Concerning your edit—no, I really don’t think that it is of the same sort. The prediction of the Higgs Boson was based on a very specific, detailed model, whereas—to continue where the grandparent left off—what you’re asking me to do here is to assent to propositions that are not based on any kind of model, per se, but rather on something like a placeholder for a model. You’re saying: “either these things are true, or we’re wrong about reductionism”.
Well, for one thing, “these things” are, as I’ve said, not even clearly coherent. It’s not entirely clear what they mean, because it’s not clear how to reason about this sort of thing, because we don’t have an actual model for how subjective phenomenal consciousness emerges from physics.
And, for another thing, the dilemma is a false one—it should properly be a quatrilemma (is that a word…?), like so:
“Either these things are true, or we’re wrong about reductionism, or we’re wrong about whether reductionism implies that these things are true, or these things are not so much false as ‘not even wrong’ (because there’s something we don’t currently understand, that doesn’t overturn reductionism but that renders much of our analysis here moot).”
“Ah!” you might exclaim, “but we know that reductionism implies these things! That is—we’re quite certain! And it’s really very unlikely that we’re missing some key understanding, that would render moot our reasoning and our scenarios!” To that, I again say: without an actual reduction of consciousness, an actual and complete dissolution of the Hard Problem, no such certainty is possible. And so it is these latter two horns of the quatrilemma which seems to me to be at least as likely as the truth of the higher rungs of the ladder.
Concerning your edit—no, I really don’t think that it is of the same sort. The prediction of the Higgs Boson was based on a very specific, detailed model, whereas—to continue where the grandparent left off—what you’re asking me to do here is to assent to propositions that are not based on any kind of model, per se, but rather on something like a placeholder for a model. You’re saying: “either these things are true, or we’re wrong about reductionism”.
Well, for one thing, “these things” are, as I’ve said, not even clearly coherent. It’s not entirely clear what they mean, because it’s not clear how to reason about this sort of thing, because we don’t have an actual model for how subjective phenomenal consciousness emerges from physics.
And, for another thing, the dilemma is a false one—it should properly be a quatrilemma (is that a word…?), like so:
“Either these things are true, or we’re wrong about reductionism, or we’re wrong about whether reductionism implies that these things are true, or these things are not so much false as ‘not even wrong’ (because there’s something we don’t currently understand, that doesn’t overturn reductionism but that renders much of our analysis here moot).”
“Ah!” you might exclaim, “but we know that reductionism implies these things! That is—we’re quite certain! And it’s really very unlikely that we’re missing some key understanding, that would render moot our reasoning and our scenarios!” To that, I again say: without an actual reduction of consciousness, an actual and complete dissolution of the Hard Problem, no such certainty is possible. And so it is these latter two horns of the quatrilemma which seems to me to be at least as likely as the truth of the higher rungs of the ladder.
My response here would be the same as my responses to the other outstanding threads.