Is expereince a mystery?

[Furrowed Brow]

I have brought this subject up before with little success illuminating what I mean let alone persuading anyone to my point of view. In debating morality with QED here it raises it’s ugly head again when.

Maybe I'm misreading you on "touchy feely", but I have great confidence that many others come to these arguments with an inappropriate sense of mystique in these areas.

Well I’m one of those who believes there is a mystery here that cannot be explained by physical theories. But whenever I get on to this subject on this forum or elsewhere it is plain I fail miserably to communicate what I mean by “experiential touchy feeliness”

So I’ll give it another crack.

It is possible to imagine some automata passing itself off as a human being, one whose brain when scanned seems to respond to stimuli in exactly the same way a human brain responds, except in this case the automata has no experience or “feel” of pain.

Pain is I think the easiest way to think about this. Hit this automata’s hand with a hammer and it says “ouch!” and withdraws its hand, whilst its brain and nervous system when scanned at the same time seems to fire in all the same places as a human brain, but there is no feeling of pain - only pain behaviour. (OK this introduced the problem of other minds. This this a separate problem that I do not want to pursue here. So please just assume all human do feel pain - except the one’s with known medical conditions).

I see no mystery in describing a biological system with a suitably complex nervous system displaying pain behaviour. The mystery is that there is a “feeling” at all. And I say the presence of “feeling” cannot be explained by physics or evolution because they are the wrong kinds of explanation to reach an understanding of how a physical bunch of atoms and forces comes to have “feeling”.

So a couple of questions:

1/ Is “feeling” a mystery that cannot be explained by physical processes?
2/ What does the automata require in order to feel?

[When answering that please make sure you are not answering the question “Can pain behaviour be explained by physical processes?” That is a different question.]

[spiritletter]

QED and Furrowed Brow, thank you for your wonderful responses. First of all, semantics: I do not have the knowledge of science that you do and would not presume to argue in that area. What I do know is the truth of poetry, which is, that metaphor can speak by indirection to those issues that have no exact scientific vocabulary. For example I use "spirit" metaphorically as that which makes life worth living and which creates a sense of wonder. In poetry, metaphor causes the mind to work in directions that it usually does not go. (I will concede that with many folks, e.g.; our president, logic is a direction in which his mind does not go).

Furrowed Brow: yes, Wittgenstein used those words, albeit in translation, at the end of the Tractatus.

[spiritletter]

Furrowed Brow: seeing things a new way may be the closest thing to salvation we have. That way, the mind always has an open door. We are able to escape our short sightedness and self destruct trajectory (e.g.; deadly belief system that has disaster at the end).

What I mean by the experience of newness is not quite the same thing as that experienced by the guy who has to have a new woman every six months, or a new car every year. Nor is it a matter of emotion, or "feel." The shift that takes place is almost permanent (but not quite). Newness in the sense that art provides can change one in a way that one can no longer be reductive or reactive. I think "profound" applies. Of course, not all art does this.

[Furrowed Brow]

Furrowed Brow: yes, Wittgenstein used those words, albeit in translation, at the end of the Tractatus.

Ah sorry. I was faking. Have you spotted my signature. It is Pears and McGuiness' translation.

[spiritletter]

Furrowed Brow: yes, Wittgenstein used those words, albeit in translation, at the end of the Tractatus.

Ah sorry. I was faking. Have you spotted my signature. It is Pears and McGuiness' translation.

Sorry, I'm not very observant!

Good place to begin a discussion of silence!

[QED]

What I do know is the truth of poetry, which is, that metaphor can speak by indirection to those issues that have no exact scientific vocabulary. For example I use "spirit" metaphorically as that which makes life worth living and which creates a sense of wonder. In poetry, metaphor causes the mind to work in directions that it usually does not go.

Picasso said something along the lines of "art is a lie that makes us realize the truth". This could take us into a debate about the truth of "things in themselves" and our perception of them -- but I think the experience is all that really counts in this debate. I tend to flinch when poetic issues are raised as I think people are not fully aware of the roots of poetry and the sensations it evokes in a strictly evolutionary sense. Anyone under the impression that we are communing with some supernatural, spiritual, world when enraptured by art, music, etc. should read John Barrow's delightful book "The Artful Universe" which contains many surprises and powerful insights into what is going on in our minds. To say that it would "sober-up" the spiritualist would be disrespectful, and hopelessly inadequate -- but it does, I think, show that we have a natural propensity to over-read mysticism in many of our personal experiences.

[spiritletter]

What I do know is the truth of poetry, which is, that metaphor can speak by indirection to those issues that have no exact scientific vocabulary. For example I use "spirit" metaphorically as that which makes life worth living and which creates a sense of wonder. In poetry, metaphor causes the mind to work in directions that it usually does not go.

Picasso said something along the lines of "art is a lie that makes us realize the truth". This could take us into a debate about the truth of "things in themselves" and our perception of them -- but I think the experience is all that really counts in this debate. I tend to flinch when poetic issues are raised as I think people are not fully aware of the roots of poetry and the sensations it evokes in a strictly evolutionary sense. Anyone under the impression that we are communing with some supernatural, spiritual, world when enraptured by art, music, etc. should read John Barrow's delightful book "The Artful Universe" which contains many surprises and powerful insights into what is going on in our minds. To say that it would "sober-up" the spiritualist would be disrespectful, and hopelessly inadequate -- but it does, I think, show that we have a natural propensity to over-read mysticism in many of our personal experiences.

I did not say that art is spirituality, merely that it is an analogue. I am not speaking of art as mysticism; rather, I am suggesting something more like paganism, animism, in which the material world is animated the same way people are -- this all within the context of experience. To see what is there in a way that has been jarred out of the numbness of conditioned response is another way of talking about it.

Why do I get more out of Picasso than I do Husserl on this subject? Perhaps it is because Picasso provides me with the experience, Husserl the idea.

By the way, thanks for the reading recommendation.