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The data ultimately comes into the scientists brain through his senses. He has to read the device, read the meter... read the computer screen... or something. If consciousness does not exist, or consciousness is an illusion, how is science justified?

eg: I see the meter reading 3.2 Amps... but if I'm not "really" seeing 3.2Amps... or if I as a conscious being really don't exist, then how is the use of 3.2 Amps in any science justified?

Ameet Sharma
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    For the purpose of recording data, being able to transcribe the meter reading of 3.2 Amps into those characters, or their equally material equivalent, is all that matters. Consciousness and qualia need not attach. Indeed, a computer hooked to the meter can do that much, and even make various inferences with it and take action if it has speakers or robohands. This is why the hard problem of consciousness is hard. The content side that affects behavior is easily modeled by CTM and similar theories, and phenomenal side can be bypassed when modeling behavior. Hence the suspicions of "illusion". – Conifold Apr 14 '23 at 00:20
  • @Conifold, but at some point a human being uses his senses... to get data from the computer or whatever... Even if I grant, non-conscious systems can carry out science autonomously in the future... at least right now, human beings are involved in the scientific process... if the process by which they get data from their senses is illusory or mistaken... how can any human being trust anything gleamed from the senses... let alone scientific data? Why aren't the illusionists and eliminativists skeptics? – Ameet Sharma Apr 14 '23 at 00:39
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    What matters is that they correctly transcribe the meter's readings, carry inferences and act on them, all the surrounding touch/feel/grasp aura may well be an illusory concoction without affecting the behavior outcomes. And it is through behavior that science is formulated and tested. Just because a procedure has mythical attachments does not mean it cannot do the intended job. Our ancestors had fables about gods and spirits interweaved with their agricultural practices, they managed to grow wheat and feed themselves nonetheless. What is done matters, not what is imagined when it is done. – Conifold Apr 14 '23 at 00:53
  • "they correctly transcribe the meter's readings"... How will we ever know they correctly transcribed the data? In my mind there's a certain sequence of events going on... the scientist has a certain visual experience which includes seeing 3.2. And he then writes it down. But according to the illusionist/eliminativist something is mistaken about this sequence of events. There is no "experience", no "visual field" etc. "And it is through behavior that science is formulated and tested" I don't see how anything can be validated without sense data. – Ameet Sharma Apr 14 '23 at 01:21
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    According to most philosophers these days, not just eliminativists, sense data theories are obsolete, see [SEP](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sense-data/). That said, sense data is not qualia, and eliminativists can perfectly well accommodate your sequence of events, just without the "experiencing" part, which makes no difference anyway. The "experiencing" adds nothing to or subtracts from reliability of transcription, mistakes are possible either way and dealt with the same way, by rechecking. It was dualists who suggested philosophical zombies, and that is what eliminativists describe. – Conifold Apr 14 '23 at 01:35
  • "which makes no difference anyway"... on the eliminativist's view or on any view at all? – Ameet Sharma Apr 14 '23 at 01:52
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/145341/discussion-between-ameet-sharma-and-conifold). – Ameet Sharma Apr 14 '23 at 01:53
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    Physical work has a sense-based definition of force acting through a distance and thermodynamic work is done by a system on its surroundings if the outcome could have been the raising of a weight https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/thermorit/chapter/work/. Electrical work is volts times amps times time. I don't know how a philosophical zombie or man made measuring instrument could accurately take measurements without a conscious theory of such measures. How would an instrument indicate amps accurately if there is no conscious human to calibrate the instrument based on concepts and perceptions? – SystemTheory Apr 15 '23 at 22:18

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Medical Materialism

Claim: States of mind are organically conditioned.

William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience

https://youtu.be/OeTtFM4-g0g?t=216

Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are.

The Brain as Sub-Reality Generating Machine (SRGM)

Claim: States of mind are information-limited mental products of a natural process.

Steven W. Smith Ph.D. - The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness

http://www.dspguide.com/InnerLightTheory/paper.htm

The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness is based on an extraordinary assertion: human awareness exists within a manufactured reality, something that is distinct and separate from the external physical universe. Our ability to dream shows that the brain contains the neural machinery to accomplish this feat. Further, the nature of human perception provides strong evidence that this reality creating machine is activated whenever we are conscious, and that we can be aware of nothing but this artificial reality. When we are awake, this inner reality is constructed to coarsely represent the physical environment around us. When we dream, the reality creating machine is running amok, creating an inner reality that is chaotic and unrelated to the outside world. This mental architecture is consistent with evolutionary adaptation, the human perception of reality, and the nature of dreaming. Perhaps most important, it provides a solution to the mind-body paradox, where the first-person and third-person perspectives see the mind as fundamentally different things.

My comment:

Scientific theories are information-limited products of the ultimately mysterious process.

The Problem of Perception

Claim: States of mind include objects of perception that are thought to exist independent of such states of mind.

SEP Article

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

My first comment:

Scientific models do not exist independent of my conscious perceptions and concepts.

My second comment:

Sets of real vs. illusory elements do not exist independent of my perceptions and concepts.

Daniel Dennet's Eliminative Materialism?

Claim: Qualia are not real, and therefore, are user-illusions.

Daniel C. Dennet - A History of Qualia

As I have put it (Dennett 1991, 2016, 2017), consciousness is a user-illusion, a brilliant simplification of the noisy tumult of causation and interaction (at the molecular and cellular levels, for instance) that needs to be prudently and swiftly sampled in order for a brain to do its work of controlling a large complex body through a challenging, changing world. Consciousness is the brain’s user-illusion of itself, or more accurately, it is a whole manifold of user-illusions for various components of the brain that have various different jobs of discrimination and control to accomplish.

Based on my interpretation Dennet evokes scientific concepts, in what I call the context of self-other communication, but he does not appear to justify his use of scientific models or his motives for self-other communication in this paper. I suppose scientific concepts and modes of self-other communication can map to a concept of user-illusion but I don't know how I would decide what is real or illusion without human consciousness or what he calls user-illusion.

SystemTheory
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  • "I don't know how I would decide what is real or illusion without human consciousness or what he calls user-illusion." Yeah, not only that, but I can't understand what his sentences mean if he's saying consciousness does not exist. " a brilliant simplification of the noisy tumult of causation"... what do these adjectives mean if consciousness does not exist? brilliant, noisy? – Ameet Sharma Apr 16 '23 at 23:32
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    Philosophers who reject idealism (any of various systems of thought in which the objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind) in favor of materialism (the doctrine that nothing exists except matter, its movement, and modifications) drive me crazy! Matter in the Sun-earth physical system is the proximate source of life, and scientific knowledge is proximate knowledge, but beyond proximate knowledge is distal (speculative) knowledge, and beyond speculation is the source of mystery. The mind can recognize Matter, Science, the Great Mystery and the Living God! – SystemTheory Apr 17 '23 at 15:10
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    Dennet claims that qualia are illusory products of a real material process. Consider The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness p. 118 (page 4 http://www.dspguide.com/InnerLightTheory/innerlight8.pdf): "While there are only three physiological primary colors (red, green and blue), there are four psychological primary colors (red, green, blue, and yellow). ... [O]ur brains transform a mixture of red and green into something that is not a mixture of anything. Yellow is perceived as a pure color, not a composite." Dennet says red, green, blue, yellow are illusory products of a real material process. – SystemTheory Apr 17 '23 at 16:09