You don’t experience inner dialog or visualizations? Some people don’t, but I assume you recall dreaming. Opponents of qualia like Dennett argue against the movie in the head, but dreams sure aren’t coming from the external environment.
An analogue question would be "why do things exist?". There can be no answer to this question. We can of course come up with theories that explain why certain things exist. But never why something even exists at all. Whatever reason we propose, reason, it again might needs to exist in order to be an acceptable answer.
Qualia seems to be similar: They name precisely what is subjective about experience and therefore cannot be fully turned objective. We can of course develop theories of how certain experiences arise but never break down this barrier.
So I find it a bit short sighted to simply say "there is no such thing as qualia".
My preferred view is to think of both "qualia" and "existence" as a koan: They are very nonsensical terms but lead to interesting questions.
Here's an argument for the conclusion "it is necessary that at least one thing exists":
1) For some proposition P, if it is impossible for us to concieve of P being true, and if that impossiblity is inherent in the very nature of P, and not in any way a product of any scientific or technological limitation, then P is necessarily false
2) It is impossible for us to conceive of the proposition "nothing exists at all" being true
3) Our inability to concieve of "nothing exists at all" is inherent in the very nature of "nothing exists at all", as opposed to being somehow a product of our scientific or technological limitations. We have no good reason to believe that any future advances in science or technology will make any difference to our inability to conceive of "nothing exists at all" being true
4) Hence, it is necessarily false that "nothing exists at all"
5) Hence, necessarily, at least one thing exists.
Now, others may disagree with this argument, but I personally believe it to be sound. And, if we have a sound argument that "necessarily at least one thing exists", then that proposition, and the argument used to prove it, constitute a good answer to the question "why do things exist?"
> 1. Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.
Our (in)ability to imagine or reason about something does not make it (un)real or (un)true. Your version would be like a dolphin claiming algebra can't be real because they can't imagine a system of equations, let alone solving one.
Further... You already know that something exists, but that's a pretty unbelievable fact if you stop to think about it. You probably wouldn't believe it if it weren't so obvious. Why? Well, can you imagine how things (or the very first thing) came to exist? Or can you imagine the concept of things always having existed? What does that even mean? They are both beyond comprehension, and yet one of them is true.
0. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ontological/
Note I explicitly said "if that impossibility is... not in any way a product of any scientific or technological limitation". Understanding mathematics to be a science (albeit a formal science rather than a natural one), a dolphin's inability to understand algebra is an example of "scientific or technological limitation"; therefore, my principle does not apply to that case, and your counterexample cannot be an argument against the principle when the principle as worded already excludes it.
> Well, can you imagine how things (or the very first thing) came to exist? Or can you imagine the concept of things always having existed? What does that even mean? They are both beyond comprehension, and yet one of them is true.
There are more than just two possibilities here. When you say "things always having existed", that can be interpreted in (at least) two different ways – an infinite past, or circular time (as in Nietzsche's eternal recurrence). Or, another possibility would be that the universe originated in the Hartle–Hawking state, meaning that as we approach the beginning of the universe, time becomes progressively more space-like, and hence there could be no unique "first moment" of time – in the beginning, there was no time, only space, and then (part of) space gradually becomes time, but in a continuous process in which there is no clear cut-off point between time's existence and non-existence.
Can I comprehend these possibilities? I feel like I can, for some of them–maybe some of them are more comprehensible to me than to you. But, those which I cannot comprehend, is that because the theory itself is inherently incomprehensible, or is that "in any way a product of any scientific or technological limitation"? I can't say for sure it isn't the later. For example, I find it really hard to comprehend the Hartle-Hawking proposal, but I don't have a good understanding of the maths and physics behind it, so it seems entirely possible that my difficulties in comprehending it are due to my lack of ability in maths and physics, rather than the very nature of the idea itself. Similarly, my intuition is repelled by the notion of an infinite past, but is it possible I'd view the matter differently if I had a better understanding of the mathematics of infinity? I can't completely rule that out.
By contrast, I have no reason to think that my inability to conceive of "nothing exists at all" is due to any limitation of my understanding of mathematics and physics. What mathematics or physics could possibly be relevant to it? There isn't any, and there is no reason to think there ever could be any. So, I say my principle clearly applies here, but not in the "how did things begin to exist" case which you raise.
What about "not existing" is impossible as an inherent property of nothingness?
And why do you think your ability to believe or picture something has any impact on whether it's real or true?
By the terms of the principle I proposed, it does matter. Now, maybe you are arguing my proposed principle is wrong in saying that matters – but, I don't know if considering a dolphin really helps get us anywhere in that argument: dolphins are – as far as we know – incapable of the kind of abstract conceptual thought necessary to even consider the question "is it possible that nothing could have existed at all", so why would what they can or can't imagine be relevant to that question?
> What about "not existing" is impossible as an inherent property of nothingness?
Essentially what I am arguing, is that it is inherent to the very idea of existence that at least something exists. The idea of some particular thing not existing is coherent, but the idea of nothing existing at all isn't.
> And why do you think your ability to believe or picture something has any impact on whether it's real or true?
Consider a statement like "the square is both entirely black and entirely white", or "1 + 1 = 3". For such statements, it is both true that (a) it is impossible that they are true, and (b) it is impossible for us to imagine what it would be like for them to be true. Now the question is, is it merely coincidentally true that both (a) and (b), or are they both true because their truth is related in some way? To me, the later seems far more plausible than the former. In which case, if we know (b) is true of a statement, that gives us at least some reason to think that (a) might be true of it as well.
Of course, we are aware of specific cases in which (b) is true without (a) being true – but, all such known cases involve limitations of mathematical/scientific knowledge or technology. Is it possible for (b) to be true, yet (a) being false, for a reason unrelated to limitations of mathematical/scientific knowledge or technology? Nobody has proposed any such plausible reason, so I think it is reasonable to conclude that there probably isn't one. Hence, if (b) is true of a proposition, and we have no good reason to suppose our inability to imagine is due to limitations of our scientific/mathematical knowledge or technology, then that's a good reason to believe that (a) is at least probably true with respect to that proposition.
They are, to the extent not random, coming from the material universe, whether from the part arbitrarily deemed “internal” to the “observer” or not.
What is this "material universe" of which you speak? As an idealist, I'm inclined to say that the "universe" is a set of minds whose qualia cohere with each other (not perfectly, but substantially). “Physical” objects, events, laws, processes, etc, are patterns which exist in those qualia.
The part of my qualia which can be reduced consistent, predictive patterns (and, for convenience, a set of concepts which represent patterns, an explanatory models for patterns, within that.)
The idea that there is anything that meaningfully exists outside of my qualia, is the lowest-level of those models, and that that includes other entities which have qualia of their own, is a high-level model (or maybe, more accurately, a conjecture) built on top of those models which might have consequences for, say, my preferences for how I would like the universe to develop, but interesting lacks predictive consequences – its a dead-end within the composite model.
On a fundamental level, outside of any beliefs about the “reality” of the patterns or explanatory models of the “material universe”, objective questions are ones which have consequences on the expectations within that set of patterns, whereas subjective ones are those which do not.
Are you arguing that idealism is a predictive dead-end? I don't think it is any more of a predictive dead-end than materialism is.
Scientific theories are conceptual frameworks which can be used to predict future observations. As such, they make no claims about the ultimate ontological status of their theoretical constructs. Materialists propose that those theoretical constructs (or at least some subset of them) are ontologically fundamental, and minds/qualia/etc must be ontologically derivative. Idealists propose that minds/qualia are ontologically fundamental, and those theoretical constructs are ontologically derivative. Neither is science, although both are philosophical interpretations of science – I see no reason why science (correctly interpreted) should be taken as preferring one to the other.
That spontaneous activity inside the brain is ‘experienced’ by the person whose brain it is in, in a similar way to activity caused by external stimuli, doesn’t seem to say anything about whether dreams are evidence of some higher level of ‘qualia’ beyond just.. brain activity is consciousness.
A scientist has the subjective experience (qualia) of observing a person sleeping with certain scientific equipment attached to them, the subjective experience of observing that equipment produce certain results, the subjective experience of waking the sleeper and asking them if they were just dreaming and getting an affirmative response, etc. If the scientist claims that "dreams are brain activity", their claim is referring to those subjective experiences of theirs, and has those subjective experiences as its justification. And that's all fine – there is no problem with any of this from an idealist viewpoint. "Brain activity" is a pattern in qualia, "dreaming" is another pattern in qualia, some correlation between them is a third (higher-level) pattern in qualia. It's qualia all the way down.
But, to then use those subjective experiences as an argument against the existence of subjective experiences is profoundly mistaken.
they can even ask that without waking them