"Why we need a scientific revolution."

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HERE’S THE STORY PREMISE: A guy named Brian is found dead on a service road, and an autopsy reveals he has no brain. What’s more, there’s no sign it has been…taken out. But how could he have lived without a brain?

The authorities don’t think it’s possible, so they decide not to investigate the case. Brian couldn’t have been murdered, after all, if he was never alive.

The main character, MONICA, is a nosy neighbor who agrees with ‘the experts’—whatever they say must be true, right?

Her son, ALEX, disagrees. He’s a philosophy student who blogs about the case, and what you’re about to read is one of his blog posts. Alex’s views are somewhat my own, but he focuses on the intrinsic, private nature of mind, which is too Cartesian for me. (I’m sure I’ll blog about that someday.)

There are other characters, of course, but this is more than enough to get started.

• FEEL FREE TO MAKE THINGS UP or write your true beliefs, it’s up to you. Be funny, be weird, be serious, whatever you want. You can use a pseudonym, or not, just let me know which to use. Typos are fine. Sloppy is authentic.

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A Not Very Philosophical Zombie

Why we need a scientific revolution

By Alex A.

Have you ever wondered how scientists can locate the language center of the brain? Or study how the brain controls emotions or forms memories? Sure, you might be thinking, they look at brains. 

“These days, science has gone way beyond what most people know about. We can literally see memories being formed. We can see the chemical changes in neurons.”  —S. Stein¹

But to see chemical changes in neurons is not to literally see memories being formed. All that scientists literally see is a picture of your brain which they then correlate to your experiences. How do they know what you’re experiencing? They ask you. They don’t see your memories at all. If they were able to see your memories, they wouldn’t need you to tell them anything; they would be able to look at your brain and tell you what you’re experiencing without any input from you whatsoever!

Oh, but they can—or so say numerous headlines claiming scientists can turn your thoughts into words “using only a sensor-filled helmet combined with artificial intelligence”. 

Sound the alarm for mental privacy!

Can AI really read your thoughts? No. Once again, AI must first be given input with which to make its correlations. In this case subjects may not have to report, but they do have to take in hours and hours of audio or video. Researchers correlate the audio or video to your personal brain activity, then feed that correlation to AI in various ways. From here the AI ‘reads’ your brain activity. This input can’t be transferred to other people; each person must be ‘calibrated’. Yet the headlines would have us believe there's a telepathic ghost in the machine that can ‘read minds’. And of course the assumption is that subjects are actually paying attention to the audiobook or video and not thinking about what they need to pick up at the grocery store or writing the great American novel about A NOT VERY PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIE. That’s not to say this technology isn’t tremendously beneficial for those who don’t have the ability to communicate. But if you want to read my thoughts, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way—by reading my personal diary. (Which is why I don’t keep one.)

People, let me tell you something, there is no 3rd person access to 1st person experience, no objective access to the subjective realm, not by reading brain scans, not by feeding AI a story and pretending to be surprised when it kinda sorta spits it back to you, not even by peering into the brain itself. 

What’s behind this bizarre idea that scientists must go around the unreliable subject with so-called 'no reporting' approaches? They want to eliminate the subject. Never mind that these approaches require—guess what?—an initial ‘calibrating’ 1st person report. Why diminish or ignore the ‘subjective’ nature of these studies? Because some believe insofar as their investigation involves you, the subject, it is not scientific. 

And they're right. It’s not scientific!

Science wants to turn back for the phenomenally-rich world it left behind centuries ago—but not to re-embrace it. No, certainly not that! No one is wondering whether reconciliation is possible. Everyone, including those who take the so-called hard problem seriously, is maniacally focused on how science can come to know consciousness as a scientific object. Does this approach make any sense? How can our minds come to know our minds as they are in themselves, apart from our minds? 

Science tries to peer into Consciousness…

Consciousness lowers her blinds.

Science will never understand Consciousness…

unless Science makes some big changes. 

I’m talking revolutionary changes.