1/24/14

I would love to see a human's palette of qualia.

I had thought that I had little meta-thought sensors in my head that could "see thoughts happening", or sense stuff going on inside my brain, like "my prefrontal cortex is engaged now because I'm experiencing the unmistakable qualia of prefrontal cortex engagement", but I'm not sure that I do..

I think I may only be able to sense the traditional five senses, as well as emotions — though I feel like many emotions can probably be broken down further — and these senses can also be generated in my imagination, and maybe everything else is pattern matching on real or imagined sensations..

So when I think "I want to go to the store", really my experience of the thought is imagining the scenario where I've gotten the goods I want and I'm all happy, and imagining the various steps needed to achieve that goal, and imagining the pains or pleasures these steps will bring and seeing that the net result is positive.. so "I want to go to the store"

And when I have a memory, say of a time when I was in high school, it seems like I have a meta sensor that tells me "this is a memory", but maybe I recognize that it's a memory by looking for features like "it contains people and objects that I recognize and can recall other stuff about, and it is consistent with various facts that I can recall" (where the step of "recalling" stuff is something the brain can do, but the feedback it gets is in the form of sensations, just like I can "move my arm", but the feedback I get is proprioception and visual feedback).

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