The contexts from which you identify “state-machine materialism” and “pain” appear to be very different from each other, so it is no surprise that you find no room for “pain” within your model of “state-machine materialism”.
You appear to identify this issue directly in this comment:
My position is that a world described in terms of purely physical properties or purely computational properties does not contain qualia. Such a description itself would contain no reference to qualia.
Looking for the qualia of “pain” in a state-machine model of a computer is like trying to find out what my favorite color is by using a hammer to examine the contents of my head. You are simply using the wrong interface to the system.
If you examine the compressed and encrypted bit sequence stored on a DVD as a series of 0 and 1 characters, you will not be watching the movie.
If you don’t understand the Russian language, then for a novel written in Russian you will not find the subtle twists of plot compelling.
If you choose some perspectives on Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment you will not see the Chinese speaker, you will only see the mechanism that generates Chinese symbols.
So stuff like “qualia”, “pain”, “consciousness”, and “electrons” only exist (hold meaning) from perspectives that are capable of identifying them. From other perspective they are non-existent (have no meaning).
If you chose a perspective on “conscious experience” that requires a specific sort of physical entity to be present, then a computer without that will never qualify as “conscious”, for you. Others may disagree, perhaps pointing out aspects of its responses to them, or how some aspects of the system are functionally equivalent to the physical entity you require. So, which is the right way to identify consciousness? To figure that out you need to create a perspective from which you can identify one as right, and the other as wrong.
The contexts from which you identify “state-machine materialism” and “pain” appear to be very different from each other, so it is no surprise that you find no room for “pain” within your model of “state-machine materialism”.
You appear to identify this issue directly in this comment:
Looking for the qualia of “pain” in a state-machine model of a computer is like trying to find out what my favorite color is by using a hammer to examine the contents of my head. You are simply using the wrong interface to the system.
If you examine the compressed and encrypted bit sequence stored on a DVD as a series of 0 and 1 characters, you will not be watching the movie.
If you don’t understand the Russian language, then for a novel written in Russian you will not find the subtle twists of plot compelling.
If you choose some perspectives on Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment you will not see the Chinese speaker, you will only see the mechanism that generates Chinese symbols.
So stuff like “qualia”, “pain”, “consciousness”, and “electrons” only exist (hold meaning) from perspectives that are capable of identifying them. From other perspective they are non-existent (have no meaning).
If you chose a perspective on “conscious experience” that requires a specific sort of physical entity to be present, then a computer without that will never qualify as “conscious”, for you. Others may disagree, perhaps pointing out aspects of its responses to them, or how some aspects of the system are functionally equivalent to the physical entity you require. So, which is the right way to identify consciousness? To figure that out you need to create a perspective from which you can identify one as right, and the other as wrong.