If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[bennyboy]

Unless the vacuum cleaner does know that it hits the table, and responds by turning away. Which they can and do. It's experiencing data processing.

That's right, it's data processing. Nothing more. It's not experiencing anything, so far as we know.

If you insist that something simply cannot be observed, and refuse to accept the method you've used to determine that -I- have qualia, then so be it. I don't see the need. I place emphasis on observational data because it is powerful, explanatory data - whereas you have a special lockbox from which you are attempting to draw some conclusion.

Fine. Tell me how you directly observe someone else's qualia. No? Tell me what scientific, non-arbitrary criteria you are using to establish that a given system actually experiences qualia? Still no? That's because other-qualia are unobservable. Your "data" isn't about what you say it's about. Religious people do the same thing-- they define behaviors and feelings in terms of religion, and then use their feelings as "observational data" that God exists. But they fail for the same reason that you do: they are using data they've collected about apples to prove the validity of their idea about oranges, denying all along that they had begged the question in order to validate the process.

The concepts we use to describe the two are separate (brain function/experience) - that doesn't mean that the two things are separate in actuality. We had time and space long before we had space-time. It seems that I can;t even help yopu to wrap your head around the fact that qualia as you describe it is special sauce.

Your condescension is misplaced. You act as though you have a source of wisdom that I need to be schooled in. I have a philosophical difference with you, founded in the fact that I don't accept as given the same kinds of philosophical assumptions that you do. Maybe I should respond in kind: "It seems that I can't even help you to wrap your ahead around the fact that things subjective cannot be meaningfully coined in objective terms."

It;s some "thing" not to do with the function of a brain...a function that is not a function. It's pointless duality, as has been expressed to you. Even if we were to lay it out, 1:1 as you have said, you've already determined that it's still "something else". What? What else, where else, how else? It's not like were approaching this from equally undefinable positions. I say here is a brain, here is what it does - and one of those things is qualia.

What else? It's qualia. There's a word for it. It's been described. It is the subjective experience of ideas and perception. And it's not a pointless duality-- it's an expression of reality as I know it: there are things which are observed, and the experience of the observer. That's the foundation of all human experience, including the experience of doing science, or of debating about philosophy.

Understand that for all your confidence in physical monism, it is exclusively through mind that you have interfaced with the universe. Maybe the experiences you've had that cause you to infer a physical monism point at reality, and maybe they don't. But the reality of the experiences themselves is the only thing which can be known absolutely to be true.

The existence of your qualia cannot be denied -by you. I could deny the existence of your qualia all day long, the same way that you have done for anything that doesn't fit your idea of what qualia -is-. I won't do that though bud, you can have your thoughts, I trust you. It's so refreshing when a conversation dials down to this level of un-productivity, and no, Benny...you still don't get it, though you clearly disagree with "it". Have we scraped the bottom of this well? I think that by the time we say "Cogito, ego sum ipsum" we're about done, eh?

Yes, I think for the maintenance of amity, we should stop now. I don't mind the debate, but I do mind the tone, and I think there's really no philosophical ground left to cover (or at least that we are likely to cover).