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I think a version of this argument does succeed in showing that qualia are real as opposed to just some conceptual mistake.

The problem with arguing about whether qualia are “physical” or “non-physical”, is I’m not sure how much sense such a distinction makes if one is not a Cartesian dualist-which I’m not, and you don’t appear to be either



Personally, I'm of the opinion that the human/animal mind is a computational process happening in the brain, and that a sufficiently complex computer could also "run" such a mind. In that sense, I believe they are entirely physical objects, just as much as the Linux kernel running on my phone is a physical object.

As such, I believe that qualia are just how we would label some aspects of this computation, and I believe that concepts like a p-zombie are thus more or less non-sensical.

I'm not claiming to know for sure that this is the way. I do think it's, at least in principle, possible that a mind is a different thing, one that our understanding of physics can't (yet?) fully model. Hell, even though I'm an atheist, I wouldn't even claim that the concept of a divine soul is completely impossible.




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