I feel like I already understand, reasonably well, the chain of causation in my brain that leads to me saying the thing in the previous paragraph
The feeling of understanding, and actual understanding, are very different things. Astrology will give people a feeling of understanding. Popsci books give people a feeling of understanding. Repeating the teacher’s password gives a feeling of understanding. Exclaiming “Neurons!” gives people a feeling of understanding. Stories of all sorts give people a feeling of understanding.
One of the signs of real understanding is doing real things with it. If I can build a house that stays up and doesn’t leak, I have some understanding of how to build a house. If I can develop a piece of software that performs some practical task, then I have some understanding of software development. If I can help people live better and more fulfilled lives, I have some understanding of people.
Therefore, I need to conclude that either consciousness and qualia don’t exist, or that consciousness and qualia exist, but that they are not the ontologically fundamental parts of reality that they intuitively seem to be.
Or the real explanation is something we have not even thought of yet.
As I understand it, here I’m endorsing the “illusionism” perspective
I don’t see how you make the jump from “not ontologically fundamental” to “illusion”. For that matter, it’s not clear to me what you count as being ontologically fundamental or why it matters.
I don’t see how you make the jump from “not ontologically fundamental” to “illusion”. For that matter, it’s not clear to me what you count as being ontologically fundamental or why it matters.
An ontologically fundamental property is a property that is fundamental to every other property. It also can’t be reduced to any other property. A great example is the superforce proposed in Theories of Everything would essentially symmetry-break into the 4 known fundamental forces: Weak and Strong Nuclear forces, Gravity, and Electromagnetism.
BTW, my credences in the following general theories of consciousness are the following:
Ontologically fundamental consciousness is less than 1%.
Non-ontologically fundamental consciousness is around 10-20% credence.
And the idea that consciousness is an illusion is probably 80-90% in my opinion.
I put illusionism at effectively 0 (i.e. small enough to ignore in all decision-making). Ontological fundamentality, as you describe it, is something that one could only judge in hindsight, after finding a testable and tested Theory of Everything Including Consciousness. We don’t yet have even a testable and tested Theory of Everything Excluding Consciousness.
The Standard Model of Particle Physics plus perturbative general relativity (I wish it was better-known and had a catchier name) appears sufficient to explain everything that happens in the solar system, and has been extremely rigorously tested. It can’t explain everything that happens in the universe—in particular, it can’t make any predictions about microscopic black holes or the big bang, unfortunately. All signs point to some version of string theory eventually filling in those gaps as a true Theory of Everything, although of course one can’t be certain until the physicists actually find the right vacuum for our universe and do all the calculations etc.
I have very high confidence that, when that process is complete, and we understand the fundamental laws of the universe, the laws which hold everywhere with no exceptions, we will have learned nothing whatsoever new or helpful about consciousness. I think fundamental physics is just not going to help us here :)
I completely agree with that. So far we only have speculations towards a TOE (excluding consciousness), and when we have one, there will still be all of the way to go to explain consciousness.
The feeling of understanding, and actual understanding, are very different things. Astrology will give people a feeling of understanding. Popsci books give people a feeling of understanding. Repeating the teacher’s password gives a feeling of understanding. Exclaiming “Neurons!” gives people a feeling of understanding. Stories of all sorts give people a feeling of understanding.
One of the signs of real understanding is doing real things with it. If I can build a house that stays up and doesn’t leak, I have some understanding of how to build a house. If I can develop a piece of software that performs some practical task, then I have some understanding of software development. If I can help people live better and more fulfilled lives, I have some understanding of people.
Or the real explanation is something we have not even thought of yet.
I don’t see how you make the jump from “not ontologically fundamental” to “illusion”. For that matter, it’s not clear to me what you count as being ontologically fundamental or why it matters.
An ontologically fundamental property is a property that is fundamental to every other property. It also can’t be reduced to any other property. A great example is the superforce proposed in Theories of Everything would essentially symmetry-break into the 4 known fundamental forces: Weak and Strong Nuclear forces, Gravity, and Electromagnetism.
BTW, my credences in the following general theories of consciousness are the following:
Ontologically fundamental consciousness is less than 1%.
Non-ontologically fundamental consciousness is around 10-20% credence.
And the idea that consciousness is an illusion is probably 80-90% in my opinion.
I put illusionism at effectively 0 (i.e. small enough to ignore in all decision-making). Ontological fundamentality, as you describe it, is something that one could only judge in hindsight, after finding a testable and tested Theory of Everything Including Consciousness. We don’t yet have even a testable and tested Theory of Everything Excluding Consciousness.
The Standard Model of Particle Physics plus perturbative general relativity (I wish it was better-known and had a catchier name) appears sufficient to explain everything that happens in the solar system, and has been extremely rigorously tested. It can’t explain everything that happens in the universe—in particular, it can’t make any predictions about microscopic black holes or the big bang, unfortunately. All signs point to some version of string theory eventually filling in those gaps as a true Theory of Everything, although of course one can’t be certain until the physicists actually find the right vacuum for our universe and do all the calculations etc.
I have very high confidence that, when that process is complete, and we understand the fundamental laws of the universe, the laws which hold everywhere with no exceptions, we will have learned nothing whatsoever new or helpful about consciousness. I think fundamental physics is just not going to help us here :)
[Sorry if I’m misunderstanding your point.]
I completely agree with that. So far we only have speculations towards a TOE (excluding consciousness), and when we have one, there will still be all of the way to go to explain consciousness.
Can you say more about the “non-ontologically fundamental consciousness” that you like? Or provide a link to something I could read?