Comments on: Getting the Questions Right http://www.juliansanchez.com/2007/01/25/getting-the-questions-right/ Just another geek in the geek kingdom Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:38:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2 By: Julian Sanchez http://www.juliansanchez.com/2007/01/25/getting-the-questions-right/comment-page-1/#comment-1570 Julian Sanchez Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:39:32 +0000 http://juliansanchez.com/?p=1564#comment-1570 Well, I certainly don't want to be too hasty about saying what we can or can't know on the basis of future discoveries, given that (by definition) we don't know yet what we might learn. But there have been some pretty cogent arguments that, just conceptually, scientific facts are not the right kind of new information that would be helpful here. Google Tom Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" for an example of what I mean. Well, I certainly don’t want to be too hasty about saying what we can or can’t know on the basis of future discoveries, given that (by definition) we don’t know yet what we might learn. But there have been some pretty cogent arguments that, just conceptually, scientific facts are not the right kind of new information that would be helpful here. Google Tom Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” for an example of what I mean.

]]> By: tom http://www.juliansanchez.com/2007/01/25/getting-the-questions-right/comment-page-1/#comment-1569 tom Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:27:49 +0000 http://juliansanchez.com/?p=1564#comment-1569 <p><em>the fullest neurological explanation of the brain's strawberry detecting, seeking, and tasting processes will not get at why there's something it's like, from the inside to be this cluster of processes. This is not because there's necessarily something too magical or lofty about these questions for grubby science; they're just not scientific questions.</em></p> <p>This seems a bit defeatist to me. I think it's primarily ethical constraints that are (rightly) holding back progress on this front, not a fundamental metaphysical disconnect. I could be very wrong about that, but I think it's still possible that we'll one day have a scientific account of how deterministic processes give rise to phenomenal experience.</p> <p>The problem of coming up with a universal theory of subjective experience might be as intractable as all the zombie arguments suggest, but I don't think we can really say just yet. It's like cavemen arguing over whether whether we'll ever know what the sun's made of on the day after they discovered fire.</p> the fullest neurological explanation of the brain’s strawberry detecting, seeking, and tasting processes will not get at why there’s something it’s like, from the inside to be this cluster of processes. This is not because there’s necessarily something too magical or lofty about these questions for grubby science; they’re just not scientific questions.

This seems a bit defeatist to me. I think it’s primarily ethical constraints that are (rightly) holding back progress on this front, not a fundamental metaphysical disconnect. I could be very wrong about that, but I think it’s still possible that we’ll one day have a scientific account of how deterministic processes give rise to phenomenal experience.

The problem of coming up with a universal theory of subjective experience might be as intractable as all the zombie arguments suggest, but I don’t think we can really say just yet. It’s like cavemen arguing over whether whether we’ll ever know what the sun’s made of on the day after they discovered fire.

]]>