I opened the survey but how it was asked throught thick “isms” thought it was sufficiently confused / stupid that I didn’t want to engage and answer. Seeing how others have used the “other” field should have gone for something like that.
That’s… interesting, because this is the standard terminology (but I agree it’s not good). Would you have preferred it if I had just given the causal diagrams? (Epiphenomenalism is “[matter] → [consciousness]”, Interactionism is “[matter] ↔ [consciousness]”, etc., you can describe every theory that way.)
I suppose the -isms pattern-match to regular philosophy discourse, which is well not very good.
There are 8 options and having two nodes seems like there are 4 ways to draw arrows between them.
Might be a bit flawed but in the setting where society has been divided into two factions “blue” and “green” and every issue has the “blue-standard” answer and “green-standard” answer expressing views is made more cumbersome if the actual stance doesn’t align with the faction lines.
Consider two structures for the questionary:
What color is the sky?
bluism
greenism
How should the value of gemstones be evaluated?
bluism
greenism
vs
What color is the sky?
blue
green
What is the most valuable gem?
Saphhire
Emerald
It is a easier to answer green Saphire and blue emerald if one doesn’t need to package them into an ism. Isms are more concrete when its about social groups and who waves which flag.
There are 8 options and having two nodes seems like there are 4 ways to draw arrows between them.
Didn’t say it was just arrows! You can also put corresponds-to signs between them as e.g. panpyschism does, and then there are two ways to reduce it to a one-node diagram. (Also there are 7 options.)
I think a lot depends on the selection you want for who answers, and what you’ll learn from it. Using standard terminology implies that you’ll get weird results if people don’t understand it. Using causal diagrams means you’ll exclude or confuse those who don’t think in those terms. When talking about “consciousness”, especially without using the word “qualia”, I suspect the framing effect of the question is going to dominate your results.
I was confused by the last question as well—is it about the actual laws of physics, or human modeling of physics? I think the laws of physics tautalogically define matter. Whether any subset of the universe can know the laws of physics completely is a separate question.
It’s basically about “do the actual laws explicitly care about consciousness”
When talking about “consciousness”, especially without using the word “qualia”, I suspect the framing effect of the question is going to dominate your results.
This I strongly doubt. These results have been very close to the center of the distribution of what I expected. About half RF, not much love for idealism, decent support for illusionism, most people think physics is complete. Would be surprised if you can get it to be too different without butchering the description.
Unsurprisingly, since “reductive physicalism” is a mixture of at least two theories
There is a distinction between reductive materialism and functionalism. Functionalism holds that consciousness is just the performance of certain functions by whatever....it’s substrate neutral. Reductive materialism can holds that the substrate matters (ie No Chinese rooms or blockheads).
Panpsychism doesn’t regard the mental as being reducible to the physical.. indeed, hostility to emergence is not ne of its main motivations.
Panpsychism asserts that everything has consciousness/mental properties. Non functionalist reductionism doesn’t, and is in fact less liberal about which entities are conscious than functionalism/computationalism.
So NFR restricts what structures are conscious but doesn’t require the corresponding rules to live on the algorithmic level only. Ok, I can see how that’s a coherent theory. Thanks.
It’s not necessarily a question of additional rules. If you take the view that no kind of functionality could explain or predict qualia, then having the right substrate in addition to the right algorithm could cause something additional to for functionality, IE qualia.
I didn’t mean additional rules, just rules in general, i.e., under NFR, the set of things you need to look at to determine whether something is conscious aren’t entirely contained on the algorithmic level of abstraction.
Of course, we are supposed to regard biological processes as reducible and not dependent on an Elan Vital… and that’s a form of reduction that’s exquisitely dependent on precise chemical.properties...you can’t make chlorophyl or haemoglobin out of any collection of atoms.
I opened the survey but how it was asked throught thick “isms” thought it was sufficiently confused / stupid that I didn’t want to engage and answer. Seeing how others have used the “other” field should have gone for something like that.
Seconding your comment. I wish OP had stated their definition of Consciousness to help clear the confusion in the various terms.
“What it’s like to be someone”; agree it should have been in the survey.
That’s… interesting, because this is the standard terminology (but I agree it’s not good). Would you have preferred it if I had just given the causal diagrams? (Epiphenomenalism is “[matter] → [consciousness]”, Interactionism is “[matter] ↔ [consciousness]”, etc., you can describe every theory that way.)
I suppose the -isms pattern-match to regular philosophy discourse, which is well not very good.
There are 8 options and having two nodes seems like there are 4 ways to draw arrows between them.
Might be a bit flawed but in the setting where society has been divided into two factions “blue” and “green” and every issue has the “blue-standard” answer and “green-standard” answer expressing views is made more cumbersome if the actual stance doesn’t align with the faction lines.
Consider two structures for the questionary:
vs
It is a easier to answer green Saphire and blue emerald if one doesn’t need to package them into an ism. Isms are more concrete when its about social groups and who waves which flag.
Didn’t say it was just arrows! You can also put corresponds-to signs between them as e.g. panpyschism does, and then there are two ways to reduce it to a one-node diagram. (Also there are 7 options.)
The direction would seem to me something that would require even more interpretation and be more ambigious.
I think a lot depends on the selection you want for who answers, and what you’ll learn from it. Using standard terminology implies that you’ll get weird results if people don’t understand it. Using causal diagrams means you’ll exclude or confuse those who don’t think in those terms. When talking about “consciousness”, especially without using the word “qualia”, I suspect the framing effect of the question is going to dominate your results.
I was confused by the last question as well—is it about the actual laws of physics, or human modeling of physics? I think the laws of physics tautalogically define matter. Whether any subset of the universe can know the laws of physics completely is a separate question.
It’s basically about “do the actual laws explicitly care about consciousness”
This I strongly doubt. These results have been very close to the center of the distribution of what I expected. About half RF, not much love for idealism, decent support for illusionism, most people think physics is complete. Would be surprised if you can get it to be too different without butchering the description.
Unsurprisingly, since “reductive physicalism” is a mixture of at least two theories
There is a distinction between reductive materialism and functionalism. Functionalism holds that consciousness is just the performance of certain functions by whatever....it’s substrate neutral. Reductive materialism can holds that the substrate matters (ie No Chinese rooms or blockheads).
The survey says “reductionist functionalism” and specifies that it’s about algorithms.
Functionalism about algorithms is called computationalism.
Non functionalist reductionism (substrate dependence) needs to be mentioned separately, because it’s one of the major physicalist theories.
What’s the difference between that and panpsychism?
It being non functionalist reductionism ?
Panpsychism doesn’t regard the mental as being reducible to the physical.. indeed, hostility to emergence is not ne of its main motivations.
Panpsychism asserts that everything has consciousness/mental properties. Non functionalist reductionism doesn’t, and is in fact less liberal about which entities are conscious than functionalism/computationalism.
So NFR restricts what structures are conscious but doesn’t require the corresponding rules to live on the algorithmic level only. Ok, I can see how that’s a coherent theory. Thanks.
Does it specify state vs. process?
It’s not necessarily a question of additional rules. If you take the view that no kind of functionality could explain or predict qualia, then having the right substrate in addition to the right algorithm could cause something additional to for functionality, IE qualia.
I didn’t mean additional rules, just rules in general, i.e., under NFR, the set of things you need to look at to determine whether something is conscious aren’t entirely contained on the algorithmic level of abstraction.
The set of things that are relevant isn’t entirely contained by “rules”, either.
Of course, we are supposed to regard biological processes as reducible and not dependent on an Elan Vital… and that’s a form of reduction that’s exquisitely dependent on precise chemical.properties...you can’t make chlorophyl or haemoglobin out of any collection of atoms.