[mpartel]

> Even after mapping the entire visual cortex to all visual features, it just doesn't get us any closer to understanding that raw experience of "sight" that happens when you look at something. It's not the same thing.

Seems plausible that a detailed enough mapping of correlates one day uncovers a single thing/feature/location/architecure/pattern/whatever that is present only when qualia are, and absent in all other processes. That would at least point us in a concrete direction.

[_akhe]

Yeah but that's like saying what propels a car forward is a green stoplight, it's just a correlation you can observe that could have nothing to do with it - might not even be indirectly causal.

When you think deeply about the Hard Problem, it's really The Impossible Problem because there's no way to solve it within our subject:object and "self" paradigms. Yet the problem persists.

Take something like the memory of the first time I tied my shoes - maybe you can find the exact neuronal correlations to that experience I have when I think of that, but they won't be that memory, nor do they even give up the ingredients to engineer that in some alternate setting. The memory itself seems like a completely different phenomenon that the neurons (themselves, concepts in consciousness) can never explain on their own.

[justanotherjoe]

Qualia is not that hard to me to explain when you consider that the outside world as you experienced it, is just a mental representation. A very faithful one, but still just a mapping. Why there is seeming dichotomy between the inner and outside world in terms of quality can be attributed to how the brain compartmentalized it. Both are in your head. This is qualia of the brain, how its seemingly apart from the 'real' world is because it's made so, because it's useful. So in short, it's as simple as 'the brain make some transformations to the signal'. I find that acceptable.

How about the real real outside world? We don't know it. No one knows the thing in itself. So far, to see the world you have to be embedded in it and see something from a specific POV.

Why there is at all consciousness, idk. Why not? Consciousness seems functional... because humans can't really do anything while unconscious. So it seems to me very much part of evolution.

[_akhe]

Yes it exists and is probably some biological product of evolution, but the brain is apparently not like a heart that pumps, or a lung that is essentially a bag that pulls oxygen out of air, it's doing something else that isn't explained using any mechanical analogy (AKA the materialist worldview).

In materialism everything we know is machines and mechanisms: From atoms to trees to buildings. It works for explaining most things, but maybe there are some things that aren't machine-like, leaving us with no way to understand it (at least not using those concepts).

Think of it like - you can program a computer to do all kinds of things, but it will never "feel pain" because that is a totally different class of phenomenon that we have no idea how to produce - no amount of code will ever make pain or joy happen to the computer - it's not a code problem. "Feeling of pain" etc. are the primitives of our experience, these little experiences add up to make up our lives and selves, but we have no idea what they are or how to produce them. We only know adjacent physical things that happen alongside it like neurons firing - which not only doesn't even begin to explain it directly but is itself a concept of the consciousness machine we're trying to explain.

[akomtu]

A human body can be in a zombie state while doing something. So a human can do something while unconscious, although we may rightfully call such a body not a real human. Conscious experience begins when that human connects to his body.

[_akhe]

Good points - sleep walking, even general absent-mindedness. In its most extreme form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

[justanotherjoe]

absent mindedness is still conscious tho. And sleepwalking is not the level of function im talking. You can't do your job while sleepwalking. I'm not convinced humans can do intelligent work without being conscious. No such states that i've seen anyways.

[_akhe]

It's a very good point - that consciousness may be necessary for certain tasks like recognizing faces, counting, reading, etc. (whatever it may be).

[mpartel]

I agree in the sense that answering "what really are qualia" may be as impossible as answering "what really are quantum fields". At some point we may be forced to accept "it just is", but that doesn't mean we can't make meaningful progress first, just like in physics.

For instance, either new physics is involved or it isn't. Finding solid evidence for or against it does not seem impossible, and it would definitely constitute meaningful progress, at the very least by ruling some theories out.

[plokiju]

I think the difference with qualia is that it has so many ethical implications too.

I can accept that I have inner experiences and can suffer, but what about animals/robots/outsiders?

Will I need to take GPT-10's feelings into account, or is it completely unconscious?