I sent the following offer (lightly edited) to discuss metaphysics to plex. I extend the same to anyone else.[1]
(Note: I don’t do psychedelics or participate in the mentioned communities[2], and I’m deeply suspicious of intuitions/deep-human-default-assumptions. I notice unquestioned intuitions across views on this, and the primary thing I’d like to do in discussing is try to get the other to see theirs.)
Hi, I saw [this shortform] by you
Wondering if you’d want to discuss metaphysics itself / let me socratic-question[3] you. I lean towards the view that “metaphysics is extra-mathematical; it contains non-mathematical-objects, such as phenomenal qualia” but I’d like to mostly see if I can socratic-question you into noticing incoherence. I’m too uncertain about the true metaphysics to put forth a totalizing theory.
Do you believe phenomenal qualia exist? If you do, are they mathematical objects? If you don’t, can you watch this short video on a thought experiment?
(Commentary: someone in the comments of the linked post told me that video was what changed their position from ‘camp 1’ (~illusionist, e.g. “qualia is an intuition from evolution”) to ‘camp 2’ (“qualia is metaphysically fundamental”))
You mentioned ‘matter’ and ‘math’ as candidates for ‘fundamental to reality’. My question depends on which is your view.
If you believe matter is fundamental, what do you mean by matter; how does it differ from math?
(Commentary: “matter” seems like an intuitive concept; one has an intuition that reality is “made of something”, and calls that “thing” (undefined) “matter”, and refers to “matter” without knowing “what it is” (also undefined); there being a word for this intuition prevents them from noticing their lack of knowledge, or the circular self-reference between “matter” and “what the world is made of”)
If you believe math is fundamental, what distinguishes this particular mathematical universe from other ones; what qualifies this world as “real”, if anything; what ‘breathes fire into the equations and creates a world for them to describe’?
(Commentary: one self-consistent position answers “nothing”—that this world is just one of the infinitely many possible mathematical functions / programs. That ‘real’ secretly means ‘the program(s?) we are part of’. Though I observe this position to be rare; most have a strong intuition that there is something which “makes reality real”.)
If you believe math is fundamental, what is math?[4]
(Questioning with the goal of causing the questioned one to notice specific assumptions or intuitions to their beliefs, as a result of trying to generate a coherent answer)
The paradox of recursive explanation applies to metaphysics too
In Explain/Worship/Ignore (~500 words), Eliezer describes an apparent paradox: if you ask for some physical phenomena to be explained (shown to have a more fundamental cause), then ask the same of the explanation, and so on, the only conceivable outcomes seem paradoxical: infinite recurse, circular self-reference, or a ‘special’ first cause that does not itself need to be explained.
This is sometimes called the paradox of why. It’s usually applied to physics; this text applies it to logic/math-structure and metaphysics/ontology too. In short, you can continually ask “but what is x” for any aspect of logic or ontology.
Here’s a hypothetical Socratic dialogue.
Author: “What is reality?”
Interlocutor: “Reality is <complete description of [very large mathematical structure that perfectly reflects the behavior of the universe]>.”
Author: “Let’s suppose that is true. But this ‘math’ you just used; what is it?”
Interlocutor: “Mathematics is a program which assigns, based on a few simple rules, ‘T’ or ‘F’ to inputs formatted in a certain way.”
Author: “I think you just moved the hard part of the question to be one question away: What is a program?”
Interlocutor: “Hmm. I can’t define a program in terms of math, because I just did the reverse. Wikipedia says a program is ‘a sequence of instructions for a computer to execute’. If I just wrote that, Author would ask what it means for a computer to execute an instruction. What else could I write?
A computer is a part of physics arranged into a localized structure, and for this structure to ‘execute an instruction’ is for physical law to flow through (operate on, apply to) it, such that the structure’s observed behavior matches that of a simpler-than-physics abstract system for transforming inputs to outputs. Unfortunately, I’ve already defined physics in terms of math, so defining a program in terms of physics would be circular. I think I’m at a dead end.”
Author: “Do you want to revise one of your previous definitions?”
Interlocutor: “Maybe I could define math as some more fundamental thing instead of as a certain kind of program. But I just failed to find such a more fundamental thing for ‘program’. Let’s check Wikipedia again...
WP:Mathematics: ‘Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of abstract objects that consist of either abstractions from nature or—in modern mathematics—purely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms’
WP:Mathematical_Object ‘Typically, a mathematical object can be a value that can be assigned to a symbol, and therefore can be involved in formulas. Commonly encountered mathematical objects include numbers, expressions, shapes, functions, and sets.’
“I can’t use the ‘abstractions from nature’ part, because I’ve already defined nature to be mathematical, so that would be circular. Saying math is made of numbers, expressions, symbols, etc, isn’t helpful either, though; Author will just ask what those are, metaphysically. Okay, I concede for now, though maybe a commenter will propose such a more-fundamental-thing that I’m not aware of, though it would invite the same question.”
I think qualia is rescuable, in a sense, and my specific view is that they exist as a high-level model.
As far as what that qualia is, I think it’s basically an application of modeling the world in order to control something, and thus qualia, broadly speaking is your self-model.
As far as my exact views on qualia, the links below are helpful:
My general answer to these question is probably computation/programs/mathematics, with the caveat that these notions are very general, and thus don’t explain anything specific about our world.
I personally agree with this on what counts as real:
If you believe math is fundamental, what distinguishes this particular mathematical universe from other ones; what qualifies this world as “real”, if anything; what ‘breathes fire into the equations and creates a world for them to describe’?
(Commentary: one self-consistent position answers “nothing”—that this world is just one of the infinitely many possible mathematical functions / programs. That ‘real’ secretly means ‘the program(s?) we are part of’. Though I observe this position to be rare; most have a strong intuition that there is something which “makes reality real”.)
What breathes fire into the equations of our specific world is either an infinity of computational resources, or a very large amount of computational resources.
As far as what mathematics is, I definitely like the game analogy where we agree to play a game according to specified rules, though another way to describe mathematics is as a way to generalize all of the situations you encounter and abstract from specific detail, and it is also used to define what something is.
Let’s do most of this via the much higher bandwidth medium of voice, but quickly:
Yes, qualia[1] is real, and is a class of mathematical structure.[2]
(placeholder for not a question item)
Matter is a class of math which is ~kinda like our physics.
Our part of the multiverse probably doesn’t have special “exists” tags, probably everything is real (though to get remotely sane answers you need a decreasing reality fluid/caring fluid allocation).
Math, in the sense I’m trying to point to it, is ‘Structure’. By which I mean: Well defined seeds/axioms/starting points and precisely specified rules/laws/inference steps for extending those seeds. The quickest way I’ve seen to get the intuition for what I’m trying to point at with ‘structure’ is to watch these videos in succession (but it doesn’t work for everyone):
experience/the thing LWers tend to mean, not the most restrictive philosophical sense (#4 on SEP) which is pointlessly high complexity (edit: clarified that this is not the universal philosophical definition, but only one of several meanings, walked back a little on rhetoric)
I sent the following offer (lightly edited) to discuss metaphysics to plex. I extend the same to anyone else.[1]
(Note: I don’t do psychedelics or participate in the mentioned communities[2], and I’m deeply suspicious of intuitions/deep-human-default-assumptions. I notice unquestioned intuitions across views on this, and the primary thing I’d like to do in discussing is try to get the other to see theirs.)
Though I’ll likely lose interest if it seems like we’re talking past each other / won’t resolve any cruxy disagreements.
(except arguably the qualia research institute’s discord server, which might count because it has psychedelics users in it)
(Questioning with the goal of causing the questioned one to notice specific assumptions or intuitions to their beliefs, as a result of trying to generate a coherent answer)
From an unposted text:
Alright, I’ll try to answer the questions:
I think qualia is rescuable, in a sense, and my specific view is that they exist as a high-level model.
As far as what that qualia is, I think it’s basically an application of modeling the world in order to control something, and thus qualia, broadly speaking is your self-model.
As far as my exact views on qualia, the links below are helpful:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FQhtpHFiPacG3KrvD/seth-explains-consciousness#7ncCBPLcCwpRYdXuG
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMwGKTBZ9sTM4Morx/linkpost-a-conceptual-framework-for-consciousness
My general answer to these question is probably computation/programs/mathematics, with the caveat that these notions are very general, and thus don’t explain anything specific about our world.
I personally agree with this on what counts as real:
What breathes fire into the equations of our specific world is either an infinity of computational resources, or a very large amount of computational resources.
As far as what mathematics is, I definitely like the game analogy where we agree to play a game according to specified rules, though another way to describe mathematics is as a way to generalize all of the situations you encounter and abstract from specific detail, and it is also used to define what something is.
Let’s do most of this via the much higher bandwidth medium of voice, but quickly:
Yes, qualia[1] is real, and is a class of mathematical structure.[2]
(placeholder for not a question item)
Matter is a class of math which is ~kinda like our physics.
Our part of the multiverse probably doesn’t have special “exists” tags, probably everything is real (though to get remotely sane answers you need a decreasing reality fluid/caring fluid allocation).
Math, in the sense I’m trying to point to it, is ‘Structure’. By which I mean: Well defined seeds/axioms/starting points and precisely specified rules/laws/inference steps for extending those seeds. The quickest way I’ve seen to get the intuition for what I’m trying to point at with ‘structure’ is to watch these videos in succession (but it doesn’t work for everyone):
experience/the thing LWers tend to mean, not the most restrictive philosophical sense (#4 on SEP) which is pointlessly high complexity (edit: clarified that this is not the universal philosophical definition, but only one of several meanings, walked back a little on rhetoric)
possibly maybe even the entire class, though if true most qualia would be very very alien to us and not necessarily morally valuable