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that seems to not have any basis in the physical at all and yet it exists
If it has no basis in physical reality, how would you detect, measure or quantify it? On what basis would you prove its existence?
Tune your consciousness into the vibrations. Duh.
I mean, if spontaneously every person on Earth heard a voice in their head say "I'm God and I love all of you, be nice to each other" in their own languages, but no physical evidence of the event could be found, that could count.
Possibly. Let's revisit the issue if that ever comes to pass.
Except that's a pretty material event. If thing A interacts with thing B there is a material thing happening between them, which can immediately be measured and quantified.
It wouldn't help that such an event happens only once, but you'll still have 8 billion data points to draw a conclusion from.
Assuming that the universe actually exists outside ourselves and that our perceptions can be explained by some set of rules (that we call "physics") seem like necessary axioms to get anywhere in science. You could reject those assumptions, but then I don't see much of a compelling reason to accept anything beyond solipsism if you don't believe in reality.
That said, I'm not sure that physics will ever be able to provide a good, complete explanation of qualia.
What about biology? What if one day a neurologist finds the brain part that creates the illusion you're not just a brain?
Of course it can. We are biological machines. Not every machine is perfect copy of another. Differences in the organs that perceive the world will lead to subjective experiences. There's no "mystery".
I never understood the point of “qualia” and “p-zombies”. To act exactly as a human does, you need the internal voice that is among your motivating factors to act like you do.
Consider being shown a video feed of people talking on your monitor. You're told that the feed is being live streamed -- but in fact it's actually a recording, and everyone whose behavior you're observing actually died a week ago. If you want to know what's really going on, how would you tell the difference between a live stream and a recording with just the video feed on the monitor? Going further, how would you tell the difference between a recording of actual people and a really good generative AI clip? If all you have is the video feed without access to the source, it seems impossible to distinguish those cases -- but there really are different things going on in all three scenarios.
p-zombies are a thought experiment along those lines. All we have are observations of someone's behavior; how can we tell if that person really has subjective experience? An LLM can claim it has the same subjective experiences as us, but the mechanisms by which it produces those claims are very different to how a human being does it and likely do not include anything remotely similar to our experience of colors, taste, etc. even if they claim they do...
Hope that helps a bit.
Thanks, I get all that. I'm just saying that if something really observably behaves like a human when interacted with – complete with behavior that's consistent with an internal world model, long term planning, and so on – that's a sapient real being in my book.
That's my point – if something is an “imitation” good enough that it behaves like the actual thing, is it still only an imitation, or is that just prejudice?
Of course if something is just an inferior knock-off, that's something else.
So the thing is, like other commenters have said, you're asking metaphysics things through the prism of science, which does not work because by nature, science uses the (mostly) objective scientific method, while metaphysics is based on subjective assessments.
You have to separate the physical, material universe as being in the domain of what can be known, from the rest, which can not be, and never will. This does not mean it doesn't exist, just that it can never be studied or proved in any way, so anyone can believe what they wish about it without leaving rationality (as long as the belief does not imply things concerning the material universe)
We do not have enough evidence to conclude that subjective experience will never be objectively measurable, sufficiently advanced neuroscience absolutely could reach a point where every aspect of human experience could be measured observed and compared. We almost certainly won't live to see it though.
Not sure what you are talking about. Science isn’t philosophy or religion, you can’t make choices what’s true or isn’t. A fact is a fact.
Any reason to doubt physicalism?
Describe "doubt" in purely physical terms.
"Has anyone found a viable alternative to falsifiable hypotheses?"
I think it is possible, logically at least, to have gods, free will and souls even if everything were physical matter, unless you define those terms specifically to be metaphysical but then its like a True Scotsman fallacy.
Physicalism might be the most viable, but that does not mean its viable enough. There are huge holes - we have no explanation for consciousness, sentience, free will, physics still doesn't explain everything physical, and quantum mechanics is such a weird aberration of physical matter I am tempted to not call it that.
However, nothing beats the scientific method for truth finding at the moment. And, at the moment, the scientific method is content with only giving us physical results.
Any reason to doubt physicalism? Is there anything in science that says “Huh well that seems to not have any basis in the physical at all and yet it exists”
If it had no basis in the physical, then what would it mean to say that it "exists?" How you define "existence" is a very big philosophical question. Excuse me while I nerd the fuck out about something.
Physics tells us that the observable universe is 93 billion light years in diameter. However, we can sometimes observe objects leaving the observable universe. This is because of complicated physics reasons:
Physical space is expanding with time. Everything is getting farther apart from everything else, and the more distance there is between two points, the faster the space in between them is expanding. At a sufficiently large distance, the rate at which the distance between the two points is increasing, is faster than the speed of light. Neither point is actually moving faster than the speed of light, it's only the space between them that is expanding. This might be hard to understand, but think of it as if you drew two dots on a balloon and then inflated it.
Once an object gets far enough away from us that the space between is expanding faster than the speed of light, it becomes impossible for us to make any further observations about that thing. This is actually what defines the bounds of "the observable universe."
So, what happens to objects that leave the observable universe? Strictly speaking, it's impossible to say. Intuitively, we would expect that they're still there doing their thing and obeying the same physical laws as when we could observe them. But, if you told me that the stars simply vanish, or that they magically transform into butterflies as soon as they leave, there's no evidence that anyone could ever produce that would falsify that belief, because, by definition, there is no way to observe what happens outside of the observable universe. If we are defining what exists based on what is physically observable, then it follows that things outside the observable universe do not exist, even if it really seems like they should.
My conclusion from this line of thought is that existence is a relational property. I am not prepared to reject the idea that a thing has to be in some way observable in order to exist, but in that case, nothing can exist in isolation. Because for a thing to be observable means that there must exist a being which could observe it. This could be said to contradict physicalism, because physicalism would say that the material world exists regardless of our senses. I would say that the physical world only exists so long as there are beings capable of sensing it, and, should all sentient beings ever become extinct, the physical world would no longer exist in any meaningful sense.
I think the main problem with this sort of logic is that it presumes that what we see is reality. This isn't necessarily true.
Evolution has shaped us to see that which is most important for our survival. If seeing things as they truly are would interfere with our evolutionary fitness, then our brains would filther that out. In fact, this seems very likely, evidence being the many illusions that can be used to fool our senses.
If this was the case, then physical objects may not exsist at all, they would just be an artifact of this filtering effect. Roland Hoffmann is a great resource for understanding this sort of theory.
I think the main problem with this sort of logic is that it presumes that what we see is reality. This isn’t necessarily true
What could possibly be considered more "real" than that which we can observe and experience?
I think the framing of questions like this assumes that there are certain “physical” things that follow one intrinsic set of laws, and certain other things that follow a fundamentally different, incommensurate set of laws.
But we don’t actually have direct knowledge of any intrinsic laws, physical or otherwise—the best we have are a set of purely provisional laws we’ve made up and regularly revise on the basis of cumulative evidence. And our method for revising these provisional laws requires that any new evidence that contradicts a law, invalidates it—provisional laws must apply to everything without exception. If we give ourselves the out that contradictory evidence can be attributed to “non-physical” causes, we can never invalidate anything nor update our models. So dualistic models are inherently unscientific—not because they’re wrong, but because starting with such assumptions is incompatible with the scientific method.
this seems more like metaphysics, or philosophy than actual science, this would be more appropiate in that discussion. you odnt want to mix religion into science.
Basically, there's a little wiggle room left in our current model of the universe, but not much, and absolutely nothing close to human-scale. Dualism is nowhere to be found - we can observe the mind breaking or operating physically - and Idealism better be indistinguishable from materialism to work.
I hear that “Oh actually the science is moving away from materialism” as well, but that seems to be more crystal talk as well.
Yep. The grain of truth here is that materials at really small scale look quite different. At small scale, and in a specific, rigorously defined way. I don't want your crystals or dog THC, Karen.
“Huh well that seems to not have any basis in the physical at all and yet it exists”
Observed particles behave different.
No they don't. Or, maybe, depending on what you mean by "observed". A consciousness doesn't have to be involved in any case.
Double slit experiment?
"observing" means interacting with.
Of course interacting with something changes how it behaves. It's in the name.
Still works if the electron is a wave the whole time. You just get a detector and a physicist in multiple states as well. That's the multiple worlds interpretation.
There's a bunch of other models, like collapse existing, but being caused by size or gravity. Collapse by consciousness is a "possibility" really only pseudoscientists are selling. I think OP mentioned Chopra.
Umm, I thought there was the concept of antimatter. No?
In the sense philosophers mean it, that's still material. A visible chunk wouldn't even look or act different until you graze a few atoms and explode.
It also depends how you define physical matter.
If it's something you cam touch, then there definitely is, starting with neutrinos.
If you mean particles we know about, can describe and sort of understand, then there's dark matter, which is probably particles we don't know yet, but have several candidates we didn't manage to confirm or disprove yet. They can only interact by gravitational (and perhaps weak?) force.
If you mean something we know at least something solid about, there's dark energy, which isn't absolutely 100% certain that it exists, but is widely accepted.
If you mean something physics doesn't detect and try to explain, then obviously not.
How is Dark Matter non-physical?
In the sense that it isn't particles we know about, can describe and sort of understand, as I wrote. Plus you can't touch it. You didn't say what you mean by physical, so I tried 4 different definitions I thought you might mean.