4 ms·

I think physicalism helps the natural sciences a lot with our current understanding of experimentation, and other positions help endeavors like phenomenalism.

• strogonoff 5y ago
  One way of thinking about it is by treating consciousness as the territory, and space-time as a simplified and accessible map of that territory. Not “neurons fire, hence we think”, but “we think, which shows itself as neurons firing”. In a very, very poor analogy, natural sciences could be seen as studying the map with a magnifying glass, then based on those findings coming up with and performing some magic rituals which somehow end up changing the territory (and thus updating the map). We are unaware that those rituals involve stomping around on land, which is what that map describes in a simplified two-dimensional way; we don’t really know that territory exists at all, it’s all covered in darkness and we only see the map. Our dances grow more sophisticated and more precise at causing map updates that we desire (via changes in the territory that we don’t know about), so we really invest in those rituals. Naturally, when it comes to that patch of territory where the map physically resides (a.k.a. medicine), the rituals don’t work so well; sadly, suggestions that territory exists are generally discarded as crackpot theories.