The Frontal Cortex

Self-consciousness, at least when felt from the inside, feels like more than the sum of its cells. Any explanation of our experience solely in terms of our neurons will never explain our experience, because we don't experience our neurons.

We necessarily do not experience the things responsible for our experience. By your reasoning, there is no potential explanation for consciousness that is adequate.

Posted by: Caledonian | November 15, 2006 8:49 AM

There's derivative and then there's plagiarism. I swear to goodness I couldn't tell when last night's episode of "House" ended and when "3lbs" began. The story line was lame and the ironic twist involving Tucci's character is an insult to the intelligence of the viewers. Whoever gave this show the green light should be producing community theater in Kansas.

Posted by: ChemJerk | November 15, 2006 8:34 PM

Demolishes the myth of mind-body duality? Nagel, Jackson and Chalmers refuted by an American television show. Doesn't get any funnier than this.

Posted by: Otto | November 16, 2006 12:55 AM

The issue in the famous thought experiment is whether Mary learns something new, not whether she sees red, and the premise given is traditionally that she has complete scientific knowledge of all aspects of vision.

Ignoring the gross ignorance of a person who would consider a thought experiment involving "complete scientific knowledge" and limiting Mary to a merely extraordinary understanding that encompasses everything that a human civilization working in finite time might eventually learn about vision, she learns absolutely nothing.

Posted by: Caledonian | November 16, 2006 8:55 AM

I think the nature of conscious experience, and the possibility of a reductionist explanation for conscious experience, remain a very contentious issue, about which informed people can disagree.

You are right about the first point - in the sense that there will inevitably be enough people willing to argue the matter for it to be 'contentious', and if we accept the friendliest meaning of 'reductionist' - but utterly wrong about the second.

The most charitable interpretation of your claim to be a "New Mysterian" I can find is that you don't believe human beings are intelligent enough to find and comprehend the explanation for how neural tissue can perform the information processing we call 'consciousness' - and since you most certainly aren't able to specify either how difficult that task is or what the upper bounds on human intelligence are, the most charitable things that can be said about your claim are that it is entirely unfounded and utterly unscientific.

There are only so many ways to civily point out that a position is garbage. Your stated criteria rule out the possibility that an explanation can be found because you require that the existence of logical impossibility be necessary for the criteria to be met. This is incoherent at best - mysterianism is to psychology and neurology what vitalism is to biology.

Posted by: Caledonian | November 16, 2006 12:18 PM