Been on the list listening for a week. Thought I would chime in. First, this has been a nice chance to see a lot of sharp minds in action. Having followed Ben's work for a while, I am not entirely surprised. There are lot of points that I would like to engage, but let me break it up:
(1) Private Language / Communicability of Qualia
The movement from a discussion of the ontological status of qualia - i.e. illusion, representation, or substance - to the communicability of these items is an engaging turn since the discussion presupposes an affirmative answer. Essentially, (while this is not precisely Wittgenstein's argument) the idea that we can sufficiently objective this idea of qualia suggests that what ever the term 'qualia' means in the context of this discussion cannot be something limited to someone's individual, inarticulate experience. This would be a prima facie contradiction.
BTW - I would think that this is in line with Wittgenstein's perspective that this type if private experience would fall outside of the language game. This is not to say that these notions do not exist. That would require a strict verificationism and infer that the fact that such suggestions are uninformative and therefore not valid. This has fallen apart in the past because such an affirmative statement has consistently been debunked in the critique of varieties of positivism (I would suggest that Wittgenstein himself did this to be consistent with his desire not to reify ANY particular abstract principle as something with a privileged view, and if you want a straight up argument, there is always Quine with "Two Dogmas of Empiricism").
So, I hope this is a sufficient argument that (a) the private nature of qualia is out of scope for a DISCUSSION about the private nature of qualia, and (b) this being out of scope does not preclude it existing nor suggest that it does in fact exist as some kind of ineffable phenomenon.
(2) Why Physicalism? or Is there such a thing?
I am particularly intrigued by the need to force the discussion into an assumption of physicalism or dualism. The true distinction should actually be between a monist model of substance or a dualist/multi model of substance. Physicalism is actually an argument for one type of description and one principle mode of knowing based on the idea that it is the most common variety of monism. Basically, it is very loaded. I think this is some of what you were getting at Ben. Right?
It is difficult to see if the Physicalist model (or should I say materialist? - maybe more sincere) is really coherent in any common variety. The Dennett variety is actually rather vacuous in terms of its epistemological justification. Most consistent thinkers who start off trying to be good materialist/empiricists within analytic philosophy tend to degrade into postmodern pragmatists (ala Richard Rorty). So, we need either subjective, shared, or objective truth, with the latter an impossibility based on the problem of finite induction.
Without skewing headlong into a discussion of deotological views, lets take a more conciliatory perspective and toss out this idea: what if physical theory is not so much different or privileged as a form of knowing, but is converging with other perspective toward a view of reality which actually requires perception that is not quantifiable under the scientific method.
I worry about slippage into some kind of Derridian quasi-transcendental notion hear - I'd just soon have good old transcendentals :-) - as long as they were well thought out enough to not be circular or vacuous. What I really mean to say is that the idea that such a TOE could be discovered merely through the scientific approach is somewhat presumptious. Moreover, it would have to rest on certain assumptions that could not themselves be by that method. They would be articles of faith are tested only in very limited domains and have shown (from a statistical correlation test) and much higher propensity for failure than non-failure. There is no success in this model because success = closure. Closure is not possible because of the problem of finite induction. So, let's keep an open mind and a humble heart about the idea of a TOE.
What I mean is something like Wired magazine talked about with the new convergence of Science a Religion. Particularly, the idea of information being the ultimate, irreducible mathematical representation that could manifest themselves as physical theory. Now, this taken in with holographic/superstring models of quantum theory yields and interesting justification for the idea that the universe and all of its phenomenon are patterns of information/energy. Indeed, energy is just a mode of information under this new logic. Someone who is doing interesting work on this issue from a theological perspective is John Milbank.
Ben, I think I catching a little echo syndrome from a little of your writings. The irony is I really am coming at this from a totally different place! I would be curious to get Gregory Chaitin's opinion on this? Perhaps consciousness is related to his theorem. Language would be a limit on the entropy of the information of a person - i.e. a "collapse" - and the full "consciousness" would be the native wave function. Of course, we could have a Platonic conundrum here. Any program or representation we create would necessarily be a collapse of this information into a limited form and FOREVER be unable of participating in the native form of our experience. I.e. it would be impossible for a machine to experience the entire mode of phenomenon we call qualia if what I am suggesting it is true.
Sad. Maybe I am wrong. In any case, it makes a lot of sense to me. I think our finiteness limits our ability to create things to a qualitative range that is less than us. They (AGIs) may outstrip us quantitatively in many dimensions, but they will be qualitatively inferior (as a result of our own inability to represent ourselves).
I hope these ideas will at least support the idea that while monism may make the most sense, monism does not equal materialism. Also, I hope that the citations are not taken as arrogant. It is jargon. Not much different than us using the term "singularity" in an Astrophysics lab without the appropriate disclaimer. I have tried to spell out the points that were made in relevant citations. I do think that where I (or others) manifestly borrow from well thought out arguments of others we should give credit. Truth is (and I think Arnoud I are on the same page here) most of the arguments we are having have already taken place in other contexts in philosophy. The key for us is to find those sources, apply them where appropriate, and add to their wisdom where appropriate or possible.
Warmest Regards, Tim
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