The case for physicalist idealism

Assuming that:

• Occam’s Razor applies to the mind/matter duality problem
• Strong emergence isn’t a thing, or things that look like strong emergence are only possible under very narrow conditions and so is extremely unlikely.
• Thus, all physical “stuff” is very likely to be both mind and matter stuff, and there’s no difference between the two.
• Complex experience like that of animals is due to the complex structures of their brains and nervous systems. The stuff they’re made of is in and of itself subjective experience, so complex experiences like sight, hearing, feeling or thinking is the actual structure of their minds.

(See Budnik’s justifying and exploring realistic Monism for an interesting take on this - one that would be more convincing if it didn’t make such large claims)

Assuming that the above is true then it must feel like something to be a fundamental particle, or an event that happens in the universe that gives the impression that such particles actually exist (like a particle colliding with another).

The simplest beholder

Given that the universe is made of subjective experience, it’s got to feel like something. In my experience as a mammalian brain experiences can be pleasant (happiness, satisfaction, warmth etc), unpleasant (pain, sadness, cold, thirst etc) or neither (shape, colour, sound). The perceived importance of this dimension is likely to be an invention of evolution rather than a natural, but it might not. Good or bad feeling might be one of the natural states of the universe. Or it might be something else.

Testing the untestable

Okay so here’s the actual idea.

If we want to know what this natural feeling feels like, the best way to get a glimpse of it would be to compare it to the simplest things we can experience. The idea being that the more hardware, the more manipulation, the more cleverly arranged physical stuff required to build an experience, the less it is like the general experience of stuff itself.

It ought to be possible to start at humans and look at simpler and simpler organisms, making educated guesses about what things feel like to them, and comparing their neural complexity to see which things are closest the base level.

The implications

Say we were to make a runaway friendly AI that does great good in the universe by reducing the amount of pain and suffering, it might discover that matter felt quite nice before evolution invented pain. This could be detremental to the future of life in the universe. If nothing else it’d make good scifi.