[donkeybeer]

What are quantities and qualities? Does exciting electrical and chemical signals in the brain and therefore inducing emotions or perceptions factor into this or is it out of scope? Or are you saying its more like a large scale state like heat in physics. If you what is it you seek beyond being able to identify the states associated with perceptions? If you are saying these "qualities" are non-verbal. Very well, do you mean non-verbal as not among the usual human languages like English, French, German, or do you mean in the most general sense as not representable by any alphabet set. We represent images, video, audio etc freely in various choices of alphabet daily on computers, so I am sure you didn't mean in that sense.

[namero999]

That's the point in contention, how to go from "electrical and chemical signals" (the quantities, mole, charge, mass, momentum, coulomb, spin) to qualities (emotions, perception, first-person perspective, private inner life, subjectivity). The jump you are making is the woo part: we have no in-principle avenue to explain this gap, so accepting it is a religious move. There is no evidence of such directed causal link, yet it is (generally) accepted on faith. If you think there is a logical and coherent way to resolve the so called "hard problem of consciousness" which doesn't result in a category error, we are all ears. The Nobel committee is too.

I agree that claiming that rocks are conscious on account of them being physical systems, like brains are, is at the very least coherent. However you would excuse if such claim is met with skepticism, as rock (and CPUs) don't look like brains at all, as long as one does not ignore countless layers of abstractions.

You can't argue for rationality and hold materialism/physicalism at the same time.

[donkeybeer]

I also come at it from another direction. Would you accept that other, non-human beings have consciousness. Not just animals, but in principle would you accept a computer program or any other machine that doesn't look like the molecular structure of a human can be conscious? I am of course hoping I am not wrong in assuming you won't disagree that assembling together in the lab or otherwise via means thats not the usual human reproduction, a molecule that is the same as a human would result in a perfectly uncontroversial normal conscious human right.

Since you can say its just a "mimic" and lacks whatever "aphysical" essence. And you can just as well say this about other "humans" than yourself too. So why is this question specially asked for computer programs and not also other people.

[donkeybeer]

What if a working Neuralink or similar is demonstrated? Does that move the needle on the problem?

Betting against what people are calling "physicalism" has a bad track record historically. It always catches up.

All this talk of "qualia" feels like Greeks making wild theories about the heavens being infinitely distant spheres made of crystals and governed by gods and what not. In the 16th century, Improved Data showed the planets and stars are mere physical bodies in space like you and I. And without that data, if we were ancient greeks we'd equally like you say but its not even "conceptually" possible to say what the heavens are, or if you think they did have a at least somewhat plausible view given that some folks computed distances to sun and moon, then take Atomism as the better analogy. There was no way to prove or disprove Atomism in ancient greek times. To them it very well was an incomprehensible unsolavable problem because they lacked the experimental and mathematical tooling. Just like "consciousness" appears to us today. But the Atomism question got resolved with better data eventually. Likewise, its a bad bet to say just because it feels incontrovertible today, consciousness also won't be resolved some day.

I'd rather not flounder about in endless circular philosophies until we get better data to anchor us to reality. I would again say, you are making a very strange point. "Materialism"/"physicalism" has always won the bet till now. To bet against it has very bad precedent. Everything we know till now shows brains are physical systems that can be excited physically, like anything else. So I ask now, assume "Neuralink" succeeds. What is the next question in this problem after that? Is there any gap remaining still, if so what is the gap?

Edit: I also get a feeling this talk about qualia is like asking "What is a chair?" Some answer about a piece of woodworking for sitting on. "But what is a chair?" Something about the structure of wood and forces and tensions. "But what is a chair?" Something about molecules. "But what is a chair?" Something about waves and particles. It sounds like just faffing about with "what is" and trying to without proof pre-assert after "what ifing" away all physical definitions somehow some aetherial aphysical thing "must" exist. Well I ask, if its aphysical, then what is the point even. Its aphyical then it doesn't interact with the physical world and is completely ignored.