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DSimon comments on Secrets of the eliminati - Less Wrong
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I apologize for being too brief. What I meant to say is that I posit that my subjective experience of qualia is real, and not explained by any form of reductionism or eliminativism. That experience of qualia is fundamental in the same way that gravitation and the electromagnetic force are fundamental. Whether the word ontological applies may be a semantic argument.
Basically, I am reprising Chalmers' definition of the Hard Problem, or Thomas Nagel's argument in the paper "What is it like to be a bat?"
I don't understand what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?
There is no explanation of HOW mass generates or causes gravity, similarly for the lack of explanation of how matter causes or generates forces such as electromagnetism. (Yes I know that some sort of strings have been proposed to subserve gravity, and so far they seem to me to be another false "ether".) So in a shorthand of sorts, it is accepted that gravity and the various other forces exist as fundamentals ("axioms" of nature, if you will accept a metaphor), because their effects and interactions can be meaningfully applied in explanations. No one has seen gravity, no one can point to gravity--it is a fundamental force. Building on Chalmers in one of his earlier writings, I am willing to entertain the idea the qualia are a fundamental force-like dimension of consciousness. Finally every force is a function of something: gravity is a function of amount of mass, electromagnetism is a function of amount of charge. What might qualia and consciousness be a function of? Chalmers and others have suggested "bits of information", although that is an additional speculation.
I don't think "[T]heir effects and interactions can be meaningfully applied in explanations" is a good way of determining if something is "fundamental" or not: that description applies pretty nicely to aerodynamics, but aerodynamics is certainly not at the bottom of its chain of reductionism. I think maybe that's the "fundamental" you're going for: the maximum level of reductionism, the turtle at the bottom of the pile.
Anyways: (relativistic) gravity is generally thought not to be a fundamental, because it doesn't mesh with our current quantum theory; hence the search for a Grand Unified Whatsit. Given that gravity, an incredibly well-studied and well-understood force, is at most questionably a fundamental thingie, I think you've got quite a hill to climb before you can say that about consciousness, which is a far slipperier and more data-lacking subject.