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.
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.