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It's not clear what the relation between sensory input and the experience generated actually is. For a crude analogy, one might think the client sending a certa
by ZeroFries 8y ago
It's not clear what the relation between sensory input and the experience generated actually is. For a crude analogy, one might think the client sending a certain JSON structure is what leads to a certain database update, but the server can alter that structure in arbitrary ways. You can also get database updates without sending any JSON at all. We should be looking at the server, not the client, to figure out how the database updates work. Similarly, a brain can probably generate arbitrary experiences in qualia-space (although probably dependent on the neural structure to do so).
- TaupeRanger 8y agoI think this is a point many people don't appreciate (or don't want to). The nature of "qualia space" or "experience space" is truly mysterious and we really have no clue what its nature is. We can draw increasingly precise correlations between brain states and reported experiences, but the question of why those correlations hold and how the two things interact is very puzzling. What aspects of reality are off limits to us due to our limited space of possible experiences? A rat will never have the experience of understanding prime numbers. What are we missing?