haig comments on Does functionalism imply dualism? - Less Wrong

-1 Post author: Mitchell_Porter 31 January 2012 03:43AM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 31 January 2012 05:20:50AM 1 point [-]

Thank you for producing a perfect example of what I called the "incomplete chain of thought"! What I called "subjective space" and "physical space", you have called "map" and "territory". This thing you call a "map", conscious experience, is part of the "territory" - part of reality - which itself is supposed to be coextensive with physics. So locating colors on the map doesn't get them off the territory. If everything real is made of physics, you still must either explain how certain patterns of neuronal excitations are actually green, or you must assert that nothing is actually green at any level of reality.

Comment author: haig 31 July 2012 07:06:13PM 0 points [-]

"If everything real is made of physics, you still must either explain how certain patterns of neuronal excitations are actually green, or you must assert that nothing is actually green at any level of reality."

This is a 'why' question, not a 'how' question, and though some 'why' questions may not be amenable to deeper explanations, 'how' questions are always solvable by science. Explaining how neuronal patterns generate systems with subjective experiences of green is a straightforward, though complex, scientific problem. One day we may understand this so well that we could engineer quales on demand, or create new types of never before seen quales according to some transformation rules. However, explaining 'why' such arrangements of matter should possess such interiority or subjectivity is, I think at least based on everything we currently know, unanswerable.