On reality of experience

(post to JCS-online @ 2011-04-26)

I give you some very simple logic of things I've written about in longer ways.

Take three statements:

A: "Everything is made from matter" => "Human beings are made from matter" ("everything" here is all that moves, "human beings" thus belong to everything)

B: "Human beings have experience" ("experience" here is cognitive experience, such as feelings, thoughts or hallucinations, but also all that is sensed - things projected to mental eye)

C: "Matter has experience" (could be read: some matter has experience)

Now:

A /\ B => C

not C => not A \/ not B

These are logic everyone can check.

A: Matter was once defined as what we can feel and touch; being materialist then meant that there are no invisible fields or parallel worlds. Later, matter started to involve invisible fields and other things, until it now covers everything known and unknown that moves (to "move" is to change as meant here, thus mathematical truth or eternal laws themselves are not matter; curvature of spacetime is connected to matter and expressed through it, so it's about matter if we be a bit general). This is clear that human beings are made from matter, even if we might have missed some forms of matter or some ways of matter; also the deeper soul can be eternal - it probably is, the deeper soul is eternal laws.

B: "Human beings have experience". Now there are many, who say it's not so - in fact, philosophers of all times have almost generally agreed that this is the only truth what we can know for sure: I have some experience. Experience is direct, it's almost as a priory knowledge. Some more coherency-seeking physicalists have agreed in not B as they want not C and can't agree not A, so they argue for not B, but let's say that's nonsense. More clever ones follow a science fiction author in saying that B comes from "mathematical complexity", which is formed from matter, but let's be clear that if this kind of mathematical complexity resolves into feelings, then first it's not math, because in math you can't conclude any feeling or experience from any set of theorems about matter and it's states, but even if it was math or is some "higher math" we haven't reached yet, it's still a cosmological principle - then it's just another way to say that certain patterns in matter are experiences. And then, follows, human beings have experience.

C: "Matter has experience" is what is generally not believed by "real scientists" and "smarter" ones say that thus, "human beings have experience" is also false. This is a proven fact that "A /\ not C => not B" and I have read quite strong proof from physicist (written in non-mathematical language), but from this proof it trivially follows that "B => C \/ not A" and then, "B /\ A => C". Estonian proof I refer to is here: http://www.kirikiri.ee/article.php3?id_article=124 ..he tries to prove that human beings have no experience and that experience is myth. But for me it was the last stone to say that matter has experience.

What I see as line, how the wrong conclusion was made:

1. "Everything is made from matter" was an answer to claims about many invisible entities, like ghosts. Many top scientists fought for that to get rid of church, which had started to kill innocent people etc. So it became messed up with articles about physics, chemistry and other cutting-edge science texts and was told by many, who had serious authority as creators of the new kind of technologies and methods. Matter was meant to be physical.

2. "There is no soul" seemed to be simple claim, which simplified human beings. It was simple, because if you believe only in matter everywhere it's simpler to believe that human beings are "the same".

3. Now, proving that human beings are "the same", the claim was made that you can explain activities of them just by looking causal connections and as those causal connections are all that happens, you can look rules of them without messing this up with subjective language of feelings. This was not meant to be truth about reality, but it was part of scientific method and therefore did not need proof of correctness (as it didn't state anything), but only strong arguments of it being effective method for research. This is effective to not try to explain movements of matter as humanly feelings, but to state objectively what is seen and to express it mathematically. We can express patterns of feelings mathematically, talking about form, and foresee future feelings through that - and by giving any feeling a mathematical name, we do not need to talk about feelings when we search for strict patterns. This kind of language won't express what matter is, but only what it does in terms of the same matter. It's not the essence, it's the form.

4. Then, after professionally starting to think only in terms of movement, it became common bias of labor workers to start thinking in terms of method. As a foundational base of their thinking, it did not need a proof of also being true - it suddenly became "simple" for any experienced labor worker, even if it's not a natural first-guess (which would be simple for any other human); this is not the evolutionary truth programmed into us to survive - it's manmade truth about how to programm our minds to get into objective research.

5. The bias strengthened by getting into textbooks and scientific works until noone simply doubted it being true.

6. Scientists started to simulate scientific method to show it's validity, especially using claims of simplicity and guess that other sides have no proofs that their thoughts are invalid. This is especially simple, because when method of philosophy and math is strong proof, method of physics is weak proof or inductive proof - this is philosophical truth that we have experience. This is proof of physics that "this is simpler to explain real events like that" and when used for something already explained by philosophers (that we have feelings, which is absolutely sure and proven) to explain it away by weak argumentation of "simplicity", "coherence of theory" etc. (where assumption of feelings does not break any coherence, it just adds some elements, which are not included in theory because of research method of that science, so the "coherence" is rather "completeness" - this is not there as it would break the completeness of our theory); it's obviously out-of-scope topic for physicians. Then, if we say that feelings are there, then they must be other way to explain some or all movements of matter in another language, which more closely connects to essence of matter.