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You might want to read this critique of Kuhn before making that claim. Kuhn's idea of the history of science being a series of non-linear paradigm shifts is very inaccurate. Progress is made in both linear and non-linear steps. Also new paradigms do not necessarily replace older ones. There is extensive overlap. Newton's mechanics are still used almost exclusively despite supposedly being 'replaced' by Einsteinian forms. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism are also very widely used despite quantum theory. And Maxwell did not replace anything. His equations subsume all the previous laws, which still apply completely in their respective domains. The science of chemistry works just fine despite sub-nuclear explanations.
If you are hoping for a paradigm shift that will turn around current scientific thinking about consciousness, I would advise not holding your breath.
Based on what you've posted here, it doesn't seem to me that you have a very deep understanding of Kuhn. I doubt you can give any examples of Kuhn denying that we still use Newton's mechanics or Maxwell's equations extensively, for example. But I think it would be a waste of our time to discuss Kuhn here, since my use of the term "paradigm shift" is more general that Kuhn's specific use of the term, and I've said nothing to imply that I share Kuhn's "relativism" (which seems to be one of the primary concerns of the author of the article you linked to). I don't deny the cumulative view of scientific progress, etc.
I do somewhat agree with Max Planck who is quoted in the article saying: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” This should not be taken too literally (I'd say think of it as more tongue-in-cheek), but I see an interesting glint of truth in it, nevertheless.
I think it is fair to say that new theories generally cannot be reduced down to old theories. Newtonian mechanics works fine for lots of things, but if you want to design and build a functional GPS system, I feel highly confident in saying that you will never use strictly Newtonian ideas to do it. (And, btw, even if I did happen to be wrong about that, I'd bet that the means by which you'd achieve your goal would be so ridiculously convoluted and inefficient that you'd be way better off giving up on the old theory and simply adopting the new one for purely practical reasons).
Now that I've said all this, I have a new way to express my prediction about the non-reducibility of qualitative experience to the conceptual tools of current physics: Once we do finally have a theory of consciousness whereby we can model the emergence of qualitative experience from the fundamentals of physics, this new theory will not be reducible to current physics any more that quantum theory or Relativity is reducible to Newtonian mechanics. And I will go further by pin-pointing the reason for this irreducibility: Current physics does not have the conceptual resources to link the qualitative concepts dealt with in neuroscience and psychology to the fundamental elements of quantum theory. Something qualitative or proto-qualitative will need to be introduced into fundamental physics before these links can be made.
Not to mention the track records of science vs. philosophy in learning things about how reality works...
This isn't an issue of "philosophy" vs. "science" and boasting about which one is better. Science isn't going to empirically disprove math or logic, and these constitute the core of the issue. You're not going to calculate the distance to the moon without employing units of distance somewhere in your calculation (or, at the very least, you need units that can, in principle, be converted into units of distance).
Physics deals with measurable quantities. I'm not saying that future physics can't build a theory using measurable quantities that help us to model the emergence of qualitative experience. On the contrary, I'm fairly confident that this will eventually happen. But I'm also fairly certain that we will need some fundamentally new measurable quantities in order to construct the theory. More specifically, these new measurable quantities will need to have qualitative dimensions. How could any sort of fundamental elements of physics have qualitative or proto-qualitative dimensions? Well, that's the big question. You might think it's a waste of time - and perhaps you're right. But I'm enjoying the puzzle, nonetheless.
That does for me, put the finger on the problem. Can we in material, nuts and bolts ways find an explanatory mechanism of qualia? I think it very likely that we shall, one day. Will we need some new way of thinking about stuff? Very possibly. Science is always needing to find new ways of thinking and philosophy may well have a considerable part to play in asking the questions that require a rethink.
That does for me, put the finger on the problem. Can we in material, nuts and bolts ways find an explanatory mechanism of qualia? I think it very likely that we shall, one day. Will we need some new way of thinking about stuff? Very possibly. Science is always needing to find new ways of thinking and philosophy may well have a considerable part to play in asking the questions that require a rethink.
I'm skeptical - has this ever been the case before? My guess is that whatever science discovers about how the brain really works is going to make most philosophies of mind look like the folks arguing we needed to find a vital essence to explain life simply because it felt like it was "obviously" different than everything else.
This isn't an issue of "philosophy" vs. "science" and boasting about which one is better. Science isn't going to empirically disprove math or logic, and these constitute the core of the issue. You're not going to calculate the distance to the moon without employing units of distance somewhere in your calculation (or, at the very least, you need units that can, in principle, be converted into units of distance).
Physics deals with measurable quantities. I'm not saying that future physics can't build a theory using measurable quantities that help us to model the emergence of qualitative experience. On the contrary, I'm fairly confident that this will eventually happen. But I'm also fairly certain that we will need some fundamentally new measurable quantities in order to construct the theory. More specifically, these new measurable quantities will need to have qualitative dimensions. How could any sort of fundamental elements of physics have qualitative or proto-qualitative dimensions? Well, that's the big question. You might think it's a waste of time - and perhaps you're right. But I'm enjoying the puzzle, nonetheless.
I agree over all with this. We will have new units in the future because I don't think we know it all yet. Despite some background noise saying the contrary. I hope we learn more. Of course we die not knowing them. remember math is a langue. It just has less wriggle round than philosophy. Thankfully. And my favorite, Engineering has even less ... it has to work or we are wrong.
...my prediction about the non-reducibility of qualitative experience to the conceptual tools of current physics...
Somewhere a couple of dozen posts ago I briefly mentioned that quantum mechanics might prove me wrong about this. I pointed out that in QM the concept of an "observer" is built in to the math. So every time I say that qualia "can't be reduced to current physics" there is always a little voice in the back of my head thinking "Well...maybe...if somehow this concept of an observer could be teased in just the right sorta way." As KC rightly pointed out, there is nothing in QM to suggest that the "observer" has to be a "conscious" creature, or even a living creature. In some versions of QM, an "observer" could be an atom, for example. The debates over interpretation of QM get wildly complicated, but the one key point that everyone agrees on is that, as things are now, all of the major interpretations of QM are consistent with experimental data. In other words, if you are going to favor one of these interpretations over the other, you need to do it mostly on the basis of gut instinct. Most physicists (with some notable exceptions) feel it is just too weird to accept that "consciousness" (which is not even a defined term in physics) could be the source of "choice" in quantum systems. It fits the data (although therein lies a whole nuther discussion), but it just doesn't seem plausible to most physicists - which is why such great efforts have been made to find alternative interpretations. Frankly, putting "consciousness" in this critical role in physics doesn't seem plausible to me either, mainly because the word is so vague that it is hard to even know what you are saying when you assign any role to consciousness.
But here's the point I'm trying to make: If I am to be proven wrong about the possibility for current physics to explain qualia, my bet is that my defeater will be somehow buried in the "measurement problem" of QM. Which leads me to another prediction: If a future version of QM weeds the alternative interpretations down to one acceptable interpretation, then the winning interpretation will be one that somehow succeeds in given some well-formed operational definition of "qualitative experience" such that it can serve as the 'chooser" of quantum states. It cannot, of course, be a local hidden variable theory (aka "local realism"), since these have been ruled out by Bell's theorem. At first glance it would seem that any interpretation that somehow puts qualitative experience into the role of observer would probably be a "hidden variable" theory, which means that it would have to be a nonlocal (or "global") hidden variable type of theory. (David Bohm's interpretation is one example of a nonlocal hidden variable approach, but there could be alternatives.) But, at this point, so far as I know, there is no logic compelling the idea that a "qualitative experience" type of theory would necessarily have to be a hidden variable theory.
Bottom line: If someone is clever enough to tweak the concept of "observer" in QM in such a way that qualitative experience plays a well-defined starring role, and if doing this doesn't radically alter the quantum math - just our interpretation of the math - then you would get to thumb your noses at me and say "See! I told ya so!" The chances of this happening seem vanishingly small to me. I'm fairly sure that the QM "qualitative observer" concept will, in fact, play a key role, but I strongly doubt it will just be a matter of adopting a new interpretation of the current math. I'd still bet my life savings that the mathematical framework itself will have to change, and the new theory will make some new predictions about what goes on in living bodies.
you do know that nobody knows why quantum mechanics works right? There is little understanding about it. So yes when they learn more about it, anything more, it will be a lot and the math will changed from not knowing why it works to an understanding of why it does. That will be a huge change. and possibility there will be new units. I hope so really.
I'm skeptical - has this ever been the case before? My guess is that whatever science discovers about how the brain really works is going to make most philosophies of mind look like the folks arguing we needed to find a vital essence to explain life simply because it felt like it was "obviously" different than everything else.
If I understand you correctly, I think we're in complete agreement. Much of the religious/spiritual argument seems based in the idea that the mind is so unique and singular and emergence that it simply must have some component that somehow transcends neurophysiology.
While there's still much that isn't understood about the mind, evidence overwhelming indicates it emerges entirely from the brain. More and more evidence is emerging that specific neural 'circuits' control many facets of behavior and experience: This further discredits already flimsy notions of a 'soul', 'eternal essence', or anything else suggesting a non-physical basis for the mind.
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remember math is a langue. It just has less wriggle round than philosophy. Thankfully. And my favorite, Engineering has even less ... it has to work or we are wrong.
