Free Will

[bennyboy]

Your computer doesn't do what we do.  I'd simply repeat all those questions I just asked of Yoo.  Saying your  computer works fine at what it is without qualia is meaningless and uninformative.  

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.

Hey, if you think that you could develop the relationship you have with your wife without qualia.....then so be it buddy.  Otherwise, it looks like you -do- need qualia to "function properly" -as a human being.

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.

[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.

[Angrboda]

My computer seems to work okay without it (so far as I know) experiencing what it's like to be a computer.  My car seems to drive around pretty well without it (so far as I know) experiencing what it's like to be a car.  There's no reason to think that ANY mechanism would need to experience what it is like to be itself in order to function properly.  So are you disregard mind as a brute fact, or attempt to explain why one particular mechanism experiences what it's like to be itself?

I would say that you aren't experiencing what it is like to be yourself. You are nothing but meat, if by you we mean that physical mechanism which houses your brain. Your brain, too, is meat. There is no "what it's like to be" for meat, just as there's no what it's like to be a brick, or a car.. The what it's like to be is a persistent projection; it's a model of what we are. It describes 'us' as being inside the head, a couple inches back from the eyes. It describes this meat as being what we are, though we are in no sense this meat; we are a process in the brain that is modeling the self as a consciousness. Qualia are the bones of this model. We create a sense of self by modeling our thoughts as belonging to a unified center of awareness; yet these thoughts need not be in any sense central or unified. That is simply another aspect of the model, that our thoughts are coming from one location in space. There is no "what it's like to be" because this what it's like to be is nothing but a fabrication, a construct created by a thinking machine. There is no 'you' except that which the brain creates. What the brain creates is the appearance of a self, complete with unitary consciousness, a body, and a past history. These are just phantoms created in the brain. No brain process 'owns' a body. The effect of the brain process is that things are controlled in the same way that the brain process models them as being controlled. The body isn't a part of 'you' -- you are just a computation inside some neurons. You are the brain's mannequin. It clothes you with all the accoutrements you associate with the self, but it is not the self. It's merely meat thinking thoughts about meat.