What This Would Establish

What This Would Establish

Positive results would dissolve the metaphysical residue by establishing:

1. Affect structure is detectable without linguistic contamination
2. The structure-to-language mapping is consistent across systems
3. The mapping is bidirectionally causal, not merely correlational
4. The "hard problem" residue—the suspicion that structure and experience are distinct—becomes unmotivated

Consider the alternative hypothesis: the structure is present but experience is not. The agents have the geometry of suffering but nothing it is like to suffer. This hypothesis predicts... what? That the correlations would not hold? Why not? The structure is doing the causal work either way.

The zombie hypothesis becomes like geocentrism after Copernicus. You can maintain it. You can add epicycles. But the evidence points elsewhere, and the burden shifts.

The test does not prove the identity thesis. It shifts the burden. If uncontaminated systems, learning from scratch in human-like environments, develop affect structures that correlate with language and behavior in the predicted ways—if you can induce suffering by speaking to them, and they show the signature, and they act accordingly—then denying their experience requires a metaphysical commitment that the evidence does not support.

The question stops being "does structure produce experience?" and becomes "why would you assume it doesn't?"