Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[bennyboy]

Why is "outside yourself" suddenly a criteria now for something being objectively existent and observable? If it isn't, then you have see a mind, as a thing objectively existent within yourself.

You've just defined subjective experience, and you're asking why it isn't objective.

Except, I do know that qualia are actually there - from my own experience - as do you. Its not a vicious circle because we are starting with the brute fact of subjective experience. "I know qualia is real because I experience it, I know my own behavior to be the consequence of subjective experience and when I see the same behavior in others, I conclude the existence of qualia in them as well". The religious parallel would be: "I know god is real because I've directly experienced him and his authorship of the bible and its veracity are the consequence of him being real and thus I can use other statements in the bible as evidence for other facts". Ofcourse, this argument fails because direct experience of god is not a brute fact and veracity of the bible is not a consequence of it.

You're saying that qualia is a brute fact, but interpretation of the CONTENT is not. And yet you are using your interpretation of the content of your qualia to establish that it also exists in others.

What difference does being interior or exterior to the self make?

The difference is that in the case of 9/11, we're only talking about planes, not the underlying reality of planes; seeing the image is enough to say, "Look. A plane!" In the case of using behavior to establish qualia, we're not just talking about whether I believe someone "really" smiled or "really" said they enjoyed my waffles or something. We're talking about inferences about what UNDERLIES those behaviors. It's an unlike process.

MY qualia are a brute fact, for me. Ideas about who/what, might have or not have them is a matter of observation mated to arbitrary philosophical assumptions. The reason you and I arrive at different conclusions is that we like working under different assumptions, and no more than that.

Maybe that's the problem - you haven't validated your philosophical assumptions, which is what makes them arbitrary.

All philosophical assumptions are arbitrary. If you could "validate" them, they wouldn't be assumptions, they'd be facts.

Not in robots or computers, it's not.

You have evidence to support that?

Because my doubt that robots are really experiencing the redness of red or any other qualia is the positive assertion, here?

Since I only accept qualia in others based on a philosophical assumption, and since robots are unlike me in many important ways, then I cannot know whether they have qualia or not. I can only go on a hunch that they do not.

Not sure, how do you measure complexity? No. More than that. Of some kind. What does that even mean?

You tell me. You are the one asserting that wherever certain functions exist, there is necessarily qualia.

Except, no one is suggesting hooking up a neuron to an EEG to determine the existence of qualia. We've already established that within physical monism, qualia is brain function - FUNCTION, not a property of neurons - which mean, correctly identifying the processes involved in that function and replicating them is required to determine at what level of processing entities become capable of experience.

Neurons function. So do neurotransmitters and hormonones. So do atoms and QM particles. So do brain parts. So does the brain. So does the mind. Human beings have all of these layers of function working together. Given both qualia and physical monism, then all these things are known to be sufficient for qualia to be experienced. I would categorize neuronal function as part of brain function, so if there are no neurons, there's no brain, and no brain function.

It is not known that taking any of these layers of function out would still leave us with qualia.