The thoughtexperiments suggest that qualia is tied to memory-formation. If your nociceptors are firing like crazy but the CNS never updates on it, was there any pain?
Then the obvious next question is what distinguishes qualia from memory-formation?
Yep, the first thing I thought after reading “this isn’t actually possible to achieve in the real world” was “Yes it is! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis, or that time I played in a concert while blackout drunk and I can only actually remember playing half of the set list.” The second thing I thought was “But did I actually have no qualia, or do I just not remember them?” The third thing I thought was “Is there any way I could possibly tell, even in principle? If there isn’t, doesn’t that mean that there’s no actual difference between qualia and the formation of memories of qualia?”
I’m pretty sure I’m in the Chalmers camp if I’m in either (because qualia are obviously epistemically primitive, and Dennett is being silly), and I’ve had the same thought about memory formation. Not from the above thought experiments, just from earlier musings on the topic. It seems possible that memory formation is required somehow, but it also seems possible that it isn’t, and I have yet to come up with a thought experiment to distinguish them.
I’m not ready to call a camera conscious just because it is saving data (although I can’t totally rule out panpsychism yet, I think we currently probably have no nonliving examples of things with consciousness), so I don’t know that memory formation is identical to qualia (but maybe). Maybe memory formation is a necessary, but not sufficient condition?
Or maybe the only methods we currently have to directly observe consciousness are internal to ourselves and happen to go through memory formation before we can report on it (certainly to ourselves). I believe things exist that can’t be interacted with, so the inability to observe (past) qualia without going through memory formation doesn’t prove that (present) qualia can’t exist in the moment without forming memory, but should we care? Midazolam, for example, is a drug that causes sedation and anterograde amnesia, but (reportedly) not unconsciousness. Does a sedated patient have qualia? They seem to act like they do. Is memory formation not happening at all? Or is it just not lasting? Is working memory alone sufficient? I don’t know.
The thoughtexperiments suggest that qualia is tied to memory-formation. If your nociceptors are firing like crazy but the CNS never updates on it, was there any pain?
Then the obvious next question is what distinguishes qualia from memory-formation?
Yep, the first thing I thought after reading “this isn’t actually possible to achieve in the real world” was “Yes it is! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis, or that time I played in a concert while blackout drunk and I can only actually remember playing half of the set list.” The second thing I thought was “But did I actually have no qualia, or do I just not remember them?” The third thing I thought was “Is there any way I could possibly tell, even in principle? If there isn’t, doesn’t that mean that there’s no actual difference between qualia and the formation of memories of qualia?”
I’m pretty sure I’m in the Chalmers camp if I’m in either (because qualia are obviously epistemically primitive, and Dennett is being silly), and I’ve had the same thought about memory formation. Not from the above thought experiments, just from earlier musings on the topic. It seems possible that memory formation is required somehow, but it also seems possible that it isn’t, and I have yet to come up with a thought experiment to distinguish them.
I’m not ready to call a camera conscious just because it is saving data (although I can’t totally rule out panpsychism yet, I think we currently probably have no nonliving examples of things with consciousness), so I don’t know that memory formation is identical to qualia (but maybe). Maybe memory formation is a necessary, but not sufficient condition?
Or maybe the only methods we currently have to directly observe consciousness are internal to ourselves and happen to go through memory formation before we can report on it (certainly to ourselves). I believe things exist that can’t be interacted with, so the inability to observe (past) qualia without going through memory formation doesn’t prove that (present) qualia can’t exist in the moment without forming memory, but should we care? Midazolam, for example, is a drug that causes sedation and anterograde amnesia, but (reportedly) not unconsciousness. Does a sedated patient have qualia? They seem to act like they do. Is memory formation not happening at all? Or is it just not lasting? Is working memory alone sufficient? I don’t know.