Qualia
From the SL4 Lexicon:
qualia:
The subjective sensations of conscious experience. Singular: quale. A topic of hot debate in Cognitive Science. See David Chalmers' paper, "Facing Up the Problem of Consciousness". See also qualia
The internal experience -- what it's like to see blue, feel pain, taste garlic. Pure solipsism would deny qualia to anyone but the solipsist, but most people agree that "there is something it is like to be" another person -- that others share the subjective experience of consciousness.
Whether an AI can have qualia has been much debated, with some naysayers including John Searle (of the Chinese Room Thought Experiment) and Roger Penrose (of the Consciousness Resides In Quantum Phenomena argument).
Although many [?] on the SL4 list think qualia could arise in a sufficiently complex system (such as an AGI), it is unclear why they arise. David Chalmers describes this as "the hard problem" of consciousness in his essay Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.
--CliffStabbert
Some other pages on this Wiki that discuss the topic of Qualia are:
- Consciousness Resides In Quantum Phenomena
- Controversial Pages/Qualia Part Two
- Controversial Pages/Qualia Part Three
- Qualia Based Altruistic Utilitarianism
