RE: The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential
April 27, 2018 at 7:16 pm
(April 27, 2018 at 3:01 pm)Hammy Wrote:(April 22, 2018 at 11:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I seriously doubt that the philosophical question is answered: why is it that any physical system, under any configuration, has the capacity to experience qualia? Why is there such a thing as subjective experience in a world view which is (at least in theory) modeled purely in objective terms?
I don't want to read your link just yet, because I doubt it answers the philosophical question at hand. If it does, would you mind giving a short-form version? If it's compelling at all, then I'll be happy to read up on AST.
--edit--
I think my issue is that qualia isn't considered elemental in a material view. So either there's a critical mass of something (information, electric fields of a certain configuration, whatever) which suddenly spawns a quale, or there's an incremental process by which more complex systems have something more and more like qualia. But qualia-gony (lol) is binary: either something is being experienced, or it isn't. I cannot conceive that there is "more and more experienced."
My bold. I seriously doubt that it's even answerable... making it even more absurd to believe that it's already answered and that is why I am debating this. Confused people thinking they've solved unsolvable problems is the only real problem here.
The line that seems to come up is this:
1) Nobody can answer the question of psychogony (the existence of mind).
2) Science has proven itself good at answering many questions.
3) Therefore science is our best recourse for studying anything.
4) Science studies only material structures, their properties, and the force that acts upon them.
5) Therefore, mind should be taken as material, because anything that isn't obviously addressed by science is a waste of time.
