So you believe it exists, but you think it is "meaningless"... I'm not sure if I understand you. What is the physical evidence or physical theory for qualia?? Can you give a general description at least of how brain physics logically implies the existence of qualia?
Well, it's obvious you misunderstand me.
Frankly, all I'm saying is that 'qualia' - the direct perception of a thing - is in itself categorically meaningless, without examining quale relationships. In a physical sense, we need but determine which neurons are active in what manner whenever a particular quale is active, and learn if, by restimulating those neurons artificially, the same qualia is produced.
Again, many people confuse the brain for a singular organism, when it is actually like a number of organisms cooperating. This 'quale' concept is simply 'what it is like' to be receiving signals from one part of the brain to another. I don't think 'qualia' - in and of themselves - is in any way separate from the actual act of sensory stimulation and the biochemical process of action-reaction within the brain that results from it.
Wait, please define information in physical terms.
Patterned chemo-electrical signals within the brain.
You're not being very clear about what it is you think qualia is or whether you even believe it exists. Let's start there and come to some agreement on what it is we're actually talking about. You say consciousness is a meaningless concept; are you denying it exists, labelling it as 'meaningless' in the context of your question or both?
You're confusing what I think about 'consciousness' with what I think about 'qualia'. I think 'qualia', as an independent concept, is meaningless; the
interrelationships between qualia, memory, etc. are what are important - that red always equates to 650 nm of light, etc. Consciousness clearly exists, and is, quite simply, a phenomena existing within any complex system capable of receiving input / signal / sensory stimulation, processing that stimulation, and producing output; storing patterns based upon that input in some form of continual, passive memory; possessing some means of distinguishing 'self' from 'other-than-self'; and, possibly, possessing the ability to be aware, on some level, of the act of thought itself... though I hesitate to add that last. As such, yes, computers, animals, insects, fish, plants, perhaps even complex non-electrical systems (if you could find one that suits the bill) might very well be considered 'conscious'.
There is that word again "information". People talk about information like they know what it is, but do we really know what it is? Do you know what it is? Can you give even a basic, watered down, physical description of "information" without breaking any rules of logic? Try it and I guarantee you will run into will logical inconsistencies, which I will point out and hopefully help you resolve.
Information is a difficult term to accurately describe; however, I'll see if I can manage at least a basic metastory to describe it.
Things that exist in an objective state - things which are not dependent upon observers to exist - possess qualities and attributes which can be observed, via senses. For example, let's look at a branch of a tree. A human, coming across this branch, receives a lot of physical stimulation: photons strike receptors in the eyes, free-floating chemicals stimulate receptors in the nose and sinus. Depending on what receptors are stricken, chemical signals travel throughout the brain, triggering off other chemicals in varying patterns, allowing the human to 'recall' the concept of 'branch', and 'brown' and 'length' - and so forth. Further reactions are employed that give the human the concept that this branch is as long as his forearm, and that his forearm's length has been labelled 'a foot long' (for example).
In other words, this is all a series of chemical reactions associated with certain patterns of stimulations. At some point in the past, the human had been exposed to something of a certain length, and given the audio signal 'Foot Long', so these two patterns of chemical reaction became associated with each other. Upon seeing something else of the same length, the audio signal chemical reaction was also triggered, to some extent.
Information is just that - sets of chemcial reactions in the brain that trigger each other off in patterns associated with certain sensory activities, and which in turn can be falsely triggered by other stimuli as well. These patterns differ from brain to brain, which makes them almost impossible to detect from one brain to another; but the relationships between the patterns should be recognizable, in some form, as consistant between individuals of similar background. This is why we can 'never look at neurons and find information' without first knowing how THAT individual brain has stored patterns of neural activity. But we can find some general idea of where certain types of data are stored, etc.
It'd be like giving someone who cannot write, a notebook and pen, and telling him to 'take notes' about things he sees in a movie. If you do this with 100 individuals, you might notice certain patterns, or you might not. Chances are, they'll try to draw pictures, but there's no guarantee - especially if you tell them, no pictures. If you make them write abstract symbols to record things about the movie, I guarantee the chances of those symbols being interpretable by others will be very low. But if you understand how a certain PERSON made his symbols, you'd have a better chance.
There is no reason, at all, that a complex neural net like our brain should use the same signal patterns for the same pieces of information. That's what makes brain study so darned difficult. Well, that, and it's hard to get a really good look at what's going on without cutting up the brain and, essentially, breaking it.
