Puzzling about how neurons create colors, beauty, goodness, and meaning.
How do neuronal processes causally bring into existence phenomena so different from their causes.
My theory includes the idea that, causally speaking, it is neuronal processes that bring into being the entire world-perceived. One peculiarity of the causal processes here is the fact that so many of features of the world-perceived, considered in their perceptual content, are so different from the neuronal processes that bring them into being. “Red” and “beauty” for example seem to bear no resemblance to the complex of neuronal firings in the brain that bring them into existence.
Unfortunately, however, what my theory suggests is not so much a solution to this apparent puzzle, as an explanation of why we lack and probably will always lack, any direct empirical evidence, that would give us a solid basis for specific and detailed knowledge about the causal processes involved.
We have only two sources of empirical knowledge: (1) There is scientific empiricism, in which empirical evidence consists in quantifiable data derived from laboratory measuring devices. There is also (2) perceptual empiricism, in which empirical evidence consists in the content of human perceptions.
Applied to the present case: Our human perceptions are the source of empirical evidence for the existence and nature of things like colors, consciousness, beauty, and so on in the world-perceived. Neuroscience is the source of evidence for the existence and nature of neural events and brain states that causally bring about these phenomena belonging to the world-perceived.
What we lack is any third kind of empirical evidence that might give us specific detailed knowledge of causal processes in which the results are so different from the causes.
I offer here the analogy of a dark tunnel.
First, in the case of colors, for example, laboratory science provides us with empirical evidence about entities and forces metaphorically “going into the tunnel” at one end, consisting in phenomena like light waves, photo-receptors, and electro-chemical interactions between nerve-synapses, which cause us to perceive colored objects the way we do. Neuroscience can possibly explain to us these material causes that cause people to have particular perceptions of colors, consciousness, and beauty, as well as all other aspects of the world-perceived.
Secondly, human perceptions are what provide us with empirical evidence and knowledge of the nature of phenomena-perceived “coming out of the tunnel” at the other end, such as colors, consciousness, and beauty.
It seems pretty clear that something happened in the tunnel enabling the material forces accessible to science that “go into the tunnel”, to causally bring into existence perceived phenomena “coming out at the other end of the tunnel,” which seem entirely different from these science-accessible causes.
Cast in terms of this metaphor, our problem is that we know that something happened in the dark tunnel which enabled these physical causes accessible to science, to bring about color perceptions so unlike these physical causes. But to have empirical evidence of what actually went on inside this dark tunnel we would have to have some third means of knowing which would be neither laboratory science nor human perceptions. This is what we seem to lack, and will probably always lack.
My conclusion; Any further explanation of the causal forces at work actually translating neuron-firings into the perceptual content of phenomena-perceived, will always be speculative by nature, lacking any direct empirical basis.
