Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[bennyboy]

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.  The large hadron collider is a massive correlate provider.  If there were a single cluster of neurons that have been found to be solely responsible for the experience of red.  Say we've mapped out experience and what happens in the brain when you experience red.  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 seems consistent with practice in other areas.  When I measure 5 volts in a circuit, I say that the circuit is presenting 5 volts.  I don't say that the voltmeter is measuring a correlate of a circuit presenting 5 volts.  Measurement assumes ontology.  To take the knife in the thigh example, our experience is only a correlate of the event.  Some people don't experience the pain as being undesirable.  Others don't experience the pain at all.  All you have is a representation that something is occurring.  But if correlates aren't admitted into evidence as witness to the existence of a thing, then your experience isn't witness to its own existence.  After all, your experience is just a correlate of reality.  That you have 'an idea' that you have an idea is no more valid than that the voltmeter is measuring 5 volts.  I think every one of us has experienced the phenomena of being half awake and thinking something, and that thought turned out to be nonsensical once we are fully awake.  How do you know that your notion of an idea isn't just another half awake illusion?  Are we going to doubt reality on the basis of the point that we know nothing in and of itself, all we know are representations of reality, correlates?  All we have are correlates; once you dispense with them, you've dispensed with the notion that anything is real.  Including experience.  Skepticism cuts both ways.

I'd disagree with the assertion that everything is necessarily a correlate.  A correlate means that one variable maps to another.  My experience of say a "dog" may be seen as a correlate to a real dog, and I think you've come up with an original and interesting way to turn that around.  However, it is not necessary to draw a correlate-- you could, for example, just see "dog" as a label for an experience of a particular category of experience-- a cute thing with 4 legs etc.-- with no reference or assertion to "reality" required.  You could also study neurology without any reference at all to qualia or mind, by using purely objective language.  So long as you are studying the relationship between brain function and behavior, there's not much need to talk about what a subject is/isn't experiencing  (a la B.F. Skinner).

The problem is specifically with regard to qualia, for which there are ONLY correlates, and no other way to access it.