But ‘consciousness is real and irreducible’ isn’t tenable: it either implies violations of physics as we know it (interactionism), or implies we can’t know we’re conscious (epiphenomenalism).
Edit: What it implies is violations of physicalism. You can accept that physics is a map that predicts observations, without accepting that it is the map, to which all other maps must be reduced.
The epiphenomenalist worry is that, if qualia are not denied entirely, they have no causal role
to play, since physical causation already accounts for everything that needs to be accounted for.
But physics is a set of theories and descriptions...a map. Usually, the ability of a map
to explain and is not exclusive of another map’s ability to do so on. We can explain the death of Mr Smith as the result of bullet entering his heart, or as the result of a finger squeezing a trigger, or a a result of the insurance policy recently taken out on his life, and so on.
So why can’t we resolve the epiphenomenal worry by saying that that physical causation and mental causation are just different, non rivalrous, maps? I screamed because my pain fibres fired” alongside—not versus “I screamed becaue I felt a sharp pain”. It is not the case that there is physical stuff that is doing all the causation, and mental stuff that is doing none of it: rather there is a physical view of what is going on, and a mentalistic view.
Physicalists are reluctant to go down this route, because physicalism is based on the idea that there is something special about the physical map, which means it is not just another map. This special quality means that a physical explanation excludes others, unlike a typical map. But what is it?
It’s rooted in reductionism, the idea that every other map (that is, every theory of the special sciences) can or should reduce to the physical map.
But the reducibility of consciousness is the center of the Hard Problem. If consciousness really is irreducible, and not just unreduced, then that is evidence against the reduction of everything to the physical, and, in turn, evidence against the special, exclusive nature of the physical map.
So, without the reducibility of consciousness, the epiphenomenal worry can be resolved by the two-view manoeuvre. (And without denying the very existence of qualia).
If the physics map doesn’t imply the mind map (because of the zombie argument, the Mary’s room argument, etc.), then how do you come to know about the mind map? The causal process by which you come to know the physics map is easy to understand:
Light leaves the Sun and strikes your shoelaces and bounces off; some photons enter the pupils of your eyes and strike your retina; the energy of the photons triggers neural impulses; the neural impulses are transmitted to the visual-processing areas of the brain; and there the optical information is processed and reconstructed into a 3D model that is recognized as an untied shoelace.
What is the version of this story for the mind map, once we assume that the mind map has contents that have no causal effect on the physical world? (E.g., your mind map had absolutely no effect on the words you typed into the LW page.)
At some point you didn’t have a concept for “qualia”; how did you learn it, if your qualia have no causal effects?
At some point you heard about the zombie argument and concluded “ah yes, my mental map must be logically independent of my physical map”; how did you do that without your mental map having any effects?
I can imagine an interactionist video game, where my brain has more processing power than the game and therefore can’t be fully represented in the game itself. It would then make sense that I can talk about properties that don’t exist within the game’s engine: I myself exist outside the game universe, and I can use that fact to causally change the game’s outcomes in ways that a less computationally powerful agent could not.
Equally, I can imagine an epiphenomenal video game, where I’m strapped into a headset but forbidden from using the controls. I passively watch the events occurring in the game; but no event in the game ever reflects or takes note of the fact that I exist or have any ‘unphysical’ properties, and if there is an AI steering my avatar or camera’s behavior, the AI knows zilch about me. (You could imagine a programmer deliberately designing the game to have NPCs talk about entities outside the game world; but then the programmer’s game-transcending cognitive capacities are not epiphenomenal relative to the game.)
The thing that doesn’t make sense is to import intuitions from the interactionist game to the epiphenomenal game, while insisting it’s all still epiphenomenal.
If the physics map doesn’t imply the mind map (because of the zombie argument, the Mary’s room argument, etc.), then how do you come to know about the mind map?
Direct evidence. That’s the starting point of the whole thing. People think that they have qualia because it seems to them that they do.
Edit: In fact, it’s the other way round: we are always using the mind map, but we remove the subjectivity, “warm fuzzies” from it to arrive at the physics map. Ho wdo we know that physics is the whole story, when we start with our experience, and make a subset of it?
What is the version of this story for the mind map, once we assume that the mind map has contents that have no causal effect on the physical world?
I’m not assuming that. I’m arguing against epiphenomenalism.
So I am saying that the mental is causal, but I am not saying that it is a kind of physical causality, as per reductive physicalism. Reductive physicalism is false because consciousness is irreducible, as you agree. Since mental causation isn’t a kind of physical causation, I don’t have to give a physical account if it.
And I am further not saying that the physical and mental are two separate ontologcal domains, two separate territories. I am talking about maps, not territories.
Without ontological dualism, there are no issues of overdetermination or interaction.
Edit: What it implies is violations of physicalism. You can accept that physics is a map that predicts observations, without accepting that it is the map, to which all other maps must be reduced.
The epiphenomenalist worry is that, if qualia are not denied entirely, they have no causal role to play, since physical causation already accounts for everything that needs to be accounted for.
But physics is a set of theories and descriptions...a map. Usually, the ability of a map to explain and is not exclusive of another map’s ability to do so on. We can explain the death of Mr Smith as the result of bullet entering his heart, or as the result of a finger squeezing a trigger, or a a result of the insurance policy recently taken out on his life, and so on.
So why can’t we resolve the epiphenomenal worry by saying that that physical causation and mental causation are just different, non rivalrous, maps? I screamed because my pain fibres fired” alongside—not versus “I screamed becaue I felt a sharp pain”. It is not the case that there is physical stuff that is doing all the causation, and mental stuff that is doing none of it: rather there is a physical view of what is going on, and a mentalistic view.
Physicalists are reluctant to go down this route, because physicalism is based on the idea that there is something special about the physical map, which means it is not just another map. This special quality means that a physical explanation excludes others, unlike a typical map. But what is it?
It’s rooted in reductionism, the idea that every other map (that is, every theory of the special sciences) can or should reduce to the physical map.
But the reducibility of consciousness is the center of the Hard Problem. If consciousness really is irreducible, and not just unreduced, then that is evidence against the reduction of everything to the physical, and, in turn, evidence against the special, exclusive nature of the physical map.
So, without the reducibility of consciousness, the epiphenomenal worry can be resolved by the two-view manoeuvre. (And without denying the very existence of qualia).
If the physics map doesn’t imply the mind map (because of the zombie argument, the Mary’s room argument, etc.), then how do you come to know about the mind map? The causal process by which you come to know the physics map is easy to understand:
What is the version of this story for the mind map, once we assume that the mind map has contents that have no causal effect on the physical world? (E.g., your mind map had absolutely no effect on the words you typed into the LW page.)
At some point you didn’t have a concept for “qualia”; how did you learn it, if your qualia have no causal effects?
At some point you heard about the zombie argument and concluded “ah yes, my mental map must be logically independent of my physical map”; how did you do that without your mental map having any effects?
I can imagine an interactionist video game, where my brain has more processing power than the game and therefore can’t be fully represented in the game itself. It would then make sense that I can talk about properties that don’t exist within the game’s engine: I myself exist outside the game universe, and I can use that fact to causally change the game’s outcomes in ways that a less computationally powerful agent could not.
Equally, I can imagine an epiphenomenal video game, where I’m strapped into a headset but forbidden from using the controls. I passively watch the events occurring in the game; but no event in the game ever reflects or takes note of the fact that I exist or have any ‘unphysical’ properties, and if there is an AI steering my avatar or camera’s behavior, the AI knows zilch about me. (You could imagine a programmer deliberately designing the game to have NPCs talk about entities outside the game world; but then the programmer’s game-transcending cognitive capacities are not epiphenomenal relative to the game.)
The thing that doesn’t make sense is to import intuitions from the interactionist game to the epiphenomenal game, while insisting it’s all still epiphenomenal.
Direct evidence. That’s the starting point of the whole thing. People think that they have qualia because it seems to them that they do.
Edit: In fact, it’s the other way round: we are always using the mind map, but we remove the subjectivity, “warm fuzzies” from it to arrive at the physics map. Ho wdo we know that physics is the whole story, when we start with our experience, and make a subset of it?
I’m not assuming that. I’m arguing against epiphenomenalism.
So I am saying that the mental is causal, but I am not saying that it is a kind of physical causality, as per reductive physicalism. Reductive physicalism is false because consciousness is irreducible, as you agree. Since mental causation isn’t a kind of physical causation, I don’t have to give a physical account if it.
And I am further not saying that the physical and mental are two separate ontologcal domains, two separate territories. I am talking about maps, not territories.
Without ontological dualism, there are no issues of overdetermination or interaction.