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Comment by stephencanon | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak to the OP, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; we are yet to observe anything in the natural world where "something magical [really turned out to be] going on", so this really is an extraordinary claim. It has been several years since I was current with the linguistics literature, but as far as I know no extraordinary evidence has been produced.

I don't think that requires that we view language solely as a probabilistic map between sounds and objects. All sorts of emergent behavior appear to be "magical" at first glance.

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I did not reference linguistics literature, but philosophy literature (a distinction worth making because they are approaching the problem at different levels). I've never been good at the 'language problem' elevator speech, but how is it possible that we can capture the full power of language while using language to describe it? Language is a technology that allows for the production of concepts like 'probability' or 'apple'. Language as a tool is so fundamental to cognition that it becomes difficult to separate the two. Heidegger's Being and Time explores that line of thinking, and Derrida loves to play the game of "well that means you can't say anything!" Both have provided me with insight into what "magic" is referencing here (rather than your fairly pithy absence-of-evidence reference).

You're asking if I believe in qualia, and the answer is no. There are firing neurons and that's it. The great variety of ways in which neurons can fire, and the great variety of experiences that shape how neurons fire combine to form an exquisite set of possible firing patterns (this is literally what makes me me and you you) but ultimately, to mis-use Gertrude Stein's famous phrase, 'there is no there there.'

I don't believe I referenced qualia. The problem of language is an emergent phenomenon just as the utility of language is. I don't believe in subjective essentialism either.

It wasn't at all clear that that is what he was asking you. And you need to qualify the sense in which you "don't believe" in qualia. You don't believe that consciousness has phenomenal properties? Qualia certainly exist in some sense.

From what it sounds like, you are just dismissing compelling philosophical issues because it frustrates your beliefs.

> Qualia certainly exist in some sense.

As an epiphenomenon of neural firings? Or is saying that 'not allowed' somehow?

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