Actually, YOU are the one who doesn’t understand that your wibblings about “qualia” are irrelevant to the experiments I covered in detail above, and indeed are irrelevant to vast swathes of scientific investigation, despite your failed attempt in a previous post to try and misrepresent the scientific endeavour as an exercise in religious doctrine.
Indeed, the point that flew past you at hypersonic speed, is that those scientific experiments I covered above have taken the subjective experiences of various test subjects, and extracted therefrom objective data allowing those subjective experiences to be reconstructed. This has lethal consequences for your wibbling about “qualia”.
Oh this is going to be good …
Not to a physicist it isn’t. Guess what? We already have evidence in abundance for particles with mass. Adding some new ones to the collection isn’t that gigantic a leap.
But since the idea appears to be so strange to you, I’ll explain how the idea arose. Which began with simulations of the behaviour of stars in galaxies. Galaxies exhibit a feature known as ‘rotation curves’, which provide information about the orbital velocities of stars around the centre of a galaxy. Unlike the behaviour of planets around stars, which follow the classic Newtonian pattern, stars orbiting a galactic centre exhibit behaviour departing from the classic scheme, and the question arose as to why this phenomenon was occurring.
By way of hypothesis, the idea that a halo of additional mass around the galaxy was influencing stellar orbital velocities was proposed. When this was tried in the simulations, the simulations produced galaxy rotation curves that were in precise agreement with observation of real galaxies. In short, a solution to the problem was found.
But this led to another issue. Namely, wny hadn’t scientists observed that mass beforehand?
Here, once again, the physicists had an answer. Namely, that all the mass previously observed was observed because it interacted with the electromagnetic force, including the absorption and emission of photons. Courtesy of this behaviour, we have been able to point telescopes at stars and planets, and observe them in detail for 400 years or so.
But, more recently, physicists alighted upon particles that did not interact with the electromagnetic force, namely neutrinos. These particles will simply pass straight through ordinary matter, and the usual way of detecting them involves looking for their infrequent interactions via the weak nuclear force. For example, very occasionally, a neutrino wil interact with the nucleus of a a chlorine atom, changing a neutron into a proton, and generate an argon atom. Over time, a build up of an excess of argon can be detected by various means. Another method of detection involves looking for the Cerenkov radiation produced when a neutrino entering water generates a relativistic electron or muon. Such detectors have to be shielded from stray radiation sources, and are usually situated in deep mineshafts to shield them from cosmic rays and other extraneous influences.
So, we already have a precedent for a particle that doesn’t engage in electromagnetic interactions, in the form of the neutrino, trillions of which ware emitted by the Sun every second as a consequence of nuclear fusion, and indeed, neutrino bursts from deep space are the first sign that a supernova event is about to become visible on Earth.
So, it wasn’t a major stretch for physicists to postulate the existence of one or more new particles, which this time only interacted via gravity. The term “dark matter” arises from the complete absence of conventional interactions with photons, unlike more typically observed matter. Now, exactly what sort of particles make up dark matter is still an open question, but scientists have sound reasons to postulate the existence of dark matter particles, because they provide a neat and elegant solution to several problems that aren’t soluble by other means, and have the virtue of being in accord with Occam’s Razor.
So, moving on … let’s see whast drivel you’re going to post about them, shall we?
Yet instead of celebrating that we’ve reached the point where this is possible, you sneer.
If you think dark matter isn’t measurable of observable, then you obviously never paid attention in class.
Recall what I just said above, about dark matter particles interacting via gravity? That’s how they’re observed, through their effects upon surrounding visible matter and upon light travelling through space, which follows the curvature of spacetime. Since dark matter has mass, and induces curvature upon spacetime like ordinary matter, the precence thereof can be detected via such effects as gravitational lensing, And indeed, at least one dark matter halo has now been mapped in detail.
“Can’t measure or observe” my arse.
Wrong. You present blind assertions on the subject, but no substance. Learn the difference.
Again, you merely assert this. Those experiments I covered above on reconstruncting still images and movies via fMRI scanning data have lethal implications for this assertion.
The only one exhibiting a refusal to understand relevant concepts here is you.
You have explained nothing, merely asserted.
I seem to recall demonstrating that the neuroscientists you purportedly “cited” as agreeing with your assertions about “qualia” do no such thing.
It’s solved the problem of reconstrructing still images and movies people have observed, using nothing more than fMRI data of blood flow through the brain.
Plants don’t even have a nervous system. So how can thay have anything comparable to the “experiences” that organisms with nervous systems have?
Seems you failed to register that little peroblem when you launched into this ridiculous diversion.
If this assertion of yours is correct, then “qualia” are not a scientific phenomenon by definition, and if they are not observable, they’re indisinguishable from the nonexistent.
So you assert, which is all you ever do.