philosophy

Qualia are what you perceive as a subjective experience, and you are able to relate that experience to other people because of human/animal input/output organs. We can measure brain activity associated with certain stimuli. But we don't know how these things are related, and we don't know what the requirements are for thoughts and experiences. Things without the ability to communicate may have thoughts that they can't tell us about or that we can't measure -- how are we actually supposed to know?

In terms of experiences like ours, brains seem necessary, but what about the universe tells you we know about other toes of structures?

For example, we don't even know the "minimum" number of brain cells to make a thought. 10? 100? 100,000? 10M? Is there a minimum? Do other organs produce thoughts as well but just can't tell us?

Heck, people have hooked up robot arms to mycelium and it moves it around based on stimuli -- what does the mycelium perceive when that happens? If someone hooked up a new input or output organ to you, would you start perceiving it internally as qualia, or would it always seem external?