REALISM AND THE FORTHCOMING REVOLUTION IN THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Keywords:
Realism. Consciousness. Qualia. Explanatory gap. Materialism. Psychophysiological laws.Abstract
This paper is a study of the role of realist and antirealist attitudes in the forthcoming revolution in the scientific study of consciousness, more specifically the realism of qualia (subjective qualities). The first stage of such a revolution will be the empirical establishment of psychophysical laws in human beings, connecting brain states with the experience of qualia. One expects that the realist attitude will prevail in studies with humans, which can linguistically report the subjective results of manipulations carried out in the sensorium of each perceptual modality. With non-human animals, the linguistic function will be replaced by the establishment of classes of sensory discernment, expressible through the activation of levers. In this case, the instrumentalist (anti-realist) interpretation should predominate, in which case there would be no psychophysiological laws per se, but laws correlating brain states with classes of discernment. The realistic interpretation of qualia would still be tenable, guided by the establishment of a general theory of consciousness, which would encompass non-human animals, and supported by manipulation experiments on the human sensorium that would allow us to experience new qualia.
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