An Objective View

I can only tell you that I don´t see any problem with the three aspects you posted in there...subjective mental content and subjective mental experience are closely related with the specificity´s either of your sensory organs operativeness at any point and respective integrated feedbacks from the system as a whole as also with your mental constructions and associations which obviously are different from someone else´s chain of experiences and focus...and qualia can be interpreted as the result of base functions between data and organ/brain interaction, they are no more mysterious then any other property one can think of in the world, they just are often more debated...I mean why does gravity is what it is or why there are shapes and forms in the Universe is no different on why we experience red when in the presence of a functional relation...what you are asking bottom line is not about subjective experience which is redundant but why effects are what they are...

Regards>FILIPE DE ALBUQUERQUE

Surely, you must wonder why a theory system like yours would need a subjective state i.e. why qualia... etc...? From a third-person perspective why would you have a conscious state it is not a process but a state it doesn't function but appears geometrically all at once… complete (also it would be like building a computer screen knowing there will never be any need for it or anyone to view it!)… but you have a first-person perspective and you are undeniably subjectively conscious... so why?... what need is there for a subjective reality?... computer designers wouldn't have one they'd say it was emergent and irrelevant ... so why is there consciousness? ... because it's needed… for life?

QM may have a conceptual handle on it:

It could be that our mind (brain if you’d rather) is (in a linguist attempt to put the ineffable into words) in a ‘superposition’ state and the continuum of consciousnesses determines the actual state which appears. Without consciousness then it's just processes i.e. ‘machine-like’ or so-called ‘zombie-like’. So the mind (brain if you’d rather) is a superposition and consciousness determines the state which appears e.g. at some point a foetus is unconscious and is just like a machine running various processes but with potential; that potential is consciousness and when it manifests during the early development of the foetus (or at conception) then the mind's superposition is grounded by the first conscious moment... so-called mind/body processes grounded by consciousness continue from that point... life!

...the thing is I disagree in that point...there are no "states" without relations !
States are systems, they are "effects" emerging from relating processes...
...when you say you have a state, in itself is nothing...such resulting state must be apprehended and comprehended by another system, it must be "acquired" in order to make sense...my view is that such acquisitions of "states" imply a priori "needs" who strive for certain inputs and from which certain effects emerge...but that of course, which for instance indeed does not explain why the experience of red is "reddish", to my view does not pose more mystery then the reason why gravity exists and behaves the way it behaves...whatever you have in this world, ultimately, it is what it is...
(...the only thing I don´t condole with in this debate is magic thinking, or mystification beyond the very mystery already implied in the phenomena...there´s no need for further obscurantism, no harm meant !...)

...But 'red' does not exist in the world so shouldn't it be more of a mystery to you than gravity?

Also, wouldn't you say gravity has an empirical effect but 'red' does not?

In your system you could use gravity but you couldn't use the qualia 'red'. Yet there is qualia.

IGM, I understand you to mean by "'red' does not exist in the world" that it is not on the same ontological level as are things like tress and forces like gravity. Agreed. But the subjective experience of redness is an "objective" phenomenon inasmuch as subjective realities are objective events.
In addition 'red' (the subjective phenomenon) IS an empirical, albeit a private, effect by definition. I think while subjective is always private, objective is not necessarily public.

Agreed, from a first-person perceptive but not from a third person perspective. Objectivity surely requires a 'third person' perspective doesn't it?

Considering the case of Martians functionally identical to us but physiologically different, he claims that the issue of whether or not they have qualia might be resolved by observing whether they manifest the same kind of puzzlement about qualia that we do. But of course they will manifest similar puzzlement, as this is determined by their functional architecture. Therefore such observation will tell us nothing more than we already knew.

Horgan (1984)

Yes, I guess what we mean by objectivity is all that we see of things, persons and events that are not part of us. But I don't think anything I see is not part of me. Remember my favorite Hindu dictum, Tat tvam asi (that art thou)? In a sense all of my experience is objective Reality and, metaphorically, all is Brahman's subjective Reality. Pardon my Self indulgence.
I'm confused by your second paragraph. Could you explain the matter of puzzlement in your hypothetical?

I feel like I've strayed from my original point and that Fil doesn't get what I'm trying to point to... but it was fun trying (for a while) ... fortunately I have my mystic side to fall back on... what a relief!

Yes, I appreciate your "mystic side"; that's why I dared to sidetrack our discussion with my Hindu dictum.

You'd have to read the source:
http://consc.net/papers/c-and-c.html

Another, slightly over-simplified way to put this, is: (1) The brain perceives itself as pattern. (2) The mind (that we experience) is pattern. Therefore (3) The brain perceives itself as the mind.

Any thoughts on this Fil or others interested in this consciousness discussion?

The famous painter-colorist, Joseph Albers offered this perspective: "If one says 'red' - the name of color - and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different."

The famous painter-colorist, Joseph Albers offered this perspective: "If one says 'red' - the name of color - and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different."

"...one can be sure",,,,,???

As you have said yourself, the whole dichotomy "subjective/objective" is analytically flawed. Studies of color vision have been the focus the demonstration of this (Wittgenstein, Verela and others). Indeed color perceptiion was the very issue which led to Wittgenstein's rejection of his earlier logical positivism (The Tractatus) and his joiuning of the "anti-representionalist camp" (senses do not mirror an "external world", nor is language isomorphic to such a world).

1 - Senses don´t have to "mirror" an external world as long a proportional rational functional relation between senses and the world is in place...
(...we are not to be the "outer" world, we are to apprehend, to relate, to function with and within the world...which is different)

And how can we get to such conclusion from the within ?

2 - A subjective experience of reality it is as valid as an objective account of it in terms of the truthfulness of the phenomena, which being possible, is being experienced...Truth itself extensive in its holistic nature encompasses all subjectivity in the realness of what exists as manifestation which is what we have when we uses the very expression or term Truth...in that sense the very object of Truth as the World lies in there, in the experience...therefore the problem is not the truthfulness of the subjective phenomena as "real" but the capacity to trace and account for its multiple causes and justifications from within in terms of systemic internal consistency (and maths can do that/pattern recognition)...what is necessary then is to find a rational relation in the function not from a 3 person perspective or from the outside (wishful thinking) but from the inside perspective, which is what we have as real, and from there to look for patterns which are consistent with the observations of an extended group of people (objective social agreement as a refinement of opinion through maths/and not opinion as a disassembled mesh of experiences, thus dumping patterns which are not consistent with the general experience as parasite variables which being true are not directly related with the object being qualified)...further confusion upon this matter it is to my view unnecessary...

Regards>FILIPE DE ALBUQUERQUE

(correction to the above post)

Of course we cannot be sure. That's what is so wonderful about subjectivity: its sovergnty, the only way we glimpse the absolute (both lower and upper case "a"). It's what I love most about art: its focus on deep subjectivity. Perhaps the major problem with the dichtomy "subjective/objective" is the implication of separation. The universe of subjective phenomena/experience is an objective reality, and--to use the Hindu's metaphor, as metaphor--the entire "objective" Cosmos is Brahman's "subjective" life. Mind, in the sense of subjectivity/ consciousness is the texture of Ultimate Reality.
This seems completely true, but how can one possibly justify it to others--to make public what is essentially private--even unreasonable?

Subjects have emotional ramifications, objects do not.
This is why subjectivity is biased and objectivity is not.

...that is a very basic response to a very complex problem...it misses the point.

agreed

with it all