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.
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?