Pleasure and Joy

[bennyboy]

Actually, it is sufficient evidence. If I establish the simultaneous existence of actual experience and brain function X, then, in future, I can regard the presence of brain function X as sufficient proof of existence of that person's awareness.

That is exactly right. You can easily establish the existence of brain function. Now go ahead and establish the existence of actual experience. Careful, though, that you don't refer to brain function X in your attempts to do so, or you're begging the question.

As a matter of fact, I can infer existence of actual experience based on physical appearance alone. If you are overweight, it'd suggest a certain fondness for food which would not be possible without existence of subjective experience.

Only because you are using the mind-existential word, "fondness." If you used "genetic tendency to consume particular foods," then that implies nothing about subjective experience.

Processing data is itself a form of awareness. When you are aware of something, it means you receive information from that entity to process. The specific form of awareness you are talking about here is a type of self-awareness, i.e. being aware of the fact that you are aware of external environment. It is another layer of awareness on top of other layers.

This is an interesting model, founded on a strange definition. Next comes the idea that the Earth is a giant consciousness, since we are all layering up on the internet, or the idea that each particle has a kind of particular consciousness that, when structured, adds up to a human consciousness. But to what degree any of these interesting ideas constitute reality is another issue altogether.

So yes, brain as a physical mechanism can process data and output behaviors (as it does for most of our body functions) without actual subjective awareness - but, addition of the subjective awareness function would not magically make it a non-physical mechanism.

Given that the brain can process data without awareness, we need a good reason why awareness is required, or how it happens. Waving at the brain, or poking it with needles to see if people smell burning toast, doesn't achieve either of these. At best, we have some plausible theories.

Since that "special" quality is easily explicable as an additional layer of pre-existing function, invoking an arbitrary and undefinable concept like 'soul' is not required. And by the way, we don't need to prove that there isn't a soul - the same way we don't need to prove there isn't a god.

I'm not actually a big fan of the soul. However, neither am I big on the idea that any physical mechanism requires self-awareness in order to operate. That's pretty magi-tastic.

If you want to start attributing qualities to them that are not required to explain observations, then you are on weak ground.

You are the one doing that - not me. You are the one attributing qualities like soul when the naturalistic explanation is sufficient.

BOP hot-potato game is fun. No, YOU have BOP, since I'm not asserting anything except that the things you are saying are scientific theories supported by evidence actually cannot be anything but assumptions, or at least derived from assumptions, which beg the question.

Simple processing of external stimuli would result in one set of behavior - such a flinching from touch or pupils contracting from light. Processing of this process - which is what experience is - results in a whole different set of behavior. You cannot answer any personal questions (why did you pick a banana instead of an apple, which do you like better - chocolate or vanilla?) without there being actual experience.

I'm pretty sure machines will be able to do all these things eventually. I'm not sure, however, that they will actually have subjective experiences as I do.