Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intelligence"?

[bennyboy]

I trust that when a fellow human is describing his/her experience that he/she is experiencing qualia. This is reasonable since my experience is very similar to that being described and the fact that qualia is able to be discussed.

And if the Cyberboy 3000 describes its "experience?" Or Siri? We are getting close to the age in which instinctive hunches based on face shapes and body motions, or the formations of linguistic forms, are not guaranteed to represent actual sentience.

What isn't contestable are the types of existents that experience qualia. You'll hear speculation as to whether or not a squirrel or toad will experience qualia, but will never hear reasonable people discuss whether or not a rock or an atom experiences qualia. To do so is absurd and meaningless. Inveighing the hypothetical philosophical zombie as something to be taken seriously is similarly grotesque; reason being is that you areYou are engaging in useless speculation and calling it philosophy.

I'm still waiting for actual evidence. Other than an instinct-based hunch, what evidence can you provide that anything experiences qualia?

Productive conversations can be had regarding qualia, but not when you hang your hat on atoms experiencing qualia and the existence of philosophical zombies.

I'm not hanging my hat on anything except an unwillingness to conflate a philosophical argument (looks like me, so feels and thinks like me) with actual evidence (There's qualia, there's the brain, there's a lack of qualia, there's a lack of brain.)

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Some things are not observable by others. For example, my qualia are real and easily identified-- by me. You, however, cannot ever have access to my "what it's like to drink cocoa" sensations.

This is precisely where you are making assumptions. You do not know this to be true. Nor do you have any evidence for that claim. You are simply declaring this to be not possible.

Science of the gaps, now, is it?

I declare it's not possible in the same way I declare it's not possible to see fairies. You declare it may be possible because you have faith in science. You've done a good job eliminating "yet" from these statements, but it's still lingering.

Pro tip: Every time a scientist has predicted there is no room for advancement, or that all is known, he has been wrong. Every. Single. Time.

This is both a strawman AND a false statement. First, I've never said nobody could ever learn more about qualia. I've said nobody could ever directly access qualia or prove that a given physical system actually had them rather than just seeming to.

Second, there have been many times in which science made no advancement-- those times in which scientific ideas were wrong.

"Extra"? "unnecessary"? Why? Because you see them as something other than consciousness?

No. Because in this thread, the philosophical argument is made that an entity SEEMING to be conscious is sufficient evidence to believe that it really is.

I suspect they are part and parcel with consciousness.
That they are an integral part of what consciousness is.
You have no evidence that they are not.

You can suspect whatever you want. However, until you can actually show that qualia exist empirically, rather than by making philosophical assumptions about physical correlates of consciousness, you are engaged in philosophy, not science.