/sci/ - Science & Math

The basic premise of physicalism or materialism is that all phenomenon should be explained by matter and its interactions. This can never be true as there are concepts that exist. There is math that remains without the existence of matter. What is an object but a representation in one's awareness? A scientific discovery involves playing around with these representations till you reach an object or phenomenon that is novel before publishing your results. But in this thread we solely look at the irrefutable existence of qualia and how consciousness cannot be in anyway material if we assume qualia to be 'real'.

To arrive at this bold conclusion I had to question everything I knew including my own self. I started with questioning my own existence. I asked if I exist. I didn't know the answer to that and so I assumed it to be true.

The hard problem of consciousness is hard not just to solve but to even explain to the materialist who only thinks about phenomenon in third person objectivity. Consciousness is the only phenomenon that is experienced in first person and so using third person methods upon it sounds kind of ridiculous but hey since we have so much success with the latter, let's try it.

The most fundamental property of consciousness is the 'self' or what the materialist would call the illusion of self. Most famous being Dan Dennett who uses the analogy of a conjuring trick to explain this: the brain tricks itself into thinking that it is real. This self is surrounded by objects which are representations in his brain. Collectively, the set of all objects in his experience and himself form the meta-representation we call consciousness that we are investigating.