I find Wordsworth’s sparrow poem quite visual. The sparrow is a small bird and a commonplace one, so this discovery of the nest with its eggs is like a glimpse into a tiny parallel world that was there all along. Yet the speaker’s point of view quickly withdraws and enlarges, first by using human terms to describe the nest (“home and sheltered bed”), then the sudden appearance of Father’s house. It works almost like a cinematic pull back.
And the Mandelstam stanza has an image that I “saw” instantly. When the speaker says the port “burns with poppies” I instantly visualized a field of red ones. And sure enough, we’re confirmed in the poppies’ redness by “Turkish flags” on the boats. Again, almost a cinematic image, in this case an aerial long shot.
Hold up. Qualia and the underlying reality are not the same thing at all! I think there’s an implicit progression here: reality produces subjective experiences (qualia) which a poet or author might then put into words. (Or not, depending on your theory of what poetry ought to be!)
You’ve focused here on a potential dividing line between experience and the verbal expression thereof, asking which side of that line is more important. But not everything on the “experience” side of the line actually corresponds to reality.
We do not usually experience atoms, for example! In fact, one might argue that we never do; that atoms are instead merely a theory about the kind of reality that might give rise to experiences like “these pollen particles on water are moving around randomly” or “this electron microscope has produced a picture that looks like some bumps.”
Yes but the qualia is the reality for us. It's literally all we know to be real, and it is pre given before we even know about atoms. To say anything is more real than qualia is to itself make a metaphysical assumption
Your reply is true, for a given meaning of the word “reality,” sure. But with the way your first paragraphs are written it’s hard to tell if you are defending the existence of reality-as-qualia, or if you are insisting that there is something beyond qualia.
When you write “I generally believe the purpose of language is to connect us to the actual: real events, real emotions, real images that a person can actually experience--what a philosopher would call "qualia",” it naturally sounds like you are only talking about the existence of human experience. But when you write that “The world is not made of language. It's made of atoms,” this sounds like you are not just talking about qualia. I found it a bit confusing.
I think your main point about language might be unaffected by this, but it’s a bit harder to follow when some of your writing sounds like you’re making metaphysical claims about reality and in other places you might be trying to avoid claiming anything either way about the potential qualia/reality split. It’s a bit confusing. Perhaps we are simply coming from different philosophical intuitions that change how we interpret words.
I find Wordsworth’s sparrow poem quite visual. The sparrow is a small bird and a commonplace one, so this discovery of the nest with its eggs is like a glimpse into a tiny parallel world that was there all along. Yet the speaker’s point of view quickly withdraws and enlarges, first by using human terms to describe the nest (“home and sheltered bed”), then the sudden appearance of Father’s house. It works almost like a cinematic pull back.
And the Mandelstam stanza has an image that I “saw” instantly. When the speaker says the port “burns with poppies” I instantly visualized a field of red ones. And sure enough, we’re confirmed in the poppies’ redness by “Turkish flags” on the boats. Again, almost a cinematic image, in this case an aerial long shot.
Yes to more poetry talk.
Glad someone likes the poetry talk! Yes, burns with poppies is so visual.
Hold up. Qualia and the underlying reality are not the same thing at all! I think there’s an implicit progression here: reality produces subjective experiences (qualia) which a poet or author might then put into words. (Or not, depending on your theory of what poetry ought to be!)
You’ve focused here on a potential dividing line between experience and the verbal expression thereof, asking which side of that line is more important. But not everything on the “experience” side of the line actually corresponds to reality.
We do not usually experience atoms, for example! In fact, one might argue that we never do; that atoms are instead merely a theory about the kind of reality that might give rise to experiences like “these pollen particles on water are moving around randomly” or “this electron microscope has produced a picture that looks like some bumps.”
Yes but the qualia is the reality for us. It's literally all we know to be real, and it is pre given before we even know about atoms. To say anything is more real than qualia is to itself make a metaphysical assumption
Your reply is true, for a given meaning of the word “reality,” sure. But with the way your first paragraphs are written it’s hard to tell if you are defending the existence of reality-as-qualia, or if you are insisting that there is something beyond qualia.
When you write “I generally believe the purpose of language is to connect us to the actual: real events, real emotions, real images that a person can actually experience--what a philosopher would call "qualia",” it naturally sounds like you are only talking about the existence of human experience. But when you write that “The world is not made of language. It's made of atoms,” this sounds like you are not just talking about qualia. I found it a bit confusing.
I think your main point about language might be unaffected by this, but it’s a bit harder to follow when some of your writing sounds like you’re making metaphysical claims about reality and in other places you might be trying to avoid claiming anything either way about the potential qualia/reality split. It’s a bit confusing. Perhaps we are simply coming from different philosophical intuitions that change how we interpret words.
Ahh I see, makes sense! Yes the atoms talk was confusing