> The question is not whether perceptions are true -- that's irrelevant. Undoubtedly perceptions present a skewed and unreliable view onto reality. It's whether they exist at all.
Perceptions are not experience. Nobody denies the existence of perceptions, the question is whether perceptions carry something "extra", something "ineffable" that we call "qualitative experience", something that cannot even in principle be captured by a third person objective description.
Algorithms and machines arguably have perceptions but not experience. Eliminativism is the position that we don't have experience either, we're only a collection of perceptions arranged in such a way that it leads us to the conclusion that our experience is real.
> This is begging the question in the other direction.
I'm not begging the question because I'm not saying eliminativism is true because matter is all we can measure. I'm simply saying that it's demonstrably true that by every measure currently available, we are just a bundle of atoms changing from moment to moment. The only people who claim otherwise and are given any kind of credibility, are people who cite fallacious thought experiments like Mary's room as "evidence". Not very compelling frankly.
Perceptions are not experience. Nobody denies the existence of perceptions, the question is whether perceptions carry something "extra", something "ineffable" that we call "qualitative experience", something that cannot even in principle be captured by a third person objective description.
Algorithms and machines arguably have perceptions but not experience. Eliminativism is the position that we don't have experience either, we're only a collection of perceptions arranged in such a way that it leads us to the conclusion that our experience is real.
> This is begging the question in the other direction.
I'm not begging the question because I'm not saying eliminativism is true because matter is all we can measure. I'm simply saying that it's demonstrably true that by every measure currently available, we are just a bundle of atoms changing from moment to moment. The only people who claim otherwise and are given any kind of credibility, are people who cite fallacious thought experiments like Mary's room as "evidence". Not very compelling frankly.