Pleasure and Joy

[genkaus]

All fine and well. However, given any physical structure (like a collection of rocks in infinite space, or just a lowly brain), how would you be able to infer that it experiences? How could you prove, to someone not willing just to accept it at face value, that YOU are actually experiencing your environment, rather than just seeming to. Sure, you can DEFINE mind in terms of rocks, or brains, but that misses the point: only the structure itself can have knowledge of its own subjective experience (if it has any).

I see your philosophical zombie and raise you a brain in a vat.

These two thought-experiments are conceptually opposite. The p-zombie is based on the fact that people can fake experience (pretend to feel pain when they actually don't) and thus an entity can conceivably exist where none of the external indicators of experience indicate actual experience. The brain-in-the-vat is the opposite - we assume that the brain does experience without showing any external indications of it. The solution to both is the same - existence and use of a mechanism for subjective experience.

Consider other biological entities seemingly capable of experience. The sunflower that turns to face the sun. The touch-me-not plant that folds up when disturbed. The venus flytrap that 'senses' the insect and eats it. In these cases we posit the existence of elaborate stimulus-response mechanisms, but exclude actual experiential capacity. That's because, due to the absence of a central nervous system, we do not see there being a possible mechanism which could facilitate experience. In humans, that mechanism is present in the brain. And as we continue to study it in depth, we keep finding different parts responsible for different kinds of experience.

The difference between an elaborate data-processing and actual experience is simple - experience is data-processing of that data-processing. For example, if you prick a person's toe he twitches - the data of the pin-prick is received by the pain receptors and processed to provide a response of twitching. If the person is conscious at the time, he'd be aware of this whole process taking place and this awareness is the sensation of pain. In other words experience. Another example - when a light is shined on your eyes, your pupils contract. This is an unconscious process that does not require any actual experience on your part. The light falls - the brain processes this - and sends out the signal for pupils to contract. But, your brain also becomes aware of the reception of this information and that is experience. And this experience can result in additional responses like blinking, squinting or shielding your eyes.

So, while one may not be directly able to observe the existence of someone else's experience, we can certainly infer - nay, prove - its existence by identifying the mechanisms required for that experience and establishing that they are functional.

I know for sure that I actually have those experiences, rather than just seeming to. You cannot validate this fact without making assumptions which beg the question; and yet obviously I won't entertain seriously the idea that my knowledge that I actually experience is invalid.

Its not begging the question if the hypothesis is both testable and falsifiable. If your dualist hypothesis was correct then any alteration in the experience itself by altering the brain chemistry would've been impossible. That was the first indicator that in all likelihood, even experience is a specific function of the brain.

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You can infer but you cannot prove.

Give us time.

The hardware/software analogy contains a red herring. The analogy fails to distinguish between physical signs and their signified meaning. We write code in such a way that preserves meaning while the hardware operates, indifferent to the instructions it has been given. Then when a computer displays a particular arrangement of nine lit LEDs, it doesn't 'know' that the output means 34. It makes no difference that the computer is vastly less complex than a human brain. The unique relationship between physical signs and their subjective significance holds without regard to scale.

Actually, the crux of that comparison is that the complexity makes all the difference in the world. The types and levels of functions increase exponentially with the level of complexity.

My brain, my computer and an abacus are all different types of machines. All three receive inputs, process them and give outputs. But given vastly different complexities, both the input and the level of processing are worlds apart. The only input the abacus is capable of receiving and processing is position of beads. My computer can receive many more types of inputs, process them and then give results - and then use those results as inputs for even more processing and so on and on and on. My brain takes it one step further - it takes the event of data-processing itself as an input and processes that to generate experience. That part of my software - one which results in subjective experience - occurs naturally. But once we figure out its algorithm, we can create a similar program for my computer - Sentience 1.0. The only reason my computer doesn't 'know' that the answer is 34 or feel that its battery is running low or experience 'pain' when I over-exert it is because this software hasn't been installed in it yet.