Richard: You can save the logical validity of the argument by tidying up (4)
I’ve done so, since I regard this as as a simple writing error. When I said “think”, I was talking about the internal narrative that I think you could in principle read out with a super-fMRI. “Say” works just as well for my purposes, and I’ve edited accordingly.
But then it’s a false premise, or at least question-begging—no epiphenomenalist is going to find it remotely plausible. And since we can offer a perfectly consistent alternative theory of reference, we are not committed to any logical inconsistency after all.
Well, yes, if you believe that (1) consciousness is a real stuff that has all the properties one intuitively attributes to consciousness (2) except for leaving a mark on the internal narrative or having any other effects whatsoever and (3) there exists some entirely distinct unknown physical cause of your talk about “consciousness”, then you can imagine eliminating consciousness from the Zombie World without contradiction. This introduces problems of reference, problems of epistemic justification, and in general, a hell of a lot of problems, but you would be able to imagine it without seeing a contradiction.
Of course, any reductive materialist or even substance dualist will believe that there exists knowledge, possibly knowledge which you could obtain by introspection or even sheer logic, such that if you had that knowledge, you would deny one of your own premises because it would be obvious consciousness is not epiphenomenal; in this sense, the “apparent conceivability” to you that consciousness is epiphenomenal, does not necessarily imply its “ideal conceivability”, and you only have direct access to facts about “apparent conceivability”.
But in any case, it is not possible to eliminate a word from a world; even in a thought experiment, that is a type error. You have to eliminate (your model of) a specific phenomenon from (your model of) the world. You cannot imagine eliminating “consciousness” from a world; you can only imagine eliminating consciousness. The epiphenomenalist imagines eliminating an effectless phenomenon, and that separately, a distinct phenomenon makes Chalmers go on writing philosophy papers. A substance dualist, or reductionist, imagines eliminating the very phenomenon that causes Chalmers to write philosophy papers.
For one of these people, the thought experiment does not end in a logical contradiction; for the other person, the thought experiment does end in a logical contradiction. It is a Variable Question Fallacy to think they are performing the same thought experiment, just because both say, “Let us imagine eliminating consciousness from the universe...”
Which of the two versions of consciousness is correct, is an empirical dispute about how the universe really works; so in this sense it is an empirical question whether or not the Zombie World is “actually logically possible”, though, really, the empirical question is which thought experiment is the right one to perform, or perhaps, which thought experiment is ideally conceivable as opposed to just apparently conceivable.
I am not arguing that the Zombie World should be apparently inconceivable to an epiphenomenalist, given that the said conceiver is currently an epiphenomenalist. Epiphenomenalism has other problems, like Occam’s Razor and theories of reference. I.e., someone says that “I believe that gravity is an epiphenomenon and that something else moves planets around, so it is logically possible to eliminate gravity from the universe while leaving all the atoms in the same place.” Granting the premise, yes, it is logically possible, but what does this person really mean by ‘gravity’?
What I’m trying to get at here, is why you can’t say: “I can imagine that consciousness is something that can be subtracted without changing the universe, therefore it is conceivable that consciousness can be subtracted without changing the universe, therefore it is logically possible that consciousness can be subtracted without changing the universe, therefore it is necessary that consciousness is an epiphenomenon; materialism says consciousness is not an epiphenomenon; therefore materialism is false.” Between your thought experiment and the materialist’s there is a changed meaning of the word “consciousness”. You cannot make “consciousness” a word of unknown referent and carry through the thought experiment, because “consciousness” has to evaluate to some particular hypothesized phenomenon before you can model removing it from a universe.
Richard: You can save the logical validity of the argument by tidying up (4)
I’ve done so, since I regard this as as a simple writing error. When I said “think”, I was talking about the internal narrative that I think you could in principle read out with a super-fMRI. “Say” works just as well for my purposes, and I’ve edited accordingly.
But then it’s a false premise, or at least question-begging—no epiphenomenalist is going to find it remotely plausible. And since we can offer a perfectly consistent alternative theory of reference, we are not committed to any logical inconsistency after all.
Well, yes, if you believe that (1) consciousness is a real stuff that has all the properties one intuitively attributes to consciousness (2) except for leaving a mark on the internal narrative or having any other effects whatsoever and (3) there exists some entirely distinct unknown physical cause of your talk about “consciousness”, then you can imagine eliminating consciousness from the Zombie World without contradiction. This introduces problems of reference, problems of epistemic justification, and in general, a hell of a lot of problems, but you would be able to imagine it without seeing a contradiction.
Of course, any reductive materialist or even substance dualist will believe that there exists knowledge, possibly knowledge which you could obtain by introspection or even sheer logic, such that if you had that knowledge, you would deny one of your own premises because it would be obvious consciousness is not epiphenomenal; in this sense, the “apparent conceivability” to you that consciousness is epiphenomenal, does not necessarily imply its “ideal conceivability”, and you only have direct access to facts about “apparent conceivability”.
But in any case, it is not possible to eliminate a word from a world; even in a thought experiment, that is a type error. You have to eliminate (your model of) a specific phenomenon from (your model of) the world. You cannot imagine eliminating “consciousness” from a world; you can only imagine eliminating consciousness. The epiphenomenalist imagines eliminating an effectless phenomenon, and that separately, a distinct phenomenon makes Chalmers go on writing philosophy papers. A substance dualist, or reductionist, imagines eliminating the very phenomenon that causes Chalmers to write philosophy papers.
For one of these people, the thought experiment does not end in a logical contradiction; for the other person, the thought experiment does end in a logical contradiction. It is a Variable Question Fallacy to think they are performing the same thought experiment, just because both say, “Let us imagine eliminating consciousness from the universe...”
Which of the two versions of consciousness is correct, is an empirical dispute about how the universe really works; so in this sense it is an empirical question whether or not the Zombie World is “actually logically possible”, though, really, the empirical question is which thought experiment is the right one to perform, or perhaps, which thought experiment is ideally conceivable as opposed to just apparently conceivable.
I am not arguing that the Zombie World should be apparently inconceivable to an epiphenomenalist, given that the said conceiver is currently an epiphenomenalist. Epiphenomenalism has other problems, like Occam’s Razor and theories of reference. I.e., someone says that “I believe that gravity is an epiphenomenon and that something else moves planets around, so it is logically possible to eliminate gravity from the universe while leaving all the atoms in the same place.” Granting the premise, yes, it is logically possible, but what does this person really mean by ‘gravity’?
What I’m trying to get at here, is why you can’t say: “I can imagine that consciousness is something that can be subtracted without changing the universe, therefore it is conceivable that consciousness can be subtracted without changing the universe, therefore it is logically possible that consciousness can be subtracted without changing the universe, therefore it is necessary that consciousness is an epiphenomenon; materialism says consciousness is not an epiphenomenon; therefore materialism is false.” Between your thought experiment and the materialist’s there is a changed meaning of the word “consciousness”. You cannot make “consciousness” a word of unknown referent and carry through the thought experiment, because “consciousness” has to evaluate to some particular hypothesized phenomenon before you can model removing it from a universe.