But in this era of neurology, one ought to be aware that thoughts are existent in the universe; they are identical to the operation of brains.
Really? I’m aware that physical outputs are totally determined by physical inputs. Neurology can tell us what sorts of physical causes give rise to what sorts of physical effects. We even have reason to believe that thoughts can be infered from the physical state of the brain in a lawlike fashion but this surely doesn’t let us infer that thoughts are IDENTICAL to the operation of brains. Merely that they always go together in the actual world.
In particular (as chalmers argues most convincingly) there is nothing contradictory about imagining we have the same physical state but totally different experiences, i.e., that it might feel like something totally different to be us. Worse we actually only know about the physical world through our experiences so you can’t simplify the problem purely down to a physical one. It’s actually the more complicated one of why the lawlike relationship between experiences and physical facts is set up right for us to have knowledge. It could have been that the physical world was all the same but we just had totally incoherent experiences.
Really? I’m aware that physical outputs are totally determined by physical inputs. Neurology can tell us what sorts of physical causes give rise to what sorts of physical effects. We even have reason to believe that thoughts can be infered from the physical state of the brain in a lawlike fashion but this surely doesn’t let us infer that thoughts are IDENTICAL to the operation of brains. Merely that they always go together in the actual world.
In particular (as chalmers argues most convincingly) there is nothing contradictory about imagining we have the same physical state but totally different experiences, i.e., that it might feel like something totally different to be us. Worse we actually only know about the physical world through our experiences so you can’t simplify the problem purely down to a physical one. It’s actually the more complicated one of why the lawlike relationship between experiences and physical facts is set up right for us to have knowledge. It could have been that the physical world was all the same but we just had totally incoherent experiences.