From Ben Haller, Ithaca, New York, US
Trying to explain away the 鈥渉ard problem鈥 of consciousness, Rowan Hooper claims qualia are illusory and so there is nothing to explain (22 June, p 34). He says 鈥渨e don’t normally talk about our qualia, we talk about things such as being tired鈥. But that misses the point.
A smartphone can register that its battery is low, display a low-battery icon on its screen and shut off safely when its power level gets too low. But nobody would claim that the smartphone 鈥渇eels tired鈥. It isn’t experiencing tiredness in a conscious way like a human. It experiences no qualia.
That is the problem to be explained, and no amount of hand-waving about 鈥渋llusions鈥 will make it go away. Even if qualia are illusory, the hard question remains: how is it that such illusions produce a conscious experience in a human brain?
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