Hacker News Reader

> What is self-evident is that there are thoughts, and some of these thoughts are "I am experiencing X".

Therein the problem lies. Equating consciousness with thoughts. It's vastly different. It can exist independently of "thoughts". It can exist independently of an "I". This can be verified as an experience.

At most it could be a very, very special kind of "thought", radically different from the rest.

View on HN

> Therein the problem lies. Equating consciousness with thoughts. It's vastly different.

Just because qualia seem "vastly different" to thoughts doesn't mean they aren't reducible to thoughts. This would make the qualitative distinction of qualia from thoughts an illusion, a false conclusion inferred from an incorrect perception.

There's a very distinct experience of being conscious and having completely no thoughts in the mind. To treat thoughts as some kind of basic element is a mistake that neither neuroscientist nor meditator would ever make. Look up default network mode and how it can be 'turned off'.

I think you're mistaking the utility of epistemically treating qualia on their own terms, with their fundamental ontological status. Just because reducibility may not be useful in most cases of analyzing qualia as a phenomena reducible to thoughts, doesn't make it untrue that they are reducible to thoughts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com