Re: Reality vs. Perception of Reality

From: <chales1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 11:42:27 +1000

<I hereby promise to try really hard with the spelling>

> Hi Bruno,
>
>> Now look at science.
>>
>> We do correlations of perceptual artefacts = _contents_ of phenomenal
>> consiousness to the point of handing out _Nobel prizes_ for
>> depictions of correlated artefacts of our phenomenal fields.
>>
>> AND THEN
>>
>> we deny phenomenal consciousness? Declare it unassailable by science?
>> Delude ourselves that these descriptions actually contain causal
>> necessity?
>
>
> [Bruno]
> Who does that?
>
> [Col]
> What?
>
> The entire suite of practical empirical science does that. Walk the
> halls. Find _any_ scientist at the coal face and ask. What planet are
> you from? Before your breath has finished the asking sentence you will
> be told you are not being scientific.


Perhaps but what's the problem being told non scientific by people who loss the scientific attitude in front of unsolved questions?

[Col]
This issue has been a subject of a long investigation. A scientific investigation into what it means to be 'scientific' in relation to the natural world. Natural science, natural scientists. I think a point of confusion between us may be that when I talk about science I mean the natural world. The one in which we appear to be embedded and of which we are constructed. I think you would agree there may be an infinity of abstract domains and their relationship to our domain is also a subject of scientific endeavor. However, when I am talking of science I mean the study of the domain we are in from within it.

I did a large historical survey and analysed it. Yes, there is a problem in natural scientists being unscientific. But it's not being scared off by unsolved problems. It’s that they dogmatically adhere to a definition of science that came about in the 1800s. It has been passed down over the last century like a frozen artifact of the golden age when philosophers and scientists were the same person. Now, mostly, they are not. As a result adequate review of the theory of science has simply not happened. The ghostly dogma is in the definition of 'scientific evidence'. It succeeded in staying that way simply through inattention.

I have been able to declare the worst phrase you can give a philosopher: 'category error' in the definition of science. I have already outlined it, but I'll state it a more obvious way:

It stems from Aristotle...embedded in the basic scientific method is that the described aspect of the natural world shall be experienced. If you can't experience it then you are not doing science (of the _natural_ world!!!). Or - you are being unscientific. All is well until you try and 'be scientific' about that part of the natural world that creates your experiences.

What happens?

"What is this visual field? What generates it? It seems to be in brain matter. Let's have a look...". You open up a brain. All you see is brain cells and the neural correlates of what you seek. "Oh NO! you declare. I can't experience the experiences of someone else's experiencing system! There's no 'objective view' to share. I can't do science! This is not science. Oh no, better stop unless someone tells me I'm being unscientific!"

So instead of being objective about an apparently paradoxical evidentiary process, science put it in an iron box with spikes in the inside and a label 'beware - career ending stuff lurks here' on it. And hid it in the 'metaphysics department' for the philosophers to play with. That way they could also jeer at philosophers.

There it resides to this day.


Everything else in our email-swap comes down to this aspect of the natural world. Dogma in one tiny little corner of science. It is a key to a door. Behind that door is the remaining 50% of the science of the natural world.

 I am saying they key to 'everything' is to investigate brain material and identify what class of universe could give rise to the experiential fields we use to describe the natural world. That we DEMAND are used in the process of doing science on pain of being unscientific, and then lock out of reach of science for no good reason.

To see how dogmatic this belief science has:

Go back..open up brain...Consider what the 'apparent lack of evidence' is telling you.

Is it evidence that phenomenal consciousness does not exist? No. Lack of evidence is not evidence of absence. That is the key category error made in the definition of science.

Is it evidence that proves we can't 'be scientific' about phenomenal consciousness? No. Yes. No. Yes. Well..only if you force science to adopt a dogmatic view of itself.

What you have in the evidentiary paradox is crucial evidence of how subjective experience works! The evidence provided is that when your observing system tries to see another observing systems observations it can't. Any further declarations (such as 'you therefore can't be scientific') are unfounded cultural preference only). Here is another slight disagreement from our original post:

>>
>> These are all unfounded ascrptions and have no evidenntiary basis
>> other than the reconfigured brain matter that results from a belief.

> Note that the "reconfigured brain matter" is also a belief.

Here you are most definitely mistaken. You do an fMRI before and after. The difference is the holding of the belief. That belief is something reported by the holder. The reporting of a belief in no way invokes the _contents_ (subject matter/intentionality) belief as an aspect of the natural world. The holding of the belief is an aspect of the natural world. Not the belief.

This class of situation - ascription - in relation to what 'being scientific' means has merely this level of real evidence and no other. It is also the entire set of evidence for your belief in 'comp'.


The mistake that has been made is to attribute more to the so called 'objective view'. There is no objective view. It is a virtual construct of brain material. To do corroborative science is to recreate multiple subjective views and compare them and then declare the study of the subjective view as unscientific when it underpins the whole of science?

To be 'scientific needs' rework. That is what I am doing. Upgrading science. It does not invalidate any empirical science done to date. It merely opens a door to a parallel descriptive realm where the first person is prime and the so called objective view is put in its proper place: a virtual construct provided by brain material. Understanding how brain material that makes use of the natural world to provide this virtual construct is the route to making predictions about brain structure and therefore an empirical science of subjective experience.

The net result? Formulate models of the universe innately inclusive of a capacity to provide subjective experience. That formulation, if accurate, should be able to make predictions of brain matter. If it can't, you are wasting your time - at least in respect of understanding the natural world.

That's the basics of the situation. We have the evidentiary system of science completely backwards. We insist on formulations based on the contents of our experience (ONE), not the existence of any experience at all (TWO). The real 'theory of everything' must a) naturally and obviously provide subjective experience and b) simultaneously explain how brain material provides our evidentiary basis - the one that gave rise to all our previous empirical science like f = MA, quantum mechanics etc. A very stringent requirement. Two models of the universe joined at the hip by phenomenal consciousness.

"You can lead a horse to water...."

Take a drink. Think about it. You can evangelise 'comp' until you turn blue. But unless you can explain brain material providing subjective experience = scientific evidence, it will remain a very nice abstract plaything and an unverifiable metaphysical theory.

I am trying to change science to that end.

You know the good thing about it? When we finally build machines with reconfigurable phenomenal consciousness: they will be able to go exploring theoretical domains like 'comp'. Take a holiday! Get a chip implant that allows you to visit the object 'red' or 'happiness'. :-)

Cheers,

Colin
Received on Thu Jul 28 2005 - 21:44:33 PDT