The model of physics itself has changed multiple times to explain physics, at great reservation mind you. Relativity required massive changes in thinking to what we considered physically possible, as did quantum physics (things can just happen by chance without further reason, whaaat?)
And in the grand scheme of things, our quest for knowledge has had a very very short timespan. Insisting that the mode of thought that has worked for a few hundred years must persist to eternity is not wise.
Assuming the standard model of physics will explain consciousness without any fundamental alternations is just as big of an assumption as the assumption that there is more to the standard model of physics. No different than having assumed newtonian physics could have explained relativity.
As far as I can see, current understanding of physics has no conceivable way of explaining how a system suddenly becomes capable of experiencing feeling.
And neither is it scientific to deny what is so readily observable to every human being.
Lastly, it would seem that you agree that our model of physics is in itself an illusion, within the framework of our conscious experience. On one hand it would appear you say, our conscious experience of reality is the sole way to find truth, and the other, that our conscious experience is flawed and experience of qualia can be discarded entirely. If we are to say "it only appears that you feel pain", how is this different than to say "it only appears that objects move"?
The proposal here is that your flawed, conscious experience can produce a truth of an "external" reality, whose laws are capable of forming the vary thing which is producing this flawed perception.
> The model of physics itself has changed multiple times to explain physics, at great reservation mind you. Relativity required massive changes in thinking to what we considered physically possible, as did quantum physics (things can just happen by chance without further reason, whaaat?)
That's not what this is about. Science consists only of third-person objective facts. There is no "mind" in particles, no notion of subjectivity, so if we just accept that our minds truly have subjective first-person facts, then this is fundamentally at odds with the very core of materialist science. Every time this has happened in history a materialist explanation has been found, as with vitalism. Maybe it won't happen this time, but odds aren't good.
> On one hand it would appear you say, our conscious experience of reality is the sole way to find truth, and the other, that our conscious experience is flawed and experience of qualia can be discarded entirely.
Your mistaken assumption is that true conscious experience of reality is necessary to this process. I'd argue that it's not, that perception is all that is needed. "Experience" and "perception" are different.
Im not sure how you assign probability to finding truths of this manner. Again in the grand scheme of things, few hundred years is not very long. I think itd be foolish to believe the world as we see it will be parallel as we see it in a million or even a thousand years from now. Do fundmenetal truths fall on some kind of probability distribution? Its as if we were discussing NP class problems, and we had previously found a method to solve polynomial problems to great success and we said "the odds of this being solveable within this framework is very high"
Second, what you consider to be "materialist" is entirely subjective which can and has been amended. We readily accept force/energy and now randomness as part of material science. Why are these things not seen as mystic and immaterial forces of life? No matter deep you go, you have to accept some fundamental, unknown truths. And if one cannot explain onserved phenomena, it is only logical to have to add onto a model. The important part of science is whether we have measureable, meaningful theories that can make accurate predictions, not whether or not our fundamental blocks are "material" or not.
Lastly, what distinction do you make between experience and perception exactly? Im not saying they are the same, but it would be helpful to know how you're meaning these terms. My take is that whatever you consider "true" reality is out of bounds. By all prgramatic approaches we can only discover what is true to our minds. Whatever test you conduct, we can only verify the results within the framework of our mind. The only "universal" (in quotes as one can imagine the existence of some other perceptron that works entirely differently) what we all agree to be verfiable.
> Im not sure how you assign probability to finding truths of this manner. Again in the grand scheme of things, few hundred years is not very
We're not talking a few hundred years, we're talking a few thousand at least. Human specialness rarely survives serious inquiry. There are no divine kings or priests, humans are not created in God's image, we're just another animal, and other animals have similar cognitive functions as we do. All of these and more were believed at one time or another, but have no factual basis.
> Second, what you consider to be "materialist" is entirely subjective which can and has been amended. We readily accept force/energy and now randomness as part of material science.
Materialism hasn't really changed, it's always and continues to be the position that all that we perceive is made of some common, physical substance governed by natural laws. That our understanding of how this works evolves doesn't change anything.
> And if one cannot explain onserved phenomena, it is only logical to have to add onto a model.
The suggestion that we cannot explain observed phenomena is exactly the point in contention. Neuroscience has barely gotten started, and the cracks in mystical properties of consciousness are practically chasms already. There is simply no basis for claiming that we need to extend our ontology to account for the mind.
> Lastly, what distinction do you make between experience and perception exactly?
Machine perception is a thing, machine experience is not. We too are machines with some extra capabilities, and one of them must produce the belief of experience as a side-effect. The conclusion is based on an illusion though, it's only perception and information processing in the end.
I don't think anybody is saying something will persist for eternity. The brain is made of 200bn neurons and something like a hundred trillion connections. That's the most complicated structure in the universe. It is reasonable to assume that there is no new physics involved unless and until we've figured out how it all fits together and still can't work out where the illusion of qualia is coming from. Otherwise you might as well say there's a supernatural soul. Positing a new ingredient without evidence is just fantasy.
Objects don't move, their wavefunctions evolve according to the Schrödinger equation, and in the classical limit where the objects are large enough and the fields they interact with are smooth enough, they appear to follow Newton's laws.
And in the grand scheme of things, our quest for knowledge has had a very very short timespan. Insisting that the mode of thought that has worked for a few hundred years must persist to eternity is not wise.
Assuming the standard model of physics will explain consciousness without any fundamental alternations is just as big of an assumption as the assumption that there is more to the standard model of physics. No different than having assumed newtonian physics could have explained relativity.
As far as I can see, current understanding of physics has no conceivable way of explaining how a system suddenly becomes capable of experiencing feeling.
And neither is it scientific to deny what is so readily observable to every human being.
Lastly, it would seem that you agree that our model of physics is in itself an illusion, within the framework of our conscious experience. On one hand it would appear you say, our conscious experience of reality is the sole way to find truth, and the other, that our conscious experience is flawed and experience of qualia can be discarded entirely. If we are to say "it only appears that you feel pain", how is this different than to say "it only appears that objects move"?
The proposal here is that your flawed, conscious experience can produce a truth of an "external" reality, whose laws are capable of forming the vary thing which is producing this flawed perception.