On 1/20/2015 4:25 AM, David Nyman wrote:
On 20 January 2015 at 05:42, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
What would that mean? If neuroscientists of the future develop brain
monitoring
instrumentation and software such that they scan watch processes in your
brain and
then say correctly, "You were seeing red and it reminded you of a dress
your late
grandmother wore and made you sad." would you accept that as "entirely
observable"?
Well, I would of course accept that what had been observed was entirely observable! It
would mean that the public component of the public-private 'entanglement' - the pattern
of neurological activity correlated with specific conscious states - had indeed been
brought under observation. But I wouldn't thereby be forced to accept that the
neuroscientists had direct access to my private state of mind in the same sense as I do
myself.
The relevant distinction is that between the result of observation, on the one hand, and
the mode of observation, on the other. The latter entails two 'entangled' components, of
which only one can be made 'public'. Despite its absence from the public sphere, the
private part cannot in fact be disregarded in any consideration of 'observation' since
it is an ineliminable component of the observers' own mode of observation!
For the very reason that it is necessarily private I think the 'hard' problem will be
regarded as solved, as solved as it can be, when one can read off veridical emotions,
thoughts, perceptions from brain scans.
Brent
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