You seem to have persuaded yourself of that qualia don’t contain information on the basis of an untested theory. I would suggest that the the experience of novel qualia that e everyone has had are empirical data that override theories.
So what information does a new taste contain? What it’s similar to, what it’s dissimilar to, how to compare it, what it reminds you of, what foods trigger it—but those are all information that can be known; it doesn’t need to be experienced. So what information does the pure quale contain?
If that information could be fully known (in a third person way) then you could just read the label and not drink the wine. Things dont seem to work that way.
Yeah but at that point you have to ask, what makes you think qualia, or rather, “the choice of qualia as supposed to a different representation” is a kind of information about the world? It seems to me more plausible that it’s just a fact about the way our minds work. Like, knowing that the bat uses qualia is an implementation aspect of the batmind and can thus probably be separated from the behavior of the bat. (Bats make this easier because I suspect they don’t reflect on the fact that they perceive qualia.) Are there functions that can only be expressed with qualia?
As a similar example, imagine a C-Zombie, a human that is not conscious and does not speak of consciousness or having qualia. This human’s mind uses qualia, but his model of the world contains no quale-of-qualia, no awareness-of-awareness, no metarepresentation of the act of perception. Can I reimplement his mind, without cheating and making him lie, to not use qualia? Is he a different person after? (My intuition says “yes” and “no”.)
[edit] My intuition wishes to update the first response to “maybe, idk”.
So what information does a new taste contain? What it’s similar to, what it’s dissimilar to, how to compare it, what it reminds you of, what foods trigger it—but those are all information that can be known; it doesn’t need to be experienced. So what information does the pure quale contain?
If that information could be fully known (in a third person way) then you could just read the label and not drink the wine. Things dont seem to work that way.
Yeah but at that point you have to ask, what makes you think qualia, or rather, “the choice of qualia as supposed to a different representation” is a kind of information about the world? It seems to me more plausible that it’s just a fact about the way our minds work. Like, knowing that the bat uses qualia is an implementation aspect of the batmind and can thus probably be separated from the behavior of the bat. (Bats make this easier because I suspect they don’t reflect on the fact that they perceive qualia.) Are there functions that can only be expressed with qualia?
As a similar example, imagine a C-Zombie, a human that is not conscious and does not speak of consciousness or having qualia. This human’s mind uses qualia, but his model of the world contains no quale-of-qualia, no awareness-of-awareness, no metarepresentation of the act of perception. Can I reimplement his mind, without cheating and making him lie, to not use qualia? Is he a different person after? (My intuition says “yes” and “no”.)
[edit] My intuition wishes to update the first response to “maybe, idk”.
Qualia are information for us: if you have no visual qualia, you are blind, etc.