[J]ust a sketch proposal which demonstrates a promising avenue of research. A complete description would state what physical system in the brain is responsible for maintaining complex, “black box” quantum states [...]
What makes this avenue different from investigation of neuron configurations? New physical laws were never discovered after rejecting the old ones, saying that they couldn’t possibly work. All discoveries of new physics happened after conducting research using the old paradigm and realising anomalies. I mean, if there is something strangely quantum going on in the brains, we will not miss it even if we use the conventional approach.
Or said differently, I still have no idea what light quantumness can bring into the question.
Do you fear that P-zombies will infect you with an epiphenomenal virus and cause you to lose your subjective experience?
I fear talking about things that aren’t connected to observable facts. I fear that I might say a lot of grammatically correct sentences with no actual meaning.
What makes this avenue different from investigation of neuron configurations?
Not much. It’s still neuroscience, but it takes reports of subjective experience a bit more seriously, and tries to explain them by using existing physics, rather than treating them as meaningless or as magical and unexplainable.
I fear talking about thing that aren’t connected to observable facts. I fear that I might say a lot of grammatically correct sentences with no actual meaning.
Look, it’s not that complicated. I’m not the only person who talks about the Cartesian theater and claims that we can somehow feel brain algorithms from the inside. If subjective experience is not an observable fact to you, then your psychology is radically different from that of many other people.
I should have written objective observable facts or something like that. I can observe that I am not a P-zombie, however the beauty of the whole P-zombie business is that such observation is, sort of, insufficient. I would need to observe whether you are a P-zombie, and that I can’t.
It is perhaps more economical and Occam-razorish for me to expect that other people are no P-zombies either, but even if they were zombies, I would have no way to realise that, and this renders the zombie question quite uninteresting.
What makes this avenue different from investigation of neuron configurations? New physical laws were never discovered after rejecting the old ones, saying that they couldn’t possibly work. All discoveries of new physics happened after conducting research using the old paradigm and realising anomalies. I mean, if there is something strangely quantum going on in the brains, we will not miss it even if we use the conventional approach.
Or said differently, I still have no idea what light quantumness can bring into the question.
I fear talking about things that aren’t connected to observable facts. I fear that I might say a lot of grammatically correct sentences with no actual meaning.
Not much. It’s still neuroscience, but it takes reports of subjective experience a bit more seriously, and tries to explain them by using existing physics, rather than treating them as meaningless or as magical and unexplainable.
Look, it’s not that complicated. I’m not the only person who talks about the Cartesian theater and claims that we can somehow feel brain algorithms from the inside. If subjective experience is not an observable fact to you, then your psychology is radically different from that of many other people.
I should have written objective observable facts or something like that. I can observe that I am not a P-zombie, however the beauty of the whole P-zombie business is that such observation is, sort of, insufficient. I would need to observe whether you are a P-zombie, and that I can’t.
It is perhaps more economical and Occam-razorish for me to expect that other people are no P-zombies either, but even if they were zombies, I would have no way to realise that, and this renders the zombie question quite uninteresting.