Billy T. "Genuine Free Will is Possible"

Earlier version of post 22, but "edit" now gives no "delete option" ??? so just made it short.

 

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How do you know you are not just having the illusion of having chosen?

Have you ever read of any of Dr Libby's (think that is his name) experiments? With microelectrodes, he clearly has shown that the preparation of motor mussel activity to achieve the actions of a "choice" may be in process even up to a second before the subject has decided to make a choice.
Basic Libby method was: Subject watches extra fast sweep second hand of a clock and notes it position when he freely decides to make a choice. (For example, push button "A" not "B.") Libby can tell before he even decides to make a choice, which button will be pushed!

I.e. the subject (with surface of brain exposed for other medical reasons) decides on his own (at random?) when to push a button and which button and later reports the position of the sweep second hand at the time he decided to make a choice. The button pushing is always later, but the preparatory changes in the pre-motor cortex electrical neural activity, which enable subsequent push of button “A” are already evident in the microelectrode records BEFORE he even decides to decide or make choice “A”!

Like you, patient is convinced he consciously decided both when and which to chose, but clearly that is just a conscious illusion. When and which choice was already known.

There is a lot of evidence like this which can be summarized as follows:

Choice or choices are often made without consciously doing so, but not "released" until consciously "approved," if immediate choice is not required. Sometimes, like when falling off a horse, the choice to try to hold on with left hand and stick out the right arm to ease contact with the ground is neither "vetoed" nor "approved" by conscious activity.

I once fell down a steep hill about 30 feet thru many small trees and their branches and had no conscious knowledge of how I had (according to the only witness) cleverly grabbed branches and trunks, tumbled /rolled etc. when I needed to, etc. to escape with no injury. First thing "I" knew was standing up again at the bottom. (I often put quotes around "I" and "me" to clearly indicate my conscious self, not my body, or the subroutine I call "myself" in the simulation - the memory and psychology that is "me" in my model.)

Sometimes "I" have no idea why I (my body) is doing something. For an example of a "borderline case“: I will be at the breakfast table and want to get the salt, which is still in the cabinet. I may also be thinking about something else, get up and find myself (body) opening the icebox.
I think I have activated a complex set of "open it" mussel patterns stored in the cerebellum and when passing the icebox they do their thing and "I" wonder why did I (body) open the ice box? I quickly understand that I should be opening the cabinet to get the salt. etc. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this. I do not think I did as much of this sort of thing when younger, but I am sort of the stereotype of the absent minded professor, often detached from my environment and deep in thought.

 

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Billy T.:

Okay.

Yes. I am aware that it is basically "the guiding wave school of QM". And yes, it is more appealing in the sense it is more in line with our general experience.

I'd be interested in your thought experiment, but not now.

This is basically my critique, also. It is essentially, the biggest case of a violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy...ever.

The problem with this theory is that these micro-tubules are in all cells. Moreover, how woud this truly impact consciousness? I strongly doubt that little tubes cause us to have a mind.

Yet if you believe this to be the case, how do you account for the fact that one -does- perceive it as an image, not as a bit of bits? Why are we conscious at all of it, as it were? It would seem that if we truly dealt with just bits of information, that such experiences would be unneeded. We would exist as philosophic zombies, yet...seemingly we do not!

Well the first-person perspective has the pecularity of existing.....but having no real foundation for it. I mean, surely you will admit that when you see things, you see them as if there was a homunculus behind your eyes seeing things, rather than a brain processing data. Even if we move it to the frontal lobes and such things, we aren't really getting at why the mind is as it is. For the frontal lobes do not have any special qualities, as far as can be understood, that would produce such imagery.

In essence: What I ask is how does your model of the brain account for the "hard problem" of consciousness? It seems to do fine with the soft problem - though I do not think I am qualified from what you have told me to affirm your theory is truth - but it, like most other neuroscientific considerations, does not seem to be able to consider the "hard problem" at all.

Will you be adding it here or adding it in another post? I assume in another post?

And yes, good call on explaining it for everyone else.

Yes. I think they used....rabbit nerve cells, yes?

Interesting stuff, I must say. But here is a question for you, that I'd be curious how you'd answer:

Sports players often relate how the events they see seem significantly slowed down compared to what they'd be if they were watching the events, rather than participating in them. For instance, it takes very little time for a pitcher to throw a 100 mph fast ball from the mound to home plate (60 feet). Doing some rough calculations here, it takes 1 minute for a 100 mph object to travel 8800 feet (that's about a mile and a half). 1 second to go 147 feet(rounded off). So 60 feet is about .35 seconds. This would be only .05 seconds more than the number you used for the whole processing process. How then can so many processes take so little time and yet any player in pro baseball can reasonably hit a 100 mph fast ball with relative frequency -and- report the "slow down" effect noted?

Fair enough, but do you have any hunches, even?

However, you do realize that this would destroy the capacity for the mind to be a Turing Machine, right? The major field of research today is based on the opposite premise. Even if I disagree with this premise (and you do, too), it is still something to consider. As it is well known that Godel's Incompleteness THeorem is essentially an attack on Turning Machines being able to calculate things like The Liar's Paradox and this would derail much of what neuroscience is today going on. If nothing else, that would make a lot of findings in regards to -how- the brain works quite incorrect.

I agree whole heartedly.

Yes, it is quite frustrating. The only two options seem to be equally as unexplainable.

Okay, you are correct: The system Berkley presents is -consistant- internally. I shall agree with you there. If one buys the axioms, one can buy the entire system without falling into rational folly.

It seems it is often the case that good theories come out of no where like this.

Would they truly be mental states without such?

It is indeed an interesting line of thought, I must say.

Ha! I like that uncertainty principle.

And yes, I meant only if we -do- accept it as a TM, which I disagree with, also.

To you as well!

 

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We agree on all but the bold above (and all your last post prior to this).
While the bold above is true (I think) I do not see it as any problem. Mother nature /evolution does a lot of strange, biologically costly, things even when they appear to be totally useless. For example, (one of my favorites questions from my youth when procrastinating about eating my peas, but stated a little more scientifically now):

Chlorophyll is biologically expensive to make, but clearly worth it to plant where light can fall on the chlorophyll. The common pea is inside a dark green jacket, which is nearly but not completely opaque. (Hold pea pod to strong light.) Now slice a pea into two hemispheres and hold one to light.- no light can go thru that much matter and very little even makes it thru the covering pod / jacket.

I will be disturbed that mussel cells have quantum event scale “micro-tubules” on them when you are disturbed by the energy being wasted by making Chlorophyll in the center of a pea.

Do not miss-understand - I am just refuting your argument. - I do NOT think “micro-tubules” have anything to do with “free will“, “consciousness” or any of that sort of thing. I do not know why they are on most all cells. Perhaps when only single cell organisms existed, they were relatively bigger (Cilla I think these “legs” are called.) and like the appendix, or nipples on a man, are “residuals” that no genetic mutation / accident has totally eliminated, but “natural selection” has at least made them smaller and less costly to make.

Replies to some other of your points in another post, soon I hope.

 

Post 24 begins my reply to yours and this one ends it.

As I have no strong position on the "images exist or not" question, I will not say much about it. I do not think it even very interesting, in part, as I do not know what an "image" would be in terms of neural pulses. Clearly you could, as the old gestalt psychologist thought, and to some extent is certainly true, that when we have neural activity distributed over neural tissue in one-to-one correspondence with some stimulus pattern (light activation on the 2D retina or fine tactile like blind reading Braille) or lady standing on your back (just to keep it interesting),

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then we have an "image" - sort of "by definition."
However, even if the neural pattern is "retinotopic" or isomorphically reproduced in neural tissue why is that an “image"? I.e. no one is seeing this pattern. In fact, it is just pulses interacting with other pulses. I think that they are some times near each other in neural tissue as often their distal causes are related and having the processing neural tissue near together makes the recognition/ correlation of this distal stimulus’s nearby or "internal" relationships easier, but that does not make it an "image." Who is looking at it to make it an "image"?
For example, one simple and quiet effective way to encrypt some message is to take a bundle of thousands of fine optical fibers, all a few feet long, that at both ends are in the same closed packed regular arrays, but randomly intermixed them at their mid points, which are then fixed wrt each other by some glue. Now cut thru this glued section and give one piece to "agent A" and the other to "agent B."
Agent A writes his secret message on back lighted paper in contact with the "regular end" of his fiber bundle and exposes some film by the light emerging from the "random end" and sends photo print of the film to agent B. It is a 2D set of apparently random light and dark spots. Agent B placing it against his fiber bundle’s "random end" and easily sees and reads the clear original message at the "regular end" because the "twisted mix" on the photo is exactly "un-twisted" again. It is only your human perspective, which makes you think the "twisted mix" on the film is not also an "image."
What I am trying to say is I do not know what is and what is and what is not an "image" when one is only talking about neural pulses, as we surely are, and no one is looking at their spatial distribution.
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Yes, you perceive the external 3D world from an internal reference point (0,0,0) which is roughly in center of head. Ask someone to write some non-symmetric letters (like B, K, & C, but not O, A or U, etc.) both correctly and in left / right reversed form on both you forehead and the back of your head and you will find you "see" as reversed what the writer sees as normal etc. (If you do not think too much about them, but just quickly "read" and tell if it is reversed or normal.)
So what? We need a point (0, 0, 0 ) in our 3D "map of the world" and for one who sees with binocular vision, this in center of the head choice I think has nothing to do with the location of the brain, only the location of the eyes is important. That is, if your brain were actually in your belly, the point (0,0,0) would still be exactly where it is now.
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Yes, the "hard problem" is consciousness and I cannot say much about it. I do not know what it is. I tend to agree (with Humphrey’s suggestion, I think it was) that it evolution selected for it as it was better to "let your hypotheses (or contemplated acts) die instead of you." I.e. if I had no facility to imagine and model the consequence of jumping off a cliff instead of doing it to find out what they are, I would not have nearly as much change to leave my genes in the next generation as if I am conscious and contemplative.

This does not yet fully explain why qualia exist. We could be conscious contemplative "grade 2 zombies with out any qualias." Perhaps star trek's "Dr Spock" was a "grade 2 zombie." As such, he could do just fine, better than humans sometimes. Normally a "zombie," in standard use of this term, as you know, is not conscious and without qualias, I will now call that least developed type a "grade 0 zombie."
I suspect qualia are "residuals" from a much earlier stage of evolution where consciousness was beyond the organism's "mental capacity", but qualias had great "survival values" I.e. it was good / pleasant for a worm to have sex, even if it was not conscious of doing so. Eating something nourishing gave "pleasure" even if no consciousness of it existed. Etc. Many of these basic emotions are deep in the "reptilian brain" still. These worms etc with qualia, but no consciousness, I am now calling "grade 1 zombies." Even a-cephalic babies seem to have pleasures, hungers, fear of falling etc. They may be "grade 1 zombies." Perhaps at some later stage of evolution we will be more like Dr. Spock and less like worms in this regard, but I am glad to be more like the worm than he is and I am better than the worm as "I" am conscious of my pleasures, but "I" do suffer my pains. I.e. I am not any of my three zombie grades, but “human” with both consciousness and qualias, but do not know what either of these characteristics really is. My "real time simulation model" is only about perception and what "I" may be i.e. an information process, not anything physical.

I see first that your baseball pitch related question still needing comment, so I will make that here too:
There is a lot of evidence that actions can be planned, but held in check by consciousness and then "released." The "wind up" for the pitch helps know when the ball will be released, but not exactly how fast it will come. There are some important "luck factors" (not every ball is even hit, many are "pop flys," etc.) I do not think baseball hitting is as nearly as hard to explain as a fast ping-pong exchange as the body motions that preceed contact of the ball with paddle are much more subtitle and slight twist and other "spin inducing" motions of the paddle only at the instant of contact can make relatively big changes in the balls trajectory. Its spin effects, as it passes thru the air, are much more pronounced due to its light weight. I honestly do not understand, even with my predictive real time simulation model, how one can play fast ping-pong at a high skill level - hitting the ball 30 times in rapid exchanges without once missing! Compared to that, baseball is "child's play" (I think, but I have never run the numbers on ping-pong speed, etc.) and I think a baseball pitch occasionally being hit is well within the capacity of my model to explain.

now only your comment:

"...this would derail much of what neuroscience is today going on. If nothing else, that would make a lot of findings in regards to -how- the brain works quite incorrect."

Yes exactly my objective - like any Crackpot's desire, this is mine.

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Billy T:

In regards to microtubules:

The reason I say that they somewhat disprove "consciousness is impacted by quantum effects on the microtubules" is that, presumably, all microtubules experience quantum effects, but we do not claim that our spleen is the source of our consciousness.

In regards to images and twisted fiber encyrption methods:

I had not meant an image in a spatially distributed sense. That is to say, I am not expecting one to find a little photograph going down the neurons of the brain. What I was discussing is, for instance, how it is that when we look out the window and see the sky, we're not seeing in bits and bytes of information, but rather are we seeing an internal image. The hard question is why do humans, and presumably all creatures, experience their awareness of the world like that?

Insightful in regards to the eye placement determining our consideration of visual placement.

A perfect article on what the Hard Problem of Consciousness is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Also, could not we have done all the above as philosophical zombies?

I am liking this grade based zombie system as an interesting way of discussing things. Let us continue to use it.

Is it truly possible to conceive of a worm with the qualia of pleasure, yet no appreciation of it? It would seem that would confer no selective benefit whatsoever. Specifically as a feeling unfelt is not a feeling at all.

Regarding Baseball and Pingpong:

You are certainly right that perhaps Pingpong is an even better example. But ultimately both of them seem to have that problem of the fact that many pitches and strikes in both games do not admit of any capacity to reasonably estimate how to hit the ball. That is to say, a sinker in baseball does not show itself as a sinker until the last moment - thus it cannot be modelled. A crazy top spin on a pingpong ball doesn't spin until that fraction of a second...et cetera, et cetera.

Ha! I like that!

 

To Prince-James:
We both think that Quantum Mechanics with or without “micro-tubules” has nothing to do with consciousness, so we can drop that. I would not want the “free will” that could be based on the random effects of Quantum Mechanics in them even if it were true.

I read your link’s Chalmer reference.

Section 4 of Chalmers (www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html) paragraph 2, 3 &4 discuss the observed coherence in neural discharges. (See Nature 338,p 334-337 (1989) for original report of these oscillations.) Chamlmers is repeating Crick’s erroneous idea that they bind together the “features” of an object when separately processed in different regions of the brain. On page 158 of my essay’s Ref 1, I tell what these oscillations actually do. - Mainly they help parse the continuous field’s stimulation into separate “objects.” - I explain how this is done, at the neuronal level, utilizing the established fact* that near-by like orientated “line detectors” (Hubel &Wiesel, Nobel Prize) constructively mutually strengthen but orthogonal adjacent ones mutually weaken neural activity. This results in “coherent, closed loop oscillations” isomorphic to the contrast boundaries (usually the edges) of the real external objects.

Since most of the oscillations are near 40Hz, it is impossible to uniquely bind the color of only 50 marbles to their separately processed shapes (all spheres in this example) without confusion. - Simply too few different frequencies exist near 40Hz. - That is why Crick’s idea is wrong, but he is famous and I am not.

His is a FAILED attempt to indicate how an objects “features” (its shape, color, location, motion, surface texture,… about 15 known to be processed in different, widely-separated neural tissue ) of every object could eventually “emerge” to make the unified perception of each object we all experience, without mixing up their features.

*C. von der Malsburg “Self-Organization of Orientation Sensitive Cells in the Striate Cortex” Kybernetika 14,p85-100 (1973)

I will comment more when I have more time.

 

Yes, I even think it possible for a human to have "un-conscious qualias" but one needs to be careful with the meaning of these (and other) words. (You said you were a "philosopher," or student thereof, I think, so no problem I assume.

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)

Qualias are often considered to be "experiences" but I think they also have at least some aspect of what Nader speaks of in "What it is like to be a ..." It may sound silly on the surface, but I think even humans can have "unconscious experiences" or at times, how they are "being a…{human in this case}" can differ.*

For example, I can be "happy" and not know (experience) it consciously or "worried" and not know (experience) it consciously. I would say that when I unknowingly / unconsciously switch from one of these not consciously experienced states, in some sense the "color of my qualias" has changed, even non-subjectively (I.e. objectively observable by others, sometimes!)

For example, my wife may say to me: "What are you worrying about?" and I reply: "Nothing." Wife: "I think something is bothering you." I pause and then reply: "Perhaps you are right, I have not heard from Emily (my daughter) for three weeks. - I hope nothing is wrong. - I think I will skype call her, if she is online." I.e. I was with "worry qualia" and not conscious of it, not "experiencing" it, except "sub consciously," (if there is any meaning to that) just as my NEVER conscious worm (because it is a "grade 1 zombie") can have a qualia of "hunger" or "pleasure" depending on how recently it has eaten.

I admit that I may be extending the meaning of "qualia" too much for some who have a definition that links or defines "qualia" as a "conscious experience," but I think that fails to capture the real essence of what a qualia is. IMHO, it is the same “type error” that all reduction approaches to "consciousness" make. BTW, I very much like Searle on this. (I have read several of his books but not for years.) IMHO he is as good as it gets when it comes to the subject/ discussion of "consciousness."

Repeating my answer to your question:
YES, if I, who can be conscious, can have a qualia of "worry" "hunger" "pleasure" etc. and yet not be "experiencing it" (add "consciously" if you need to), then certainly a "type 1 zombie", suchs as a worm, who can never be conscious, can have at least those qualia, which are very necessary to his staying alive , such as "hunger," or which are esential for producing offsprings, such as "pleasure in sex." The worm MUST have these qualia (At least as I use this term, to fully capture its meaning.) !!!!

And, NO these qualia of the worm confer enormous benefit, both to it (and to its prodigy, their very existence) !!!

I throw your question back to you:
Is it truly possible to conceive of a worm withOUT the qualia of pleasure (in sex) and the qualia of hunger???
Actually, as is almost always the case with philosophy, we are arguing over a definition. - Obviously mine is better.

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but not sure what yours is.

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*Another quick example, without much discussion or illlustration: My "humanity" itself sometimes is different, in what it is like (to be human), than at other times, with me totally unconscious of any change. I.e. feelings, experiences, qualia, etc. change with no consciousness of the change. - Especially slow changes as one ages. Is my "blue qualia" now that same as 50 years ago? How would I even know, even if I consciously tried to answer? One can not consciously "examine qualia", anymore than you can consciously "examine consciousness." (You can think about it, philosophise about it. debate it, discuse it, but you can not "examine it." - As Searle says, or would, as I am not quoting him:
By its very nature consciousness, is subjective, not an objective thing, that can be examined.

SUMMARY
Putting this quickly and crudely (I am learning from the Baron M):

Worms fuck. Fucking gives them pleasure, even if they do not know it, or that they are fucking. Ain't that simple and true!

PS, what the Barron just said, without adequate credit to Nader, is that is part of "What it is like to be a worm."

 

God was the first, before Him was no time, since He created it. So He has ultimate free will as nothing were before Him.

You can try to say that He should have known about the future He was going to make even if there were no time yet, it may be that He in order to be perfect had to limit what He knew about the future by the order that He made it. Cause God doesn't only use knowledge, He is also wise.

It's what is done that matters, as you probably will say that God wouldn't be perfect if His knowledge was limited, but that is only misunderstanding on your part.


Whatever He has to do, whatever He wants to do, He can do it since He wants good things, it is no limit to Him, but rather in our terms we would call it a blessing. Even though He knows the future, He decided to make it all in 6 days, and in the seventh day He rested. Therefor He made it sequentially (instead of just making it all at once), it might be perceived as if He moved through His own knowledge and making it real in the sequence that He wanted, maybe so that those time would have different characteristics (even though all days are the same, God in His wisdom made them different from eachother).

 

Cyperium:

This is irrational. God cannot create time. In order to create, there must be time. A time before and a time after the creation. To create time would not permit this. God would have been eternally static.

Perfection cannot be limited. That is a contradiction of terms.

Nonsense. It is an analytic truth. Perfection cannot be limited and be perfect.

God cannot want to do a thing. To want implies a lack. For God to lack, implies imperfection.

And God made no such thing in 7 days. This is simply Biblical hogwash with no foundation in reason.

 

Billy T.:

Agreed.

I would strongly suggest you write a paper specifically on this matter, in order that you might put it forth for academic consideration. That is to say, to not make this but one part of a larger paper, but to devote an entire one to it. It could garner enough attention to warrant serious reconsideration of the established theory in academic circles.

Yes, we should be quite okay with terminology, so long as we make ourselves clear if there is reason to suspect we might not be conveying information clearly. Ambiguities of language do pop up once in a while, after all.

But yes, let us continue now.

An interesting thought. So in essence, you point to unconscious qualia in how one can be acting supremely happy (or any emotion for that matter) and yet be blindsided by someone commenting on it, if one is say, occupied with a task?

Hmmm. That is very interesting. But here is a question relating to that:

Can these qualia incite one to act? For even if your wife was noticing that something was off with you, you were not calling up Emily until she made you consciously aware of what was eating at you mentally. That is to say, it took a conscious recognition of the qualia and its reasonable source before you acted. Could an unconscious worm experience such similar revelations in order to seek the food?

I have to agree with you there. Searle is has some excellent points on many of these issues. He's probably the best academic philosopher currently tenured that handles these issues from this approach.

I hope he'll write more for the new millennia.

Owing to the qualia-centric focus of consciousness, I would affirm that no. Leaving your option and "full fledged human-esque qualia" as the only viable options.

I support the latter, on account of my prior questions in regards to "conscious awareness before acting on the unconscious qualia".

Here's a question that this sparked: If our qualia changes over time, would we have awareness of our prior qualia being different from that we experienced now? Or would our memories depend upon our current qualia to interact with them? Or do memories contain the qualia ready made?

Ha! VERY Baronesque.

 

The definition of free will is "the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies" according to
http://wordnet.princeton.edu

It doesn't matter whenther the universe is deterministic or if quantum mechanics introduces an element of randomness. We cannot have have free will unless we are external to the laws of physics as we understand them. Maybe we cannot predict the behaviour of somebody very well (due to the complicated nature of it, the fact that we do not know the characteristics of every particle in the universe since the start of time and also due to quantum randomness) but we do know that whatever behaviour is exhibited by a living thing, it is not a REAL CHOICE.

 

I have no profesional interest movating me to do this and do not enjoy writting papers. I mainly do only things I enjoy (or to please my wife) at this stage of life.

How neuronal mechanisms parse the visual field into "objects" are already well described in my paper published in the APL tech digest (ref 1 of my essay)*. Not only this parsing is explained, but the details of how nerves achieve the Gestalt "good continuation law" are also explained there. (Why an object that is "behind" another one, which cuts the stimulation on the retina of the more distant one into two distinct and separate regions of neural activity in the retina is perceived as one object, instead of two different objects.)

I show that depth has nothing to do with "good continuation" by a illustration printed on 2D in the paper. You should really try to get my origial paper.* If you do, you will be asked in the paper to count the number of objects in Fig 7 before turning page to see Figs. 8,9,&10. Please do this, most readers do not. All four figures are closely related and even though the last three differ from Fig 7 only by the addition of one more object, you will perceive far fewer objects in the last three figures which are essentially identical except for some fine white lines that idicate how the nueral impulses spread to bind together as one object the different separated regions of retinal stimulation that made the object count in Fig 7 seem much greater than in Figs 8,9,&10.

In paper also is a slightly expanded Necker cube which has an alteration between being a 2D and 3D object in perception as well as the standard depth reversal. You can draw it. Make a slight separation of the four trapizoids and two triangle from the each other and the central square. If the separation is too large, you will see these seven simple geometric figures only as 2D objects but at smaller separation your perception will altenate in its "dimentionality" (I think I am the first to do this also.) It is an important paper, explaining many things in a few pages.

*For reprint, contact the Johns Hopkins University / Applied Physic Laboratory (helen.worth@jhuapl.edu). "Reality, Perception, and Simulation: A Plausible Theory" appeared in the JHU/APL Technical Journal, volume 15, number 2 (1994) pages 154 - 163.

This is not a very standard publication for people in psychology to read and of relatively limited circulation. None the less, someday (probably after I am dead) it will be recognized as important and giving the correct explaination for several things the cognitive science community does not currently understand correctly.

Type 1 zombie worm is largely driven by his "qualia" and never "knows" that his sex was fun etc. but pon the "up side" he dose not know he is "hungry" either. As I stated and think you now accept, humans can IMHO have "unconscious" qualia as well as conscious ones, the first being essentailly identical in kind to those of he worm and sometimes causing behavior in humans as well.

I think the additional advantage of being sometimes conscious of your qualia is mainly that this makes memory stronger. Dr Spock, my example of a type 2 zombie, with consciousness but no qualia, is sort of a proficient thinking machine. Clearly conscious qualia are not essential to behavior.

I do not know what consciousness is, but tend to accept that evolved to allow conscious being to consider the consequences of their actions and then act if there is time for this. My POV is that like Dr. Spock, we have established and even activated neural sets necessary for "plan A", "Plan B" "Plan C"....which are reasible responses to our unconsious qualia, but when there is time for conscious consideration of these plans only at most one is "released." Are you familiar with Dr. Libby's micro electrode studies that stongly support this? - I describe one of his experiment recently in a post.

I think that the one consciously selected may not satisfy the unconsious qualia as well as another (I.e. flert with pretty girl, not rape her.) and sometimes this conflict can result in phsychological problems. I also think that "repeative compulsive behavior" is when the unconsicious qualia wins this conflict. Typically some act is executed that is not view as "wrong" consciously, and thus not worth the effort to block it. I.e. it is "released" and the hands get washed 50 times in one hour. etc.

It is late, for me. Must go to bed. will not correct the typos now. I know little about memory but do accept the idea that strong qualia (posibably of conscious or not) make for strong memories. Memory is complex. I do not think very highly of D. Denet's consciousness explained but if that is where he describes two version of menory (one call "Stallin revision" and I forget the other change type's name) I think he is not far from truth in his POV.