The possibility is repeatedly mooted that cognition (and/or conscious experience) simply is neural activity, or that consciousness is the collapse of a quantum wave.
First, this a form of nominal fallacy - the reasoning error that re-naming something somehow explains it. It doesn't - it adds no new information.
Second, to suggest that one thing is another is to suggest that the phenomenon of “one thing being another” exists. It doesn't. I can say "hats are cats" as often as I like, but it will never be true.
Furthermore, the idea of one thing being another is not a known process which can be used to explain an unknown one.
Whilst we can cite a known process to explain another, we can’t invent one for that purpose. For example, if I am trying to explain the phenomenon of fluid transport out of the kidney tubules, I can cite osmosis. Osmosis is a phenomenon that is empirically well-established (Dutrochet 1826) and defined. Its systems have been outlined experimentally in detail, and it is reliably replicable. The phenomenon of “one thing being another” tacitly being cited here is not. There is no known phenomenon of one thing being another. If one thing is another then they are one thing!
To summarise, if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle, but she hasn't so she ain't. More accurately, if my aunt were my uncle, she'd be my uncle, but she ain't, she's my aunt.
In science, there is not one single piece of evidence of one thing being another. It therefore has no place in science.
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