OK, if I understand correctly, the report suggests that qualia may diverge from qualia reports—like, some intervention could change the former without the latter. This just seems really weird to me. Like, how could we possibly know that?
Let’s say I put on a helmet with a button, and when you press the button, my qualia radically change, but my qualia reports stay the same. Alice points to me and says “his qualia were synchronized with his qualia reports, but pressing the button messed that up”. Then Bob points to me and says “his qualia were out-of-sync with his qualia reports, but when you pressed the button, you fixed it”. How can we tell who’s right?
And meanwhile here I am, wearing this helmet, looking at both of them, and saying “Umm, hey Alice & Bob, I’m standing right here, and I’m telling you, I swear, I feel exactly the same. This helmet does nothing whatsoever to my qualia. Trust me! I promise!” And of course Alice & Bob give me a look like I’m a complete moron, and they yell at me in synchrony ”...You mean, ‘does nothing whatsoever to my qualia reports’!!”
How can we decide who’s right? Me, Alice, or Bob? Isn’t it fundamentally impossible?? If every human’s qualia reports are wildly out of sync with their qualia, and always have been for all of history, how could we tell?
Sorry if I’m misunderstanding or if this is in the report somewhere.
There are some examples of situations/interventions where I’m reasonably confident that the intervention changes qualia reports more than it changes qualia.
The first that jumps to mind is meditation: in the relatively small number of studies I’ve seen, meditation dramatically changes how people think they perceive time (time feels slower, a minute feels longer, etc), but without noticeable effects on things like reaction speed, cognitive processing of various tasks, etc.
This to me is moderate evidence that the subjective experience of the subjective experience of time has changed, but not (or at least not as much) the actual subjective experience of time.
Anecdotally, I hear similar reports for recreational drug use (time feels slower but reaction speed doesn’t go up...if anything it goes down).
This is relevant to altruists because (under many consequentialist ethical theories) extending subjective experience of time for pleasurable experiences seems like a clear win, but the case for extending the subjective experience of the subjective experience of time is much weaker.
Interesting… I guess I would have assumed that, if someone says their subjective experience of time has changed, then their time-related qualia has changed, kinda by definition. If meanwhile their reaction time hasn’t changed, well, that’s interesting but I’m not sure I care… (I’m not really sure of the definitions here.)
Let me put it a different way. Suppose we simulate Bob’s experiences on a computer. From a utilitarian lens, if you can run Bob on a computational substrate that goes 100x faster, there’s a strong theoretical case that FastBob is 100x as valuable per minute run (or 100x as disvaluable if Bob’s suffering). But if you trick simulatedBob to thinking that he’s 100x faster (or if you otherwise distort the output channel so the channel lies to you about the speed), then it seems to be a much harder case to argue that FakeFastBob is indeed 100x faster/more valuable.
If someone declares that it feels like time is passing slower for them (now that they’re enlightened or whatever), I would accept that as a sincere description of some aspect of their experience. And insofar as qualia exist, I would say that their qualia have changed somehow. But it wouldn’t even occur to me to conclude that this person’s time is now more valuable per second in a utilitarian calculus, in proportion to how much they say their time slowed down, or that the change in their qualia is exactly literally time-stretching.
I treat descriptions of subjective experience as a kind of perception, in the same category as someone describing what they’re seeing or hearing. If someone sincerely tells me they saw a UFO last night, well that’s their lived experience and I respect that, but no they didn’t. By the same token, if someone says their experience of time has slowed down, I would accept that something in their consciously-accessible brain has changed, and the way they perceive that change is as they describe, but it wouldn’t even cross my mind that the actual change in their brain is similar to that description.
As for inter-person utilitarian calculus and utility monsters, beats me, everything about that is confusing to me, and way above my pay grade :-P
Right, I guess the higher-level thing I’m getting at is that while introspective access is arguably the best tool that we have to access subjective experience in ourselves right now, and stated experiences is arguably the best tool for us to see it in others (well, at least humans), we shouldn’t confuse stated experiences as identical to subjective experience.
To go with the perception/UFO example, if someone (who believes themself to be truthful) reports seeing an UFO and it later turns out that they “saw” an UFO because their friend pulled a prank on them, or because this was an optical illusion, then I feel relatively comfortable in saying that they actually had the subjective experience of seeing an UFO. So while external reality did not actually have an UFO, this was an accurate qualia report.
In contrast, if their memory later undergoes falsification, and they misremembered seeing a bird (which at the time they believed it was a bird) as seeing an UFO, then they only had the subjective experience of rememberingseeing an UFO, not the actual subjective experience of seeing an UFO.
Some other examples:
1. If I were to undergo surgery, I would pay more money for a painkiller that numbs my present experience of pain than I would pay for a painkiller that removes my memory of pain (and associated trauma etc), though I would pay nonzero dollars for the later. This is because my memory of pain is an experience of an experience, not identical with the original experience itself.
2. Many children with congenital anosmia (being born without a sense of smell) act as if they have a sense of smell until tested. While I think it’s reasonable to say that they have some smell-adjacent qualia/subjective experiences, I’d be surprised if they hallucinated qualia identical to the experiences of people with a sense of smell, and I would be inaccurate to say that their subjective experiences of smell is the same as people who have the objective ability to smell.
I think you’re emphasizing how qualia reports are not always exactly corresponding to qualia and can’t always be taken at face value, and I’m emphasizing that it’s incoherent to say that qualia exist but there’s absolutely no causal connection whatsoever going from an experienced qualia to a sincere qualia report. Both of those can be true!
The first is like saying “if someone says “I see a rock”, we shouldn’t immediately conclude that there was a rock in this person’s field-of-view. It’s a hypothesis we should consider, but not proven.” That’s totally true.
The second is like disputing the claim: “If you describe the complete chain of events leading to someone reporting “I see a rock”, nowhere in that chain of events is there ever an actual rock (with photons bouncing off it), not for anyone ever—oh and there are in fact rocks in the world, and when people talk about rocks they’re describing them correctly, it’s just that they came to have knowledge of rocks through some path that had nothing to do with the existence of actual rocks.” That’s what I would disagree with.
So if you have a complete and correct description of the chain of events that leads someone to say they have qualia, and nowhere in that description is anything that looks just like our intuitive notion of qualia, I think the correct conclusion is “there is nothing in the world that looks just like our intuitive notion of qualia”, not “there’s a thing in the world that’s just like our intuitive notion of qualia, but it’s causally disconnected from our talking about it”.
(I do in fact think “there’s nothing in the world that looks just like our intuitive notion of qualia”. I think this is an area where our perceptions are not neutrally and accurately conveying what’s going on; more like our perception of an optical illusion than our perception of a rock.)
Hi, sorry for the very delayed reply. I think one thing I didn’t mention in the chain of comments above is that I think it’s more plausible that there are interventions that change qualia reports without much changing (morally important) qualia than the reverse: changing important qualia without changing qualia reports. And I gave examples of changing qualia reports without (much) changing qualia, whereas the linked report talks more about changing qualia without substantively changing qualia reports.
I can conceive of examples where qualia interventions change qualia but not qualia reports (eg painkillers for extreme pain that humans naturally forget/round down), but they seem more like edge cases than the examples I gave.
I agree that there are both interventions that change qualia reports without much changing (morally important) qualia and interventions that change qualia without much changing qualia reports, and that we should keep both these possibilities in mind when evaluating interventions.
OK, if I understand correctly, the report suggests that qualia may diverge from qualia reports—like, some intervention could change the former without the latter. This just seems really weird to me. Like, how could we possibly know that?
Let’s say I put on a helmet with a button, and when you press the button, my qualia radically change, but my qualia reports stay the same. Alice points to me and says “his qualia were synchronized with his qualia reports, but pressing the button messed that up”. Then Bob points to me and says “his qualia were out-of-sync with his qualia reports, but when you pressed the button, you fixed it”. How can we tell who’s right?
And meanwhile here I am, wearing this helmet, looking at both of them, and saying “Umm, hey Alice & Bob, I’m standing right here, and I’m telling you, I swear, I feel exactly the same. This helmet does nothing whatsoever to my qualia. Trust me! I promise!” And of course Alice & Bob give me a look like I’m a complete moron, and they yell at me in synchrony ”...You mean, ‘does nothing whatsoever to my qualia reports’!!”
How can we decide who’s right? Me, Alice, or Bob? Isn’t it fundamentally impossible?? If every human’s qualia reports are wildly out of sync with their qualia, and always have been for all of history, how could we tell?
Sorry if I’m misunderstanding or if this is in the report somewhere.
(I have not read the report in question)
There are some examples of situations/interventions where I’m reasonably confident that the intervention changes qualia reports more than it changes qualia.
The first that jumps to mind is meditation: in the relatively small number of studies I’ve seen, meditation dramatically changes how people think they perceive time (time feels slower, a minute feels longer, etc), but without noticeable effects on things like reaction speed, cognitive processing of various tasks, etc.
This to me is moderate evidence that the subjective experience of the subjective experience of time has changed, but not (or at least not as much) the actual subjective experience of time.
Anecdotally, I hear similar reports for recreational drug use (time feels slower but reaction speed doesn’t go up...if anything it goes down).
This is relevant to altruists because (under many consequentialist ethical theories) extending subjective experience of time for pleasurable experiences seems like a clear win, but the case for extending the subjective experience of the subjective experience of time is much weaker.
Interesting… I guess I would have assumed that, if someone says their subjective experience of time has changed, then their time-related qualia has changed, kinda by definition. If meanwhile their reaction time hasn’t changed, well, that’s interesting but I’m not sure I care… (I’m not really sure of the definitions here.)
Let me put it a different way. Suppose we simulate Bob’s experiences on a computer. From a utilitarian lens, if you can run Bob on a computational substrate that goes 100x faster, there’s a strong theoretical case that FastBob is 100x as valuable per minute run (or 100x as disvaluable if Bob’s suffering). But if you trick simulatedBob to thinking that he’s 100x faster (or if you otherwise distort the output channel so the channel lies to you about the speed), then it seems to be a much harder case to argue that FakeFastBob is indeed 100x faster/more valuable.
Oh, I think I see.
If someone declares that it feels like time is passing slower for them (now that they’re enlightened or whatever), I would accept that as a sincere description of some aspect of their experience. And insofar as qualia exist, I would say that their qualia have changed somehow. But it wouldn’t even occur to me to conclude that this person’s time is now more valuable per second in a utilitarian calculus, in proportion to how much they say their time slowed down, or that the change in their qualia is exactly literally time-stretching.
I treat descriptions of subjective experience as a kind of perception, in the same category as someone describing what they’re seeing or hearing. If someone sincerely tells me they saw a UFO last night, well that’s their lived experience and I respect that, but no they didn’t. By the same token, if someone says their experience of time has slowed down, I would accept that something in their consciously-accessible brain has changed, and the way they perceive that change is as they describe, but it wouldn’t even cross my mind that the actual change in their brain is similar to that description.
As for inter-person utilitarian calculus and utility monsters, beats me, everything about that is confusing to me, and way above my pay grade :-P
Right, I guess the higher-level thing I’m getting at is that while introspective access is arguably the best tool that we have to access subjective experience in ourselves right now, and stated experiences is arguably the best tool for us to see it in others (well, at least humans), we shouldn’t confuse stated experiences as identical to subjective experience.
To go with the perception/UFO example, if someone (who believes themself to be truthful) reports seeing an UFO and it later turns out that they “saw” an UFO because their friend pulled a prank on them, or because this was an optical illusion, then I feel relatively comfortable in saying that they actually had the subjective experience of seeing an UFO. So while external reality did not actually have an UFO, this was an accurate qualia report.
In contrast, if their memory later undergoes falsification, and they misremembered seeing a bird (which at the time they believed it was a bird) as seeing an UFO, then they only had the subjective experience of remembering seeing an UFO, not the actual subjective experience of seeing an UFO.
Some other examples:
1. If I were to undergo surgery, I would pay more money for a painkiller that numbs my present experience of pain than I would pay for a painkiller that removes my memory of pain (and associated trauma etc), though I would pay nonzero dollars for the later. This is because my memory of pain is an experience of an experience, not identical with the original experience itself.
2. Many children with congenital anosmia (being born without a sense of smell) act as if they have a sense of smell until tested. While I think it’s reasonable to say that they have some smell-adjacent qualia/subjective experiences, I’d be surprised if they hallucinated qualia identical to the experiences of people with a sense of smell, and I would be inaccurate to say that their subjective experiences of smell is the same as people who have the objective ability to smell.
Thanks!
I think you’re emphasizing how qualia reports are not always exactly corresponding to qualia and can’t always be taken at face value, and I’m emphasizing that it’s incoherent to say that qualia exist but there’s absolutely no causal connection whatsoever going from an experienced qualia to a sincere qualia report. Both of those can be true!
The first is like saying “if someone says “I see a rock”, we shouldn’t immediately conclude that there was a rock in this person’s field-of-view. It’s a hypothesis we should consider, but not proven.” That’s totally true.
The second is like disputing the claim: “If you describe the complete chain of events leading to someone reporting “I see a rock”, nowhere in that chain of events is there ever an actual rock (with photons bouncing off it), not for anyone ever—oh and there are in fact rocks in the world, and when people talk about rocks they’re describing them correctly, it’s just that they came to have knowledge of rocks through some path that had nothing to do with the existence of actual rocks.” That’s what I would disagree with.
So if you have a complete and correct description of the chain of events that leads someone to say they have qualia, and nowhere in that description is anything that looks just like our intuitive notion of qualia, I think the correct conclusion is “there is nothing in the world that looks just like our intuitive notion of qualia”, not “there’s a thing in the world that’s just like our intuitive notion of qualia, but it’s causally disconnected from our talking about it”.
(I do in fact think “there’s nothing in the world that looks just like our intuitive notion of qualia”. I think this is an area where our perceptions are not neutrally and accurately conveying what’s going on; more like our perception of an optical illusion than our perception of a rock.)
Hi, sorry for the very delayed reply. I think one thing I didn’t mention in the chain of comments above is that I think it’s more plausible that there are interventions that change qualia reports without much changing (morally important) qualia than the reverse: changing important qualia without changing qualia reports. And I gave examples of changing qualia reports without (much) changing qualia, whereas the linked report talks more about changing qualia without substantively changing qualia reports.
I can conceive of examples where qualia interventions change qualia but not qualia reports (eg painkillers for extreme pain that humans naturally forget/round down), but they seem more like edge cases than the examples I gave.
I agree that there are both interventions that change qualia reports without much changing (morally important) qualia and interventions that change qualia without much changing qualia reports, and that we should keep both these possibilities in mind when evaluating interventions.