Is science too rigorous and objective?

Reply to TiredThinker The article seems
to back Chalmer’s panpsychism in that it talks about consciousness as a kind of substantive content to be studied alongside matter. This gives into a materialist thinking: subjective experience is just a different kind of objective phenomenon. What needed is an appreciation of subjectivity and consciousness not as an inner object, datum, substance to be measured alongside outer
objects, but consciousness as interaction.

Quoting Joshs

consciousness as interaction.

:100:

I think there is a big mistake in that article. Apparently, it makes the big and valuable step of including subjectivity into consideration, together with the traditional objectivity that has been already considered by science so far. It makes creditable statements, such as “We can’t know any consciousness other than our own” and “it’s turning the very lens of consciousness back on itself”. Actually, it doesn’t realize that, as soon as we talk (or think) about subjectivity, we automatically turn it into objectified subjectivity, that is not anymore the true subjectivity, the one that it is impossible to talk about, exactly because of this phenomenon. What I am saying is very clear when he says “while the study of subjectivity, as a physical phenomenon, is different to some degree because it’s turning the very lens of consciousness back on itself, it is not different in kind from other scientific objects of study”. Here is, very explicit, the operation of objectifying subjectivity. He forgets Wittgestein’s important statement “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”: this applies specifically to subjectivity.
It is impossible to truly talk about subjectivity. Then you might ask what I am talking about by saying “true subjectivity”. I am talking about a hope: the hope that you will go beyond my words and think about your own personal, inexpressible experience of subjectivity. We can’t do anything more than hope.

Reply to Angelo Cannata :up:

Quoting Joshs

What needed is an appreciation of subjectivity and consciousness not as an inner object, datum, substance to be measured alongside outer
objects, but consciousness as interaction.

:up:

Quoting TiredThinker

What is the takeaway of this article? How can subjective things be measured?

It's their job to try and discover a material consciousness, hopefully they do because that would be super cool, alas, it will probably never happen however.

Quoting TiredThinker

What is the takeaway of this article? How can subjective things be measured?

I read that article when it came out. I think it makes some very interesting points. Clearly the 'hard problem' criticism being discussed in other threads has made an impact. However where I part company with the article is here:

Human minds are, in this new view of science, a natural product of the evolution of mind and matter, which are just two aspects of the same thing. Human minds represent the most complex form of mind in this corner of our universe, as far as we know.

The problem with that is that it remains reductionist. It reduces mind to a biological phenomenon, as the theory of evolution is only ever a biological theory. So even if one tries to incorporate the so-called subjective perspective, it remains reductionist. As @Angelo Cannata also says.

Consciousness is an act like urination or digestion or walking or talking, you get the idea. Are all these activities physical in the sense a stone (matter) is or heat (energy) is (have I covered all the bases?)?

Even the basics of nature contain a basic, primordial, preliminary, proton mentality. It's just a property of matter. A divine property, I might add, since matter was created by the gods to let the non-material divine life in heaven evolve time after time, in one big bang after another.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/wundt.html

I just remember something along the lines of Wilhelm using a metronome to determine a most desirable speed of ticking. And other researchers determine the golden ratio is the most desirable way to create shapes. The idea of desirability versus not is subjective even if it it is binary?