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 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.
@kelly Or like, suppose I take a hallucinogenic drug and see visions. My experience with them is qualia, ungrounded to any external consensus reality.
