- "Qualia" are subjective conscious experiences; you know they're real because you experience them yourself.
- We all assume that other people have them too (ignoring abstract philosophical debates around "zombies").
- Sounds like you assume dogs have them too -- because dogs act as if they're conscious, right?
- However, some people assert that computers cannot have qualia, by the "Chinese Room" argument.
My position is that the "Chinese Room" argument is meaningless if we don't understand anything about the basis of qualia in the first place -- and we don't. Where does the "only biological entities" requirement come from? Do bacteria have consciousness? Where do you draw the line?
In contrast, "if it acts as if it's conscious, maybe it is conscious" at least seems logically consistent. It looks pretty likely that computers could act as if they're conscious, if AI continues to advance. Maybe they would really be conscious and maybe they wouldn't, who knows? But I haven't seen any convincing argument to rule it out.
To repeat, the only direct confirmation of qualia we have is our own subjective experiences. Everything else is guesswork.
Although not everyone feels that way and many believe only humans have qualia.
More to the point though... It's a hard stretch convincing me that matrix multiplications lead to qualia. At which point in the multiplication is sensation felt?
Whereas a dog and a human presumably operate on principles we still don't understand, so there is room in this unknown space for qualia to exist.
To claim that non biological things certainly experience qualia is... A statement of faith.
I have not said they don't.
My statement is simply that we've never had any evidence they do.
My statement (the equivalent of agnosticism) is observational.
The other (that non biologic things are equally capable of qualia) is a faith based statement.
It's like me saying 'only biological things experience qualia because God made it so'.