`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

Under Construction


Qualia - An Experience


Have you ever been Experienced? Well, I have - The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?


Index


What are Qualia?


Qualia , the quality of knowing, is really just a word for experience. Philosophers like to use colour as the standard form, particularly red, and often as what it is like to have the sense perception of some thing, but as I have pointed out before, position is also a type of qualia, and one that it is much easier for different minds to agree upon.


Qualia are often described by philosophers as 'raw feels', but what I think they ought to mean, without anyone saying it precisely enough, is that every single kind of experience is qualia, because any experience is like something. They don't, of course, but that is their bad.


It is not just direct and simple perceptions of reality that form qualia. Qualia could very much be the feeling of fear that comes from danger, or the excitement of sex, or the pride from recognition by your fellows. What all these have in common is that, like colour and position, they cannot be known if they have never been experienced - and if they can't be known, then they can't be remembered.


However, some experiences can be conveyed by means of talented or skillful exposition. Nothing of this kind is innate unless it is hardwired in the brain at birth, or metamorphed into at puberty, which is a kind of second birth in some ways, I suppose.


Imagining qualia for colour is much less bright than the direct experience, and having a recent memory to call upon makes for a brighter qualia in recall than is afforded by pure imagination.


It seems it must remain impossible for Mary to imagine colours before she steps outside, just as it would be if she had not the cone receptors in her retina to receive colour as light.


Colour is a really bad example, because the person with a B&W life doesn't even have the nerve impulses of colour, let alone the brain patterns, let alone the icon.


The same would be true for the person who never had some other kind of experience, say prison, or being under fire, or attacked by a wild animal, or getting drunk. Each is different, we can watch a film and understand how, but that is not living it.


Closer to the nub of it might be the person who goes through the motions in some way. Perhaps they have sex but do not make love. Perhaps they play football but never score. Perhaps they drive a car but never crash.


There are too many possibilities in life to know them all, and so many that are simply beyond our abilities. The SF novel Blindsight gives some idea of this.


It seems a logical impossibility to have the brain pattern and not have the qualia emerge. Yet the qualia can be recalled to some extent, if the memory is accessible, perhaps that means well laid down, perhaps the truth is more indirect and it is a question of the memory being perfect always but that it needs the indexing of it to be well formed.


It must be that the qualia is not actual brain pattern itself, but emerges from brain pattern, to be like some thing. So how could an empty question be filled by a brain pattern when the required answer is some qualia?


Given this argument, can a qualium be as simple as a word? In which case, as words can be understood in many levels, is not the word just another object - real objects such as cars are understood to various levels of complexity, so must be just as much a qualia when in the mind as any sensation, or any word.


The key is that the answer may be supported by brain, but is always in the realm of mind, not brain. So confirmation must come from beyond brain, or must it? The $64,000 question is do the qualia affect what the brain does? If not, then the qualia are just epiphenomena, but is there any way of understanding what the qualia do, what the brain does, and how outcomes are determined, that gives a definitive answer, one way or the other?


A Word on Epiphenomena


In response to the suggestion that qualia, and so consciousness, are just epiphenomena, with no causal effect on brain activity, or life, has to be one of the stupidest comments or claims made of consciousness. Just for the fact that we can imagine possible outcomes, and so gain evolutionary advantage in locating food, and mates, and in avoiding danger, when we know perfectly well that apart from a few elementary cases of non-conscious blindsight, without awareness there is no avoiding the pitfall, or spotting the opportunity.


Although it is tempting for some to propose the idea that we could do all we do by blindsight alone, the evidence from real life is that we do not. If we don't pay attention to where we are going, lampposts and banana skins abound. However, the other simple fact is that for either brain, or mind to recognise 'banana skin' somewhere there has to be an abstract produced that is like a banana skin. So in truth, even were it just brain, the brain would have to make a pattern just like a banana skin, and here 'just like' means that has all the facts of the whole banana skin, but none of the reality of it. The bottom line is that the brain cannot help but produce mind that is composed of qualia, i.e. the qualia is just the brain doing its job. There can be no separation betweeen brain pattern and experience - the very idea of a philosophical zombie that has brain pattern but no experience, no qualia, is total word salad. It just could not be.


One outcome of killing the P-zombie is that there is no point arguing about epiphenomena, or qualia, or anything else, mind is emergent from brain activity, because the activity has a pattern of meaning.


This may seem like not the happy outcome for all those idealists, dualists, spiritualists, or anyone else feeling threatened by existential angst. However, that is quite a different kettle of fish - understanding survival of the 'self' is largely a theoretical exercise that turns on understanding the nature of facts. Facts are truths, and truths can be recognised as eternal, although some would disagree, claiming the necessity of a truthmaker. However, I would say, that just because you managed to destroy the evidence, doesn't mean you aren't guilty!


Consciousness divides into that of which we are aware, and that which is subconscious. Presumably both emerge from the same bonfire of the active brain, so the crux of the hard problem becomes do subconscious thoughts form qualia?. The conclusion I would come to is that the icon is like something whether it is the brightest icon in the mind or not - otherwise it is useless to the mind, and by extension useless to the person. I would say the icon at centre stage is the icon promoted to importance by connection to other icons. That icon is your heart for that moment, and is also central to you whole by definition. Also, lets not forget that icons are in themselves wholes with parts that are brain activity, so icons are facts, and facts are eternal, So that is good news for spiritualists.


Obviously, this could all be debated, but I would also say that there is evidence of meaning attaching to physical bodies, from hills all the way to planets, and perhaps even the stars. In which case we can hope to understand what constitutes proof of life.



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