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Sideways comments on We are not living in a simulation - Less Wrong
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I do think that qualia are reified in the brain. I do not think that a surgeon could go in with tongs and remove them any more than he could in with tongs and remove your recognition of your grandmother.
They're a physical effect caused by the operation of a brain, just as gravity is a physical effect of mass and temperature is a physical effect of Brownian motion. See here and here for one reason why I think the computational view falls somewhere in between problematic and not-even-wrong, inclusive.
ETA: The "grandmother cell" might have been a poorly chosen counterexample, since apparently there's some research that sort of actually supports that notion with respect to face recognition. I learned the phrase as identifying a fallacy. Feel free to mentally substitute some other complex idea that is clearly not embodied in any discrete piece of the brain.
You haven't excluded a computational explanation of qualia by saying this. You haven't even argued against it! Computations are physical phenomena that have meaningful consequences.
"Mental phenomena are a physical effect caused by the operation of a brain."
"The image on my computer monitor is a physical effect caused by the operation of the computer."
I'm starting to think you're confused as a result of using language in a way that allows you to claim computations "don't exist," while qualia do.
As to your linked comment: ISTM that qualia are what an experience feels like from the inside. Maybe it's just me, but qualia don't seem especially difficult to explain or understand. I don't think qualia would even be regarded as worth talking about, except that confused dualists try to use them against materialism.