Programming the Human Mind:

[I_am_not_mafia]

As for recognizing and measuring it: that's the mating call of the physicalist monist.  I wake up, experience ideas and sensations, and the word for the subjective sense of experience of things is qualia.  I don't have to be able to hold it up to a tape measure for the word to have meaning.

But you do for it to be useful. I am only interested in terms that are useful. If it's not useful then it's irrelevant.

How do I know that qualia exists in your brain or whether you subjectively experience anything at all as opposed to reacting to stimuli? As far as I'm concerned you're just a biological automaton.

Then you are limited to considering brain function, and not mind.

It's you that's saying that there is a difference. There is no reason to suggest that there is and plenty of evidence to tell us that there isn't. Neurodegenerative diseases and anesthetic will compromise your mind as they inhibit or destroy your brain.

The very concept of Qualia is just a quagmire that does not help anyone. Conversations involving Qualia never get anywhere, they never result in any conclusion or testable hypothesis.

That's your problem.

Not a problem at all. It just means that I just end up ignoring the whole issue of qualia and not missing out in the slightest. You're the one who brought it up. Not me.

You feel like you have Qualia because you are your brain situated in your body situated in an environment. No one else feels what you are feeling.

I feel like I have qualia because I have qualia.  Your narrative about WHY I have qualia would be more convincing if you could, for example, determine whether ANY physical structure does or doesn't have it.  You can't, so you will say it's a "quagmire," or a useless term.  But the problem is, when I see red, I see redness, and nobody has even an inkling why that is so.

Which all means that I can safely ignore whatever you say about qualia. If it's something that only you experience and which cannot be measured then I do not have to worry about it. It's irrelevant. Your reason is circular. You feel like you have qualia because you have qualia?

Whatever explanation anyone could give you, you could just turn around and accuse someone of being a physicalist monist or some such term. You're creating something undefinable and then demanding that people explain it. For example, what does it even mean to see redness when you see red?

Now if by qualia above you mean the conscious awareness of seeing red, then I can easily come up with some plausible hypotheses as to how this could be implemented in a robot. It would be useful to have a robot that was conscious of seeing red.

But if you want to program a human mind, you will need to be able to address this question.  You cannot, and therefore clearly cannot, at least with full knowledge that it is working, reproduce a human mind.

Actually I don't want to program a human mind. I don't think that's possible because then it wouldn't be human.

We have absolutely no reason to expect that it won't. Of course you also need to define what it means for something to feel subjectively. You can do that while figuring out how to measure Qualia.

I don't need to measure Qualia.  I just need to have a word which differentiates the difference between red light hitting the eye, and the subjective experience of redness.

Why do you need a word which differentiates the difference between red light hitting the eye, and the subjective experience of redness? What use is it? How does it help you? Why is it relevant?

You have not given any reason why I should be concerned with qualia when creating an Artificial Intelligence. I'll leave qualia up to the philosophers to worry over.