> ... neural signals could predict upcoming words in a sentence. ... This kind of predictive coding is something we associate with being awake and attentive, yet it’s happening here in an unconscious state
In psycholinguistics, the assumption is, and always has been, that language processing is unconscious, a background process like visual object recognition. For starters, conscious attention is too slow by two orders of magnitude, and infants can process language, while presumably not yet (fully) conscious.
I remember one particular one a few decades ago, where I was feverishly (pun intended) trying to achieve something with XML, only it being a fever dream, nothing of it made sense, so I was wracking my brain for nonsense those entire hours.
(tangent) Also, please forgive my question which may seem impolite but I really want to know: why did you type "whilst" instead of "when" or "while"? Have you ever said the word "whilst" out loud, in a normal conversation? More letters, an extra (half)syllable, zero meaning or nuance added, I just don't get it. I wonder this every time I see it, mean no disrespect and would be grateful for a straightforward reply. (/tangent)
I find that I have two personalities and my writing/text personality is much more sagacious and better spoken (if that makes sense??)
Or... well, ok, maybe they can't experience if they are not conscious? I see how this can be argued, but I still do not agree. I'm sure qualia is created not by consciousness (I would notice if it was), and I'm sure it is created not for consciousness specifically, it must have some other uses too.
> I'm sure qualia is created not by consciousness
Whether or not qualia is created by consciousness, I don't see how we necessarily can tell one way or the other. We don't exactly have great introspective tools to do such self analysis, not to mention what we think we feel is often illusory/not reflective of reality.
Moreover, thinking about it, I come to a conclusion, that if I cannot reflect on qualia creation, then it is a (weak) evidence for qualia created by consciousness. I suppose the consciousness is harder to reflect on than other things, hard to map it into states of the content of consciousness. Like, I can reflect on my vision and see some hints on how I get these wonderful pictures, despite it being definitely not consciousness, I can reflect on how I produce or decode language. And to my mind it is because consciousness was devised to reflect on these things, so I could report on my observations to others. But to reflect on itself is a wholly different matter.
I’d be REALLY curious to see a survey of philosophy 2015 vs 2025 UG entrants on mind-brain connection intuitions
I broke my leg recently. Shortly after that I've lost my consciousness. It was very painful, the body reacted with a lot of adrenaline, and after a several minutes when adrenaline was drained away my consciousness was drained too.
I experienced something like this several times, though not to the point of fainting. But this time was special in other way too: I had friends near me, they observed me through all the process and we could compare our observations later. It seems, that my memory stopped recording before I fainted. I was still operating to some extent, but I couldn't remember a thing. When asked something I grunted in answer. When one of my friends insisted that I stand up and come to a better place to sit down, I actually stand up and did several steps before stopping and slowly (and carefully) sank to the ground. (An interesting observation, my controls over my body were weakening, but I was still using them for what they worth. It fits with all other similar experiences: the limbs and all the muscles seem to be losing their strength, and it takes a lot of will to make them work.)
On the light of this, I'm very interested what proponents of the idea, that feelings need consciousness to work, would say about my half-unconscious state. Did I feel myself extremely bad at the time? Or maybe I didn't feel anything? My friends are sure that the former statement is true, but they may be mistaken by my outside looks. I personally don't remember. Up to some point I remember that I felt really bad, but the next thing I remember I look at the sky and I'm surprised by what I see (I was not in a place I expected to be). And at that moment I was pretty ok already, no more adrenaline issues, just my leg was aching.
Was I experiencing qualia is another interesting question. I'm pretty sure I was, but I'd like to hear an argument for the opposite.
A bit more seriously, the brain actually uses a significant chunk of the body's energy budget (no matter how efficient it is relative to human made equipment). So evolutionarily, it doesn't make sense unless it's doing something exceptionally useful.
Sleep-learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning
Also, Sleep and learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_learning