Dan and Rob continued:
> > I do realize that effects such as consciousness are extraordinary from
> > the perspective of empirical science, but this method is not the only
> > one available - sometimes one just has to accept that it's just a tool
> > - the true discoveries, that is, the ideas that guide the
> > implementation of the empirical method, come from good old fashioned
> > philosophizing.
> Yeah! Go team! Now, where do we begin?
> Hmmm...
> What were we looking for, again?
Now wait. Rob, I'm glad you are one of the few with me on
this but lets be careful. I'm quite sure were not at all talking about
something that is really all that "extraordinary from the perspective
of empirical science".
Just because, to date, all our empirical science has been
concerned with is only cause and effect and when we are claiming that
there could be more to "qualities" than just simple abstract cause and
effect, in no way places qualia outside of every day empirical
reproducible science.
When I push on my eye in a completely dark room, it can
produce a red sensation, even though there is no light in the room.
This can be very empirical and scientific even if our understanding
hasn't penetrated to the point where we can understand, eff, and
scientifically share such feelings and qualities first hand.
The simple cause and effect scientific observations that we
have done to date may have missed some phenomenal "qualities" of
nature but it can't have missed much. These phenomenal "qualities"
that we are talking about must have some "causal" (as in objectively
or scientifically in traditional ways) affect that is consistent with
all we know of brain matter. These "qualities" or what these
representations are "like" must some how fit or be hiding within what
we already know of the fundamental cause and effect nature of matter.
The red strawberry is not at all like the green field of leaves.
Because red is not like green is why our hand goes towards it to pick
it. Regular old abstract scientific instruments must be able to
detect and model these behaviors just like anything else that
influences or has a causal effect in reality. They must prove, that
red is like something and that whatever this is like, it is not like
green, and that this is how we are able to have effect in the world
and pick the red strawberry out of the green leaves.
Part of doing this will be every time an abstract machine
objectively observes a particular set or pattern of neural firings (or
whatever qualia "objectively" is) the brain always experience the
precise qualia related to that and never anything else. When the
instrument says the brain is experiencing red, the brain will always
experience red and nothing else. The same with green and all other
qualia.
It's still good old empirical, reproducible... science, it's
just now concerned with more than abstract cause and effect, but also,
what is that cause and effect like when we experience phenomenal red
and green.
When we can do things like objectively understand what and why
red is the way it is in our consciousness, when we can show others
what our red, salty... is like and we can say that yes, indeed, it is
the same, or it is different.... it'll still all be empirical
objectively reproducible... science. It's just that the brain is so
complex, and good at simplifying or making us think that qualia is
something out beyond our senses (or that it doesn't exist at all),
that we've prematurely limited science to less than what it truly can
be.
Just because red is still "ineffable", doesn't mean it will
always be. It's just that effing is a bit different and in an
engineering way a bit more complicated (self referential?) than simply
abstractly knowing by cause and effect sensing and abstract
representations that have no regard for what the fundamental
phenomenal nature of the observed representation is.
Brent Allsop
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:18 MDT