Okay. I don’t think it’s possible to build a functional equivalent of a mind that talks of qualia because it has them, by 1:1 porting at the synapse level, and get something that talks of qualia without having any. You can stipulate that all day but I don’t think it can actually be done. This is contingent on neurons being the computational elements of our minds. If it turns out that most of the computation of mindstates is done by some sort of significantly lower-scale process and synaptic connections are, if not coincidental, then at least not the primary element of the computation going on in our heads, I could imagine a neural-level functional equivalent that talked of qualia while running the sort of elaborate non-emulation described in my previous comment.
But if neurons are the computational basis of our minds, and you did a 1:1 synapse-level identical functional copy, and it talked of qualia, it would strain credulty to say it talked of qualia for a different reason than the original did, while implementing the same computation. If you traced the neural impulses backwards all the way to the sensory input that caused the utterance, and verified that the neurons computed the same function in both systems, then what’s there left to differentiate them? Do you think your talk of qualia is not caused by a computation in your neurons? Qualia are the things that make us talk about qualia, or else the word is meaningless. To say that the equivalent, different-substrate system talked about qualia out of the same computational processes (at neuron level), but for different, incorrect reasons—that, to me, is either Chalmers-style dualism or some perversion of language that carries no practical value.
Okay. I don’t think it’s possible to build a functional equivalent of a mind that talks of qualia because it has them, by 1:1 porting at the synapse level, and get something that talks of qualia without having any. You can stipulate that all day but I don’t think it can actually be done. This is contingent on neurons being the computational elements of our minds. If it turns out that most of the computation of mindstates is done by some sort of significantly lower-scale process and synaptic connections are, if not coincidental, then at least not the primary element of the computation going on in our heads, I could imagine a neural-level functional equivalent that talked of qualia while running the sort of elaborate non-emulation described in my previous comment.
But if neurons are the computational basis of our minds, and you did a 1:1 synapse-level identical functional copy, and it talked of qualia, it would strain credulty to say it talked of qualia for a different reason than the original did, while implementing the same computation. If you traced the neural impulses backwards all the way to the sensory input that caused the utterance, and verified that the neurons computed the same function in both systems, then what’s there left to differentiate them? Do you think your talk of qualia is not caused by a computation in your neurons? Qualia are the things that make us talk about qualia, or else the word is meaningless. To say that the equivalent, different-substrate system talked about qualia out of the same computational processes (at neuron level), but for different, incorrect reasons—that, to me, is either Chalmers-style dualism or some perversion of language that carries no practical value.