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I think you need multiple words because there isn’t one feature you’re trying to capture. The phenomenon in question is qualitative, first-person, intrinsic, immediately given, not captured by structural description. You could use those words depending what you’re talking about.

Notice also those properties are all “non-material” but you can’t say that aloud or someone comes along and complains of course they’re not non-material that’s a theoretical posit you’re making, not an observation of the proeprties of the phenomenon under consideration.

I find the whole conversation gets bogged down in talking about qualia which aren’t even the really problematic thing for materialism, first-person givenness is. Qualia get reduced to functions or illusions, but in the first-person givenness of experience you have the real motivation for an ontological primitive.

In Vedanta this first-person givenness of experience is called saksin or witness. Qualia are more like the forms/qualities matter takes “within” experience. So all these arguments illusionists make to say experience isn’t infallible because you can be mistaken about the properties of some qualia are just irrelevant when it comes to the witness or the fact that there is some kind of qualitative thing there.

What do you think are the best words for describing the part of our conscious experience that feels intrinsically non-material? I'm not saying it's true, but we still need a precise language for it.

I feel like 'what it is like' is too imprecise, and 'qualia' implies weird bits or atomic nuggets of consciousness, which obviously makes the…

Mar 26
at
9:14 PM
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