There is a practical reason to subscribe more to the Camp 1 research, even if you are in Camp 2. I might be wrong, but I think the hard problem of qualia won’t be solvable in the near future, if at all. To research something you need N > 1 of that phenomenon. We, in some sense, have N = 1. We have it ourselves to observe subjectively and can’t observe anyone else qualia. We think other humans have it based on the premise they say they have qualia and they are built similarly so it’s likely. We are not sure if animals have it as they don’t talk and can’t tell us so. If animals have it, we can’t tell what the prerequisites are and which animals have it. We know and built things that clearly don’t have qualia, but they are able to misleadingly tell us that they do (chatbots, including LLM-based ones). This ability to have qualia also does not seem to be located in a specific part of the brain—so we don’t really observe people with brain injuries who could say they don’t have qualia. Yes, there are people with depersonalization disorder who say they feel disconnected from their senses. However, the very fact they can report this experience suggests some form of qualia is present, even if it’s different from typical experience. This means research in Camp 2 might be futile until we find a sensible way to even make any progress. Yes, we can research and explain how qualia relate to each other, and explain some of their properties, but doesn’t seem viable to me that it could lead to solving the main problem.
There is a practical reason to subscribe more to the Camp 1 research, even if you are in Camp 2.
I might be wrong, but I think the hard problem of qualia won’t be solvable in the near future, if at all. To research something you need N > 1 of that phenomenon. We, in some sense, have N = 1. We have it ourselves to observe subjectively and can’t observe anyone else qualia. We think other humans have it based on the premise they say they have qualia and they are built similarly so it’s likely.
We are not sure if animals have it as they don’t talk and can’t tell us so. If animals have it, we can’t tell what the prerequisites are and which animals have it. We know and built things that clearly don’t have qualia, but they are able to misleadingly tell us that they do (chatbots, including LLM-based ones). This ability to have qualia also does not seem to be located in a specific part of the brain—so we don’t really observe people with brain injuries who could say they don’t have qualia. Yes, there are people with depersonalization disorder who say they feel disconnected from their senses. However, the very fact they can report this experience suggests some form of qualia is present, even if it’s different from typical experience. This means research in Camp 2 might be futile until we find a sensible way to even make any progress. Yes, we can research and explain how qualia relate to each other, and explain some of their properties, but doesn’t seem viable to me that it could lead to solving the main problem.