Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[max-greece]

Question: Can you think of an experiment that would prove whether qualia are generated by physical processes versus facilitating them?

Those of us interested in philosophy of mind have a fair understanding of the issues and arguments surrounding the mind-body problem. To the best of my knowledge we all agree that a causal relationship exists between the brain-states and mental properties. How this fact is interpreted depends on whether you are a monist or dualist.

For philosophical reasons, I consider physical matter incapable of producing qualia and see the need for some other vehicle capable of supporting phenomena qualities (dualism). The analogy I use is that of a radio, which does not cause music, but is by virtue of its state can receive signals. Others consider first-person awareness an emergent property. They believe particular configurations of physical matter are capable of producing qualia as a non-fundamental property of reality.

Do you believe there is a non-philosophical way, i.e. scientific one, to determine which interpretation is correct?

I find this whole subject extremely difficult to get to grips with. With that in mind here is my first go:

I stand in front of a STOP sign late at night. It is too dark to read the sign. I take a photograph of the stop sign with my digital camera (no flash).

I then don a pair of night vision glasses and can now read the word stop. I take a photo of the sign through the glasses.

When I get back home I load the photos onto the computer and tell it to load them as scanned documents. The first photo cannot be read by the software. The second can and it gives me the single word in a text file - stop.

Now I am not sure if this is even a proper example of qualia but if the ability to see/read the word and interpret it is a result of qualia then both the computer and I have made the same gain through the use of equipment.

Does this even make sense? Fuck I hate philosophy.