Can qualia exist without dependence on external factors?

[Ferris_bg]

Could there be a meaning without dependence, what you think?

 

[apeiron]

Could there be a meaning without dependence, what you think?

No.

But more controversially, can there be information without dependence?

 

[SMERSH]

In my opinion, generally no except in one case - Qualia or something analogous to what is termed as "qualia".

Why? Because, regardless of what the "reality" is underlying the qualia and how deceptive qualia may be it seems to have a "reality" of it's own, even with all it's subjectivity, so it *may* have some independence of it's own.

It seems for example, my knowing all the "mechanisms" or "causality" or "theory of everything" behind these qualia, I do not think it changes the experience of the qualia itself. Qualia seem to be "independent" of "what's out there", or "what is the true model" or what "reality" is.

Although knowing the "causality" of these qualia in principle may allow some way to change the specific qualia experienced using some breathtakingly futuristic technology (some hyper-enhanced virtual reality indistinguishable from reality) but it seems these experiences will nonetheless remain "qualia", therefore qualia seem to have independent "meaning" for that entity or individual experience.

All the sophisticated top-down and bottom-up causality principles seem to me to be a further escalation of broadly "mechanistic" explanations for qualia itself without appearing to directly address the problem of qualia experienced by individual selves. On the other hand any non-mechanistic approach doesn't seem to allow further progress on understanding this and seems to lead to some kind of irrational mysticysm. It's a conundrum.

I almost wonder if some kind of neutral monism is the answer to individual qualia.

I merely speculate on this but these are my initial thoughts on a subject I approach with an understanding that we have a lot to learn as science advances.