It’s like asking why high kinetic energy “feels” hot. It doesn’t, heat is just how the brain models signals from temperature receptors and maps them into the self-model.
Same idea here: Section 3 argues that all feelings work like that—subjective experience is just how predictive, self-modeling systems represent internal and external states.
Sections 4 and 5 explain why this evolved: it’s a useful way for the brain to prioritize action when reflexes aren’t enough. You “feel” something because that’s how your brain tracks itself and the environment.
If this doesn’t count as an explanation (or at least a concrete hypothesis), what would one look like to you? What kind of answer would satisfy you that subjective experience has been explained?
It’s like asking why high kinetic energy “feels” hot. It doesn’t, heat is just how the brain models signals from temperature receptors and maps them into the self-model.
We know how high (random) kinetic energy causes a high reading on a thermometer.
We do not know why this “feels hot” to people but (we presume) not to a thermometer. Or if you think, as some have claimed to, that it might actually “feel hot” to a strand of mercury in a glass tube, how would you go about finding out, given that in the case of a thermometer, we already know all the relevant physical facts about why the line lengthens and shrinks?
Sections 4 and 5 explain why this evolved: it’s a useful way for the brain to prioritize action when reflexes aren’t enough. You “feel” something because that’s how your brain tracks itself and the environment.
This is redefining the word “feel”, not accounting for the thing that “feel” ordinarily points to.
The same thing happened to the word “sensation” when mechanisms of the sensory organs were being traced out. The mechanism of how sensations “feel” (the previous meaning of the word “sensation”) was never found, and “sensation” came to be used to mean only those physical mechanisms. This is why the word “quale” (pl. qualia) was revived, to refer to what there was no longer a name for, the subjective experience of “sensations” (in the new sense).
The OP, for all its length, appears to be redefining the word “conscious” to mean “of a system, that it contains a model of itself”. It goes into great detail and length on phenomena of self-modelling and speculations of why they may have arisen, and adds the bald assertion, passim, that this is what consciousness is. The original concept that it aims and claims to explain is not touched on.
Self modelling is one of the things that consciousness is used to mean , but far from the only one. It’s likely that they are separate phenomena too, since infants probably f have a qualia, and probably dont have a self model.
Why do we feel heat, but the thermometer just shows a reading? The article’s hypothesis is that the feeling is the specific way brain self-model processes temperature signals. Thermometer lacks that kind of complex self-modeling setup where the feeling would supposedly happen.
Good point about the history of ‘sensation’ and the risk of just redefining terms. The article tries to avoid that ‘bald assertion’ trap by hypothesizing the identity—that the feeling is the functional signature within the self-model, as the core of the proposed explanation, not just a label slapped on after describing the mechanism.
As the (updated) preamble notes, this is just one mechanistic hypothesis trying to reframe the question, offering a potential explanation, not claiming to have the final answer.
If this doesn’t count as an explanation (or at least a concrete hypothesis), what would one look like to you?
Something that inputs a brain state and outputs a quale ie solves the Mary’s Room problem. And does it in a principled way, not just a look up table of known correlations.
subjective experience is just how predictive, self-modeling systems represent internal and external states.
To say that X “is just” Y is to say there is no further explanation.
Your points hit the main disagreement: is explaining the brain’s function the same as explaining the feeling? This article bets that the feeling is the function registering in the self-model. Totally get if that sounds like just redefining things or doesn’t feel (pardon the loaded term!) like a full explanation yet. The article just offers this mechanistic idea as one possible way to look at it.
You say it’s mechanical, but there’s no mechanical (or physical for functional) reason for anything to feel like anything from the inside, so that’s actually an additional posit. And there’s no deteministic or predictable pattern to the way particular qualia match up to the functions they are identical to. And, therefore, no way of predicting novel ones. If there’s no comprehensible or predictive mechanism behind it, why call it mechanical?
There is a theory that works like yours, dual aspect neutral monism. It holds that physical brain states and phenomenal states are fundamental the same , but appear differently.
But it has no pretensions to be a physical or reductive theory.
These are great points! Saying the feeling is the function is the big leap/hypothesis here, not something the mechanics proves directly. The exact ‘why this feeling for that function’ map isn’t figured out yet – Section 9 flags that as ongoing research. It’s called ‘mechanical’ because the underlying process described (the predictive modeling stuff) is physical/computational.
I added a note to conclusion to make it clearer the goal here is different from something like dual-aspect monism (which might posit two basic aspects). This article is trying to see if the feeling can be explained from the mechanism itself, even if that explanation isn’t complete.
It’s like asking why high kinetic energy “feels” hot. It doesn’t, heat is just how the brain models signals from temperature receptors and maps them into the self-model.
Same idea here: Section 3 argues that all feelings work like that—subjective experience is just how predictive, self-modeling systems represent internal and external states.
Sections 4 and 5 explain why this evolved: it’s a useful way for the brain to prioritize action when reflexes aren’t enough. You “feel” something because that’s how your brain tracks itself and the environment.
If this doesn’t count as an explanation (or at least a concrete hypothesis), what would one look like to you? What kind of answer would satisfy you that subjective experience has been explained?
We know how high (random) kinetic energy causes a high reading on a thermometer.
We do not know why this “feels hot” to people but (we presume) not to a thermometer. Or if you think, as some have claimed to, that it might actually “feel hot” to a strand of mercury in a glass tube, how would you go about finding out, given that in the case of a thermometer, we already know all the relevant physical facts about why the line lengthens and shrinks?
This is redefining the word “feel”, not accounting for the thing that “feel” ordinarily points to.
The same thing happened to the word “sensation” when mechanisms of the sensory organs were being traced out. The mechanism of how sensations “feel” (the previous meaning of the word “sensation”) was never found, and “sensation” came to be used to mean only those physical mechanisms. This is why the word “quale” (pl. qualia) was revived, to refer to what there was no longer a name for, the subjective experience of “sensations” (in the new sense).
The OP, for all its length, appears to be redefining the word “conscious” to mean “of a system, that it contains a model of itself”. It goes into great detail and length on phenomena of self-modelling and speculations of why they may have arisen, and adds the bald assertion, passim, that this is what consciousness is. The original concept that it aims and claims to explain is not touched on.
Self modelling is one of the things that consciousness is used to mean , but far from the only one. It’s likely that they are separate phenomena too, since infants probably f have a qualia, and probably dont have a self model.
Why do we feel heat, but the thermometer just shows a reading? The article’s hypothesis is that the feeling is the specific way brain self-model processes temperature signals. Thermometer lacks that kind of complex self-modeling setup where the feeling would supposedly happen.
Good point about the history of ‘sensation’ and the risk of just redefining terms. The article tries to avoid that ‘bald assertion’ trap by hypothesizing the identity—that the feeling is the functional signature within the self-model, as the core of the proposed explanation, not just a label slapped on after describing the mechanism.
As the (updated) preamble notes, this is just one mechanistic hypothesis trying to reframe the question, offering a potential explanation, not claiming to have the final answer.
If qualia are functions , why can’t we have functional account of them?
Something that inputs a brain state and outputs a quale ie solves the Mary’s Room problem. And does it in a principled way, not just a look up table of known correlations.
To say that X “is just” Y is to say there is no further explanation.
Your points hit the main disagreement: is explaining the brain’s function the same as explaining the feeling? This article bets that the feeling is the function registering in the self-model. Totally get if that sounds like just redefining things or doesn’t feel (pardon the loaded term!) like a full explanation yet. The article just offers this mechanistic idea as one possible way to look at it.
You say it’s mechanical, but there’s no mechanical (or physical for functional) reason for anything to feel like anything from the inside, so that’s actually an additional posit. And there’s no deteministic or predictable pattern to the way particular qualia match up to the functions they are identical to. And, therefore, no way of predicting novel ones. If there’s no comprehensible or predictive mechanism behind it, why call it mechanical?
There is a theory that works like yours, dual aspect neutral monism. It holds that physical brain states and phenomenal states are fundamental the same , but appear differently. But it has no pretensions to be a physical or reductive theory.
These are great points! Saying the feeling is the function is the big leap/hypothesis here, not something the mechanics proves directly. The exact ‘why this feeling for that function’ map isn’t figured out yet – Section 9 flags that as ongoing research. It’s called ‘mechanical’ because the underlying process described (the predictive modeling stuff) is physical/computational.
I added a note to conclusion to make it clearer the goal here is different from something like dual-aspect monism (which might posit two basic aspects). This article is trying to see if the feeling can be explained from the mechanism itself, even if that explanation isn’t complete.