Pleasure and Joy

[genkaus]

Things are not always what they seem. You can come at this problem from as many angles as you want-- but they all have one thing in common: they do not give you direct access to subjective experience, and therefore require assumptions to arrive at the conclusion that there is any subjective experience happening at all.

And as I've indicated many, many times before, direct access is not required to establish existence. Not for black-holes, dinosaurs or a murder and not for subjective experience either. The only assumption here is that subjective experience, like any other existent entity, have a specific form of existence and provide specific evidence of its existence. That assumption is made for all the other objects as well. Your continuous repetition of "if can't directly observe it, you can't know it exists" has been invalidated by science in multiple scenarios.

You can prove that an organism behaves in a certain way. You cannot prove that the reason it behaves in this way is because it has actual experience of the information it is processing.

If I prove that the behavior requires actual experience of processed information, then I have proven that it is capable of actual experience. And guess what, this is precisely what the scientists ins the field of neuroscience have done.

Layers in layers, dude. You have yet to come up with any test that proves the existence of actual experience in an organism, rather than it behaving as you suppose a feeling organism might behave.

That is the test. How are you not getting this? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck. If I independently ascertain facts about your life and then ask you questions about it and you answer me without any external prompting, then the conclusion that you are speaking from memory is a reasonable one. Similarly, if I see that in all subjects giving verbal testimony of anger, there are consistent hormonal and physiological reactions such as spike in adrenaline, increased heart-rate, vasodilation then the conclusion that the entity is actually experiencing anger is a reasonable one.

IF and only IF behavior is a mechanical, deterministic result of processed data, then why not?

Given, my argument is that subjective experience itself is mechanical, deterministic form of data-processing, I don't see the point of this statement.

Once upon a time, it was said a computer could never beat a grandmaster, because it lacked "imagination." We now know that a computer can beat almost any player, even a grandmaster; we do not know, however, that the computer has an imagination.

Actually, we do know that it has imagination. All we have to do is look at the Chess program. Nobody has programmed in all possible moves and all possible strategies into it. Only the rules of the game and parameters of analysis have been given. Based on those, the program comes up different possible scenarios that are not a part of reality. That is precisely what imagination is - coming up with scenarios that are not a part of reality based on the knowledge of reality.

The problem here is that a circle can't rightly be reasoned to be an arrow. ALL the science done is done by minds. If what those minds perceive is an accurate representation of reality, then the science is valid, even to the degree of determining where mind comes from. However, if reality is other than what it seems, which is very possible, then the validity of the science is limited to the scope of the assumptions you listed: specifically, that there is a physical reality, and that it is (pretty much) what it seems to be.

Is it possible? That reality is not what it seems? We are not talking about errors in perception here. Science accounts for those errors and has measures in place for correction. What you are suggesting here is the possibility that perception itself is invalid. Got a way to justify that possibility?

So if I use science to determine how to build a bridge, and I have the experience of a standing bridge, that's fine. In the context of the universe as it seems, it doesn't matter what the underlying reality of the bridge is. And as satisfying as it is to meet the BOP of ideas set in this context, and as elegant as your proofs in this context are, you are forever limited to that context.

If you want to use science (read: the mind) to determine the nature of mind in an absolute sense, then you have a parent/child relationship in which the two are identical. You must resolve the validity of the parent to validate ideas about the child, but cannot for obvious reasons-- you've thrown yourself into an infinite loop.

Do I really have to remind you that science does not deal in absolutes?

The reason this argument fails is that the parent/child statements are not identical. One addresses the nature of perception, the other addresses the nature of mind.

The statement "mind perceives reality" (parent) is axiomatic - make no mistake about that. But it says nothing about the nature of mind itself. Any question regarding the nature of mind is a separate consideration.

The statement "mind is a physical system" (child) does require validation - which has been given. This statement lies squarely within the given context and is valid within it. If you wish to question the context itself, i.e. challenge whether we truly perceive reality, you may do so. But beware: any such challenge would implicitly assume that very concept and any such denial would therefore commit the fallacy of stolen concept.

Well, the Cyberboy 2000 says, "Yum yum, I want the chocolate ice cream, not the yucky strawberry," rubs its belly, drools a little, and opens its eyes slightly wider to show that what it is looking at "pleases" it. It stamps its little cyber-feet if you tell it no, and make annoying noises in the car on the way home. None of this means it's actually experiencing anything.

If we establish that the specific behavior is not present in the initial programming, then yes, it most certainly means that it is actually experiencing something.