I wrote an essay about sentience and its relations to physics. For the moment, I keep it on ResearchGate, and I am welcoming comments.
The negative way to sentience (comments welcome!)
Abstract. While the materialist paradigm is credited for the incredible
success of science in describing the world, to some scientists and
philosophers there seems to be something about subjective experience
that is left out, in an apparently irreconcilable way. I show that
indeed a scientific description of reality faces a serious limitation,
which explains this position. On the other hand, to remain in the realm
of science, I explore the problem of sentient experience in an indirect
way, through its possible physical correlates. This can only be done in a
negative way, which consists in the falsification of various hypotheses
and the derivation of no-go results. The general approach I use here is
based on simple mathematical proofs about dynamical systems, which I
then particularize to several types of physical theories and
interpretations of quantum mechanics. Despite choosing this
scientifically-prudent approach, it turns out that various possibilities
to consider sentience as fundamental make empirical predictions,
ranging from some that can only be verified on a subjective basis to
some about the physical correlates of sentience, which are independently
falsifiable by objective means.
For the moment, you can read it and comment here.
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