If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[bennyboy]

I'm not sure that would make it any more a functional quality than it already is, by whatever means. More a difference in how it is generated (or by what) than what it's worth, what it can be used for, whether or not it has a function. I'm getting the feeling that you aren't thinking of an electric field, as such, but more like a qualia field-straight up?

I wouldn't know how to define it, but yes, I'm saying for qualia to be useful/meaningful in a mechanical description of the universe, it would have to have some means of interacting with either other systems or other qualia. It's been argued that since qualia is (supposed to be) just brain function, then our behaviors are subjective expressions of our qualia. However, if qualia are a property of brain function, then the diagram looks something like:

(qualia)<->brain function --> behavior --> other person -->brain function <->(qualia)

But unless qualia have another interface with the universe other than brain function, then brain function --> behavior --> other person --> brain function is fully sufficient.

I think the first model more meaningfully describes reality as I know it. So unless qualia is a magical link between brain and soul, or brain and another dimension, or brain and the Mind of God or something, I would look for it to interact in some way with the universe; it doesn't make sense to say it interacts with brain function. Elsewise, it is a strange logical eddy-- flowing one way, and affecting nothing.

The only things we know which interact with each other, and which supervene as properties of objects while not really being explained by those objects, are magnetism and gravity. So right now, I'd argue qualia might be something like that.