Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[HappySkeptic]

What about qualia? Qualia are not explained by brain states. I think that's one of Nagel's main points.

To return to Searle, conscious states are causally reducible to brain states (I agree with that). But they aren't ontologically reducible (because of qualia). So the point is: reductionism fails here. Searle believes it is simply a gap in our scientific knowledge, and that the reductionism fails simply because of our ignorance of the natural world... ie... it doesn't necessarily fail. I'm not sure I completely agree with Searle here. But I like his analysis.

I have never understood the qualia argument.  One has to completely misunderstand what the mind is to make the argument.

The mind is experiential.  It experiences its own recreations of the past, present, and future.  Qualia are part of that experience.  They are the mind's experience of the sensory inputs.

Do qualia need to exist in a computing machine?  No, if it is not organized like the mind, but yes if does operate like the mind.  The mind is far more than a computing machine.