That seems to make sense to me. It also helps explain why the qualia experience can change, even with identical stimuli and everything else being equal, save for one’s state of mind. In that case, might qualia be considered something that is acquired or “learned”, rather than innate? So one can learn to love the taste of coffee or beer, even if they previously did not, with enough exposure and mental focus? Or someone who is into BDSM may come to experience pleasure instead of (or along with) pain, though they might not have had that experience prior to their introduction to the practices. The stimuli remains exactly the same, but the qualia is plastic.
No, that is the actual problem of qualia. Assuming your account of Tononi’s views is correct, he has not addressed it, he has just given another (there are many, all just as “scientific” as Tononi’s) account of how the brain might handle perceptual information. On any view, perceptual includes information about the visual qualities of things, but qualities are not the same thing as qualia (or, if someone thinks they are, they will need to make a pretty good argument about it - the whole point of inventing the concept of qualia was to be able to make a distinction between the qualities of things in the world and the qualia of our experience).
This is in fact, typical of theories of conscious experience coming from scientists. Despite sometimes advertizing themselves as comprehensive solutions, they in fact address aspects of what Chalmers called the “easy problem” in depth, and ultimately fail to address his “hard problem” at all. And of course, that is exactly what Chalmers would expect, as by, “easy problem” he meant those aspects of consciousness that are addressable by science, and by “hard problem” he meant that about which science can say nothing useful, but that can only be addressed by metaphysical stipulations about scientifically inaccessible properties.
Perhaps I should add that I personally, do not like Chalmer’s property-dualistic “solution” (or non-solution) to the problem of qualia. It is really no advance over Descartes’ substance dualist solution. But Chalmers was also right that this is the cul-de-sac that you are inevitably led into by what was, when he first wrote about the issue, the “standard” information-processing framework for thinking about how cognition in general and perception in particular works. It remains the standard framework, but does not so monolithically dominate cognitive science and neuroscience as it used to, and there are now alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding perception that may possibly be able to avoid Chalmers’ cul-de-sac, and allow for a non-dualistic account of qualitative experience. For one such example, see, for instance, the recent work of J.K. O’Regan (who is a real scientist, with a lab and experiments and math and everything).
Which, depending on your philosophical bent, you might consider to be everything that needs to be explained – you could hold that all that is needed to explain consciousness is to explain our judgments of being conscious, as Dennett does, which Tononi’s theory seems a live option for.
I’m not sure Chalmers would entirely agree with this characterization of his views – for one, he certainly holds that his views on consciousness (‘natural supervenience’) are grounds for a scientific theory thereof.
Well, it does have the advantage that the problem that is fatal to the substance-dualist view – the causal closure of the physical – is arguably less so in a property dualist conception; but in general, I do tend to feel that his approach is somewhat unsatisfying, as well.
Dennett’s solution to the problem of qualia is that there are not any qualia, that it is a pseudoproblem, the result of philosophical confusions (that, unfortunately, a lot of non-philosophers are afflicted by). If he is right, then practically any scientifically account of perception that does not convincingly purport to solve the problem of qualia, no doubt including Tononi’s, will do. Such theories are to be judged on their other merits, not on how they handle qualia, because they don’t, but don’t need to.
Anyway, what you say just reinforces my original point. Whether or not you think some scientific theory of perception explains qualia, or is consistent with a viable explanation of qualia, depends on your “philosophical bent”. The problem remains an essentially philosophical (i.e., conceptual) one, and when people who are scientists (have labs) try to say something about it, they are actually just doing philosophy (sometimes well, but often badly).
Again, if you accept Chalmers’ metaphysical claims you can put them together with practically any scientific account of cognition that works otherwise, and that does not otherwise explain qualia, and, bingo, you have a “scientific” account of qualia. The difficultly, however, is in making the metaphysical idea itself plausible (as anything but a counsel of despair), and science qua science has nothing to contribute to that. Chalmers’ theory, like Dennett’s is really a theory of why scientists don’t need to bother their little heads about qualia: Dennett, because they don’t exist, and Chalmers because certain things (presumably representational brain states) just have them, and there is nothing more to be said about it.
Personally, if I thought I had to choose between those two philosophical options. I would much prefer Dennett’s, but I think there are other and better options, but options that may not be compatible with a traditional “information processing” account of cognition. When philosophical theories actually put some constraints on the scientific possibilities then they become testable, potentially scientific explanations themselves. Information processing theories of cognition are under pressure for a lot of reasons apart from their difficulties in handling qualia, but they are very entrenched, and a lot of people seem to have difficulty in even contemplating the possibility that they might just be false. Theories such as those of Dennett and Chalmers (especially the latter) were designed not to rock the scientific boat; their unsatisfactoriness is an index of the fact that the boat needs to be rocked, and maybe even set on a new course.
If you wouldn’t mind expounding a bit, I’m interested in hearing about this point in more depth. How would you characterize the “information processing” approach to cognition and how specifically is it under pressure? I don’t have any ulterior motive here, I’m honestly curious.
I was thinking some more about my originally-stated position regarding qualia as a phenomenon involving mind and body, and how the example that The Hamster King brought up demonstrates a bit of a monkey wrench in that. Further examples I can think of that suggest that qualia originates entirely in the mind (which here I am referring to as that which consciously “pays attention” to things - I know, that’s not what it really is, exactly, no one really knows what the mind is, etc., and this is a facile definition. I’m using it to describe one function that is either part of brain function or is emergent somehow) and that the body merely follows:
People who experience blindsight or hysterical deafness will show signs of having received sensory input (unconscious awareness of the direction from which a light is shone, or EEG response to sounds, etc.) without reporting the experience of qualia. In these cases, a sense is stuck in “zombie mode” and the conscious self is apparently unable to experience qualia, Is it because these people are somehow blocked from paying attention to certain sensory input, or is there something blocking the information from reaching the “I” in the brain, no matter how much they may try to pay attention? Other examples of qualia-blindness are described as case studies by Oliver Sacks and V.S. Ramachandran which suggest that damage to not one but varied areas of the brain may result in a loss of the ability to experience qualia.
On the flip side, as I mentioned before, qualia can be experienced in the absence of external stimuli. Lucid dreams, hallucinations of any of the senses, phantom limb, etc., are all examples in which the experience of qualia is reported sans physical stimuli.
I don’t think it’s a matter of the sheer amount of data being received by the brain that matters so much as the route it takes once it’s received. So I have to revise my initial approach to a brain-mind-body sequence, based on the idea that the mind is either a function of the brain or an emergent phenomenon of the brain, and that body response to qualia experience depends on whether stimuli spurs the brain to experience qualia first (relay to the mind?) or whether it skips the mind and jumps right into the “zombie response.” Sloppy, I know. I’m drowning in the deep end, here, someone throw me some water wings!
So, how does that ‘sensorimotor’ stuff do the necessary heavy lifting? The arguments against functionalism (understood such that it is not brutely eliminativist) are quite general, and at least on a quick reading, everything in this approach seems to be quite easily functionally describable…