I’m two years late to the discussion, but I think I can clear this up. The idea is that a person without qualia might still have sensory processing that leads to the construction of percepts which can inform our actions, but without any consciousness of sensation. There is also a distinction between sensory data and sensation. Consider this scenario:
I am looking at a red square on a white wall. The light from some light source reflects off the wall and enters my eye, where it activates cone and rod cells. This is sensory data, but it is not sensation, in that I do not feel the activation of my cone and rod cells. My visual cortex processes the sensory data, and generates a sensory experience (qualia) corresponding in some way to the wall I am looking at. I analyze this sensory experience and thus derive percepts like “white wall” and “red square”. The generation of these percepts will typically also lead to a sensory experience (qualia) in the form of an inner monologue: “that’s a red square on a white wall”. But sometimes it won’t, since I don’t always have an inner monologue. Yet, even when it doesn’t, I am still able to act on the basis of having seen a red square on a white wall. For example, if I am subsequently quizzed on what I saw, I will be able to answer it correctly.
Well, that’s my formulation of how qualia works, having thought about it a great deal. But there are people who profess that they experience qualia and yet suspect that the generation of percepts does not come from the analysis of conscious sensory experience, but from the processing of sensory data itself, and that the analysis of sensory experience just happens to coincide with it (Leibniz’s pre-ordained harmony of God).
Finally, we could also imagine cases where the sensory experience is not generated at all; where there is merely sensory data that, despite being processed by the visual cortex, never becomes sensory experience (never generates the visual analogue of an internal monologue), but still crystallises into sufficiently ordered sensory data that it can give rise to percepts. This would be the hypothetical “philosophical zombie”.
I don’t think this last scenario is possible, because I don’t think qualia are epiphenomena; I think they are an intrinsic part of the process by which human beings (and probably other entities with metacognition) make decisions on the basis of sensory data. Without this, I do not believe our cognition could advance significantly beyond that of infancy (I do not think infants possess qualia), but there are certain cases where our instincts can respond to sensory data in a manner that does not require attention to qualia, and may indeed not require qualia at all.
I’m two years late to the discussion, but I think I can clear this up. The idea is that a person without qualia might still have sensory processing that leads to the construction of percepts which can inform our actions, but without any consciousness of sensation. There is also a distinction between sensory data and sensation. Consider this scenario:
I am looking at a red square on a white wall. The light from some light source reflects off the wall and enters my eye, where it activates cone and rod cells. This is sensory data, but it is not sensation, in that I do not feel the activation of my cone and rod cells. My visual cortex processes the sensory data, and generates a sensory experience (qualia) corresponding in some way to the wall I am looking at. I analyze this sensory experience and thus derive percepts like “white wall” and “red square”. The generation of these percepts will typically also lead to a sensory experience (qualia) in the form of an inner monologue: “that’s a red square on a white wall”. But sometimes it won’t, since I don’t always have an inner monologue. Yet, even when it doesn’t, I am still able to act on the basis of having seen a red square on a white wall. For example, if I am subsequently quizzed on what I saw, I will be able to answer it correctly.
Well, that’s my formulation of how qualia works, having thought about it a great deal. But there are people who profess that they experience qualia and yet suspect that the generation of percepts does not come from the analysis of conscious sensory experience, but from the processing of sensory data itself, and that the analysis of sensory experience just happens to coincide with it (Leibniz’s pre-ordained harmony of God).
Finally, we could also imagine cases where the sensory experience is not generated at all; where there is merely sensory data that, despite being processed by the visual cortex, never becomes sensory experience (never generates the visual analogue of an internal monologue), but still crystallises into sufficiently ordered sensory data that it can give rise to percepts. This would be the hypothetical “philosophical zombie”.
I don’t think this last scenario is possible, because I don’t think qualia are epiphenomena; I think they are an intrinsic part of the process by which human beings (and probably other entities with metacognition) make decisions on the basis of sensory data. Without this, I do not believe our cognition could advance significantly beyond that of infancy (I do not think infants possess qualia), but there are certain cases where our instincts can respond to sensory data in a manner that does not require attention to qualia, and may indeed not require qualia at all.