What I'm saying is that what one consciously experiences at any given time is made up of qualia. Qualia are the subjective correlates of internal and external stimuli. Together they make up the totality of our experience. For instance, the individual tastes, smells, sounds, sensations, emotions, and thoughts reduce to qualia; together they make up your collective experience at any given moment.
But it seems to me, from your description, that they do not represent anything real and are rather labels for sets of private behaviors. In other words "qualia" is a useless term because we already have other terms to describe this.
It seems that the only basis for your objection to the term is that it sounds too 'soul-like' to you. If you have a more logical reason as to why you believe the term isn't suitable please share it 'cause I've yet to hear it.
I've already explained that my own consciousness doesn't feel, to me, that clear-cut. It very often looks fuzzy and unfocused. I'm having trouble finding the exact words to express what I mean in English, mind you. Silly language!
That isn't what I'm saying. My point is that emergent properties are collective properties of a system that do not exist [or have no meaning] below a certain reductive level of organization.
Gotcha.
Theres no need for you to try so hard to find out my position when I've already explicitly and repeatedly stated it. I'll tell you one last time. I believe that the 'mind' and 'consciousness' can be understood just like any other phenomenon. Its just that currently, we simply lack sufficient scientific understanding to realistically model or reproduce it.
My problem is that what you claim is your position and what you are arguing otherwise in this thread seem different. I get the impression that you're giving consciousness a special quality that I find unjustified.
I asked you what a qualia is. You said it is what constitutes experience, and then you say we can experience qualia.
Okay, so whats the problem?
Well, its turtles about turtles. Qualia are supposed to be the basic constituents of experience, and yet you can experience
them. It's like saying that letters compose words but that letters are composed of letters, too.
Thats exactly my point. Once humans have that knowledge we'll be able to seriously devise ways to synthetically create it.
That's funny, I thought you meant that computers were not aware of their own code and therefore were not really self-aware.
Why do you claim that you aware of it after rather than when?
Because recent neurological studies have shown this.
Us being conscious is the reason why our language has words that attempt to describe it.
Perhaps. Or perhaps us thinking we're conscious is the reason why our language has such words in it. Or maybe we're just infering our own state of consciousness based on our observation of others, as Mercutio suggests. In fact, we usually don't get anywhere in those terms until we reach a certain age, even if we already know the words.
I'd insult less if individuals would stop being deliberately obtuse.
Since you are not a mind-reader I would suggest you should be more careful about what you think other people think.
I never claimed that unconscious processes are self aware. I said that conscious processes can be self aware, and that such self-awareness is what we call introspection.
I think I've lost the thread of that particular aspect of our discussion.
