I really don't think these types of experiments tell us anything about the fundamental question of consciousness. The question being, why am I here experiencing it all? Why is it not just, well, "automated", without me here as an "observer"?
So you have a research subject and you stick a pin in his brain and that makes him, I don't know, forget the alphabet. You say that contributes to the theory that consciousness is generated by the brain.
Two objections.
1) I already knew you could stick a pin in his eye and he would probably fail to recall the alphabet for several minutes. What I am getting at is that the fact that human consciousness is "heavily invested" in the material universe is bleeding obvious from the get-go. What does recent knowledge about the brain add to this? There is a heluva lot of functionality there, sure. There is a serious nexus of sensation, communication, and computation there, sure. But the above-referenced, Fundamental Question of Consciousness (TM), remains untouched.
2) How do you know your subject (the one with the pin in his brain) is truly conscious? Yes, I am talking about the possibility of a p-zombie[0]. You might want to say, "All reasonable people can here assume that the subject is a truly conscious being." And indeed I agree we can generally, in life, make such assumptions. However, you are hoping for scientific understanding of the nature of true consciousness, so you bloody-well hope for a scientific method to verify a truly conscious being. Otherwise it's like hoping to have the periodic table before you can test whether a material is gold or lead. However, there can be no such hope for a future method of verification, because presently there is not even any observation of the very thing to be verified! This would be like expecting someone who, I don't know, perhaps grew up imprisoned in a cave to develop a model of the solar system.
>The question being, why am I here experiencing it all? Why is it not just, well, "automated", without me here as an "observer"?
It's simple really: you have to observe to decide. Imagine not having any vision-qualia. How would you read? Your vision-qualia is the substrate from which your conscious mind makes decisions. You cannot have conscious decision making without qualia. Conscious experience is simply high level representations of information interfacing with your decision-making apparatus. Nothing more, nothing less.
The concept of p-zombies are inherently contradictory. P-zombies are by definition indistinguishable from a conscious entity through any test. Yet when I ask a p-zombie a million questions designed to get at its conception of its conscious experience, it responds in the exact same way as the conscious entity. Furthermore, all observations of its behavior prove to be equivalent to the conscious entity. So the p-zombie must contain the exact same information regarding "conscious experience" as the assumed conscious entity. Therefore, the two systems are information-equivalent.
What is the difference between these two supposed systems? They are information-equivalent, and yet you claim the conscious entity experiences something the p-zombie doesn't. But of course, by definition of experience, that occurrence must be able to shape your future behavior. This contradicts information-equivalence.
You might say: well the representation of that information is different in the p-zombie vs the conscious entity. This doesn't work either. Just like the universe has no privileged reference-frame, it has no privileged information representation either.
Therefore, either qualia is a meaningless concept, or it is purely dependent on information representation.
Furthermore, if you accept that our brains are a large part of what makes up our minds, then somehow our physical brains "interface" with the substrate of consciousness. Neuroscientists should be able to find this interface. Physicists should be able to probe this "consciousness substrate" using the same physical properties of matter that our brains do. We have found nothing of the sort. The only thing in our brains are bundles of neurons and neurotransmitters. Those of you that suppose metaphysical explanations for consciousness are just as guilty of "god of the gaps" as those who would look up at the stars and posit a god holding them in place. Don't be that person.
So you have a research subject and you stick a pin in his brain and that makes him, I don't know, forget the alphabet. You say that contributes to the theory that consciousness is generated by the brain.
Two objections.
1) I already knew you could stick a pin in his eye and he would probably fail to recall the alphabet for several minutes. What I am getting at is that the fact that human consciousness is "heavily invested" in the material universe is bleeding obvious from the get-go. What does recent knowledge about the brain add to this? There is a heluva lot of functionality there, sure. There is a serious nexus of sensation, communication, and computation there, sure. But the above-referenced, Fundamental Question of Consciousness (TM), remains untouched.
2) How do you know your subject (the one with the pin in his brain) is truly conscious? Yes, I am talking about the possibility of a p-zombie[0]. You might want to say, "All reasonable people can here assume that the subject is a truly conscious being." And indeed I agree we can generally, in life, make such assumptions. However, you are hoping for scientific understanding of the nature of true consciousness, so you bloody-well hope for a scientific method to verify a truly conscious being. Otherwise it's like hoping to have the periodic table before you can test whether a material is gold or lead. However, there can be no such hope for a future method of verification, because presently there is not even any observation of the very thing to be verified! This would be like expecting someone who, I don't know, perhaps grew up imprisoned in a cave to develop a model of the solar system.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie