Monist vs. Dualist Experiment?

[genkaus]

And you've consistently ignored my agreement with that statement, and my statement that these two cases of agnosticism are not equivalent.

No. I've answered it by showing the equivalence.

There's no way to establish if qualia is a part of brain function, except by your assumption-masked-as-hypothesis.

Every description of qualia fits matches brain function - thus the hypothesis that qualia is brain function stands on solid ground.

Theists do what you do. They say, "Look at the magnificent sunset. Only God could have done that." You say, "Look at the behavior. Only qualia could have done that." What neither of you have done is to establish that your "evidence" is attributable to, and only to, what you say it is.

Except, unlike theists, I know of the existence of god and know of atleast one sunset for which he is directly responsible.

In other words, I know that qualia exists and I know that some of my behavior is caused by qualia. And that differentiates my proposition frm a theists.

That's a goofy parallel. I'm talking about systems which are integral to brain function, and how to identify which of those systems are necessary for qualia to really exist, and which are not. This is not making shit up just for giggles.

For you to talk about that, you first have to accept that bran systems are necessary to create qualia - which you haven't.

Why are they sensible possibilities? Because given qualia in the brain, one, some or all of those layers of functioning are required for qualia to exist. But we can only interface with functioning humans, specifically those who can communicate. We can't check a group of neurons, or atoms, for qualia. We can't check non-organic processing units for qualia.

Given the basic nature of qualia - that is, it is always associated with complex sensory events, positing its existence at neural or atomic level becomes nonsensical.

Your solution is to define it away, "Qualia (according to me) is X, therefore wherever X is found, I've found evidence of qualia." Except you haven't demonstrated that qualia is X, and your "evidence" is therefore really only evidence that you are willing to beg the question.

Except, I'm not the one doing the defining. And showing evidence for a tautology is never required.

Qualia is a property of experience, which requires existence of a mind. Which means positing existence of qualia at the level where mind doesn't exist is nonsensical and does not require disproving.

If you want to say what qualia are, then you have to prove that's what they are.

You mean proof as in definition - which has been available to you from the start.