Oh thats funny, I'm having a hard time reading that interpretation, my point more specifically is that it is all a purely physical system - I put scare quotes around that phrase because I believed it implied some metaphysical mind.

Ahh I see what you mean now, sorry. I mistakenly inferred something that wasn't there. I agree that it's all part of a physical system and that the absence of the signal is still meaningful.

Getting back to the topic:

While phantom pain may be more interesting, maybe a better example that the parent comment could've brought up is psychogenic pain. In this case there is no apparent physical (bodily) damage, no apparent signal, nor an absence of a signal. Searching for a cause of this type of pain in the brain (presumably some "wires" are getting "crossed") seems like it might help us develop a explanation of pain qualia...in humans/animals.

But I feel like this type of thinking and research could only apply to AGI if subjective experience turns out to be functionalist in nature, and arguments in favor of a functionalist interpretation of experience have so far been fairly unconvincing.

Or he made a distinction between the simple, signalling peripheral nervous system and the highly integrated, full of emergent properties, seemingly more than the sum of its parts, central nervous system.