Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[bennyboy]

I think this has been discussed before - but all the things mentioned cannot be said of a philosophical zombie. Certain behaviors - specifically, self-referential ones - are not possible without the ability to experience.

Yes, but the zombie's collected data meet the criteria for your definition of experience. We are talking about qualia.

---

A few points you might want to be careful about:

1. Given your three possibilities - brain function precedes qualia, qualia, precedes brain function or they are simultaneous - you've, at the outset, defined them as distinct entities with different natures. Given that, your statement "At the exact moment of experience, at least part of the brain function must be identical to the experience" becomes nonsensical.

Subjective qualia and objective measures of brain function clearly are different, because subjective and objective are different. The question is whether they are different processes, or just different properties of the same process.

2. Don't confuse causal precedence with temporal precedence. For example, the speed of my car is caused by how fast the wheels are spinning. But both events are temporally simultaneous, even though causally, one precedes the other. Which is why, qualia and brain functions being temporally simultaneous does not imply anything regarding their causal relation.

Actually, there IS a slight lag in time, at least during acceleration, as all the materials involved distort slightly under the stress of the force coming from the drive-train: the axle twists, the rubber wheel twists, the knobs on the tires bend over a little, etc.

But actually what I'm really saying is if the qualia are experienced exactly at the same time that the brain functions are observed externally, this would be good evidence for the idea that qualia are a property only of the brain.

My ideas about interference, etc. are a try at introducing objective control over neural systems precise enough to allow verbal comments, the only "reliable" way to interact with qualia, to give comments on the more easily-observed property: brain function. You could never measure the speed of light with a stop-watch: you need interference to do it, AFAIK. It occured to me that a similar approach might aid in brain/consciousness studies.