Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[bennyboy]

Sorry for the late reply.

No it wouldn't. The way I gain knowledge is to look at things. If I look at video of 9/11, I gain knowledge about it. I cannot look at the qualia in others. I can ONLY assume it.

What you are looking at is the video - a supposed consequence of 9/11. Similarly, when you look at behavior, you see the supposed consequence of qualia. As far as you know, the video can exist without the events as shown actually happening and behavior can exist without qualia actually occurring. Which means you should be equally agnostic in both cases. The extent to which you are only assuming that other have qualia is the same extent to which you are assuming that the towers were brought down.

I get it. I just don't agree that the analogy holds. In the case of 9/11, there is no sufficient explanation for the video planes crashing into buildings and causing a fire than an "actual" plane crashing into an "actual" fire (quotes because in this argument, solipsism and idealism always linger in the background). Yes, it's possible that neither the planes, nor the buildings, nor New York exist, in which case it would be a pretty fantastic conspiracy, but that's not because of their PROPERTIES as I perceive them. It's a different kind of agnosticism.

In the case of qualia, you have a secondary property which is not necessary to explain behavior. The brain itself is a sufficient explanation: "Data comes in, brain processes it, and behavior comes out." Our reason for believing in qualia therefore is not behavior-- it is the direct experience of our own qualia as a brute fact.

I do not have my own interior plane or my own interior fire which I necessarily extend by philosophical pragmatism to 9/11

The reality of physical universe has never been in question here - we're both assuming that from the start. Here's why your agnosticism in both cases should be equal:

You know your own qualia from your own experience and you probably know of buildings falling from your own experience as well. You know your behavior to be a consequence of your subjective experience and you know the video to be a consequence of recording a falling building. You know of these consequences in cases of which you have no direct experience - the 9/11 and other peoples' qualia. However, you believe that it is possible for these consequences to occur without that the particular cause. Which means, you should be equally agnosctic about them.

The difference is that nobody is equating planes with invisible secondary properties which I must ALSO assume. In a physical monism, the brain is sufficient to explain behaviors, which are really just the physical motions of the body. The only assumption I need to make is that the brain, and its relationship to the body, are real (no solipsism, no Matrix, etc.). Whether qualia exist is irrelevant, since whether or not I accept the qualia of others, their brains and behaviors are the same-- there's still no mystery which demands the extra inference.

But I have seen the juice behind the color purple and the dog before the wagging tail - so those "what ifs" are pointless. And given that one is all the sample size I have, that's what I have to base my reasonable conclusions on.

Right. Those "what ifs" are pointless because ALL the other relationships about things and their properties are based on objective experience of objects which are not you.

As for sample size-- a sample size of one is meaningless in establishing a general rule, because it's impossible to establish any principle by which to make that generalization. This is not a "reasonable conclusion." It's a philsophical assumption.