@paulhanke,
It seems to me that science is the modelling of the world that has to agree with instrumentally measured cause and the subsequent instrumentally measured effect. The problem re consciousness is that as yet we have no instrumental measure of it. We rely on anectdotal evidence, just as we rely a great deal on the anectdotal measure of symptoms in medicine generally. This is a scientific annoyance and a philosophers delight
Maybe we should consider the possibility of instrumentally measuring consciousness. Presumably it would concur with honest anectdotal evidence? Well actually not necessarily. It may be that our visual cortex for example is receiving one thing, but anectdotally we honestly report something else. In what sense could we distinguish in such an example from consciousness and mind?
Suppose our instruments were capable of not only measuring sensory input, but also measuring brain function to the extent that we could scientifically predict what the person thought they saw. This would mean that we could map not only the visual cortex and its data, but also map the brain interpretation and reformed data. eg the visual cortex recieves a muddle of leaves and this triggers the brain map of a cat that the brain subsequently reports as what it saw. Further the brain trigger of the fear of cats is measurable in effect and thus this is scientifically determined as the cause of the cat interpretation over actual leaf perception. and so on...
now i don't personally believe this will ever be possible except perhaps in a simple and hit and miss way. But suppose it was. Does it follow from this that since the mapping of the function of brain predicts what is consciously percieved and even what is anectdotally reported, that what we recognise as consciousness must exist in all forms of matter function?
In other words, such a mapping of brain function to perfect predictability of anectdotal evidence of experience does not reveal any seperate 'cause' for a new fundamental concept of consciousness. It just instrumentally measures the sequences of causes and effects within the brain, creates a functional model that agrees and then predicts what the subject will say. The latter means also a prediction as to whether the subject will say anything, which in turn explains
why someone would speak or not, what they would say, whether it was what they thought they saw and also compare to what they actually saw. At no point in this concieved mapping of brain function with its predictability would the concept of consciousness as a new physical concept be necessary. BUT consciousness is anectdotally reported by the subject and the brain model would predict where and why this occurs in all brains.
Thus, that area of the model that predicts the anectdotal evidence of consciousness would be associating consciousness with that area of brain function. But there is no new force or matter here. Its just a map of interacting matter. So would science in such a situation have to conclude that consciousness arises from physical function? And if so, since the experience of consciousness adds nothing to the predictive power of the scientific model of the brain, it follows that all matter function must have consciousness under a complete scientific theory?
If not, then such a science must conclude that only certain types of matter arrays can give rise to consciousness while also maintaining that the experience of consciousness is utterly irrelevant as a component of the model of the brain. (remember i am distinguishing between the brain model and its prediction and mapping of consciousness which is relevant re modelling and prediction, with the actual subjective experience of it.) The experience of consciousness is thus seen from such a scientific point of view as both transcendental (outside scientific need for modelling the world, as compared to gravity say) and an utterly useless by product of matter function. Which isn't so different from attributing some kind of experiential consciousness to all matter function, since it would be totally irrelevant to the fundamentals that form that scientific model of the world anyway.
Personally i see consciousness as a part of the life force which to me is as useful to understanding the world as gravity. Is it possible that science will build models of the brain whereby consciousness sits alongside gravity and electricity as universal forces? And if so ..... so what! My experience of it cannot be matched by a variable in a scientific model
In the end the form of a scientific theory is a text. What kind of text can be used to predict the reading of it?
