[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[Ben Zaiboc]

On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 8:49 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat 
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> 
wrote:

    /> I mean it should be possible to point to a specific thing in a
    specific beings brain and say that is what's causing their experience/


 > I could be a zombie. How could you ever know for certain that I'm 
even having an experience much less point to a specific thing in my 
brain and say that is the cause of it?

    > or, rather, that's what 'their experience' *is*


 > You could point to a specific part of my brain and say that is what 
caused me to behave in a certain way, but behavior is not qualia. You 
are in the same position that Evolution was in when it produced the 
human race; you can not directly detect qualia in others, you can only 
hypothesize about it from their behavior.


OK, in that case, what use is the word and concept "Qualia"? Does it add 
anything at all to our understanding of ourselves? It would seem not.

I don't believe in zombies. If memory serves, there's a logical argument 
by someone or other to prove they can't exist, I don't remember who 
though. Anyway, the concept seems just daft. If anyone could be a 
zombie, we'd all be zombies. I'm not, though, so I reckon no-one is. You 
can probably articulate the evolutionary argument for this better than I 
can.

-- 
Ben Zaiboc

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