Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[genkaus]

This is indeed a brute fact.

I accept this, but only in the context of the assumption that there is in fact a physical world (i.e. we're not in the Matrix or the Mind of God). This leaves us with either physical monism or substance dualism, but excludes idealism (which I also accept as possible). I think for the purposes of this thread, I'm okay doing that.

Yes. It's hard to argue that mind is unique from the brain when you can poke a brain and smell smoke, or take drugs and have your whole perceptual experience completely collapse. It would be disengenous not at least to agree that much or all of the content of mind and experience seem to be of and by the brain.

Right. It would be like showing "Casablanca" but with no screen to catch the light.

I agree. I think the intuitive response that people show in their interactions with their environment is that there's a mental "I" interacting with physical objects, and that when people communicate, two mental "I" entities must interface through their body-objects.

I can't speak for all humanity, but I think whatever people SAY about "I," they generally act as though they think "I" is distinct from the rest of the universe in some way.

That doesn't mean that view is correct, though.

That's the problem I have with duality. It seems to me either a monism or a ternary system would work better.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all I'm seeing is agreement here. Given that, do you agree that the philosophical zombie is likely to be a nonsensical concept?

But this is not how we arrive at knowledge of the existence of mind. No machine came along and inferred qualia from either brain function or the mechanics of the body (like frowning and smiling). It is because we are already familiar with qualia that we make assumptions by like association: when I smile, people ask what I'm feeling happy about. They seem to recognize my qualia based on my behavior. So when other people smile, I extend that recognition back to them, and believe that they are feeling happy and therefore experience qualia.

I don't think that is a scientific process. It's a mediation between social instincts and philosophical pragmatism. Basically, we accept the consciousness of others because it feels right, and because it's the way things need to be for most of our instinctive behaviors to make any sense at all. And we want them to make sense.

The only problem here is that the process of gaining knowledge doesn't have to be strictly scientific. We make knowledgeable inferences in our daily lives by association everyday.

Is it necessary to infer qualia to explain the behavior? I don't think so, since muscular activity traces back through neural activity, not through qualia. Maybe qualia ARE just the experience of certain kinds of neural activity, but if they are not more than that, then referencing them, rather than just the brain function itself, seems redundant at best. What does it really add to an explanation worded purely in the function of neural systems? I think the answer is this: because we already know about qualia, and the subjective experience of a person matters more to us than the biological systems which arrive at a behavior.

I don't think it is redundant at all. The kind of explanation required depends upon the level at which you are examining the process. For example, I can give you details about how the hardware works and what signals it sends and it won't help you understand what functions does the software perform.