Mindfulness or Mindlessness?

[Angrboda]

What is there to conscious experience besides qualia?  Qualia is the what of intentionality.  It's qualia all the way down.  If qualia needs no explanation, then conscious experience needs none.

I'm very skeptical of people who talk about various "whats" of consciousness.  To me it's like hearing a noise and concluding there is a bear in the brush.  Assuming the bear brings a truckload of properties that may not belong to the noise.  Assuming that whats like qualia and experience are existent is assuming a lot about them.  As noted in the dream analogy, these may be just our brain telling us we have a what.  This, as noted, leads to the Cartesian theater, which is almost certainly wrong.  So some of the properties you're inheriting by assuming a whatness about qualia or experience are most certainly wrong.  Take memories for example.  If we assume a whatness to them, then we bring in a property of persistence and exteriorality, neither of which are supported by the science.  Memory is a process, not a thing.  So I think the evidence leans in favor of considering consciousness and experience as a process rather than a what.  I'm reminded of Searle's Chinese Room; a skeptic might look in vain for where the meaning lies by assuming it is a what that exists in or out of the room.  My favored response is the systems response, but in terms of consciousness, that's basically functionalism, which you seem unhappy with.  I have to wonder if you found square circles in a dream whether you'd be looking to explain their whatness in the dream similarly.

ETAS:  I think what you are referring to as beliefs are more properly termed propositions.  Beliefs are the feeling associated with propositions.  That feeling isn't metaphysical.

It isn't "qualia all the way down." There are quantitative conscious experiences that have a 1:1 reduction. Those don't pose the same kind of problems qualia do.

Such as?

Searle's Chinese room is an argument against functionalism. And I agree with Searle's criticisms.

In moving to discussion of intentionality Searle seeks to develop the broader implications of his argument. It aims to refute the functionalist approach to understanding minds, that is, the approach that holds that mental states are defined by their causal roles, not by the stuff (neurons, transistors) that plays those roles. The argument counts especially against that form of functionalism known as the Computational Theory of Mind that treats minds as information processing systems

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Searle's response to the systems reply is that if you internalize the system, then the system is completely within me and I still don't understand Chinese. But this is question-begging because nowhere does he consider whether the system is understanding Chinese or not, inside or out of the person. He's effectively side-stepping the systems reply without actually answering it. I don't know that a simulation within Searle wouldn't be realizing the function of understanding and neither does he. Because the systems reply is about instantiating a function, regardless of Searle's intent, it constitutes a functionalist response which Searle doesn't meaningfully answer.

You think I'm saying there's a bear in the bushes. I'm not. I'm saying, "there's a sound coming from the bushes." And your response is, "Well, there's no reason to assume it's a bear, so you're wrong."

I think you are indeed saying there's a bear. You've separated qualia from the process as an atomistic component. That's a bear. I prefer to remain agnostic as to whether qualia or the state of perceiving that we have qualia are the same. You do not. Just as supposing we need an answer to where memories are stored would also be assuming a bear.

In what way do you find functionalism unsatisfactory? Let me ask you this: If we experience seeing square circles in a dream, do we then need to explain how square circles can exist? Your qualia posts suggest that we do.