what we need psychologically to survive is not the same as what is really there. Qualia is a bullshit word like trying to say there is a difference between the numeral '1' and the word 'one'. I do not dispute the fact that we are better people when we recognize that there are intelligences/forces greater than us. Presuming that our current science is 'good enough' reminds me of the time when a prominent physicist said that 'all that remains is to add decimal points of precision to our measurements'.

>Qualia is a bullshit word like trying to say there is a difference between the numeral '1' and the word 'one'

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Are you saying that sense data is the same as the subjective experience of it?

Data comes in, response is determined by the associations built up in the brain both over the subject’s own life time and all of evolution.

I don’t see the need to add some mystical third component, sounds to me like philosophers just made up something to talk about because they don’t get paid unless they have something to talk about.

From wiki:

Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky.

Nothing here seems to be above and beyond simple developed response to stimuli, same as a meal worm.

Yes, we collect sense data, process it and then respond to it, but we also have a subjective experience. We 'see an image in our minds' as part of processing it, but why and how? Something like the 'The taste of wine' isn't a response, but a subjective feeling. Why do we have a subjective experience of pain instead of reacting to it?

To be honest though, if you're actually interested in discussing this your comment really isn't conductive to fruitful discussion (especially the part denigrating philosophers). If not, why even respond?

Regarding “the taste of wine”. I have for uninteresting reasons never gotten drunk, never trained my brain to associate positive feelings with wine or alcohol. As a result, wine for me subjectively is elaborate fruit juice. When I am given a fancy wine, I can taste the components people describe, but the subjective experience they have of the amazing taste I do not share, because I simply don’t have those associations. Similarly for beer my subjective experience is an association of disgust.

Those of us who believe neurons are all there is are simply arguing everything is just abstractions and associations, just neurons firing. What you call a subjective experience is a particular set of neurons firing as a response to stimuli. There is nothing more than that, and while you can form an abstraction in your brain that describes something more than that, this would be an example of an improperly trained neural net.

> especially the part denigrating philosophers

Quite the opposite, really. I simply refuse to put them on a pedestal by making arguments like you did saying, essentially, “philosophers have been saying this is complicated for hundreds of years, therefore it must be”. Which, as other have stated, is not a logical argument but a faith based one. It’s really quite the same as my friends HS theology class, in which a correct answer to “what evidence do we have of the existence of god” was “thousands of years of belief and study by renowned theologians”, aka. bullshit.

Isn’t he just saying that qualia is in the same category as God? It seems like an abstraction we created to reason about and hopefully solve some social coordination problem, but not an essential part of reality.

Because when you are sensing something your brain tries to find associations with past experiences in your memory and builds an "image" from that, and because peoples have different experiences in their memories it becomes subjective and a little different for everybody. Also when it's something very different from your past experience the mix of the closest memories can be weird and seemingly unrelated.