Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[bennyboy]

You keep calling qualia an assumption as though that were somhow a problem for the science thereof.  If you think that this is anything -other- than disputing -our- experience.........I don;t know what to tell you.  I don;t assume that qualia exists, nor do you.  I very literally observe it, and that is bound inextricably to the definition of the term itself...it's the thing we hope to explain.  So if you can't get past that, and we can't start on that common ground...we can -have- no discussion.  There's nothing to talk about.  Science is not attempting to explain qualia that we assume to exist, it's attempting to explain qualia as a fundamentally undeniable truth of -every single human beings on the planets experience, it is the very -term- for our experience.  If that's not enough to move it past the category of assumption, to you, then nothing will or can.  Your objection is not with materialism, but with knowledge itself.  Good luck.

That's a lot of words for, "I don't know what qualia is or what causes it, but it has to be the brain."

Yes, I know that you;d like for me to stop saying that..I already opined upon it...we decided to hug it out, but here again it rears it's head.  I would hope that, at some point...repeatedly pointing this out helps you to realize that your objections are in internal self contradiction.  You cannot first claim that materialism (or science) cannot account for something....and then object to all of the ways that it accounts for that very thing.  Both statements cannot be true, if you have something to object to.....then obviously there is an accounting -to- object to.

You can only, rationally, express your disagreement with that accounting, or in your case, contempt.

Show me the science that claims to account for qualia. Show me a plausible scientific theory of consciousness. And stop speaking on behalf of science unless you are actually prepared to BRING some science into this discussion, or you aren't so much defending science the process of inquiry as Science the institution.

I recommend we send out some e-mails to educational institutions and ask THEM my questions. I 100% guarantee you that they'll tell you they operate in the context of the assumptions I'm talking about, and that they are fine with that. But I do not think they will be as mocking as you and Mathilda about philosophical questions; in fact, I suspect they probably take them very seriously.

I've actually done some study in neurology and psychology, written ANNs, and so on. You think I'm just talking out of my ass, but it's partly my experience WITH the science of mind that leads me to take the philosophical issues so seriously.