Natural science promises a complete story of the world. No "element of reality" should be missing from the mathematical formalism of physics, i.e. relativistic quantum field theory or its more speculative extensions. The Standard Model is extraordinarily well tested. Within its conceptual framework, consciousness would seem not only causally impotent but physically impossible. Hence the "Explanatory Gap" and the Hard Problem of consciousness.
In recent years, a minority of researchers have proposed that the Hard Problem may be an artefact of materialist metaphysics. Contra Kant, but following Schopenhauer, Russell, Lockwood, Strawson, et al., the new idealists conjecture that the phenomenology of one's mind reveals the intrinsic nature of the physical - the elusive "fire" in the equations about which physics is silent. Our ordinary presupposition that the intrinsic character of the physical is devoid of phenomenal properties is an additional metaphysical assumption. This is hugely plausible, for sure, but not a scientific discovery. Perhaps most tellingly, the only part of the "fire" in the equations to which one ever enjoys direct access, i.e. one's own consciousness, discloses phenomenal properties that are inconsistent with a materialist ontology.
Untestability cuts both ways. Any conjecture that the world's fundamental quantum fields - and, presumably, fundamental macroscopic quantum phenomena such as superconductors or superfluid helium - are intrinsically experiential would seem unfalsifiable too: just speculative metaphysics.
Rather surprisingly, we shall see this isn't the case.
IEET Contributor Adam Ford and IEET Fellow David Pearce talk about the difference between Materialism, Physicalism and Strawsonian Physicalism. Does reductive physicalism entail monistic idealism? A testable conjecture about the nature of the physical world?
Natural science promises a complete story of the world. No "element of reality" should be missing from the mathematical formalism of physics, i.e. relativistic quantum field theory or its more speculative extensions. The Standard Model is extraordinarily well tested. Within its conceptual framework, consciousness would seem not only causally impotent but physically impossible. Hence the "Explanatory Gap" and the Hard Problem of consciousness.
In recent years, a minority of researchers have proposed that the Hard Problem may be an artefact of materialist metaphysics. Contra Kant, but following Schopenhauer, Russell, Lockwood, Strawson, et al., the new idealists conjecture that the phenomenology of one's mind reveals the intrinsic nature of the physical - the elusive "fire" in the equations about which physics is silent. Our ordinary presupposition that the intrinsic character of the physical is devoid of phenomenal properties is an additional metaphysical assumption. This is hugely plausible, for sure, but not a scientific discovery. Perhaps most tellingly, the only part of the "fire" in the equations to which one ever enjoys direct access, i.e. one's own consciousness, discloses phenomenal properties that are inconsistent with a materialist ontology.
Untestability cuts both ways. Any conjecture that the world's fundamental quantum fields - and, presumably, fundamental macroscopic quantum phenomena such as superconductors or superfluid helium - are intrinsically experiential would seem unfalsifiable too: just speculative metaphysics.
Rather surprisingly, we shall see this isn't the case.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7tyNw4Exek