What is it like to be a bat?

Can we just all admit there has basically been no real progress made to the mind-body problem. They all rest on metaphysical axioms of which no one has any proof of. Physicalism is about as plausible as solipsism.

Exhibit a

> Nagel begins by assuming that "conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon" present in many animals (particularly mammals), even though it is "difficult to say [...] what provides evidence of it".

Much of the mind-body problem comes from Descartes, who assumed that physical reality was nothing more than a bunch of particles bouncing around. Given that the mind cannot be reduced to this (whatever my experiences are, they are different from particles bouncing around), then the mind must be something utterly unlike everything else in reality. Thus Descartes posits that the mind is one thing and the body another (substance dualism).

If one drops the assumption that physical reality is nothing more than a bunch of particles, the mind stops being so utterly weird and unique, and the mind-body problem is more tractable. Pre-17th century, philosophers weren't so troubled by it.

> Given that the mind cannot be reduced to this (whatever my experiences are, they are different from particles bouncing around)

Why cannot it?

Several reasons. One is that my experience of looking at a tree is one thing, but the neurological firing that takes place in my brain when I look at a tree is another. They are not the same. If you can reduce your experience of looking at a tree to neurons firing, then you are not really looking at a tree, and absurdity results.

Another is that the propositions "the thought 2+2=4 is correct" and "the thought 2+2=5 is wrong" can only be true with regard to the content of a thought. If thought can be reduced to neurons firing, then describing a thought as correct or wrong is absurd. Since this is not the case, it must be impossible to reduce thought to neurons firing.

(Btw, the first paragraph of my previous comment is not my position. I am giving a three-sentence summary of Descartes' contribution to the mind-body problem.)

I don't follow the reasoning at all. Why is human experience not the neurological firing? Why can't a thought be reduced to neurons firing, what about that would make it absurd?

I promise I'm not being dense or rhetorical, I truly don't understand that line of thought.

It seems to me like begging the question, almost like saying "experience cannot be this, because it'd be absurd, because it cannot be this."

Here's something I posted a while ago, I'm copying and pasting with a few slight edits:

It is wrong to claim that brain states (neurons firing) are the same as mental states (thoughts). There are several reasons for this. One is that reducing thoughts to brain states means a thought cannot be correct or incorrect. For example, one series of mental states leads to the thought "2+2=4"; another series leads to the thought "2+2=5". The correctness of the former and the wrongness of the latter refers only to the thought's content, not the physical brain state. If thoughts are nothing more than brain states, it's meaningless to say that one thought is correct -- that is to say, it's a thought that conforms to reality -- and that the other is incorrect. A particular state of neurons and chemicals cannot per se be incorrect or incorrect. If one thought is right (about reality) and another thought is wrong (not about reality), then there must be aspects of thought that are distinct from the physical state of the brain.

If it's meaningless to say that one thought is correct and another is incorrect, then of course nothing we think or say has any connection to reality. Hence the existence of this disagreement, along with the belief that one of us is right and the other wrong, presupposes that the physicalist position is wrong.

There's a leap you're making I cannot follow.

I agree with this: the physical configuration of neurons, their firings, the atoms that make them, etc, cannot be "right" or "wrong". This wouldn't make sense in reality; it either is or isn't, and "right" or "wrong" are human values. The universe is neither right nor wrong, it just is.

What about the thoughts those neuron firings mean to us? Well, a good argument can be made that they are also not "right" or "wrong" in isolation, they are just phenomena. Trivially, a thought of "2+2=4" is neither right nor wrong, it's only other thoughts that consider it "right" or "wrong" (often with additional context). So the values themselves can be a physical manifestation.

So it seems to me your problem can be resolved like this: in response to a physical configuration we call a "thought", other "thoughts" can be formed in physical configurations we call "right" or "wrong".

The qualities of "right" or "wrong" only exist as physical configurations in the minds of humans.

And voila! There's no incompatibility between the physical world and thoughts, emotions, "right" or "wrong".

I will try to respond later, but briefly:

> "right" or "wrong" are human values

Would 2+2=4 be correct, and 2+2=5 be incorrect, only if there were a human being to say so?