How does the brain generate subjective experience – the feeling of 'what-it's-like' to be us? Explanations differ: some seek physical mechanisms (Physicalists included), while others find such accounts lacking or impossible in principle. This article presents a specific physicalist and functionalist hypothesis: subjective experience arises from the brain's evolved capacity...
The Unavoidable Experience of Free Will in a Deterministic World The existence of free will in a potentially deterministic universe is one of philosophy's most enduring puzzles. Positions fall into categories like Hard Determinism (no free will, as everything is determined), Libertarianism (genuine free will exists and is incompatible with...
Your points hit the main disagreement: is explaining the brain's function the same as explaining the feeling? This article bets that the feeling is the function registering in the self-model. Totally get if that sounds like just redefining things or doesn't feel (pardon the loaded term!) like a full explanation yet. The article just offers this mechanistic idea as one possible way to look at it.
The brain leans hard on prediction errors, not just successes. Those errors drive learning and are even proposed to be the feelings like surprise or pain when the self-model registers them. That 'successfully operating' bit was about feeling like a stable 'self', not implying that experience needs perfect prediction. Presumably, if predictions broke down catastrophically or persistently, the stable sense of self could get seriously disrupted too.
Why do we feel heat, but the thermometer just shows a reading? The article's hypothesis is that the feeling is the specific way brain self-model processes temperature signals. Thermometer lacks that kind of complex self-modeling setup where the feeling would supposedly happen.
Good point about the history of 'sensation' and the risk of just redefining terms. The article tries to avoid that 'bald assertion' trap by hypothesizing the identity - that the feeling is the functional signature within the self-model, as the core of the proposed explanation, not just a label slapped on after describing the mechanism.
As the (updated) preamble notes, this is just one mechanistic hypothesis trying to reframe the question, offering a potential explanation, not claiming to have the final answer.
I get your point – explaining why things feel the specific way they do is the key difficulty, and it's fair to say this model doesn't fully crack it. Instead of ignoring it though, this article tries a different angle: what if the feeling is the functional signature arising within the self-model? It's proposing an identity, not just a correlation. (And yeah, fair point on the original 'debunking' title – the framing has been adjusted!).
Appreciate the link! Made few tweaks to make the debate more constructive.
It’s like asking why high kinetic energy “feels” hot. It doesn’t, heat is just how the brain models signals from temperature receptors and maps them into the self-model.
Same idea here: Section 3 argues that all feelings work like that - subjective experience is just how predictive, self-modeling systems represent internal and external states.
Sections 4 and 5 explain why this evolved: it’s a useful way for the brain to prioritize action when reflexes aren’t enough. You “feel” something because that’s how your brain tracks itself and the environment.
If this doesn’t count as an explanation (or at least a concrete hypothesis), what would one look like to you? What kind of answer would satisfy you that subjective experience has been explained?
How does the brain generate subjective experience – the feeling of 'what-it's-like' to be us? Explanations differ: some seek physical mechanisms (Physicalists included), while others find such accounts lacking or impossible in principle. This article presents a specific physicalist and functionalist hypothesis: subjective experience arises from the brain's evolved capacity for predictive self-modeling. We offer this mechanistic framework not to dismiss other views, but to reframe the question and provide a testable model for critique and discussion, regardless of your perspective.
1. Introduction: Ditch the Mystery, Embrace the Mechanism
Why does it feel like something to have experiences? This challenge – often discussed as the 'hard problem' of consciousness (Chalmers) – isn't necessarily mysterious,... (read 2783 more words →)
The existence of free will in a potentially deterministic universe is one of philosophy's most enduring puzzles. Positions fall into categories like Hard Determinism (no free will, as everything is determined), Libertarianism (genuine free will exists and is incompatible with determinism), and Compatibilism (free will and determinism can coexist). This article presents one perspective within this rich debate, exploring how the powerful and subjective experience of free will can arise and persist for agents operating within a deterministic universe, without necessarily resolving deeper metaphysical questions for everyone. We will argue that, for complex, deliberative agents like humans, this experience is effectively unavoidable from... (read 836 more words →)
These are great points! Saying the feeling is the function is the big leap/hypothesis here, not something the mechanics proves directly. The exact 'why this feeling for that function' map isn't figured out yet – Section 9 flags that as ongoing research. It's called 'mechanical' because the underlying process described (the predictive modeling stuff) is physical/computational.
I added a note to conclusion to make it clearer the goal here is different from something like dual-aspect monism (which might posit two basic aspects). This article is trying to see if the feeling can be explained from the mechanism itself, even if that explanation isn't complete.