The incompressibility of 0 or a quark isn’t a problem to physical reductionism
I actually do think some people register these being incompressible as a problem. Think of “what breathes fire into the equations” or “why does anything exist at all”(OK, more about the incompressibility of the entire world than a quark, but same idea—I could imagine people being confused about “what even are quarks in themselves” or something...)
So, dualism is true? For the dualist, there is no expectation that qualia should be compressible or reducible. But that’s not a meta-explanation
We can distinguish two levels of analysis.
firstly, accepting a naïve physicalism, we can try to give an account of why people would report being confused about consciousness, which could in principle be cashed out in purely physical predictions about what words they speak or symbols they type into computers. That’s what I was attempting to do in the first two sections of the article(without spelling out in detail how the algorithms ultimately lead to typing etc., given that I don’t think the details are especially important for the overall point) I think people with a variety of metaphysical views could come to agree on an explanation of this “meta-problem” without coming to agree on the object level.
Secondly, there is the question of how to relate that analysis to our first-person perspective. This was what I was trying to do in the last section of the article(which I also feel much less confident in than the first two sections). You could say it’s dualist in a sense, although I don’t think there “is” a non-physical mental substance or anything like that. I would rather say that reality, from the perspective of beings like us, is necessarily a bit indexical—that is, one always approaches reality from a particular perspective. You can enlarge your perspective, but not so much that you attain an observer-independent overview of all of reality. Qualia are a manifestation of this irreducible indexicality.
I actually do think some people register these being incompressible as a problem. Think of “what breathes fire into the equations
If the equations are something like string theory or the standard model, they are pretty complex, and there is a legitimate concern why you can compress things so far but not further.
firstly, accepting a naïve physicalism, we can try to give an account of why people would report being confused about consciousness, which could in principle be cashed out in purely physical predictions about what words they speak or symbols they type into computers
But there is no reason for the maximally naive person to be confused about qualia, because the maximally naive person doesn’t know what they are, or what physics is or what reductionism is. The maximally naive approach is that I am looking at a red chair, and I see it exactly as it is, and the redness is a property of the chair ,not a proxy representation generated in my brain.
I think people with a variety of metaphysical views could come to agree on an explanation of this “meta-problem” without coming to agree on the object level.
Sure. A physicalist could say that the the hard problem is the problem of explaining qualia on physical terms ,at the meta level, and the obvious object level solution is to ditch qualia.
Whereas an idealistist could agree that the the hard problem is the problem of explaining qualia on physical terms ,at the meta level, but say that the obvious object level solution is to ditch physicalism.
I would rather say that reality, from the perspective of beings like us, is necessarily a bit indexical—that is, one always approaches reality from a particular perspective.
Physicalism admits perspectives, but not irreducible ones. Under relativity, things will seem different to different observers, but in a way that is predictable to any observer. Albert can predict someone else’s observations of mass, length and time....but can Mary predict someone else’s colour qualia?
I actually do think some people register these being incompressible as a problem. Think of “what breathes fire into the equations” or “why does anything exist at all”(OK, more about the incompressibility of the entire world than a quark, but same idea—I could imagine people being confused about “what even are quarks in themselves” or something...)
We can distinguish two levels of analysis.
firstly, accepting a naïve physicalism, we can try to give an account of why people would report being confused about consciousness, which could in principle be cashed out in purely physical predictions about what words they speak or symbols they type into computers. That’s what I was attempting to do in the first two sections of the article(without spelling out in detail how the algorithms ultimately lead to typing etc., given that I don’t think the details are especially important for the overall point) I think people with a variety of metaphysical views could come to agree on an explanation of this “meta-problem” without coming to agree on the object level.
Secondly, there is the question of how to relate that analysis to our first-person perspective. This was what I was trying to do in the last section of the article(which I also feel much less confident in than the first two sections). You could say it’s dualist in a sense, although I don’t think there “is” a non-physical mental substance or anything like that. I would rather say that reality, from the perspective of beings like us, is necessarily a bit indexical—that is, one always approaches reality from a particular perspective. You can enlarge your perspective, but not so much that you attain an observer-independent overview of all of reality. Qualia are a manifestation of this irreducible indexicality.
If the equations are something like string theory or the standard model, they are pretty complex, and there is a legitimate concern why you can compress things so far but not further.
But there is no reason for the maximally naive person to be confused about qualia, because the maximally naive person doesn’t know what they are, or what physics is or what reductionism is. The maximally naive approach is that I am looking at a red chair, and I see it exactly as it is, and the redness is a property of the chair ,not a proxy representation generated in my brain.
Sure. A physicalist could say that the the hard problem is the problem of explaining qualia on physical terms ,at the meta level, and the obvious object level solution is to ditch qualia.
Whereas an idealistist could agree that the the hard problem is the problem of explaining qualia on physical terms ,at the meta level, but say that the obvious object level solution is to ditch physicalism.
Physicalism admits perspectives, but not irreducible ones. Under relativity, things will seem different to different observers, but in a way that is predictable to any observer. Albert can predict someone else’s observations of mass, length and time....but can Mary predict someone else’s colour qualia?