Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[Neo-Scholastic]

When I put the probes of a voltmeter across a certain part of an electrical circuit, the readout displays a number which represents an electrical quantity. We know it does so accurately because we've designed it to provide an accurate representation of the electrical quantity. When it's voltage, we say that we have measured the voltage across the probes. With current, current. We only have correlates for the things we measure…. Is it a valid objection to the practice of measurement to say that I haven't measured the presence or absence of the experience red in this hypothetical brain?

This raises an interesting question. Are all aspects of reality quantifiable?

It seems to me that identifying that a thing is present, like a memory, by observation of a brain state is not the same as identifying the quality of a thing, such as what that memory is about. Applying rules about extended bodies to things that have no extension seems like a category error. It is like saying that ‘nova’ means the same thing in English (a brightening star) and Spanish (doesn’t go) just because it has the same spelling.

All we have are correlates; once you dispense with them, you've dispensed with the notion that anything is real.

If efficient cause is defined by temporal succession, then your position makes perfect sense. At the same time that Humean causality comes at great cost, i.e. it creates an infinite regress of intermediate causes. That is exactly the same objection reductionists consider a damning flaw of substance dualism.