Qualia Research Institute meetup: what is hedonic tone?
Qualia Research Institute is non-profit building a science of consciousness to improve lives of sentient beings.
This is a meetup for the community around QRI in London. Chris Percy (twitter), a researcher with QRI, is going to give a talk: “What is Valence (hedonic tone)?”
Chris's talk in his words
The 'hard problem' of consciousness has had plenty of attention: why should any physical or functional phenomenon be accompanied by experience? This talk argues that a parallel 'hard problem' of valence has been largely ignored: Why should any experience feel good or bad?
QRI has a conceptual solution in the form of the Symmetry Theory of Valence, originally developed by Mike Johnson (see also: 2020 overview). But it's far from a complete theory. It's not even clear what requirements a theory of valence should account for. Or how we would assess the quality of those accounts across competing theories. What even are the alternatives to a Symmetry Theory?
This talk will discuss these alternatives, suggesting that none of them satisfy an initial set of requirements that we'll describe. The question is, how do we get from here towards a more complete answer?
More than a talk, we want to invite you to a discussion. The talk is based on a draft paper that Chris Percy and Asher Soryl first started with Andrés Gómez-Emilsson (QRI's President & Director of Research) on in 2024. Our progress on this particular paper seems to have stalled! We need fresh ideas and challenging eyes. Please come along and help.
Unconference
The talk by Chris will be followed by unconference, a participant-driven conference with write-in schedule on the wall. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space. We had several unconferences previously, so might've been to one already — this one will have a similar format. The unconference topics don't have to be related to the topic of the talk — they can be any of the general QRI topics: consciousness research, psychedelics, meditation, neuroscience, philosophy.
That said, you can also simply come and hang out with people — unconference is there to give some structure and help like-minded people find each other.
Schedule
19:00 Doors open, socialising
19:45 a 45 minute talk with Q&A, “What is valence”
20:30: the talk ends, hanging out, socialising, preparing unconference sessions
21:00 till late: unconference & socialising. The discussions can be on any QRI-related topic, not just the topic of the talk.