From: Ken Clements (Ken@InnovationOnDmnd.com)
Date: Sat Dec 11 1999 - 17:16:25 MST
Zeb Haradon wrote:
> 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?
The greatest advance in the scientific method after the repeatable
experiment was the double blind repeatable experiment. The capacity for
humans to fool themselves is almost without limit. In the future I
expect molecular nanotechnology to give me the tools to do these
'internal' experiments. When that happens, I also expect to get the
answers sans superstition.
-Ken
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