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Michal Ryszard Wojcik's avatar

Another point is the term "phenomenal consciousness". I always thought that the adjective phenomenal served to make the phrase "phenomenal consciousness" unambiguous as opposed to just consciousness. I expect "phenomenal consciousness" to be about qualia; in materialism they are physically instantiated objects in the brain. But consciousness as a cognitive process need not involve qualia. It can be, in theory, implemented as software on hardware. Please disambiguate what you mean.

Lukasz Stafiniak's avatar

Phenomenal consciousness as opposed to access consciousness or creature consciousness. It is used to collectively refer to phenomenally conscious states, colloquially called experiences. This avoids the ambiguity in qualia, whether qualia are states (experiences) or properties.

Michal Ryszard Wojcik's avatar

Then it's an ontological distinction whether an abstract computational process is physically implemented in a way to create an entity called experience. But it's not a cognitive category because the same processes up to isomorphism can be experience or not. Right?

Lukasz Stafiniak's avatar

On my account, isomorphic processes are ontologically equivalent.

Michal Ryszard Wojcik's avatar

No way. A pen and pencil instantiation is ontologically equivalent to a computer program?

Lukasz Stafiniak's avatar

An instantiation is not a program. Pen and pencil are not equivalent to a silicon chip computer, but there is just one program.

Michal Ryszard Wojcik's avatar

I mean that the chatbot and the human brain may be running the same algorithm at a certain level of abstraction and then it's cognitively the same event but not physically. One may be an experience the other may not. Therefore, talking about phenomenonal consciousness is about physics rather than cognition.