Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[The Grand Nudger]

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."

Strange, since I didn't make a single mention of that...but that's what you hear anyway.  You must know what the science says after all.

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.

Show yourself.  These bullshit attempts to exhaust a persons patience don't play with me.

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'd take a philosophical question seriously if you'd mount one.  You haven't...and I know, I know, you think you have.

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.

I -know- you're talking out of your ass, lol. If you want to take philosophical issues seriously than do so, stop making bullshit claims and then -calling- that philosophy, that's not philosphy..that's just exhausting someones patience with a long list of bullshit claims.