sudly said:

The hard problem begins when one denies that the evolutionary and organisational questions sometimes called the soft problems could, even in principle, answer the how and why of phenomenology. It is therefore not simply the fact that those questions remain unsolved. It is the claim that no resolution of them, including an account of their evolutionary emergence, organisation and causal operation, could answer why or how experience exists.

I do not make that denial. If experience is an evolved aspect of an organism’s organised participation in the world, then its explanation belongs within the same explanatory field as the processes through which that organisation emerged and operates. Perception, memory, integration, learning and adaptive participation are therefore the real problems to solve.

They may be profoundly difficult, including because of asymmetry of access, but they are not a separate metaphysical problem. The remaining task is to develop that account, not to explain how an additional non-evolutionary property enters the picture.

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Rahz said:

redgreenvines said:

qualia exists because of the familiarity reflex and sensory neural signals.
both are required

qualia requires the familiarity reflex
the reflex does not require qualia - one makes the other - it does not go backwards

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If the familiarity reflex itself requires no qualia, and sensory neural signals themselves can also occur without qualia, what is it about combining the two that produces qualia?

You've identified two necessary conditions, but that doesn't yet explain why their interaction should produce subjective experience rather than simply a more complex non-conscious neural response.

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redgreenvines said:

Rahz said:

redgreenvines said:

qualia exists because of the familiarity reflex and sensory neural signals.
both are required

qualia requires the familiarity reflex
the reflex does not require qualia - one makes the other - it does not go backwards

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If the familiarity reflex itself requires no qualia, and sensory neural signals themselves can also occur without qualia, what is it about combining the two that produces qualia?

You've identified two necessary conditions, but that doesn't yet explain why their interaction should produce subjective experience rather than simply a more complex non-conscious neural response.

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the subjective experience is the ever changing Gestalt with body feelings - reactivated memories and sensation of the world at large.
the topic is huge
I highly recommend a good glance at this link https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

in the end Qualia is a concept about experience/experiencing.
the brain and its familiarity reflex is that.
from the tiniest worm to the most theoretical scientist, that reflex underpins how experience extends memory and memory extends experience.

the term 'Qualia' is extra, just as is the terms "god", "subconscious", and "will".

these are theoretical ramparts that were built to defend archaic thinking patterns.

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Quote:

Rahz said: Chalmers himself accepts that consciousness arose through evolution.

Suppose we completely explain the evolution of operation, perception, memory, etc. What in that explanation entails that any of it is experienced?

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redgreenvines said:

well in one case we are talking about the arrangement of parts (anatomy) and in the other case the parts are engaged (electric charges are interacting in the anatomy)

the gap is between dreamless sleep (or death) and waking experience - & dreaming

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Rahz said:

If something is physically happening then there can be a physical description of it, but it's not just about flavor mechanics, but why there's any flavor at all.

I think that is Chalmers's gist. Why should information processing give rise to experience at all? We don't yet know whether increasingly complete descriptions of what conscious systems do will ever explain why there is something it is like to be those systems.

It just is. How's that for an answer?

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Freedom said:

redgreenvines said:

well in one case we are talking about the arrangement of parts (anatomy) and in the other case the parts are engaged (electric charges are interacting in the anatomy)

the gap is between dreamless sleep (or death) and waking experience - & dreaming

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ok press play and watch the anatomy jiggle around, there is still a gap between jiggling anatomy and experience. Do you not see that?

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Rahz said:

That's appropriately cautious. The hard problem is considered hard because when a mechanism performs a function, the capacity is explained. But explaining the capacities doesn't seem, by itself, to explain why performing them should be accompanied by subjective experience.

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