For someone like Guilio Tononi and his Integrated Information Theory, ALL possible states that a conscious entity can be in are qualia, contentless or not.
So you first have to decide what a qualia is at some deeper physiological level before you can answer the question. Currently, qualia are thought to be associated with activity of the feedback loops between the cortex and the thalamus. The current theory of how PC works is that TM helps set up/enhance a filtering system in the thalamus that allows the brain to maintain alertness while reducing the feedback loops to a minimum, thereby reducing qualia towards zero. There's no direct evidence of this that I am aware of, because it would require using brain imaging hardware that costs more than the entire worth of MUM to purchase and maintain, on people with regular PC episodes (up to $6 million for the equipment, and there's a reason why they charge $1000+ per test -it's expensive to run, also). And thus, the difficulty: Tononi's model can't conceive of qualia being non-existent, and to acknowledge that, he'd have to change definitions or the definition of qualia needs to be changed, or something. Other non-TM models of brain functioning and qualia have similar issues: PC just doesn't enter their world-view when devising their models. So, until definitions firm up, its hard to ask, letalone answer, the question. L --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "sparaig" <LEnglish5@> wrote: [...] > > Does someone in PC experience qualia? > > > > It's a tricky question to ask, letalone answer. > > Not if you're talking about PC-by-itself during > meditation, no thoughts, no mantra. Why tricky? >
