First, that it's identical isn't a statement of logic or anything like that. It's an ontological fact.

Re logic relying on abstraction, sure--I'd agree with that. But we'd disagree on what such abstractions are. In my view they're particular brain states.

And I'm saying you can't make that claim without invoking the very thing you're trying to explain. If for instance you did an fMRI study of 'brain states' (and, note, there is a huge cloud hanging over all that kind of science anyway), then you're obviously not going to see anything like 'an abstraction'. So to even show how the brain 'generates' abstractions, or how this neural pattern is equivalent to an abstraction, then you would have to rely on abstractions.

You can't get outside abstractions and logic, and look at them 'from the outside'. They are always internal to the act of thinking, and therefore prior to whatever inferences you wish to make. And they are basic to science itself.

So whatever answers you find in analysing the data, must assume what they set out to prove - which is the exact meaning of 'question-begging'.

Eliminativism is a radical school of thought, in that it really does question the reality of first-person experience - not simply 'reports' about it, but the reality of it. And it is exactly in that context that the term 'qualia' is debated. It's got little to do with Wittgenstein's 'private language' argument, as I have noted, Wittgenstein was not a materialist, but Dennett is. — Wayfarer

Dennett, unlike eliminative materialists, generally accepts our ordinary common-sense mental terms which he describes as the "intentional stance". What he rejects is any epiphenomenal or radically-private instantiation of those terms. Here's Dennett in "Quining Qualia":

Which idea of qualia am I trying to extirpate? Everything real has properties, and since I do not deny the reality of conscious experience, I grant that conscious experience has properties. — Dennett

Note that he explicitly accepts the reality of conscious experience. Instead, what he goes on to reject is the idea of private phenomena as an object or property of conscious experience, namely qualia.

Searle said further: "To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have." — Wayfarer

Dennett doesn't deny the existence of consciousness as the above "Quining Qualia" quote makes clear. Contra Searle, Dennett rejects a first-person/third-person phenomenal distinction. Instead the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have - exhibit behaviorally.

Per Wittgenstein's private language argument, we can only describe our experiences in publicly-accessible language. That does not imply that the language only refers to the behavior (which Wittgenstein's critics accused him of). It instead refers to the first-person experience which is not separable from the behavior. There is no private qualia property that could, even in principle, be switched on or off.

Dennett doesn't deny the existence of consciousness as the above "Quining Qualia" quote makes clear. Contra Searle, Dennett rejects a first-person/third-person phenomenal distinction. — AndrewM

Rejecting the qualitiative difference between the first and third person perspective is the nub of the entire debate. Denett grants that first-person experience has properties, but he denies that they're intrinsic, he denies that there is anything that can't be explained in third-person terms. They appear real, but are not intrinsically real.

There is no private qualia property that could, even in principle, be switched on or off. — AndrewM

Qualia are not objects of consciousness, or objects of experience, but elements of experience. Or, put another way, experience has a qualitative dimension, which is expressed (clumsily) as 'what-it-is-like' to be something. That qualitative dimension of experience, is not an object of consciousness, which is why a materialist philosophy of any type must say that it can be accounted for in third-person terms.

The nature of the first person perspective is somewhat similar to a blind spot. The first person perspective is never the object of experience, for the obvious reason that it is only ever the subject of experience, the subject to whom experiences occur. But asking what the subject is, is like trying to grasp one's own hand; you can't turn around and look at it. So it is impossible to demonstrate what subjective awareness is, because to all intents, it isn't anything. But it is, in the Kantian sense, transcendental - that is, experience presupposes a subject of experience, but that subject is not visible to experience.

Denett's philosophy simply exploits this epistemological blind spot to say that there is really no subject of experience at all, that the experience of subjectivity is an artifact of 'folk psychology' that has no objective reality (which in one sense is true - hence the ability to "exploit" the blind spot). Dennett is no bar-room philosopher, and he develops his arguments with considerable sophistication, but that is the nub of it, and why John Searle, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, and others, all say that he is actually ignoring the nature of consciousness, rather than explaining it.

But as it concerns this 'epistemological blind spot' it is the kind of argument that can't be won - it requires an actual change in perspective, something like a gestalt shift, because it really amounts to philosophising on the basis of a kind of cognitive deficiency.

It's all tied back to Dennett's atheism and his belief that Darwin 'is the greatest thinker in history'. Denett's belief is that life is 'an algorithm' which develops from a complex chemical reaction, and then unfolds according to neo-Darwinian logic; and that organic molecules are the source of all intentional action and consciousness in the Universe:

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.

Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 202-3.

So, of course, humans are not actually persons or free agents - they are 'moist robots' who are simply following the algorithm which is encoded in their genetic program in order to propogate. Dennett routinely throws that line out, as if to shock, and then says: so what's the problem?

John Searle called Dennett's philosophy a form of intellectual pathology.

And I'm saying you can't make that claim without invoking the very thing you're trying to explain. — Wayfarer

Which isn't a problem. I'm not denying abstractions. I'm saying that they're particular brain states (namely, the brain states that amount to concepts.)

f for instance you did an fMRI study of 'brain states' (and, note, there is a huge cloud hanging over all that kind of science anyway), then you're obviously not going to see anything like 'an abstraction'. — Wayfarer

You could at least hypothetically see the areas of the brain that engage when the test subject forms a concept (I say at least hypothetically because I don't know if anyone has attempted a research project for this). That would be seeing an abstraction, as that's what abstractions are.

So whatever answers you find in analysing the data, must assume what they set out to prove — Wayfarer

Empirical claims are not provable, period.

Dennett doesn't deny the existence of consciousness as the above "Quining Qualia" quote makes clear. Contra Searle, Dennett rejects a first-person/third-person phenomenal distinction. Instead the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have - exhibit behaviorally. — Andrew M

Surely he thinks that they can exhibit behaviorally, or that they're just the sorts of things that sometimes do exhibit behaviorally, no?

Although if there's a difference between what does exhibit behaviorally and what doesn't but could (and what nevertheless occurs while not exihibiting behaviorally), it would seem that one can't actually identify the "intentional stance" as what exhibits behaviorally.

which is why a materialist philosophy of any type must say that it can be accounted for in third-person terms. — Wayfarer

You continually claim that materialists philosophers must come to such and such conclusion, where that flies in the face of the fact that I'm a materialist philosopher who hasn't come to that conclusion.

What makes the difference here is my "perspectivalism" or "reference-pointism." For ALL phenomena, x at reference point A is different than x at reference point B; that is, at least some properties of x are different at A and B. And everything is from some reference point. (Also, combination of reference points are just another reference point--"point" is not being used in a literal, mathematical sense.)

First person and third person are different reference points (obviously).

So qualia from one reference point will not have the same properties as qualia from a different reference point.

The first person perspective is never the object of experience, — Wayfarer

How would you define "object"/"object of experience" here?

I'm saying that they're particular brain states (namely, the brain states that amount to concepts.) — TerrapinStation

I've been arguing that to equate a 'brain state' with a concept, requires conceptual analysis, and so must involve a circular argument. You can't say what a brain state is, without relying on concepts, so to say that a brain state is an explanation of a concept, involves a circularity. I don't think you've got that.

Surely [Dennett] thinks that they can exhibit behaviorally, or that they're just the sorts of things that sometimes do exhibit behaviorally, no? — TerrapinStation

In an interview, Dennett says:

The elusive subjective conscious experience — the redness of red, the painfulness of pain — that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.

Human beings, Mr. Dennett said, quoting a favorite pop philosopher, Dilbert, are “moist robots.”

“I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?”

The fact that Dennett can ask this question clearly indicates his shortcomings. Science is not omniscient, it is not all knowing; it deals with specific questions in terms of general principles. Much of science's effectiveness is drawn from what it excludes; it excludes unnecessary factors in order to isolate the specific causal factors for specific questions and to attain certainty. This obviously has proven extraordinarily effective across all kinds of subjects. But there are many questions it doesn't deal with, many aspects of existence it doesn't encompass; those who don't understand this fact have fallen into the trap of scientism. And Daniel Dennett is well-known as an advocate of scientism and scientific reductionism.

So in regards to the rhetorical question: 'why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?': there's a very good answer to that. Science deals with objects, and humans are not objects, but subjects of experience. And, notice that this is the very thing that Daniel Dennett is obliged to deny. Why the denial of the human subject might be a problem is not something he can see. And why can't he see it? Because it's his blind spot!

You continually claim that materialists philosophers must come to such and such conclusion. — TerrapinStation

Materialist philosophers must say that some material existent is the basis of reality. It used to be the atom; post relativity and quantum mechanics, it is now said to be 'matter-energy-space-time'. But whatever conclusion they come to, must assert the primacy of something that can be designated as 'material' or 'physical' (although that is nowadays a constantly-changing concept).

How would you define "object"/"object of experience" here? — TerrapinStation

Naively! 'An object' is just what it sounds like - ping-pong balls, computers, cars, trees, planets, stars, to pick a random sample. Objects are just that - things that exist in the world.

Philosophically speaking - anything with which you have a relationship of 'otherness' with, i.e. something other to you, is an object of experience; anything that can be analysed or measured by the senses or by instruments is an object of experience.

Where it becomes difficult is precisely when you start to think about the reality of abstract objects, like numbers and geometrical rules. Are they really 'objects'? I say not. A numeral is an object - you can carve it out of stone - but what it signifies is purely intelligible, i.e. a relationship of quantity (although number is notoriously hard to define. That is why, for example, the Wikipedia entry on the Philosophy of Mathematics is such a large article, with many, often exclusionary, arguments.)

But the point in respect of this thread, is that 'qualia' comprise an aspect of experience - it is the experience of seeing red, tasting an orange, climbing a tree. The point about them is, that they're irreducibly first-person, so certainly not 'objects of experience' in the sense given above. Whereas those who deny that qualia are real, are saying there's nothing about 'experience' that can't be fully explained in third-person terms; that the concept of qualia is, in philosophical terminology, otiose; qualia exist, but only as an appearance, they have no inherent reality.

Now I'm saying a lot of the controversy about this point arises from the fact that the self, or the subject of experience, is never an object of experience, as per the explanation above. It is transcendental, in the sense that Kant and Husserl held, namely, a necessary condition of experience, which is not itself disclosed in experience. (There is a well-known analogy for this concept in the Upaniṣads, namely, that of 'the eye that can see other things, but cannot see itself, the hand can grasp things, but it cannot grasp itself'.)

So I'm arguing that self, in this sense, is something that must be excluded by materialism, or at any rate, it has to be accounted for in terms of the activities of brains, molecules, and physical forces, and so on - if there is a real subject, it defeats materialism. That attitude is what materialism or physicalism is, after all. And it appears possible to exclude the subject, because it really is nowhere 'out there'; it never is an object of experience, in the way others are, or animals are, or planets, stars, mountains, etc; it is not 'objectively existent'.

But then the issue is, you're denying the very faculty that is proposing the argument! This is the common objection to materialism - that it is self-refuting, that it denies the very faculty which makes philosophical argument possible in the first place.

In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sense—this would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effect—but rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness’s foundational, disclosive role.

Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology p144

So materialism is the attempt to 'naturalise' knowledge - to locate it or account for it in the 'domain of objects'. And I'm arguing, it isn't there - that materialism is, for this reason, radically mistaken.

Here's a forum comment on Dennett which exposes this error:

The problem is that like a stage magician, [Dennett] is using his honed skills of misdirection to make 'the hard problem of consciousness' seem to disappear, all the while standing in the way of the audience to see it. His approach uses instrumental reasoning to make a case against subjective realism from seemingly logical examples. In a car, his approach would cite the existence of a steering column, gear shift, and ignition to explain how the driver is unnecessary, and that in fact the seat belt must be the real driver since that’s all we see whenever we get out of the car and look at the driver’s seat. All that remains is for neuroscience to figure out the mechanism by which the buckle, steering wheel, accelerator, and DMV fit together.

He assumes that the fact of optical illusion exposes the unreality of perception, rather than ambiguity between layers of complex human perception. He assumes from the start that subjectivity can only arise from Cartesian dualism rather than something else (like a sense-based monism). He assumes that our experience of subjectivity is fatally flawed but that our sense of objectivity is beyond question.

Source

So I'm arguing that self, in this sense, is something that must be excluded by materialism, or at any rate, it has to be accounted for in terms of the activities of brains, molecules, and physical forces, and so on - if there is a real subject, it defeats materialism. That attitude is what materialism or physicalism is, after all. And it appears possible to exclude the subject, because it really is nowhere 'out there'; it never is an object of experience, in the way others are, or animals are, or planets, stars, mountains, etc; it is not 'objectively existent'. — Wayfarer

If you are arguing that the self must be excluded from physicalism because physicalism can only account for things in terms of physics, then why don't you start with an easier target. Under your caricature of physicalism, it certainly cannot account for life. Physical forces are nowhere mentioned in the theory of evolution, but rather replicators subject to variation and selection.

That's why, if I went to university to study life sciences, I would enrol in biology, rather than physics, although 'biological materialism' is also a very powerful current in the modern academies (for which, read up on the controversy following Thomas Nagel's 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos.)

. . . 'qualia' comprise an aspect of experience - it is the experience of seeing red. . . — Wayfarer

What it's like to see red is the experience. It is hardly an aspect of itself but things that reflect or emit light.

The reason that it is discussed is precisely because it is concerned with the experience of seeing red, not what wavelengths constitute red light, or what light is. So, it refers to experience, not to an object of experience, that is the distinction I'm trying to draw out.

I've been arguing that to equate a 'brain state' with a concept, requires conceptual analysis, and so must involve a circular argument. — Wayfarer

Even if that were so, it would be about making claims as such. But that has no impact on what's the case ontologically. I'm saying that they're identical ontologically. Our claims do not matter for whether that's the case or not. It's not as if what's factually the case in the world somehow hinges on the claims we make or how well we make them, whether we make fallacious claims or not, etc.

In any event, I wasn't forwarding an argument, so the criticism that something was fallacious as an argument (specifically via circularity) doesn't even apply.

so to say that a brain state is an explanation of a concept — Wayfarer

But who said that it's an "explanation" of anything? I completely avoid the loaded word "explanation" except for criticizing what a mess it is whenever we try to hinge arguments on whether something is an explanation or not.

Materialist philosophers must say that some material existent is the basis of reality — Wayfarer

If only that comment had something to do with the earlier comment of yours that sparked my comment.

Even if that were so, it would be about making claims as such. But that has no impact on what's the case ontologically. I'm saying that they're identical ontologically. Our claims do not matter for whether that's the case or not. It's not as if what's factually the case in the world somehow hinges on the claims we make or how well we make them, whether we make fallacious claims or not, etc.

In any event, I wasn't forwarding an argument, so the criticism that something was fallacious as an argument (specifically via circularity) doesn't even apply. — TerrapinStation

So, if you're not forwarding an argument, making a claim, or explaining anything, what, in fact, are you talking about?

How about pointing towards that which is beyond experience? To that a description or explanation doesn't amount to the presence of any state, whether an object of experience or not?

I mean Terrapin hasn't got the details right, but why do you find it so absurd that someone would act as if the world is always more than descriptions and explanations? Who would be interested in trying to reduce the world to merely our experience of objects? Only those who thought our knowledge amounted to an account of everything.

'An object' is just what it sounds like - ping-pong balls, computers, cars, trees, planets, stars, to pick a random sample. Objects are just that - things that exist in the world. — Wayfarer

But then first person experience is an object, since it exists in the world, and like everything else, it is the properties of particular matter, in particular structures, undergoing particular processes. (In my view of course.)

The point about them is, that they're irreducibly first-person, so certainly not 'objects of experience' in the sense given above. — Wayfarer

Per the way you're defining objects, I wouldn't say that whether something is first person experience has anything to do with whether something is an object.

There is a well-known analogy for this concept in the Upaniṣads, namely, that of 'the eye that can see other things, but cannot see itself, the hand can grasp things, but it cannot grasp itself'.) — Wayfarer

It seems like you're saying that experience (or that perhaps one's self) is something other than experience. I suppose you're positing the infamous "homunculus" here. I don't buy any of that. Talking about "experiencing one's experience" is nonsensical in my view. Experience is experience (of course).

So I'm arguing that self, in this sense, is something that must be excluded by materialism — Wayfarer

In the homunculus sense, where it's something "behind" experience, you mean? If so, good riddance. I don't think the idea of that is any less nonsensical if we parse it under dualism, by the way.

But then the issue is, you're denying the very faculty that is proposing the argument! — Wayfarer

It's not denying a non-homunculus self that's simply awareness/consciousness etc. (In my case, at least.) It's just getting rid of the silly idea of there needing to be something different "behind" awareness, experience etc.

And by the way, remember when I said that you continually claim that materialists must think such and such, despite the fact that some of us think no such thing? You're doing that again herein assuming that we're all eliminative materialists.

Re Husserl, why are we caring what his view was? Do we have some commitment to follow suit with him for some reason?

what, in fact, are you talking about? — Wayfarer

That ontologically, concepts, qualia, abstractions etc. are identical to brain states.

That's an ontological fact. As such it doesn't matter whether we make claims about it or not. It in no way hinges our claims, etc.

I mean Terrapin hasn't got the details right — TheWillowOfDarkness

Umm . . .

But then first person experience is an object, since it exists in the world. — TerrapinStation

But it doesn't! If you were asked to point to a location for 'first person experience', where would you point? (This is fundamental to the topic. In fact it would be more accurate to say the world exists in first-person experience.)

It seems like you're saying that experience (or that perhaps one's self) is something other than experience. — TerrapinStation

It's something other than an object, namely 'the subject of experience'; that to which or whom experiences occur. It is precisely that which Dennett denies.

That's an ontological fact. — TerrapinStation

What do you mean by 'ontological'?

remember when I said that you continually claim that materialists must think such and such, despite the fact that some of us think no such thing? — TerrapinStation

My claim is that materialists must think the fundamental stuff of the world is material. Don't they?

I mention Husserl because his analysis is directly relevant to this discussion, which is about philosophy of mind - not as an authority, but because he has articulated some important objections to naturalism.

why do you find it so absurd that someone would act as if the world is always more than descriptions and explanations? — WillowOfDarkness

Because descriptions and explanations are given by an agent. They're not self-existent.

For sure, but isn't that the point? The agent is more than any description of them. How then can we expect a description or explanation of them to be exaustive?

You say to describe or explain experiences, we need to give an exaustive account, as if knowing someone had experiences had to amount to being everything. How can we expect any knowledge to do this?

Is it not true that any instance of knowledge is less than the world? Why would we ever suppose we had to be "exaustive" to know or explain anything? To do so is to reduce the world to only our descriptions.

More to the point how can the "hard problem" function without this reductionism? If we are honest about knowledge, then we understand that it can never be "exaustive."

The "hard problem" is demanding the incoherent-- knowledge which exaustive of the subject. It is just as, if not more, reductionist as any eliminative materialist.

How then can we expect a description or explanation of them to be exhaustive? — TheWillowOfDarkness

I am not saying that. That is what materialism is saying.

The "hard problem" is demanding the incoherent-- knowledge which exhaustive of the subject. It is just as, if not more, reductionist as any eliminative materialist. — TheWillowOfDarkness

What David Chalmers says in his essay Facing Up to the Hard Problem is:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

How is that 'reductionist'?

Rejecting the qualitiative difference between the first and third person perspective is the nub of the entire debate. — Wayfarer

I think the debate is whether there are subjective phenomena. Everyone agrees that smelling a rose is a qualitatively different experience to seeing someone else smell a rose. However the phenomena are the same in both experiences.

Denett grants that first-person experience has properties, but he denies that they're intrinsic, he denies that there is anything that can't be explained in third-person terms. They appear real, but are not intrinsically real — Wayfarer

Dennett espouses what he calls a mild realism about mental terms. For example in "Real Patterns" he says, "I have claimed that beliefs are best considered to be abstract objects rather like centers of gravity."

I would claim that an abstraction over something physical is real, not merely apparently real.

Surely he thinks that they can exhibit behaviorally, or that they're just the sorts of things that sometimes do exhibit behaviorally, no? — Terrapin Station

What we think and feel may not always be noticeable in everyday observable behavior but, per materialism, there is always some material instantiation (e.g., in brain activity, particles shifting around, or some such).

Although if there's a difference between what does exhibit behaviorally and what doesn't but could (and what nevertheless occurs while not exihibiting behaviorally), it would seem that one can't actually identify the "intentional stance" as what exhibits behaviorally. — Terrapin Station

The "intentional stance" is identified with the objects of experience - the actual pain, smell, belief, etc. The exhibited behavior enables us to form the relevant language concepts for those objects. But things are not always as they appear - a person might be in pain but concealing it, or a person might not be in pain but faking it.

'Particles shifted around' is not in question, but 'shifted by what' is. The materialist must say that they are only shifted around by physical forces or at any rate by some factor which is ultimately attributable to same; according to which 'mind over matter' can never occur.

What we think and feel may not always be noticeable in everyday observable behavior but, per materialism, there is always some material instantiation (e.g., in brain activity, particles shifting around, or some such). — Andrew M

Everything always obeys the laws of physics - even tigers must do that. But what is remarkable about these laws is that they permit abstractions that are real and causal. The Schrödinger equation is completely uninformative if you wish to explain why a person was eaten by the tiger, yet it is universal and applies to the tiger and the tiger's meal.

Life used to be a deep mystery, and no doubt there were those who maintained that it could not be explained physically. But then a theory at the correct level of emergence was discovered, which not only explains life, bit explains it rather simply as a phenomenon of replicators subject to variation and selection.Life must obey the laws of physics just like everything else, but these laws appear nowhere in its explanation.

The claim that consciousness or qualia cannot be addressed from the physicalist perspective, is the claim that no theory of them, at the appropriate level of emergence, is possible. i.e. The problem of qualia is insoluble and not amenable to reason.

Is the Schrodinger equation physical?

Life used to be a deep mystery, and no doubt there were those who maintained that it could not be explained physically. But then a theory at the correct level of emergence was discovered, which not only explains life, bit explains it rather simply as a phenomenon of replicators subject to variation and selection. — tom

As one who was accused before of presenting a 'caricature of physicalism', I have to take issue with this statement. First, I think it is a reference to David Deutsch's so called 'constructor theorem', which is not actually a predictive scientific theory at all, but sleight-of-hand pop metaphysics based on questionable interpretations of quantum physics.

Secondly, the conundrums that have been thrown up by physics about the nature of matter have given rise to all manner of metaphysical speculation, such as those proposed by David Deutsch and also by Max Tegmark, comprising the idea of infinitely many parallel universes. And these extravagent speculations are based on nothing more than the difficulties of explaining what is seen in experiments involving sub-atomic particles (so called). There's nothing in any of that which comes close to addressing the physical issues involved in the origination of DNA, as such.

So how it can now be declared that 'the mysteries of life' have been 'solved', when the purported 'simplest components in the Universe' turn out to require the inference of infinite parallel dimensions? When there are so many vast unanswered questions in fundamental physics and cosmology? As if this has all been solved, as if we know what there is to know. Remember well Lord Kelvin's famous prediction, that 'the details have all been worked out, now it's just a matter of decimal places'.

Except for the Michelson Morley experiment.

The problem of qualia is insoluble and not amenable to reason. — Tom

Correction - not amenable to objectification.