This was longer than it needed to be, and in my opinion, somewhat mistaken.
The zombie argument is not an argument for epiphenomenalism, it’s an argument against physicalism. It doesn’t assume that interactionist dualism is false, regardless of the fact that Chalmers happens to be an epiphenomenalist.
Chalmers furthermore specifies that this true stuff of consciousness is epiphenomenal, without causal potency—but why say that?
Maybe because interactionism violates the laws of physics and is somewhat at odds with everything we (think we) know about cognition. There may be other arguments as well. It has mostly fallen out of favor. I don’t know the specific reasons why Chalmers rejects it.
Once you see the collision between the general rule that consciousness has no effect, to the specific implication that consciousness has no effect on how you think about consciousness (in any way that affects your internal narrative that you could choose to say out loud), zombie-ism stops being intuitive. It starts requiring you to postulate strange things.
In the epiphenomenalist view, for whatever evolutionary reason, we developed to have discussions and beliefs in rich inner lives. Maybe those thoughts and discussions help us with being altruistic, or maybe they’re a necessary part of our own activity. Maybe the illusion of interactionism is necessary for us to have complex cognition and decisionmaking.
Also in the epiphenomenalist view, psychophysical laws relate mental states to neurophysical aspects of our cognition. So for some reason there is a relation between acting/thinking of pain, and mental states which are painful. It’s not arbitrary or coincidental because the mental reaction to pain (dislike/avoid) is a mirror of the physical reaction to pain (express dislike/do things to avoid it).
But Chalmers just wrote all that stuff down, in his very physical book, and so did the zombie-Chalmers.
Chalmers isn’t denying that the zombie Chalmers would write that stuff down. He’s denying that its beliefs would be justified. Maybe there’s a version of me in a parallel universe that doesn’t know anything about philosophy but is forced to type certain combinations of letters at gunpoint—that doesn’t mean that I don’t have reasons to believe the same things about philosophy in this universe.
Assume consciousness has no effect upon matter, and is therefore not intrinsic to our behaviour.
P-zombies that perfectly mimic our behaviour but have no conscious/subjective experience are then conceivable.
Consider then a parallel Earth that was populated only by p-zombies from its inception. Would this Earth also develop philosophers that argue over consciousness/subjective experience in precisely the same ways we have, despite the fact that none of them could possibly have any knowledge of such a thing?
This p-zombie world is inconceivable.
Thus, p-zombies are not observationally indistinguishable from real people with consciousness.
Thus, p-zombies are inconceivable.
In the epiphenomenalist view, for whatever evolutionary reason, we developed to have discussions and beliefs in rich inner lives.
Except such discussions would have no motivational impact. A “rich inner life” has no relation to any fact in a p-zombies’ brain, and so in what way could this term influence their decision process? What specific sort of discussions of “inner life” do you expect in the p-zombie world? And if it has no conceivable impact, how could we have evolved this behaviour?
I would hope not. 3 is entirely conceivable if we grant 2, so 4 is unsupported, and nothing that EY said supports 4. 5 does not follow from 3 or 4, though it’s bundled up in the definition of a p-zombie and follows from 1 and 2 anyway. In any case, 6 does not follow from 5.
What EY is saying is that it’s highly implausible for all of our ideas and talk of consciousness to have come to be if subjective consciousness does not play a causal role in our thinking.
Except such discussions would have no motivational impact.
Of course they would—our considerations of other people’s feelings and consciousness changes our behavior all the time. And if you knew every detail about the brain, you could give an atomic-level causal account as to why and how.
A “rich inner life” has no relation to any fact in a p-zombies’ brain, and so in what way could this term influence their decision process?
The concept of a rich inner life influences decision processes.
I would hope not. 3 is entirely conceivable if we grant 2, so 4 is unsupported
It’s not, and I’m surprised you find this contentious. 3 doesn’t follow from 2, it follows from a contradiction between 1+2.
1 states that consciousness has no effect upon matter, and yet it’s clear from observation that the concept of subjectivity only follows if consciousness can affect matter, ie. we only have knowledge of subjectivity because we observe it first-hand. P-zombies do not have first-hand knowledge of subjectivity as specified in 2.
If there were another way to infer subjectivity without first-hand knowledge, then that inference would resolve how physicalism entails consciousness and epiphenomenalism can be discarded using Occam’s razor.
Of course they would—our considerations of other people’s feelings and consciousness changes our behavior all the time. And if you knew every detail about the brain, you could give an atomic-level causal account as to why and how.
Except the zombie world wouldn’t have feelings and consciousness, so your rebuttal doesn’t apply.
The concept of a rich inner life influences decision processes.
That’s an assertion, not an argument. Basically, you and epiphenominalists are merely asserting that that a) p-zombies would somehow derive the concept of subjectivity without having knowledge of subjectivity, and b) that this subjectivity would actually be meaningful to p-zombies in a way that would influence their decisions despite them having no first-hand knowledge of any such thing or its relevance to their life.
So yes, EY is saying it’s implausible because it seems to multiply entities unnecessarily, I’m taking it one step further and flat out saying this position either multiplies entities unnecessarily, or it’s inconsistent.
3 doesn’t follow from 2, it follows from a contradiction between 1+2.
Well, first of all, 3 isn’t a statement, it’s saying “consider a world where...” and then asking a question about whether philosophers would talk about consciousness. So I’m not sure what you mean by suggesting that it follows or that it is true.
1 and 2 are not contradictions. Conversely, 1 and 2 are basically saying the exact same thing.
1 states that consciousness has no effect upon matter, and yet it’s clear from observation that the concept of subjectivity only follows if consciousness can affect matter,
This is essentially what epiphenomenalists deny, and I’m inclined to say that everyone else should deny it too. Regardless of what the truth of the matter is, surely the mere concept of subjectivity does not rely upon epiphenomenalism being false.
we only have knowledge of subjectivity because we observe it first-hand.
This is confusing the issue; like I said: under the epiphenomenalist viewpoint, the cause of our discussions of consciousness (physical) is different from the justification for our belief in consciousness (subjective). Epiphenomenalists do not deny that we have first-hand experience of subjectivity; they deny that those experiences are causally responsible for our statements about consciousness.
and epiphenomenalism can be discarded using Occam’s razor.
There are many criteria by which theories are judged in philosophy, and parsimony is only one of them.
Except the zombie world wouldn’t have feelings and consciousness, so your rebuttal doesn’t apply.
Nothing in my rebuttal relies on the idea that zombies would have feelings and consciousness. My rebuttal points out that zombies would be motivated by the idea of feelings and consciousness, which is trivially true: humans are motivated by the idea of feelings and consciousness, and zombies behave in the same way that humans do, by definition.
That’s an assertion, not an argument.
But it’s quite obviously true, because we talk about rich inner lives as the grounding for almost all of our moral thought, and then act accordingly, and because empathy relies on being able to infer rich inner lives among other people. And as noted earlier, whatever behaviorally motivates humans also behaviorally motivates p-zombies.
Epiphenomenalists do not deny that we have first-hand experience of subjectivity; they deny that those experiences are causally responsible for our statements about consciousness.
Since this is the crux of the matter, I won’t bother debating the semantics of most of the other disagreements in the interest of time.
As for whether subjectivity is causally efficacious, all knowledge would seem to derive from some set of observations. Even possibly fictitious concepts, like unicorns and abstract mathematics, are generalizations or permutations of concepts that were first observed.
Do you have even a single example of a concept that did not arise in this manner? Generalizations remove constraints on a concept, so they aren’t an example, it’s just another form of permutation. If no such example exists, why should I accept the claim that knowledge of subjectivity can arise without subjectivity?
Unlike the other points which I raised above, this one is semantic. When we talk about “knowledge,” we are talking about neurophysical responses, or we are talking about subjective qualia, or we are implicitly combining the two together. Epiphenomenalists, like physicalists, believe that sensory data causes the neurophysical responses in the brain which we identify with knowledge. They disagree with physicalists because they say that our subjective qualia are epiphenomenal shadows of those neurophysical responses, rather than being identical to them. There is no real world example that would prove or disprove this theory because it is a philosophical dispute. One of the main arguments for it is, well, the zombie argument.
Epiphenomenalists, like physicalists, believe that sensory data causes the neurophysical responses in the brain which we identify with knowledge. They disagree with physicalists because they say that our subjective qualia are epiphenomenal shadows of those neurophysical responses, rather than being identical to them. There is no real world example that would prove or disprove this theory because it is a philosophical dispute. One of the main arguments for it is, well, the zombie argument.
Which seems to suggest that epiphenominalism either begs the question, or multiplies entities unnecessarily by accepting unjustified intuitions.
So my original argument disproving p-zombies would seem to be on just as solid footing as the original p-zombie argument itself, modulo our disagreements over wording.
Which seems to suggest that epiphenominalism either begs the question,
Well, they do have arguments for their positions.
or multiplies entities unnecessarily by accepting unjustified intuitions.
It actually seems very intuitive to most people that subjective qualia are different from neurophysical responses. It is the key issue at stake with zombie and knowledge arguments and has made life extremely difficult for physicalists. I’m not sure in what way it’s unjustified for me to have an intuition that qualia are different from physical structures, and rather than epiphenomenalism multiplying entities unnecessarily, it sure seems to me like physicalism is equivocating entities unnecessarily.
So my original argument disproving p-zombies would seem to be on just as solid footing as the original p-zombie argument itself, modulo our disagreements over wording.
Nothing you said indicates that p-zombies are inconceivable or even impossible. What you, or and EY seem to be saying is that our discussion of consciousness is a posteriori evidence that our consciousness is not epiphenomenal.
I’m not sure in what way it’s unjustified for me to have an intuition that qualia are different from physical structures
It’s unjustified in the same way that vilalism was an unjustified explanation of life: it’s purely a product of our ignorance. Our perception of subjective experience/first-hand knowledge is no more proof of accuracy than our perception that water breaks pencils.
Intuition pumps supporting the accuracy of said perception either beg the question or multiply entities unnecessarily (as detailed below).
Nothing you said indicates that p-zombies are inconceivable or even impossible.
I disagree. You’ve said that epiphenominalists hold that having first-hand knowledge is not causally related to our conception and discussion of first-hand knowledge. This premise has no firm justification.
Denying it yields my original argument of inconceivability via the p-zombie world. Accepting it requires multiplying entities unnecessarily, for if such knowledge is not causally efficacious, then it serves no more purpose than vital in vitalism and will inevitably be discarded given a proper scientific account of consciousness, somewhat like this one.
I previously asked for any example of knowledge that was not a permutation of properties previously observed. If you can provide one such an example, this would undermine my position.
It’s unjustified in the same way that vilalism was an unjustified explanation of life: it’s purely a product of our ignorance.
It’s not. Suppose that the ignorance went away: a complete physical explanation of each of our qualia—“the redness of red comes from these neurons in this part of the brain, the sound of birds flapping their wings is determined by the structure of electric signals in this region,” and so on—would do nothing to remove our intuitions about consciousness. But a complete mechanistic explanation of how organ systems work would (and did) remove the intuitions behind vitalism.
I disagree. You’ve said that epiphenominalists hold that having first-hand knowledge is not causally related to our conception and discussion of first-hand knowledge. This premise has no firm justification.
Well… that’s just what is implied by epiphenomenalism, so the justification for it is whatever reasons we have to believe epiphenomenalism in the first place. (Though most people who gravitate towards epiphenomenalism seem to do so out of the conviction that none of the alternatives work.)
Denying it yields my original argument of inconceivability via the p-zombie world.
As I’ve said already, your argument can’t show that zombies are inconceivable. It only attempts to show that an epiphenomenalist world is probabilistically implausible. These are very different things.
Accepting it requires multiplying entities unnecessarily, for if such knowledge is not causally efficacious
Well the purpose of rational inquiry is to determine which theories are true, not which theories have the fewest entities. Anyone who rejects solipsism is multiplying entities unnecessarily.
I previously asked for any example of knowledge that was not a permutation of properties previously observed.
I don’t see why this should matter for the zombie argument or for epiphenomenalism. In the post where you originally asked this, you were confused about the contextual usage and meaning behind the term ‘knowledge.’
What EY is saying is that it’s highly implausible for all of our ideas and talk of consciousness to have come to be if subjective consciousness does not play a causal role in our thinking
Although he is also saying that our ideas about free will come about from a source other than free will.
forced to type certain combinations of letters at gunpoint
Except there can’t be a gunman in the zombie universe if it’s the same as ours (unless… that explains everything!). This essay is trying to convince you that there’s no way you can write about consciousness without something real causing you to write about consciousness. Even a mistaken belief about consciousness has to come from somewhere. Try now to imagine a zombie world with no metaphorical gunman and see what comes up.
Well that’s answered by what I said about psychophysical laws and the evolutionary origins of consciousness. What caused us to believe in consciousness is not (necessarily) the same issue as what reasons we have to believe it.
I think you’re smuggling the gunman into evolution. I can come up with good evolutionary reasons why people talk about God despite him not existing, but I can’t come up with good evolutionary reasons why people talk about consciousness despite it not existing. It’s too verbose to go into detail, but I think if you try to distinguish the God example and the consciousness example you’ll see that the one false belief is in a completely different category from the other.
This was longer than it needed to be, and in my opinion, somewhat mistaken.
The zombie argument is not an argument for epiphenomenalism, it’s an argument against physicalism. It doesn’t assume that interactionist dualism is false, regardless of the fact that Chalmers happens to be an epiphenomenalist.
Maybe because interactionism violates the laws of physics and is somewhat at odds with everything we (think we) know about cognition. There may be other arguments as well. It has mostly fallen out of favor. I don’t know the specific reasons why Chalmers rejects it.
In the epiphenomenalist view, for whatever evolutionary reason, we developed to have discussions and beliefs in rich inner lives. Maybe those thoughts and discussions help us with being altruistic, or maybe they’re a necessary part of our own activity. Maybe the illusion of interactionism is necessary for us to have complex cognition and decisionmaking.
Also in the epiphenomenalist view, psychophysical laws relate mental states to neurophysical aspects of our cognition. So for some reason there is a relation between acting/thinking of pain, and mental states which are painful. It’s not arbitrary or coincidental because the mental reaction to pain (dislike/avoid) is a mirror of the physical reaction to pain (express dislike/do things to avoid it).
Chalmers isn’t denying that the zombie Chalmers would write that stuff down. He’s denying that its beliefs would be justified. Maybe there’s a version of me in a parallel universe that doesn’t know anything about philosophy but is forced to type certain combinations of letters at gunpoint—that doesn’t mean that I don’t have reasons to believe the same things about philosophy in this universe.
Indeed. The condensed argument against p-zombies:
Assume consciousness has no effect upon matter, and is therefore not intrinsic to our behaviour.
P-zombies that perfectly mimic our behaviour but have no conscious/subjective experience are then conceivable.
Consider then a parallel Earth that was populated only by p-zombies from its inception. Would this Earth also develop philosophers that argue over consciousness/subjective experience in precisely the same ways we have, despite the fact that none of them could possibly have any knowledge of such a thing?
This p-zombie world is inconceivable.
Thus, p-zombies are not observationally indistinguishable from real people with consciousness.
Thus, p-zombies are inconceivable.
Except such discussions would have no motivational impact. A “rich inner life” has no relation to any fact in a p-zombies’ brain, and so in what way could this term influence their decision process? What specific sort of discussions of “inner life” do you expect in the p-zombie world? And if it has no conceivable impact, how could we have evolved this behaviour?
I would hope not. 3 is entirely conceivable if we grant 2, so 4 is unsupported, and nothing that EY said supports 4. 5 does not follow from 3 or 4, though it’s bundled up in the definition of a p-zombie and follows from 1 and 2 anyway. In any case, 6 does not follow from 5.
What EY is saying is that it’s highly implausible for all of our ideas and talk of consciousness to have come to be if subjective consciousness does not play a causal role in our thinking.
Of course they would—our considerations of other people’s feelings and consciousness changes our behavior all the time. And if you knew every detail about the brain, you could give an atomic-level causal account as to why and how.
The concept of a rich inner life influences decision processes.
It’s not, and I’m surprised you find this contentious. 3 doesn’t follow from 2, it follows from a contradiction between 1+2.
1 states that consciousness has no effect upon matter, and yet it’s clear from observation that the concept of subjectivity only follows if consciousness can affect matter, ie. we only have knowledge of subjectivity because we observe it first-hand. P-zombies do not have first-hand knowledge of subjectivity as specified in 2.
If there were another way to infer subjectivity without first-hand knowledge, then that inference would resolve how physicalism entails consciousness and epiphenomenalism can be discarded using Occam’s razor.
Except the zombie world wouldn’t have feelings and consciousness, so your rebuttal doesn’t apply.
That’s an assertion, not an argument. Basically, you and epiphenominalists are merely asserting that that a) p-zombies would somehow derive the concept of subjectivity without having knowledge of subjectivity, and b) that this subjectivity would actually be meaningful to p-zombies in a way that would influence their decisions despite them having no first-hand knowledge of any such thing or its relevance to their life.
So yes, EY is saying it’s implausible because it seems to multiply entities unnecessarily, I’m taking it one step further and flat out saying this position either multiplies entities unnecessarily, or it’s inconsistent.
Well, first of all, 3 isn’t a statement, it’s saying “consider a world where...” and then asking a question about whether philosophers would talk about consciousness. So I’m not sure what you mean by suggesting that it follows or that it is true.
1 and 2 are not contradictions. Conversely, 1 and 2 are basically saying the exact same thing.
This is essentially what epiphenomenalists deny, and I’m inclined to say that everyone else should deny it too. Regardless of what the truth of the matter is, surely the mere concept of subjectivity does not rely upon epiphenomenalism being false.
This is confusing the issue; like I said: under the epiphenomenalist viewpoint, the cause of our discussions of consciousness (physical) is different from the justification for our belief in consciousness (subjective). Epiphenomenalists do not deny that we have first-hand experience of subjectivity; they deny that those experiences are causally responsible for our statements about consciousness.
There are many criteria by which theories are judged in philosophy, and parsimony is only one of them.
Nothing in my rebuttal relies on the idea that zombies would have feelings and consciousness. My rebuttal points out that zombies would be motivated by the idea of feelings and consciousness, which is trivially true: humans are motivated by the idea of feelings and consciousness, and zombies behave in the same way that humans do, by definition.
But it’s quite obviously true, because we talk about rich inner lives as the grounding for almost all of our moral thought, and then act accordingly, and because empathy relies on being able to infer rich inner lives among other people. And as noted earlier, whatever behaviorally motivates humans also behaviorally motivates p-zombies.
Since this is the crux of the matter, I won’t bother debating the semantics of most of the other disagreements in the interest of time.
As for whether subjectivity is causally efficacious, all knowledge would seem to derive from some set of observations. Even possibly fictitious concepts, like unicorns and abstract mathematics, are generalizations or permutations of concepts that were first observed.
Do you have even a single example of a concept that did not arise in this manner? Generalizations remove constraints on a concept, so they aren’t an example, it’s just another form of permutation. If no such example exists, why should I accept the claim that knowledge of subjectivity can arise without subjectivity?
Unlike the other points which I raised above, this one is semantic. When we talk about “knowledge,” we are talking about neurophysical responses, or we are talking about subjective qualia, or we are implicitly combining the two together. Epiphenomenalists, like physicalists, believe that sensory data causes the neurophysical responses in the brain which we identify with knowledge. They disagree with physicalists because they say that our subjective qualia are epiphenomenal shadows of those neurophysical responses, rather than being identical to them. There is no real world example that would prove or disprove this theory because it is a philosophical dispute. One of the main arguments for it is, well, the zombie argument.
Which seems to suggest that epiphenominalism either begs the question, or multiplies entities unnecessarily by accepting unjustified intuitions.
So my original argument disproving p-zombies would seem to be on just as solid footing as the original p-zombie argument itself, modulo our disagreements over wording.
Well, they do have arguments for their positions.
It actually seems very intuitive to most people that subjective qualia are different from neurophysical responses. It is the key issue at stake with zombie and knowledge arguments and has made life extremely difficult for physicalists. I’m not sure in what way it’s unjustified for me to have an intuition that qualia are different from physical structures, and rather than epiphenomenalism multiplying entities unnecessarily, it sure seems to me like physicalism is equivocating entities unnecessarily.
Nothing you said indicates that p-zombies are inconceivable or even impossible. What you, or and EY seem to be saying is that our discussion of consciousness is a posteriori evidence that our consciousness is not epiphenomenal.
It’s unjustified in the same way that vilalism was an unjustified explanation of life: it’s purely a product of our ignorance. Our perception of subjective experience/first-hand knowledge is no more proof of accuracy than our perception that water breaks pencils.
Intuition pumps supporting the accuracy of said perception either beg the question or multiply entities unnecessarily (as detailed below).
I disagree. You’ve said that epiphenominalists hold that having first-hand knowledge is not causally related to our conception and discussion of first-hand knowledge. This premise has no firm justification.
Denying it yields my original argument of inconceivability via the p-zombie world. Accepting it requires multiplying entities unnecessarily, for if such knowledge is not causally efficacious, then it serves no more purpose than vital in vitalism and will inevitably be discarded given a proper scientific account of consciousness, somewhat like this one.
I previously asked for any example of knowledge that was not a permutation of properties previously observed. If you can provide one such an example, this would undermine my position.
It’s not. Suppose that the ignorance went away: a complete physical explanation of each of our qualia—“the redness of red comes from these neurons in this part of the brain, the sound of birds flapping their wings is determined by the structure of electric signals in this region,” and so on—would do nothing to remove our intuitions about consciousness. But a complete mechanistic explanation of how organ systems work would (and did) remove the intuitions behind vitalism.
Well… that’s just what is implied by epiphenomenalism, so the justification for it is whatever reasons we have to believe epiphenomenalism in the first place. (Though most people who gravitate towards epiphenomenalism seem to do so out of the conviction that none of the alternatives work.)
As I’ve said already, your argument can’t show that zombies are inconceivable. It only attempts to show that an epiphenomenalist world is probabilistically implausible. These are very different things.
Well the purpose of rational inquiry is to determine which theories are true, not which theories have the fewest entities. Anyone who rejects solipsism is multiplying entities unnecessarily.
I don’t see why this should matter for the zombie argument or for epiphenomenalism. In the post where you originally asked this, you were confused about the contextual usage and meaning behind the term ‘knowledge.’
Although he is also saying that our ideas about free will come about from a source other than free will.
Except there can’t be a gunman in the zombie universe if it’s the same as ours (unless… that explains everything!). This essay is trying to convince you that there’s no way you can write about consciousness without something real causing you to write about consciousness. Even a mistaken belief about consciousness has to come from somewhere. Try now to imagine a zombie world with no metaphorical gunman and see what comes up.
Well that’s answered by what I said about psychophysical laws and the evolutionary origins of consciousness. What caused us to believe in consciousness is not (necessarily) the same issue as what reasons we have to believe it.
I think you’re smuggling the gunman into evolution. I can come up with good evolutionary reasons why people talk about God despite him not existing, but I can’t come up with good evolutionary reasons why people talk about consciousness despite it not existing. It’s too verbose to go into detail, but I think if you try to distinguish the God example and the consciousness example you’ll see that the one false belief is in a completely different category from the other.