I think qualia is independent of the calculation done by our brain. Think of the brain like an enormously powerful and complex computer. It has a camera that can detect light. Those visual signals are then processed, and a response is outputted. A computer can process the visual signal without having a subjective experience of it, after all we don't normally think of computers as being conscious. So why is the brain special? It should be able to do the same and render us meat robots.
But we're not meat robots. We each know we're not because we know we have a subjective experience. That we have a subjective experience is the one thing we can know for certain. Since consciousness is totally superfluous to our existence, it must be attributable to something else. The idea that it's just a property of matter like spin or charge makes the most sense to me.
When computer processes external signals it needs to somehow represent the signal to themselves, it doesnt matter what the particular representation is, it just matters that it is and is consistent. For example it doesnt matter if computer represents lack of light as 1 and presence of light as 0 or the other way around it just matters that there is a representation and computer can recognize what 0 and 1 means. I think that is qualia, a particular way our brain represents external signals in its calculations and thats why it cant be explained to someone else because its something arbitrarly assumed in our brains
But that representation by the computer can be conveyed in quantitative terms. We can look at the code it runs on and the circuitry that executes that code and see that the presence of light is represented by a 0. That is a quantitative description, not a qualitative one. It's not analogous to a subjective experience.
In the human brain we'd be looking at which group of neurons in the visual cortex fire when the optic nerve sends in a signal from a cone cell struck by a red photon. That is the physical representation analogous to the 0 in the computer.
Knowing that brings us no closer to feeling for ourselves the sensation of red. By definition, a qualia is something that can't be quantitatively described, so it isn't something that can be represented within the structure of the brain.
I think its a quantitive description for us because we precisely know how a computer functions but from the perspective of a computer it is qualitative since it just knows what the 0 and 1 mean but doesnt know how it knows this.
Similarly for us we dont know how we know what red means, we just know, and also similarly since we understand how computers function we can quantitatively describe 0 and 1 once we precisely understand how human brains function we will be able to quantitatively describe red
I think qualia is independent of the calculation done by our brain. Think of the brain like an enormously powerful and complex computer. It has a camera that can detect light. Those visual signals are then processed, and a response is outputted. A computer can process the visual signal without having a subjective experience of it, after all we don't normally think of computers as being conscious. So why is the brain special? It should be able to do the same and render us meat robots.
But we're not meat robots. We each know we're not because we know we have a subjective experience. That we have a subjective experience is the one thing we can know for certain. Since consciousness is totally superfluous to our existence, it must be attributable to something else. The idea that it's just a property of matter like spin or charge makes the most sense to me.
When computer processes external signals it needs to somehow represent the signal to themselves, it doesnt matter what the particular representation is, it just matters that it is and is consistent. For example it doesnt matter if computer represents lack of light as 1 and presence of light as 0 or the other way around it just matters that there is a representation and computer can recognize what 0 and 1 means. I think that is qualia, a particular way our brain represents external signals in its calculations and thats why it cant be explained to someone else because its something arbitrarly assumed in our brains
But that representation by the computer can be conveyed in quantitative terms. We can look at the code it runs on and the circuitry that executes that code and see that the presence of light is represented by a 0. That is a quantitative description, not a qualitative one. It's not analogous to a subjective experience.
In the human brain we'd be looking at which group of neurons in the visual cortex fire when the optic nerve sends in a signal from a cone cell struck by a red photon. That is the physical representation analogous to the 0 in the computer.
Knowing that brings us no closer to feeling for ourselves the sensation of red. By definition, a qualia is something that can't be quantitatively described, so it isn't something that can be represented within the structure of the brain.
I think its a quantitive description for us because we precisely know how a computer functions but from the perspective of a computer it is qualitative since it just knows what the 0 and 1 mean but doesnt know how it knows this. Similarly for us we dont know how we know what red means, we just know, and also similarly since we understand how computers function we can quantitatively describe 0 and 1 once we precisely understand how human brains function we will be able to quantitatively describe red