Dear Pat, 
 
Yes, let's talk about "pain", and its neural correlate [and hence avoid the 
irrelevant "out there" stuff: the neural correlate is "in here" 
(i.e., in the brain, or perhaps brain/body)]. We shouldn't need 
hypothesize experienceoscopes: let's restrict ourselves to human 
experiences of the kind that we are familiar with.  

So your argument says "I KNEW the pain, but I didn't ABOUT the pain".
In the context of your endeavour to show that the pain could be `identically
the same thing' as its neural correlate, and experiential vs propositional
modes of knowing, I presume that what you did not know, or know about, was the 
fact that the pain P that you experienced was identically the same thing as 
something that you (as a small child) did not know anything about, namely 
the neural (functional) activity F in your brain. You knew P, but did not know
THAT P=F. Then you argue that since, according to your hypothesis, P=F, 
although you did not know THAT P=F, since you knew P, you knew F. 

But that hypothesis (P=F) is not consistent with that nature of experiential 
knowing, as it is known to the child who knows pain, and what it is like
to experience pain. In the usual (child's) ways of speaking, which defines 
the meaning (to the child) of `experiencing pain' one has 
`pain' = `experience of pain' = `experiencing of pain': 
what is immediately experientially known is exactly P. 

What is `immediately experientially known' is P. But, by virtue of the very 
meaning of `immediately experientially known', F is not immediately
experientially known. Thus BECAUSE OF THE MEANING OF THIS TERM it is not 
possible to hypothesize that P is identical to F. The pain P is `immediately
experientially known, to the child but the functional property F is not 
`immediately experientially known' to the child. Thus P *cannot be* 
identically the same thing as F. To simply postulate P=F in the face of
this direct contradiction with the normal pre-existing understanding of what 
these familiar words mean, constitutes *not* a rational solution to the problem
of comprehending the relationship of `function' to `experience', but rather
an irrational attempt to try to extend the classical mechanical conception
of nature, in which experience has no natural place, to a realm where 
experience is important.

In answer to your question about the `time' of the experience, it is certainly
true that the neural event has a clock time, but the experience itself
contains only a certain psychological time: the clock time is not a property
of an experience, per se.

You say: "I think that eventually a scientific account of experience *must* 
refuse to take this step. If experiences cannot be identified with any 
externally viewable aspect of the subject's structure, then any science of 
consciousness is impossible. And I see no reason to be so stubborn, other 
than a previous conviction that such steps must be forbidden."

But quantum theory as formulated by Bohr was pre-eminently a scientific 
theory whose logical foundation was precisely the need for a practical
thoroughly scientific theory of observable phenomena (as contrasted with
various ontological possibilities that went beyond science into metaphysics).
In Bohr's interpretation human experiences were taken as irreducible primitives.
In the von Neuman-Wigner ontologicalization of Bohr's interpretation this
feature is retained: it is a two-aspect theory in which an experience is
one aspect of a quantum event that has also a physical side, where these 
two-sided events are part of a processes that is represented in Hilbert space,
and is controlled by mathematical laws that have a stochastic component.

So I do not think your claim about how science *must* go is defensible, and
suggest that the stubborness is on the part of those who insist upon 
sticking to the classical conceptualization of nature and of science
in the face of scientific advances that demand that we go beyond, and
insist upon this even at the price of saying that our knowledge of what is 
`immediately experientially known' is somehow wildly mistaken, an idea that 
would throw all of science into a state doubt and confusion.

In answer to your later remarks, let me repeat that the problem is not 
about the fact that we do not know THAT P=F: it is about the fact that P
is `immediately experientially known' to the child, but F is not
`immediately experientially known' to the child, and this FACT makes the
hypothesis that P=F rationally untenable: there is a distinction between
P and F, even if it is only this undeniable difference. 

Cordially, Henry

CC:klein@adage.Berkeley.EDU, phayes@cs.uiuc.edu, A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk,
keith@imprint.co.uk, mckee@neosoft.com, brings@rpi.edu,
ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu, patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au