From: Zeb Haradon (zharadon@inconnect.com)
Date: Sat Dec 11 1999 - 13:32:02 MST
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Clements <Ken@InnovationOnDmnd.com>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: Friday, December 10, 1999 11:21 PM
Subject: Re: q*****
> My turn to quote from Chalmers on page 215 of _The Conscious Mind_:
> -- All this metaphysical grandeur is well and good, one might reply, but how
> -- does it cash out in practice? In particular, how can we discover the psycho-
> -- physical laws that will constitute a theory of consciousness? After all, there
> -- is an enormous problem for a theory of consciousness that does not confront
> -- a theory of physics: the lack of data. Because consciousness is not directly
> -- observable in experimental contexts, we cannot simply run experiments mea-
> -- suring the experiences that are associated with various physical processes,
> -- thereby confirming and disconfirming various psychophysical hypotheses.
> -- Indeed, it might seem that the untestability of any theory of consciousness
> -- that we might put forward would relegate such theories to the status of
> -- pseudoscience.
>
> I did not argue *for* physicalism (another failure of reason is that an argument against something
> must, necessarily be an argument for something else), I am pointing out that any theory that has no
> data, and is untestable, shares the same status as superstition. Some superstitions turn out to be
> true. However, given all the non-testable things out there to believe in, and that I cannot find a way to
> break the symmetry, I choose to wait for data to believe in any.
>
> -Ken
But don't you experience it yourself, and isn't that data?
The problem with this type of data is that you cannot experience other people's consciousness. You can rely on reports from them, but you have no idea if they are lying, or making it up after the fact. And even assuming they are always correct and always telling the truth, you have no idea if the qualia associated with an experience they report is the same as the qualia you are experiencing, or if there is ANY qualia associated with their experiences. I believe that ultimately there is no way around this. This makes it an extremely difficult experiment to broach scientifically. An individual could do certain things to his brain and study the effects on qualia, and, I suppose, make his own science which has validity to him, but if his experiments are not reporoducable in others, they may very well see it as "superstition". But, should the scientist who did the experiments and experienced the effects consider it superstition? Should anyone except those who do not directly experience qualia (if any exist) consider their existence to be hypothetical and superstitious?
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Zeb Haradon
My personal website:
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~haradon
A movie I'm directing:
http://www.elevatormovie.com
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