You haven't answered the question which I posed prior to Wayfarer's subsequent response which your post that I ma responding to responds to :

That said the one thing I wonder about with your saying that an artificial mind could be built that has first person experiences coupled with your saying that feelings are the only problematics is whether it would be possible to have first person experiences sans feelings. — Janus

I actually don't like the term "first person"―it is so humancentric. I also don't like the "dimensionless point" model of subjectivity.

The related question that comes to mind is whether you think consciousness is possible absent feelings and whether you equate consciousness with first person experience. Is it possible to have feelings without a sensate body?

To be discoverable, there needs to be some measurable influence on known things. So there could be particles, or properties, that have no measureable influence on particles or waves we can detect. String theory may true, but there seems to be no means of verifying that. If it IS true. there could be any number of vibrational states of strings that have no direct measurable affect on anything else. — Relativist

I can understand thinking something like dark matter must exist. Not directly detectable in any way we've thought of, but something is having a gravitational effect on things. But if there is no detectable effect, why suspect there is something undetectable present?

Not wanting to pre-empt Relativist's response, but given the current theoretical understanding of cosmology and physics, dark matter and dark energy are presumed to exist, due to the large-scale behavour of galaxies (the former) and the expansion of the Universe (the latter). So as far as dark matter is concerned, there is a 'detectable effect', first found by Franz Zwicky and elaborated by Vera Rubin. This is that galaxies don't rotate at a rate which is commensurable with their observable mass, so something undetectable must be an influence. Either there is some un-detectable matter, or something is the matter with the understanding of physics at galactic scales (the approach known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics). Jury is still out but the majority opinion seems to favour dark matter.

The related question that comes to mind is whether you think consciousness is possible absent feelings and whether you equate consciousness with first person experience. Is it possible to have feelings without a sensate body? — Janus

Sorry I overlooked your question. A being that was built,which lacked feelings is generally referred to as a "Zombie." The being would have experiences, that created memories that might affect its future behavior - so in that sense, it would be a sort of first-person experience. It could behave in ways identical to humans - reacting as we do to bodily injury; crying at a funeral, having the outward physical effects of sexual arousal..., and learning to behave differently based on the experiences.

But it wouldn't be the sort of experiences that we have (IMO). It seems to me that feelings are the direct impetus for all our intentional behavior. This seems to be the relevance of the so-called "first-person-ness" of our minds: feelings are exclusively first-perseon experiences. Zombie behavior could be perfectly understood from standard programming. Real human behavior would need something to produce feelings.

No, and I fully expect that nothing ever will. It’s not the kind of view which is amendable to falsification, as it is a metaphysical belief. — Wayfarer

Yes, but it's a cautious belief - I know it's not necessarily true - it will always ONLY be a best explanation. I don't think you'll admit it, but it's rational to accept best explanations as provisionally true. Compare it to a belief about a historical fact deduced from data too limited to be conclusive.

You will notice, incidentally, that I do not advance a ‘theory of mind’.

I know, and that's why you aren't in position to refute my "best explanation" analysis. I think I said as much, months ago.

Yes, I understand. I didn't know where Relativist was going with the idea that there may be things with no detectable effect.

And after all these months of conversations, I'm still at a loss to understand what you think physicalism explains, other than in its role as a methodological assumption in science.

The being would have experiences... — Relativist

Wouldn't it have to be a subject, to be considered 'a being that has experiences'? Experiences are not standalone events. They are experiences for someone. If there is no subject, then at best there are internal state transitions, information processing, memory registration, and behavioral dispositions — none of which by themselves amount to experience in the first-person sense.

Isn't the whole point of the 'philosophical zombie' argument that there would be no objective way of determining whether it really was a subject, as distinct from merely emulating subjectivity? Thereby showing that subjective awareness is not something objectively discernable.

And after all these months of conversations, I'm still at a loss to understand what you think physicalism explains, other than in its role as a methodological assumption in science. — Wayfarer

It's a metaphysical underpinning for that methodological assumption: the world is a natural one, evolving entirely due to laws of nature; that everything that exists is an object with properties and relations to other existents. So what it explains is the nature of what exists, and what to expect as new discoveries are made.

It provides a broad, consistent perspective for evaluating philosphical claims. I defend its implications: e. g. compatibilism, a natural (evolutionary) basis of morality, the nature of abstractions (including mathematics), a theory of truth, and quasi-necessitarianism. Any forum topic I comment on will always be based on this position, unless I'm just entertaining other possibilities to see where they lead.

a natural (evolutionary) basis of morality, the nature of abstractions (including mathematics), a theory of truth. — Relativist

I don’t recognise the cogency of “evolutionary morality.” Evolutionary theory explains how biological traits are selected and propagated; it does not generate norms or obligations. Even Richard Dawkins has been explicit on this point: “survival of the fittest” is not, and must not be treated as, a moral maxim.

Likewise, I hold that mathematical entities such as numbers are real but not physical. They are not located in space-time, do not enter into causal relations, and are not products of evolutionary history, yet they retain objective necessity and normative force.

These are not peripheral disagreements but principled objections to the claim that physicalism explains morality, mathematics, or truth rather than redescribing them in ways that vitiate their real attributes.

I don't expect them to be recognised, however.

Do you REALLY want to get into each of those topics? That would extend this long discussion several more years. I've contributed to threads on all these topics, and am likely to do so again, so lets's not go there now. I only brought these up to answer your question.

I only brought these up to answer your question. — Relativist

And I only wanted to make it clear that I don't think you have. But, sure, let's take them up elsewhere.

And I only wanted to make it clear that I don't think you have. But, sure, let's take them up elsewhere. — Wayfarer

What part of your original question did I not answer? You had asked:

what you think physicalism explains, other than in its role as a methodological assumption in science. — Wayfarer

I gave you a pretty thorough answer.

But if there is no detectable effect, why suspect there is something undetectable present? — Patterner

I started by saying it's possible there is some aspect of reality that accounts for feelings, that is otherwise undetectable. This doesn't justify believing there is some such thing, but it counters the notion that physicalism is impossible if feelings cannot be accounted for by known aspects of reality.

It's a bit like dark matter. There were measureable gravitational effects that were inconsistent with General Relativity. Naively, this might be treated as falsification of GR. But GR explains so much, and it made many verified predictions. So dark matter was proposed to explain those apparent anomalies, despite there being no direct evidence of it.

Similarly, physicalism is successful at accounting for almost everything in the natural world - so it seems more reasonable to assume there's something we're missing than to dispense with the overall theory.