Pleasure and Joy

[genkaus]

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.

For that you use the non-mental indicators of experience - the subject's verbal testimony, physiological reactions, physical reactions (both conscious and subconscious). Should there be actual experience occurring, all these lines of inquiry would be consistent and complement each-other and thus form a comprehensive body of evidence for the existence of 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.

That's the point. "Genetic tendency to consume particular foods" is not fondness - fondness requires the entity to be aware of that genetic tendency, which means being subjectively aware. Being overweight would normally require more than simple genetic tendency, it'd require that the person be aware of that tendency and act accordingly.

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.

I've corrected this misconception before.

Consciousness is a form of data-processing. That does not mean that all data-processing are forms of consciousness. Therefore, earth is not a giant consciousness and each particle does not have a particular kind of consciousness. The complexity of the system is very much relevant to this.

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.

Actually, that is the first step t achieving precisely that. When you open a hood of the car, you don't automatically find out what does what and how the whole thing works. You have to poke and prod at various places to figure that out.

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.

You are the one who brought up the soul. Anyway, if you believe that a physical system can completely simulate human behavior without the requisite self-awareness inherent to humanity, then by all means, provide justification.

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.

Criticisms to philosophical positions are not exempt from the burden of proof.

The "assumptions" here is the knowledge that:
- Physical systems exist.
- Physical systems capable of information processing exist.

The mind-hypothesis compatible with these assumptions is that "consciousness is a form of information processing done by the physical system referred to as the brain".

The testing parameters for this hypothesis would require explaining different aspects of consciousness (data-processing) as functions of brain and providing evidence that they are, in fact, functions of brain. While this testing is not complete, it is well on its way with mounting evidence explaining different aspects of consciousness as brain functions.

The falsifiability criteria would be presenting an aspect of consciousness that simply cannot be explained as a brain function - not just currently, but in perpetuity. The most common candidate for this would be the hard problem of consciousness or subjective experience. However, there is a hypothesis addressing that specific issue - one that is compatible to the physicalist-mind hypothesis and has sufficient evidence for it so that it cannot be rejected out-of-hand.

Thus, I've met my burden of proof - to the extent our current knowledge allows. Criticizing this position simply based on limitations of current knowledge would be - by definition - arguing from ignorance.

Despite your protests to the contrary, your assertion here is simple - "subjective experience cannot be explained/tested/proven by physcalist hypotheses/experimentation". The position to the contrary has given ample evidence to justify itself. You have given none. Science has met its burden of proof - you have not.

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.

Behavior indicative of subjective preference without actual subjective awareness? How the hell is that even possible?