Rocket, the rationale isn't
"Oh, I'm awake so therefore I must be able to have qualia". The experience of being awake
is qualitative;
any subjective experience at all is qualia. Its not an additional property of being conscious and awake -- it
is consciousness.
I'm literally stunned that you don't seem to be picking up on this in the slightest
Well, I didn't know your definition of "conscious" was so broad.
We can explain waking behavior. We can explain subjective experience -- it is simply what it is like to be something.
So where is the HPC in all of this? If "qualia" are merely subjective experience then they aren't a mystery at all.
I already gave an example of such in the thought experiment I proposed in post
#353. The subject of the thought experiment is conscious, in the physiological sense, but does not have knowledge of anything because they are sensorially cut off from their environment.
Consciousness does not have a tautological relationship with knowledge; it is merely the necessary requisite for it. Just as an object cannot register weight unless it has mass, so an entity cannot have knowledge unless it is conscious. There is absolutely
no logical contradiction or circular reasoning in this statement. For the life of me, I cannot understand why you don't see this.
Alright. But if you are going to define consciousness such that such a creature is conscious -- even though it has zero knowledge of itself -- then there isn't anything to pursue. Your definition is equivalent to mere existence, and thus is utterly useless.
That just the problem. Neither you, or anyone else has an operational definition of qualitative experience [i.e consciousness]. There are various methods of defining and modeling computational functions but absolutely nothing in the way of describing how such functions translate into conscious thought.
You are dead wrong on both points.
Pixy, for example, has a very simple operational definition of consciousness. You disagree with it. So what. That doesn't mean
he doesn't have a definition.
And I am very capable of describing how computational functions translate into conscious thought -- under my definition of consciousness.
So we come back to the HPC, apparently -- Pixy and I are entirely able to describe what we are talking about while you sit there and shake your head and say "No, you are still missing
something. What it is, I cannot put my finger on, but it is
something."
Okay, so what is the difference between neurons of a conscious brain and an unconscious brain?
The flow of information between them.
What is it about the activity of some neurons that produces qualitative experiences?
Self reference and reasoning.
How do the contributions of all those neurons come together in the unified experience of being conscious?
Any system that references itself and reasons can be said to be conscious, under various definitions of "conscious."
If you want to know how neurons come together to form
human consciousness, be prepared to spend a few years with your head in books -- and that is just to learn what we haven't figured out yet. Talk to Nick227, he seems to be an expert on human consciousness theories.
Is an organism simply having neurons sufficient for generating consciousness?
Is an object simply having carbon atoms sufficient for generating diamond? If you pour some transistors into a box will numbers be calculated?
What a silly question.
