how does consciousness differ from having a model of the internal states of one’s own mind?
This is a great question and I’m not sure.
There’s a difference between understanding processes and their causes from the outside and experiencing them subjectively, from the inside, as qualia.
Light exists and there are rules that govern it. A human can learn to understand the math that governs photons, the biology of how eyes work, the neurology that determines how the signals are passed through neurons and “processed” in the occipital lobe, and even how the brain will react to that stimuli. A computer algorithm could model all of that. But even if you understand the chain of causes perfectly, if you are color blind, you still don’t experience the subjective qualia of color.
Some psychopaths are notoriously charming and expert manipulators. They are extremely skilled at modeling others. But, at least in some cases, that modeling is done without any affective response, unlike most of us, who feel something when we someone in pain. Apparently, modeling can occur without subjective (motivating) affect. Conceivably, one could even model one’s self without affect.
Conscious expedience seems to be something more than just modeling, since all the modeling in the world, from the outside, does not produce a conscious experience. Yet, that experience incontrovertibly exists, in some sense. I’m having it. Whatever causes color, nothing could ever disprove that color isn’t.
(This feels like a problem of free will to me. I have written essays all-but-proving, that Free Will is an incoherent concept. Yet this fails to persuade some, who see their personal, subjective feeling of having chosen to indisputable. I can’t deny the existence of my qualia, since it is the only thing I have direct access to. In that I experience it, it is. However, I think I may be confuses in much the same way the proponent of Free Will is confused. Someone please dissolve the question for me.)
This is a great question and I’m not sure.
There’s a difference between understanding processes and their causes from the outside and experiencing them subjectively, from the inside, as qualia.
Light exists and there are rules that govern it. A human can learn to understand the math that governs photons, the biology of how eyes work, the neurology that determines how the signals are passed through neurons and “processed” in the occipital lobe, and even how the brain will react to that stimuli. A computer algorithm could model all of that. But even if you understand the chain of causes perfectly, if you are color blind, you still don’t experience the subjective qualia of color.
Some psychopaths are notoriously charming and expert manipulators. They are extremely skilled at modeling others. But, at least in some cases, that modeling is done without any affective response, unlike most of us, who feel something when we someone in pain. Apparently, modeling can occur without subjective (motivating) affect. Conceivably, one could even model one’s self without affect.
Conscious expedience seems to be something more than just modeling, since all the modeling in the world, from the outside, does not produce a conscious experience. Yet, that experience incontrovertibly exists, in some sense. I’m having it. Whatever causes color, nothing could ever disprove that color isn’t.
(This feels like a problem of free will to me. I have written essays all-but-proving, that Free Will is an incoherent concept. Yet this fails to persuade some, who see their personal, subjective feeling of having chosen to indisputable. I can’t deny the existence of my qualia, since it is the only thing I have direct access to. In that I experience it, it is. However, I think I may be confuses in much the same way the proponent of Free Will is confused. Someone please dissolve the question for me.)