannot account for qualia.
2. “redness” is a quale
   Ergo: Material descriptions cannot account for “redness”.

This rests on an answer in (1) to the very point in dispute.

If you do not subscribe to 1, then we should understand what the criterion is for accepting a material description of a given quale. What is that criterion for you, if you are not begging the question?

-TS

As I suspected, you don’t understand what begging the question is. The argument you give does not beg the question. Its conclusion presumes the truth of its premises - that’s just how all arguments are supposed to work - not vice versa. The mere fact that you dispute a premise of an argument does not mean that the argument is question-begging.

More importantly, however, it is not even an argument that I have made.

 

[Betterave]

I think you’re dead right - I spent some time thinking about this last night and realised my post was a bit ropey. The analogy I presented is wrong, and i see awatkins has responded downthread. Hopefully this post will clarify.

I think what I’m trying to say, is that there is no argument regarding the physical process of taste (to use awatkins’ example. This process is, in theory at least, fully explainable in terms of its physical process.

None of which, of course, allows a third party in possession of all these facts to understand what it’s like to experience sweetness. From that perspective, the experience is non-physical - physics, after all, is all about explaining a process.

So far so good.

I believe that the experience is the brain’s interpretation of all these chemical/electrical processes. From that point of view the experience is purely physical, even if describing the process doesn’t provide the experience.

This starts to sound a little suspicious… The brain presumably just is a chemical object with its electrochemical processes, so how is it possible for this very process to “interpret” itself? What does that mean: to interpret? Unless you explain this you are left with a rather opaque ‘explanation’ for your belief.

Note that physicalism is not the same as materialism. The former holds that all “reality [whatever that means] must eventually be expressible in the language of physics;” the latter is “the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications” (both from the OED). However, awatkins has been using the term ‘materialism’ when he perhaps should have used ‘physicalism.’

Experiential knowledge does not deny materialism.

You make some nice distinctions here. Now here’s the question: what does it mean to say “nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications”? It doesn’t mean anything (interesting) unless “matter and its movements and modifications” has not been simply analytically (a priori) stipulated as equivalent to “everything that exists.” So what does “matter and its movements and modifications” mean, and what justifies your positing this meaning for those terms?

 

[Touchstone]

As I suspected, you don’t understand what begging the question is. The argument you give does not beg the question. Its conclusion presumes the truth of its premises - that’s just how all arguments are supposed to work - not vice versa.

That’s not the problem. The beg to the question is (1), where (1) is supposed to be the “ergo”, the product of the syllogism. From the Wikipedia entry on "begging the question":

Begging the question (or petitio principii, “assuming the initial point”) is a type of logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise.

This is (1) – the premise that qualia cannot be explained material is the “initial point”, and you’ve assumed it up front. The provisional assumption of the truth of the premise is fine, that’s what makes a syllogism work, but it’s a fail when the premise is the conclusion, the object of investigation.

The mere fact that you dispute a premise of an argument does not mean that the argument is question-begging.

Here I am not disputing the soundness of the premise, and don’t need to for making the case on begging the question. I’m just showing that you’ve assumed your conclusion in the premise.

More importantly, however, it is not even an argument that I have made.

Wasn’t it you that said this, a few posts back?

Betterave:

I think you badly misunderstand the nature of the problem here. It is not that “no amount of physical facts can accurately portray, e.g., sweetness”; it’s that no amount of physical facts even begin to portray sweetness, including, obviously, an fMRI scan.

(my emphasis)

That’s the (1) I provided, right there. Are you repudiating that quote, then? That’s what’s in dispute. Perhaps qualia can be materially explained, and the physical phenomena.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Hmm…

Redness is predicated in quid; not in quale;-- red is predicated in quale.

When we predicate as a participle we predicate in quale; but when we predicate as a noun we predicate in quid.

So; semantically speaking redness is predicated in quid as it is used as a propositional noun; insofar as it is a real predicate as to the object towit it is predicated; and if the object inhered in a genus of materials; that predicated to it materially must also be material; but only if the predication is identical in form as the species is differentiated from its prior genus.

Redness describes a quidditative property which is instantiated in material individuals; and also has an existence contingently upon the instantiation of suitable light to an object; by consequence the in quid predicate redness is contextually actualised by an external; although existent in an object even when unmanifest.

See my comments to The Exodus – the existence of the object that drive the percepts we interpret as “redness” is not in question here. Whatever features make a baby “cute” for humans uncontroversially exist in the baby whether the baby is being observed or not – that’s an unfortunate distraction here that we’ve spun off into that isn’t a point of contention.

Dennett’s point is that “cute” is a product of whatever it needs to be for evolutionary reasons, and this runs counter to common intuitions that there is something “intrinsically cute” about the baby. It’s not cute because it has “cuteness” as a discrete part of its nature (see for example, the way an electron has “spin” as an intrinsic property, by contrast), it’s just cute because biologically it’s imperative that a baby be endearing and enticing toward affection – “cute”. If babies had spiky horns and slimy scales, we’d find that just as cute, under a different run of the tape of evolution.

So that’s Dennett’s point, largely lost in the mix, here. The second issue that does have contention is the question of qualia and the adequacy of material representations for subjective experience.

-TS