Seems people are really confused about the statements made in the linked post.
1. Individual elementary particles have no internal states beyond mass/charge/spin etc. and therefore are incapable of thinking, feeling or suffering, as this would require, at a minimum, processes changing those states.
2. Human-shaped collections of underlying physical constituents clearly have the sensations of feeling something.
3. We do not currently know where the boundary is, as in, what kind of physical or logical structures are needed to support qualia.
I disagree with 2. I know that at least one human has qualia (or at least that the universe has at least one qualia-experiencer which seems localized in one human), but I have no operational definition or test which would allow me to share that knowledge OR to detect it outside myself.
I don’t think I’ve seen people mention whether change over time is a factor in thinking/qualia/suffering? If so, then even elemental particles change in the fields they experience and react to.
Seems people are really confused about the statements made in the linked post.
1. Individual elementary particles have no internal states beyond mass/charge/spin etc. and therefore are incapable of thinking, feeling or suffering, as this would require, at a minimum, processes changing those states.
2. Human-shaped collections of underlying physical constituents clearly have the sensations of feeling something.
3. We do not currently know where the boundary is, as in, what kind of physical or logical structures are needed to support qualia.
I disagree with 2. I know that at least one human has qualia (or at least that the universe has at least one qualia-experiencer which seems localized in one human), but I have no operational definition or test which would allow me to share that knowledge OR to detect it outside myself.
I don’t think I’ve seen people mention whether change over time is a factor in thinking/qualia/suffering? If so, then even elemental particles change in the fields they experience and react to.