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Tag: qualia

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2 posts found
Jun 10, 2025
acx
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11 min 1,705 words 891 comments 191 likes podcast (10 min)
Scott argues that philosophical zombies (beings without consciousness) would still report having qualia and conscious experiences, challenging a key argument in the p-zombie debate. Longer summary
Scott Alexander challenges a core argument in the philosophical zombie debate by suggesting that p-zombies (beings without consciousness) would still report having qualia and conscious experiences, just like humans do. He walks through how p-zombies would process and describe visual information, showing that they would need to use language similar to how we describe conscious experience. The post explores the implications of this for various philosophical positions on consciousness, though it acknowledges remaining difficulties in explaining subjective experience. Shorter summary
Jul 16, 2024
acx
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48 min 7,338 words 489 comments 155 likes podcast (43 min)
Daniel Böttger proposes a new theory of consciousness as recursive reflections of neural oscillations, explaining qualia and suggesting experimental tests. Longer summary
This guest post by Daniel Böttger proposes a new theory of consciousness, describing it as recursive reflections of neural oscillations. The theory posits that qualia arise from the internal processing of information within oscillating neural patterns, which can reflect on themselves. The post explains how this theory accounts for various characteristics of qualia and consciousness, and suggests ways to test the theory using EEG source analysis. Shorter summary