Pleasure and Joy

[bennyboy]

Fine, I'll repeat the same argument once again - we don't need direct access to the property of subjective experience. Once again, we don't need direct access to the property of subjective experience. We do have an objective access to it - the observation of its consequences. Not 'seeing' subjective experience is not a roadblock to concluding its existence.

When you infer a black hole, it's because you know there's something affecting the path of objects or light moving through space. You are observing properties, and inferring the existence of an object which explains them. The black hole is a necessary addition, because there's no other good way to explain some apparent oddities of things observed in space.

In the case of all the behaviors you mentioned, we already have a sufficient explanation-- the mechanism of the brain. It is not necessary to posit the existence of fairies in order to explain all the behaviors-- unless you think the brain itself is NOT sufficient to explain the behaviors. So the idea that actual awareness is inferred from the brain or its behaviors is baloney. The fact is that you already "know" that people experience awareness, and you follow your conclusion back to the criteria that would arrive at that "knowledge."

We've both agreed that we are willing to believe that other humans actually experience, based on behavioral and physical similarities. The difference is that I accept that position as intrinsically agnostic, while you have to convince yourself that it's based on a careful consideration of physical facts, and therefore worthy of the word "knowing." You are wrong to do so. When you know what you want to believe, and conflate confirmation bias with an actual scientific process, you are not pitting science against philosophy. You are pitting your personal truthiness against BOTH science AND philosophy.