Dan—I don’t know what “emergent property” or “complex system” are supposed to mean, but Unknown got “bridging law” just right. Granted, it’s one thing to assert there’s a bridging law, and another to actually provide one.
To say that their might be a “bridging law” without naming any of its properties is to say nothing at all. It’s like saying that there might be a thermodynamic law or a falling law, but you have no idea what it might be. It can’t be measured or seen, only imagined. It might as well be voodoo, because it has no explanatory power. “Emergent property” and “complex system” are examples of similar terms purported to describe how consciousness could arise, which … also mean nothing at all*. They’re buzzwords, one and all. Unfamiliar examples may have hindered communication on that point. We don’t actually know anything about consciousness and none of these terms help that.
Eliezer grants the same point with regards to reductions. The difference between our views is that he thinks the reduction is logically necessary; that there is no sense to be made of the idea of a ‘zombie’ world physically identical to ours but lacking consciousness. I think that’s plainly false. There’s nothing incoherent about the idea of zombies. So the admitted link between the physical and phenomenal facts is merely contingent (taking the form of a natural law, rather than a reductive analysis).
Have you been reading Plato? This feels Platonic. You do realize that by saying you can be a “zombie” without physical changes, you automatically bring in a non-physical “consciousness”? Anchoring it to a physical brain doesn’t help much. There is a ghost in your machine, even if it does need the machine. Your machine is haunted. I don’t know precisely what’s haunting it or how many hit dice it has, because “bridging properties” are a little vague for my taste. I am glad, however, to have been assured that successful philosophers can imagine them with ease. I’m also glad that your ghost is completely attached to your brain exactly like a reductionist consciousness would be, because full-blown dualism is harder to work with.
How does changing brain-based accounts of the mind from “reductive analysis” to “natural law” fix the counterintuitiveness of consciousness? Does “natural law” mean “magic”- and if not, what makes it different? How do we find out about natural laws, and what do they do? What, in essense, is gained by prefixing with “psycho-” onto “physical”?
In keeping with my own neo-Platonic leanings, I’d suggest your ghost and/or bridging law is likely an obscenely complex mathematical—or if you prefer, computational—object. It’s some kind of madness to require the world’s most powerful supercomputer to have some non-physical and/or dualistic properties for it to do counterintuitive and incredible things. I mean, it’s a human brain, and more energy and time has been poured into designing it than is either decent or right. It’s arguably more complicated than every artificial thing our species has ever made put together, including tax codes. If you can’t coax some odd things out of it without resorting to dualism, you’re doing it wrong. Any kind of dualism or “bridging law” is fundamentally unnecessary. That’s not to say it’s definitely wrong, but it’s not necessary to account for the fact that consciousness is odd.
I also happen to think philosophical zombies are logically impossible, but that’s me.
P.S. You’ve been reading too many straw men. I certainly don’t think “there’s a soul floating around communing with the brain”. Follow the links in my earlier comment.
Myeah, sorry. The “floating around communing” was in response to an interjection recommending a parapsychology book a ways back.
*”complex system” occasionally does mean something, but usually not when it’s being used to refer to minds.
P.S.: It’s about dualism, Tiiba. It’s not quite Cartesian, but it’s still some sort of semi-dualism.
Myeah, sorry. The “floating around communing” was in response to an interjection recommending a parapsychology book a ways back.
*”complex system” occasionally does mean something, but usually not when it’s being used to refer to minds.
P.S.: It’s about dualism, Tiiba. It’s not quite Cartesian, but it’s still some sort of semi-dualism.