Either "qualia" are ultimately a type of experience that can be communicated to a conscious being who hasn't had the experience, or they cannot. If they can be, they cease to have any distinction from any other communicable fact. If they cannot, you can't actually use them to determine if something is conscious, because nobody can communicate to you their own individual qualia. Either way, qualia by necessity drop out of any theory of consciousness that can classify whether something as inert as a brick is a conscious being or not. And if a theory of consciousness does not predict, either way, whether or not a brick is conscious, then it is a waste of time.
Either "qualia" are ultimately a type of experience that can be communicated to a conscious being who hasn't had the experience, or they cannot.
That's the sort of dilemma I don't trust as a reasoning step. What if they can partially or vaguely or approximately (but not precisely and entirely) be communicated to a conscious being who hasn't had the experience?
This post is a followup to "We are not living in a simulation" and intended to help me (and you) better understand the claims of those who took a computationalist position in that thread. The questions below are aimed at you if you think the following statement both a) makes sense, and b) is true:
"Consciousness is really just computation"
I've made it no secret that I think this statement is hogwash, but I've done my best to make these questions as non-leading as possible: you should be able to answer them without having to dismantle them first. Of course, I could be wrong, and "the question is confused" is always a valid answer. So is "I don't know".
a) Something that an abstract machine does, as in "No oracle Turing machine can compute a decision to its own halting problem"?
b) Something that a concrete machine does, as in "My calculator computed 2+2"?
c) Or, is this distinction nonsensical or irrelevant?
ETA: By the way, I probably won't engage right away with individual commenters on this thread except to answer requests for clarification. In a few days I'll write another post analyzing the points that are brought up.