RE: Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Univer...
May 19, 2014 at 5:42 am
(May 18, 2014 at 9:21 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It doesn't matter whether my thinking is deep or not. It doesn't matter what I personally believe. What matters here, according to you, is evidence. So what evidence do you have that anything in the universe possesses, or allows for the supervenience of, the experience of qualia? If you point to fMRIs, I'll say that as the brain processes information from the environment, it needs more energy. If you point to brain waves, I'll say those are electromagnetic traces of brain function. If you point to behaviors, I'll say that the brain is processing information and outputting a behavior. At no point in any of this is it necessary to form the belief that there is a real experience of qualia happening in that brain.
And yet you believe that all brains exhibiting certain behaviors must really be experiencing qualia. What is your evidence for this extra, and unnecessary, property, which you can neither see nor in any way measure? Sounds like a belief in ghosts to me.
I trust that when a fellow human is describing his/her experience that he/she is experiencing qualia. This is reasonable since my experience is very similar to that being described and the fact that qualia is able to be discussed.
What isn't contestable are the types of existents that experience qualia. You'll hear speculation as to whether or not a squirrel or toad will experience qualia, but will never hear reasonable people discuss whether or not a rock or an atom experiences qualia. To do so is absurd and meaningless. Inveighing the hypothetical philosophical zombie as something to be taken seriously is similarly grotesque; reason being is that you areYou are engaging in useless speculation and calling it philosophy.
Productive conversations can be had regarding qualia, but not when you hang your hat on atoms experiencing qualia and the existence of philosophical zombies.
