Free Will

[The Grand Nudger]

Saying "Your brain experiences qualia because it's a super-special machine, unlike all those simpler machines you listed" doesn't really explain how/why qualia would add anything to any physical mechanism.

I didn't say anything of the sort..I only acknowledge that your computer and your car aren't human.  OFC your computer can do what it does without qualia, your car can do what it does without qualia.  Can you?  Even if you could...imagine, say, that you are surrounded by beings that do not experience qualia...can you not see why you might have an advantage over them?  How this wonderfully "full" experience confers benefits?

Of course I do, because my existence is defined by my experiencing qualia.  If nothing else, that's what I am: a qualia experiencer.  But you are conflating me the subjective agent and me the physical mechanism-- maybe they are the same, but conflating them in this way begs the question.

I don't think we're having the same discussion.  I'm trying to express what functions qualia provides in human beings...why it would be advantageous for us to experience qualia, and how natural selection acts upon creatures -with- qualia. That you are the physical mechanism is simply a consequence of how I would explain qualia. You may not be, but you could be, and it's the explanation that fits currently available evidence. Whether or not you are is irrelevant to whether or not ns would or could select for whatever it is, whatever you are. However this "x" presents itself....whatever it is and whatever allows for it......it's advantages seem..to me...to be a whole lot clearer than your questions (and yoos questions) would imply. This qualia that you have of say..."love"... compels you, deeply...to do things which would directly affect both your survival, your mate's survival, and the survival of your offspring... that's just for starters....but in itself is enough to answer the question of what it brings us.