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?
Insofar as they are communicable, the communication can be emitted by someone that doesn't experience them, and thus doesn't serve as evidence that the communicating being experiences the quale. (In the classic "Mary the color scientist" formulation, Mary, who has never experienced seeing red, can tell people partially/vaguely what it's like to see red, since knows every communicable fact about seeing red, including how people describe it.)
I agree; but I don't think it's relevant to the question.
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.