3 ms·
Question: Beyond aphantasiacs, could there be living humans who lack qualia altogether? The Hard Problem of Consciousness™ is "how can a physical system genera
by georgewsinger 6y ago
Question: Beyond aphantasiacs, could there be living humans who lack qualia altogether?
The Hard Problem of Consciousness™ is "how can a physical system generate qualia?", where "qualia" is something like "the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions", or "what it feels like to have experiences".
I once ran into a very intelligent person (philosophically trained) who genuinely didn't understand the Hard Problem of Consciousness, or what was even meant by qualia. It occurred to me during this conversation that there might be genuine instances of humans out there who lack qualia. As opposed to p-zombies (hypothetical humans who lack qualia but claim they have qualia), real life qualia-less humans might just find the notion of qualia nonsensical. Perhaps there are even people out there who understand what qualia is, and outright deny that they have it?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThere are those who lack an internal monologue. People with a lack of critical thinking skills may be overrepresented by this group without an equivalent tool to analyze abstract concepts.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoPeople who genuinely lack qualia would be completely immune to physical sensations, so this is unlikely. I can imagine a hypothetical brain in a glass jar might survive like this, but for most people the absence of physical sensations while living in a body would be evidence of a very serious medical condition. Of course being able to persuade yourself through sleight of philosophy that physical sensations are somehow illusory is a different class of problem.