Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[bennyboy]

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

And the difference would be?

The difference would be that the zombie only processes information, while I both process and subjectively experience it.

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.

Neither the measures of brain function nor qualia are necessarily processes. That's yet to be established.

The measures of brain function are clearly processes: blood flow, EEG, etc. I'd call qualia processes because they arise and subside in response either to internal symbols or external objects.

Or the short answer: what are you talking about?

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I think Apophenia hit the nail on the head earlier when she(?) noted how dualism doesn't actually solve the problems it instantiates. In other words, how does this second substance do what it is claimed "physical matter" cannot. I'd further like to know what non-physical matter or stuff is that substance dualists speak of, because it seems like a made up thing. It divorces a large part (if not the crucial part) of what we mean when we say something exists: spatial occupance.

As for my own position: I'm not too sure. My lack of familiarity wity both neuroscience and philosophy of mind doesn't do me any favors. I suppose I would be inclined towards a position that consciousness isn't some extra thing over brain activity, rather than the result of brain activity as a whole instead of one particular thing or area of the brain.

The simplest observation of one's own experience shows that theres "I" the thinker/observer, and then ideas or physical objects which I think about or observe. The problem with both physical monism (with mind) or substance dualism (physical objects + mind) is that they BOTH fail to reconcile this subject/object duality.

In substance dualism, my question is: how is it possible for mind and matter to interact? How, for example, does one move? What is the bridge? It seems to me there must be something which is partly matter and partly mind. If so, that duality is collapsed anyway, since there's now mind/matter, which is pretty much the monist's description of the brain.

In the case of physical monism, the problem is that science takes as its target observable properties of matter. Brain function is observable, but the mind isn't. Mind is not an observable property of matter, nor is it a necessary explanation of how any material system behaves. It doesn't MATTER (snerk) whether a brain has a mind: the mechanism from eye, to brain, to behavior can be traced along physical structures without reference to qualia.

In the case of science, why wouldn't solipsism be the default, for example? Why posit extra properties of a brain which you cannot even confirm to exist? The answer isn't very scientific-- I already "know" that people think and feel pretty much as I do. And by "know," I mean "assume."