Qualia Quotes

“I find that some philosophers think that my whole approach to qualia is not playing fair. I don’t respect the standard rules of philosophical thought experiments. “But Dan, your view is so counterintuitive!” No kidding. That’s the whole point. Of course it is counterintuitive. Nowhere is it written that the true materialist theory of consciousness should be blandly intuitive. I have all along insisted that it may be very counterintuitive. That’s the trouble with “pure” philosophical method here. It has no resources for developing, or even taking seriously, counterintuitive theories, but since it is a very good bet that the true materialist theory of consciousness will be highly counterintuitive (like the Copernican theory--at least at first), this means that “pure” philosophy must just concede impotence and retreat into conservative conceptual anthropology until the advance of science puts it out of its misery. Philosophers have a choice: they can play games with folk concepts (ordinary language philosophy lives on, as a kind of aprioristic social anthropology) or they can take seriously the claim that some of these folk concepts are illusion-generators. The way to take that prospect seriously is to consider theories that propose revisions to those concepts.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

“I'm the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

“[O]ur percept is an elaborate computer model in the brain, constructed on the basis of information coming from [the environment], but transformed in the head into a form in which that information can be used. Wavelength differences in the light out there become coded as 'colour' differences in the computer model in the head. Shape and other attributes are encoded in the same kind of way, encoded into a form that is convenient to handle. The sensation of seeing is, for us, very different from the sensation of hearing, but this cannot be directly due to the physical differences between light and sound. Both light and sound are, after all, translated by the respective sense organs into the same kind of nerve impulses. It is impossible to tell, from the physical attributes of a nerve impulse, whether it is conveying information about light, about sound or about smell. The reason the sensation of seeing is so different from the sensation of hearing and the sensation of smelling is that the brain finds it convenient to use different kinds of internal model of the visual world, the world of sound and the world of smell. It is because we internally use our visual information and our sound information in different ways and for different purposes that the sensations of seeing and hearing are so different. It is not directly because of the physical differences between light and sound.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

“[T]he form that an animal's subjective experience takes will be a property of the internal computer model. That model will be designed, in evolution, for its suitability for useful internal representation, irrespective of the physical stimuli that come to it from outside. Bats and we need the same kind of internal model for representing the position of objects in three-dimensional space. The fact that bats construct their internal model with the aid of echoes, while we construct ours with the aid of light, is irrelevant.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

“Lack of insight into each other’s private qualia of God, results in a never-ending argument between two people with vastly different conceptions of the term God.”
― Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?

“Our bodies are the quanta and our minds are the qualia - together they form a physical entity capable of interaction with many forms in the universe.”
― Rajeev Kurapati, Unbound Intelligence: A Personal Guide to Self-Discovery

“We Neuroscientists have come a long way in proving that God is neither a Delusion nor an Almighty Being watching over life on Earth. God is the Event Horizon of Human Consciousness. I termed this state of attaining God, as 'Absolute Unity Qualia'.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“In your usual state of consciousness, there is a separate quale experience of everything you observe. But when you transcend into the domain of absolute divinity, all your qualia get mixed up.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Qualia is an experiential state of the conscious mind.”
― Debasish Mridha

“In general, if we leave out the atheistic fraction of world population that possesses no notable optimistic or positive Qualia of God, the majority of the human species possesses a beneficial Qualia of God enriched with blissful sentiments.”
― Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?

“Qualia of God refers to the private subjective experience or conception of God in people.”
― Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?

“In most cases, people argue over the term God, without having the perception of another person’s own idea of the word. Hence, often people with an atheistic perspective of the world attribute the God of many religious individuals to be an angry, authoritarian and vengeful God who acts like a human being and lives in the clouds or in heaven. But the irony is, most religious individuals do not conceive God in an anthropomorphic or angry way. Rather, in their personal psychological domain of religious or spiritual beliefs, they conceive God in more abstract, spiritual and merciful way.”
― Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?

“The Qualia of God have paramount potential to alter your body chemistry through mind-body substrates of neurobiology.”
― Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?

“He (Mohammed) was an ordinary man just like any other man. And as such his personal instincts, urges, drives as well as his philosophical goodness bubbled to the surface of his consciousness when he attained the Absolute Unitary Qualia.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance

“Qualia is your inner mental experiences.
Science has no way to prove or explain it.
You don't have to prove to someone that pain is real.
Science has limitations.”
― R.A. Delmonico

“do we love, or
am i but a blue tangerine?”
― Ollie Bowen, On the Occasion of a Wedding: Eclectic Love Poems

“Akin to waves and ripples on the surface of primordial and eternal ocean of vibrant multidimensional consciousness, each of our minds is engaged in elaborate patterning of interdependent becoming and evolving towards a more complex but fluid cognitive structure. Your timeless cosmic self instantiates into the phenomenal mind. Ultimately, at least to an idealist, information is a difference between phenomenal states of consciousness. Viewed in this way, the whole symphony of existence transpires as qualia information processing. Is there a rainbow if no one is present to observe it?”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality