Read Mandik's paper on qualia quietism

Meta-Illusionism and Qualia Quietism is an awesome paper by Pete Mandik. I don't think it's received enough attention. It's short (~9 pages), so go read it.

Mandik argues that many of the technical terms used in philosophy mind that purport to capture distinctive elements of consciousness, e.g., qualia, phenomenal properties, and "what-it's-like-ness" are mutually interdefining but aren't meaningful and that, as a result, nothing useful can be gained by using such terms.

Yet even those regarded as the strongest critics of these notions, e.g., illusionists, may themselves be under the illusion that these terms capture notions prevalent among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike, such that we are collectively under a shared illusion. This, too, may not be the case. If so, these terms may reflect conceptual and linguistic confusions distinct to academic philosophers and those engaged with their work. If so, then it isn't so much that people are subject to an illusion, but that philosophers are subject to the illusion that people are subject to an illusion, hence, meta-illusionism.

I endorse both qualia quietism and meta-illusionism. "Qualia" is a tricky term, that is often used in a theoretically neutral and mundane way to describe something we already have terms for, e.g., "subjective experience," but is often also used in more obscure ways to describe putative phenomena that spells trouble for physicalism and purportedly furnishes us with one of the most mysterious and seemingly irresolvable problems in all of philosophy.

While philosophers inclined to reject more substantive accounts of qualia often raise what I take to be strong points, they also often seem to suppose that nonphilosophers endorse or at least implicitly disposed to think in terms consistent with proponents of qualia and related views that underwrite the hard problem of consciousness. I am skeptical that we should grant even this much to such accounts.

Just as I see little indication that most ordinary people are moral realists, I have yet to see convincing evidence that most people are quite as drawn to the sorts of metaphysically mysterious views that analytic philosophers often endorse. This doesn't mean there aren't implicit commitments or widespread conceptions of how the mind works or what the nature of consciousness is like that are mistaken, but establishing what, specifically, is prevalent among nonphilosophers is an empirical question, and the few studies I've seen cast at least some doubt on the notion that most people find the sorts of concerns that animate analytic philosophers intuitive or compelling.

Unfortunately, the most common reaction I've seen to views like this is to scoff or dismiss such concerns. Philosophers seem inadequately concerned with the degree to which the central concepts behind their positions can be intelligibly communicated. I suspect there may be a tendency for people to find, when they have used certain term long enough, to insist that those terms must be meaningful, since, after all, so many people use them and claim to find them meaningful. Yet I think this may be a kind of linguistic mirage, and that philosophy is not going to need to contend with the fact that language often as much an impediment to understanding the world as an aid.

References

Mandik, P. (2016). Meta-illusionism and qualia quietism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 140-148.