alt Hacker NewsNo, qualia are not fundamental to existence, this is an example of Wilfrid Sellars' "myth of the given" - to have a quale of a colour or a shape appearing in your vision you must have a concept of that colour/shape. Qualia in that sense are not prior to cognition. Maybe we can say they are necessary as an element of concept formation and language, ie for sapience.
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trick-or-treat • today at 10:07 AM
Not fundamental to existence but fundamental to consciousness.
Theoretically the person sitting next to you could be a zombie, no qualia, the lights are off, he's just having a conversation with you with nothing going on behind the scenes. And there's no way to tell, except that it's reasonable to extrapolate that since you feel something, he probably does too.
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You really don't need a concept of a colour or a shape, and it's a fairly typical academic fallacy to assume you do.
That's directly confusing experience with categorisation and labelling of experience.
If you touch a very hot object your nervous system will pull your hand away before your brain registers what's happening. The qualia of pain are pre-conceptual, preverbal, and precranial, and your consciousness only catches up later.