Interesting post. Have you read Being No One? He derives a similar system based on studies of interesting neurological phenomena.
I would offer an additional hypothesis for why humans like dualism: We implement dualism neurologically to compactly model cognitive agents. Hence we perceive mind to be ontologically fundamental. This would have had utility in minimising cognitive resource needed to figure out that the growling cat with extended claws “intends” to eat “you”.
So that’s my thesis: consciousness is the simulation of reality run on the hardware
of our brains, and qualia is the Level3+ observation that the reality we perceive is
simulated.
One critique: Your thesis puts qualia as higher level than conciousness.
As I see it qualia are the neurologically basic distinguishable stimuli; they allow reality to be compressed and conversely error-corrected. Hence we see in colour in spite of being unable to perceive colour across most of our visual field, and can’t reproduce stimuli as well as we can distinguish them (disregarding savantism).
I agree in broad terms with your assessment of conciousness as self-simulation. That puts the two things as largely orthogonal; neither requires the other. In practice, I’d assert qualia came earlier—simulating other minds (and your own) being far easier once you’re already compressing reality; as these simulations just temporally compress actions.
Your thesis puts qualia as higher level than conciousness. As I see it qualia are the neurologically basic distinguishable stimuli;
I don’t think that this is a real disagreement, but that we’re just talking about different things. I don’t mind which one we assign the word ‘qualia’ to. What I was talking about I believe must be at higher level than consciousness because it can be consciously manipulated. (For example, imagine a circle and then slowly deform it into an ellipse. By this having a ‘quality’, I mean that it is an abstract imagined ‘thing’—it seems to have a presence in my mind.)
You’re lucky I’m not one of those without abstract imagined mental imagery, which would weaken your point somewhat. The fact that you can imagine a given stimulus, for example pure blue or a circle, does not imply that conciousness precedes the stimuli or the compact representation of it.
What it implies is that you can plan, reason counterfactually, conceive of what is not. Call it what you will. I’m not suggesting that neurological compression (my qualia) are required for conciousness, only that they likely came earlier. Your internal processes are not a hierarchy of cognitive processes; it’s parallel processing run riot. Being able to hacking the more basic sensory compressors and reasoning systems doesn’t make conciousness prior to them, any more than the ability for concious control of breathing makes conciousness prior to that.
It would be interesting to know whether those without abstract imagined mental imagery are always non-dualists. I already strongly suspect that the intractability of the dualist/monist debate points to different types of minds. It’s not that monists understand dualists and disagree with them, it seems that often monists don’t even know what dualists are talking about*.
I further think there are different minds among dualists, because there doesn’t seem to be a consistent notion of what they mean by ‘qualia’.
*On the other hand, their sense of self may still interact with a simulation of reality, just one that isn’t image-based.
The visualisation (of abstract things) seems to be the important point; inability to interact with simulations of reality would preclude planning or memory, and would be pathological.
As a monist I think I understand the words uttered by dualists, and even the phenomena being described. What I do not know is why these things are perceived to be fundamental things. It does not bother me overmuch to recognise that my senses need not project out into the world. I will note that mathematics deals in the properties of unseen abstract things, which may make it easier to conceive of representations that aren’t fundamental in themselves.
Interesting post. Have you read Being No One? He derives a similar system based on studies of interesting neurological phenomena.
I would offer an additional hypothesis for why humans like dualism: We implement dualism neurologically to compactly model cognitive agents. Hence we perceive mind to be ontologically fundamental. This would have had utility in minimising cognitive resource needed to figure out that the growling cat with extended claws “intends” to eat “you”.
One critique: Your thesis puts qualia as higher level than conciousness. As I see it qualia are the neurologically basic distinguishable stimuli; they allow reality to be compressed and conversely error-corrected. Hence we see in colour in spite of being unable to perceive colour across most of our visual field, and can’t reproduce stimuli as well as we can distinguish them (disregarding savantism).
I agree in broad terms with your assessment of conciousness as self-simulation. That puts the two things as largely orthogonal; neither requires the other. In practice, I’d assert qualia came earlier—simulating other minds (and your own) being far easier once you’re already compressing reality; as these simulations just temporally compress actions.
I don’t think that this is a real disagreement, but that we’re just talking about different things. I don’t mind which one we assign the word ‘qualia’ to. What I was talking about I believe must be at higher level than consciousness because it can be consciously manipulated. (For example, imagine a circle and then slowly deform it into an ellipse. By this having a ‘quality’, I mean that it is an abstract imagined ‘thing’—it seems to have a presence in my mind.)
You’re lucky I’m not one of those without abstract imagined mental imagery, which would weaken your point somewhat. The fact that you can imagine a given stimulus, for example pure blue or a circle, does not imply that conciousness precedes the stimuli or the compact representation of it.
What it implies is that you can plan, reason counterfactually, conceive of what is not. Call it what you will. I’m not suggesting that neurological compression (my qualia) are required for conciousness, only that they likely came earlier. Your internal processes are not a hierarchy of cognitive processes; it’s parallel processing run riot. Being able to hacking the more basic sensory compressors and reasoning systems doesn’t make conciousness prior to them, any more than the ability for concious control of breathing makes conciousness prior to that.
It would be interesting to know whether those without abstract imagined mental imagery are always non-dualists. I already strongly suspect that the intractability of the dualist/monist debate points to different types of minds. It’s not that monists understand dualists and disagree with them, it seems that often monists don’t even know what dualists are talking about*.
I further think there are different minds among dualists, because there doesn’t seem to be a consistent notion of what they mean by ‘qualia’.
*On the other hand, their sense of self may still interact with a simulation of reality, just one that isn’t image-based.
The visualisation (of abstract things) seems to be the important point; inability to interact with simulations of reality would preclude planning or memory, and would be pathological.
As a monist I think I understand the words uttered by dualists, and even the phenomena being described. What I do not know is why these things are perceived to be fundamental things. It does not bother me overmuch to recognise that my senses need not project out into the world. I will note that mathematics deals in the properties of unseen abstract things, which may make it easier to conceive of representations that aren’t fundamental in themselves.