I don’t feel very hopeful about the conversation atm, but fwiw I feel like you are missing a fairly important point while being pretty overconfident about not having missed it.
Putting a different way: is there a percent of people who could disagree with you about what consciousness means, which would convince you that you it’s not as straightforward as assuming you have the correct definition of consciousness, and that you can ignore everyone else? If <50% of people agreed with you? If <50% of the people with most of the power?
(This is not about whether your definition is good, or the most useful, or whatnot – only that, if lots of people turned out to be mean different things by it, would it still particularly matter whether your definition was the “right” one?)
(My own answer is that if like >75% of people agreed on what consciousness means, I’d be like “okay yeah Critch’s point isn’t super compelling”. If it was between like 50 − 75% of people I’d like “kinda edge case.” If it’s <50% of people agreeing on consciousness, I don’t think it matters much what definition is “correct.”)
Your comment is not really a response to the comment I made. I am not missing the point at all, and if you think I have I suspect you missed my point very badly (and are yourself extremely overconfident about it). I have explicitly talked about there being a number of possible definitions of consciousness multiple times and I never favored one of them explicitly. I repeat, I never assumed a specific definition of consciousness, since I don’t have a specific one I assume at all, and I am completely open to talking about a number of possibilities. I simply pointed out that some proposed definitions are clearly wrong / useless / better described with other terms. Do not assume what I mean if you don’t understand.
Note that I am a not a prescriptivist when it comes to language. The reason the language is wrong isn’t because I have a particular way you should talk about it, but because the term is being used in a way that doesn’t actually fit together with the rest of the language, and thus does not actually convey the intended meaning. If you want to talk about something, talk about it with words that convey that meaning.
On to ‘how many people have to disagree’ for that to matter? One, if they have a real point, but if no one agrees on what a term means it is meaningless. ‘Consciousness’ is not meaningless, nor is introspection, or the other words being used. Uses that are clearly wrong are a step towards words being meaningless, and that would be a bad thing. Thus, I should oppose it.
Also, my original comment was mostly about direct disagreements with his credences, and implications thereof, not about the definition of consciousness.
Having a vague concept encompassing multiple possible definitions, which you are nonetheless extremely confident is the correct vague concept, is not that different from having a single definition in which you’re confident, and not everyone shares your same vague concept or agrees that it’s clearly the right one.
This statement is obviously incorrect. I have a vague concept of ‘red’, but I can tell you straight out that ‘green’ is not it, and I am utterly correct. Now, where does it go from ‘red’ to ‘orange’? We could have a legitimate disagreement about that. Anyone who uses ‘red’ to mean ‘green’ is just purely wrong.
That said, it wouldn’t even apply to me if your (incorrect) claim about a single definition not being different from an extremely confident vague definition was right. I don’t have ‘extreme confidence’ about consciousness even as a vague concept. I am open to learning new ways of thinking about it and fundamentally changing the possibilities I envision.
I have simply objected to ones that are obviously wrong based on how the language is generally used because we do need some limit to what counts to discuss anything meaningfully. A lot of the definitions are a bit or a lot off, but I cannot necessarily rule them out, so I didn’t object to them. I have thus allowed a large number of vague concepts that aren’t necessarily even that similar.
your (incorrect) claim about a single definition not being different from an extremely confident vague definition”
That is not the claim I made. I said it was not very different, which is true. Please read and respond to the words I actually say, not to different ones.
The definitions are not obviously wrong except to people who agree with you about where to draw the boundaries.
And here you are trying to be pedantic about language in ways that directly contradict other things you’ve said in speaking to me. In this case, everything I said holds if we change between ‘not different’ and ‘not that different’ (while you actually misquote yourself as ‘not very different’). That said, I should have included the extra word in quoting you.
Your point is not very convincing. Yes, people disagree if they disagree. I do not draw the lines in specific spots, as you should know based on what I’ve written, but you find it convenient to assume I do.
No, I authentically object to having my qualifiers ignored, which I see as quite distinct from disagreeing about the meaning of a word. Edit: also, I did not misquote myself, I accurately paraphrased myself, using words which I know, from direct first-person observation, mean the same thing to me in this context.
I don’t feel very hopeful about the conversation atm, but fwiw I feel like you are missing a fairly important point while being pretty overconfident about not having missed it.Putting a different way: is there a percent of people who could disagree with you about what consciousness means, which would convince you that you it’s not as straightforward as assuming you have the correct definition of consciousness, and that you can ignore everyone else? If <50% of people agreed with you? If <50% of the people with most of the power?
(This is not about whether your definition is good, or the most useful, or whatnot – only that, if lots of people turned out to be mean different things by it, would it still particularly matter whether your definition was the “right” one?)
(My own answer is that if like >75% of people agreed on what consciousness means, I’d be like “okay yeah Critch’s point isn’t super compelling”. If it was between like 50 − 75% of people I’d like “kinda edge case.” If it’s <50% of people agreeing on consciousness, I don’t think it matters much what definition is “correct.”)
Your comment is not really a response to the comment I made. I am not missing the point at all, and if you think I have I suspect you missed my point very badly (and are yourself extremely overconfident about it). I have explicitly talked about there being a number of possible definitions of consciousness multiple times and I never favored one of them explicitly. I repeat, I never assumed a specific definition of consciousness, since I don’t have a specific one I assume at all, and I am completely open to talking about a number of possibilities. I simply pointed out that some proposed definitions are clearly wrong / useless / better described with other terms. Do not assume what I mean if you don’t understand.
Note that I am a not a prescriptivist when it comes to language. The reason the language is wrong isn’t because I have a particular way you should talk about it, but because the term is being used in a way that doesn’t actually fit together with the rest of the language, and thus does not actually convey the intended meaning. If you want to talk about something, talk about it with words that convey that meaning.
On to ‘how many people have to disagree’ for that to matter? One, if they have a real point, but if no one agrees on what a term means it is meaningless. ‘Consciousness’ is not meaningless, nor is introspection, or the other words being used. Uses that are clearly wrong are a step towards words being meaningless, and that would be a bad thing. Thus, I should oppose it.
Also, my original comment was mostly about direct disagreements with his credences, and implications thereof, not about the definition of consciousness.
Having a vague concept encompassing multiple possible definitions, which you are nonetheless extremely confident is the correct vague concept, is not that different from having a single definition in which you’re confident, and not everyone shares your same vague concept or agrees that it’s clearly the right one.
This statement is obviously incorrect. I have a vague concept of ‘red’, but I can tell you straight out that ‘green’ is not it, and I am utterly correct. Now, where does it go from ‘red’ to ‘orange’? We could have a legitimate disagreement about that. Anyone who uses ‘red’ to mean ‘green’ is just purely wrong.
That said, it wouldn’t even apply to me if your (incorrect) claim about a single definition not being different from an extremely confident vague definition was right. I don’t have ‘extreme confidence’ about consciousness even as a vague concept. I am open to learning new ways of thinking about it and fundamentally changing the possibilities I envision.
I have simply objected to ones that are obviously wrong based on how the language is generally used because we do need some limit to what counts to discuss anything meaningfully. A lot of the definitions are a bit or a lot off, but I cannot necessarily rule them out, so I didn’t object to them. I have thus allowed a large number of vague concepts that aren’t necessarily even that similar.
That is not the claim I made. I said it was not very different, which is true. Please read and respond to the words I actually say, not to different ones.
The definitions are not obviously wrong except to people who agree with you about where to draw the boundaries.
And here you are trying to be pedantic about language in ways that directly contradict other things you’ve said in speaking to me. In this case, everything I said holds if we change between ‘not different’ and ‘not that different’ (while you actually misquote yourself as ‘not very different’). That said, I should have included the extra word in quoting you.
Your point is not very convincing. Yes, people disagree if they disagree. I do not draw the lines in specific spots, as you should know based on what I’ve written, but you find it convenient to assume I do.
No, I authentically object to having my qualifiers ignored, which I see as quite distinct from disagreeing about the meaning of a word.
Edit: also, I did not misquote myself, I accurately paraphrased myself, using words which I know, from direct first-person observation, mean the same thing to me in this context.