Wednesday, 3 November 2021
In any computationalist or materialist, or more generally anti-idealist theory of consciousness there is a categorical barrier between the substrate, the nuts and bolts under the bonnet, or electrochemical sloshings in the wet brain, and the experiencing that is produced. You might get to a point of perfect theoretical understanding of the physical computations but you can never experience them as they go since there is simply no experience in these interacting bits of stuff. But the stuff here is the stuff of theory, which means that it consists of natural kinds of things (molecules etc.) interacting according to fixed rules (laws of physics etc.) - and these kinds and rules are already products of the mind, having the sort of ideality ascribed to appearances. So their very non-experience-ability is itself a category of mind, in fact a certain kind of experience. If you were able to watch the brain processes of your very watching as it was happening you'd experience the thrill of the sublime in the adamantine heterogeneity to experience of the elements constructing experience, and such would be neither in nor out of experience. Materialism etc., has no more meaning than that.
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