What core concepts form the foundation of your way of looking at the world?
Core ideas underpinning my worldviews:
Qualia matter.
More than one thing can be true at a time.
@starkatt so, unfamiliar, I looked up 'qualia' after seeing some of your posts a day or two ago, and, I couldn't grasp the definition. If you wouldn't mind taking the time, would you be willing to try to define it for me, like, as you would for a child? Or is it just a philosophical concept inherently complex enough to be irreducible, or perhaps too reliant on prerequisite conceptual knowledge?
@kelly Okay. So suppose you're staring at a swatch of florescent red paint. It's bright and colorful.
The light entering your eyes has a certain intensity and wavelength distribution. It hits the back of your eye and starts a cascade of information in your brain.
But that doesn't describe what the color *feels* like. Aside from any emotional resonances, purely experiencing the color red as a conscious being is a unique sensation. The redness exists. That's qualia.
@starkatt so, it's a universal truth or situation (if not a constant) that stands as something that's 'real' regardless of subjective experiences of it by people? Like, is gravity qualia? ('a qualia?')
@kelly Kind of the opposite? It's a subjective experience that only exists within one mind, and cannot be described in purely physical terms.
@kelly Or like, suppose I take a hallucinogenic drug and see visions. My experience with them is qualia, ungrounded to any external consensus reality.
@starkatt hmm. So, would it be like: a film editor chose to synchronize visuals with sound effects and music, but qualia is the fact that this can easily make me cry? A music video sequence is the 'objective' reality (thing that exists) and qualia is my subjective (but real to me) experience, the subjectivity making it no 'less real?'
@kelly Qualia is what that film making you cry _feels_ like to you, yeah.
@starkatt interesting. I've been looking for a word for this for a long time, then. At least, as I understand it. It FEELS like a spiritual connection that I'm still aware is biological, but that doesn't make it any less magical to me. The feeling of, someone made this hoping it would move me, I do feel moved, and whatever released those chemicals in me must be real but I don't need to 'know' exactly why. Just how good it feels when it does. It feels like having a reason for existing.
@kelly Sounds like you got it :)
@starkatt ah cool! Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me, it's a useful concept and fills in a vocab gap for me. (I like words but don't do well in academic environments.)
@kelly Glad to have been helpful!
@kelly Like, I have no way of knowing if your experience of red is the same as mine, but that doesn't make your personal experience of it less real.