Which “sane variants” do you have in mind? Can you suggest any (ideally pedagogical) references?
I’m currently skeptical, if we’re working under the assumption that the framework / project I suggested above (i.e., the project where we start with QFT+GR and systematically explain that entire chain of causation of David Chalmers typing up book chapters about consciousness) will be successful and will not involve any earth-shattering surprises.
If that assumption is true, then we have two postulates to work with: (1) microphysics is causally closed, (2) phenomenal consciousness, whatever it is (if it’s anything at all) is the thing that David Chalmers is able to successfully introspect upon when he writes book chapters talking about phenomenal consciousness (per the argument that Eliezer was putting forward).
I acknowledge that type-F monism is compatible with (1), but it seems to me that it fails (2). When future scientists tell the whole story of how QFT+GR leads to David Chalmers writing books about consciousness, I think there will be no room in that story for the “intrinsic phenomenal properties of quarks” (or whatever) to be involved in that story, in a way that would properly connect those intrinsic properties to David’s introspection process.
But again, this is pretty tentative because I remain confused about type-F monism in the first place. :)
The sane variant is cosmopsychism (because real physical objects are not fundamentally separable) with probably only one intrinsic property—existence.
When future scientists tell the whole story of how QFT+GR leads to David Chalmers writing books about consciousness, I think there will be no room in that story for the “intrinsic phenomenal properties of quarks” (or whatever) to be involved in that story, in a way that would properly connect those intrinsic properties to David’s introspection process.
From your linked paper:
If one holds that physical terms refer not to dispositional properties but the underlying intrinsic properties, then the protophenomenal properties can be seen as physical properties, thus preserving a sort of materialism.
The story is about intrinsic properties, because that’s what equations describe—when you describe some physical system, it is implied that described physical system exists and all it’s casual influence is because of it’s existence. And you introspect the existence of universe itself by cogito ergo sum.
The story is about intrinsic properties, because that’s what equations describe—when you describe some physical system, it is implied that described physical system exists and all it’s casual influence is because of it’s existence. And you introspect the existence of universe itself by cogito ergo sum.
Hmm, I don’t think you’re following me (or I’m not following you).
Let’s say Chalmers introspects for a bit, and then writes the sentence “I am currently experiencing the ineffable redness of red.”, or alternatively that Chalmers writes the sentence “I am not currently experiencing the ineffable redness of red.”. Presumably (since you seem not to be an illusionist), you would endorse the claim that Chalmers chooses one sentence over the other based on its truth value, and that he ascertained that truth value by introspection, and that choice is intimately / causally related to properties of phenomenal consciousness. Right? So then we can ask questions like: What exactly (if anything) was he introspecting upon, and how was he doing so, and how did he interpret the results in order to choose one sentence over the other? If phenomenal consciousness is anything at all, it presumably needs to be the thing that Chalmers is somehow able to query during this introspection process, right? So how does this querying process work, and produce specific correct answers to questions about consciousness?
If your version of cosmopsychism is just the idea of saying “the universe exists, and this existence is an intrinsic property of the equations” or whatever, then I’m open-minded to that. (Related.) But I don’t understand how that has anything to do with the question above. Right? You’re calling it “cosmopsychism” but I don’t see any “psych” in it…
What exactly (if anything) was he introspecting upon, and how was he doing so, and how did he interpret the results in order to choose one sentence over the other? If phenomenal consciousness is anything at all, it presumably needs to be the thing that Chalmers is somehow able to query during this introspection process, right? So how did his brain manage to do that?
The thing that Chalmers queries is his brain. The phenomenal nature of his brain is that his brain exists. Chalmers can’t query a brain that doesn’t exist. Therefore phenomenal things cause Chalmers to say “I am currently experiencing the ineffable redness of red.”.
But I don’t understand how that has anything to do with the question above.
Existence have something to do with everything—you can’t introspect or see red if you don’t exist. But yes, the solution to the Hard Problem doesn’t have much to do with human qualia specifically (except maybe in the part where cogito ergo sum is the limit of reflectivity and awareness in humans have something to do with reflectivity) - if you explain the consciousness itself using physical notion of existence, then the redness of red is just the difference of neural processes.
You’re calling it “cosmopsychism” but I don’t see any “psych” in it…
That it doesn’t have any magical “psych” is by design—that’s why it’s not dualism. The relevant phenomenal aspect of existence is that it solves zombies. And I mean, sure, you can avoid using the word “consciousness” and stick only to “existence”. But it connects to your intuitions about consciousness—if you imagined you may lose consciousness if you were to be disassembled to atoms and reassembled back, now you have a direct reason to imagine that it still would be something to be like reassembled you.
Therefore phenomenal things cause Chalmers to say “I am currently experiencing the ineffable redness of red.”.
I feel like you’re dodging the question here. I can make a list of properties X that Chalmers believes consciousness has, and I can make another list of properties Y that Chalmers believes consciousness doesn’t have. There should be an explanation of why the things on list X are not on Y instead, and vice-versa.
You can’t just say “if the universe didn’t exist, then lists X and Y wouldn’t exist either”. Sure, maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t constitute any progress towards explaining why the X&Y list contents are what they are. Right?
I feel like you’re angling for a position kinda like: “cosmopsychism explains why I have a conscious experience, but explains nothing whatsoever about any of the properties of that conscious experience”. Right? That strikes me as kinda an insane thing to believe…
Like, if I say “this rock was formed by past volcanic activity”, then you can dig a bit deeper and relate specific properties of the rock to known properties of volcanoes. Right? That’s the normal state of affairs.
So if you say “I know the explanation of why there’s conscious experience, but that explanation doesn’t offer even one shred of insight about why conscious experience is related to memory and self-awareness and feelings and first-person perspective etc., as opposed to conscious experience being related to this pile of blankets on my couch” … then I reject that the thing you’re saying is actually the explanation of why there’s conscious experience.
I hope this isn’t coming across as mean. You seem pretty reasonable, maybe you’ll have good responses, that’s why I’m still here chatting :)
Not intentional—I’m just not sure whether you see problems with casual closure or with epistemic usefulness.
You can’t just say “if the universe didn’t exist, then lists X and Y wouldn’t exist either”. Sure, maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t constitute any progress towards explaining why the X&Y list contents are what they are. Right?
I wouldn’t say “any progress”—correct propositions about X and Y are correct even if they may seem trivial. And it sure would be a progress for someone who was forced to believe in dualism or worse as an alternative. And, to be clear, consciousness having a content is not a problem for casual closure—if some specific universe didn’t exist and some other universe existed instead, X and Y would be different. But yes, it’s a solution that is not especially useful except for a narrow purpose of solving the Hard Problem.
I feel like you’re angling for a position kinda like: “cosmopsychism explains why I have a conscious experience, but explains nothing whatsoever about any of the properties of that conscious experience”. Right?
Right. Well, if you stretch the definition of an explanation and properties, there are some vague intuition-like mental processes that I believe become streamlined when you accept cosmopsychism. Like, at the stage of “we have no idea how to solve the Hard Problem but I’m sure physicalism will win somehow” people still manage to hope for some kind of moral realism about consciousness, like there is objective fact that someone is in pain. But yeah, you may derive all this stuff from other sources too.
But, why do you think it’s insane? There are no philosophical problems with relation of some mental processes to memory. Science will explain it in the future just fine. “Why there’s conscious experience” always was the only mysterious problem about consciousness. And I’m not even saying that the Hard Problem and it’s solution is interesting, while practical theory of awareness is boring and useless. It’s just as the matter of fact under some reasonable definitions cosmopsychism solves the Hard Problem—that’s the extent of what I’m arguing.
then I reject that the thing you’re saying is actually the explanation of why there’s conscious experience.
The point is that cosmopsychism together with usual science provides the explanation you want. And no one doubts that science will do it’s part.
Which “sane variants” do you have in mind? Can you suggest any (ideally pedagogical) references?
I’m currently skeptical, if we’re working under the assumption that the framework / project I suggested above (i.e., the project where we start with QFT+GR and systematically explain that entire chain of causation of David Chalmers typing up book chapters about consciousness) will be successful and will not involve any earth-shattering surprises.
If that assumption is true, then we have two postulates to work with: (1) microphysics is causally closed, (2) phenomenal consciousness, whatever it is (if it’s anything at all) is the thing that David Chalmers is able to successfully introspect upon when he writes book chapters talking about phenomenal consciousness (per the argument that Eliezer was putting forward).
I acknowledge that type-F monism is compatible with (1), but it seems to me that it fails (2). When future scientists tell the whole story of how QFT+GR leads to David Chalmers writing books about consciousness, I think there will be no room in that story for the “intrinsic phenomenal properties of quarks” (or whatever) to be involved in that story, in a way that would properly connect those intrinsic properties to David’s introspection process.
But again, this is pretty tentative because I remain confused about type-F monism in the first place. :)
Not sure about references, maybe Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism and The Combination Problem for Panpsychism by Chalmers?
The sane variant is cosmopsychism (because real physical objects are not fundamentally separable) with probably only one intrinsic property—existence.
From your linked paper:
The story is about intrinsic properties, because that’s what equations describe—when you describe some physical system, it is implied that described physical system exists and all it’s casual influence is because of it’s existence. And you introspect the existence of universe itself by cogito ergo sum.
Thanks for the references.
Hmm, I don’t think you’re following me (or I’m not following you).
Let’s say Chalmers introspects for a bit, and then writes the sentence “I am currently experiencing the ineffable redness of red.”, or alternatively that Chalmers writes the sentence “I am not currently experiencing the ineffable redness of red.”. Presumably (since you seem not to be an illusionist), you would endorse the claim that Chalmers chooses one sentence over the other based on its truth value, and that he ascertained that truth value by introspection, and that choice is intimately / causally related to properties of phenomenal consciousness. Right? So then we can ask questions like: What exactly (if anything) was he introspecting upon, and how was he doing so, and how did he interpret the results in order to choose one sentence over the other? If phenomenal consciousness is anything at all, it presumably needs to be the thing that Chalmers is somehow able to query during this introspection process, right? So how does this querying process work, and produce specific correct answers to questions about consciousness?
If your version of cosmopsychism is just the idea of saying “the universe exists, and this existence is an intrinsic property of the equations” or whatever, then I’m open-minded to that. (Related.) But I don’t understand how that has anything to do with the question above. Right? You’re calling it “cosmopsychism” but I don’t see any “psych” in it…
The thing that Chalmers queries is his brain. The phenomenal nature of his brain is that his brain exists. Chalmers can’t query a brain that doesn’t exist. Therefore phenomenal things cause Chalmers to say “I am currently experiencing the ineffable redness of red.”.
Existence have something to do with everything—you can’t introspect or see red if you don’t exist. But yes, the solution to the Hard Problem doesn’t have much to do with human qualia specifically (except maybe in the part where cogito ergo sum is the limit of reflectivity and awareness in humans have something to do with reflectivity) - if you explain the consciousness itself using physical notion of existence, then the redness of red is just the difference of neural processes.
That it doesn’t have any magical “psych” is by design—that’s why it’s not dualism. The relevant phenomenal aspect of existence is that it solves zombies. And I mean, sure, you can avoid using the word “consciousness” and stick only to “existence”. But it connects to your intuitions about consciousness—if you imagined you may lose consciousness if you were to be disassembled to atoms and reassembled back, now you have a direct reason to imagine that it still would be something to be like reassembled you.
I feel like you’re dodging the question here. I can make a list of properties X that Chalmers believes consciousness has, and I can make another list of properties Y that Chalmers believes consciousness doesn’t have. There should be an explanation of why the things on list X are not on Y instead, and vice-versa.
You can’t just say “if the universe didn’t exist, then lists X and Y wouldn’t exist either”. Sure, maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t constitute any progress towards explaining why the X&Y list contents are what they are. Right?
I feel like you’re angling for a position kinda like: “cosmopsychism explains why I have a conscious experience, but explains nothing whatsoever about any of the properties of that conscious experience”. Right? That strikes me as kinda an insane thing to believe…
Like, if I say “this rock was formed by past volcanic activity”, then you can dig a bit deeper and relate specific properties of the rock to known properties of volcanoes. Right? That’s the normal state of affairs.
So if you say “I know the explanation of why there’s conscious experience, but that explanation doesn’t offer even one shred of insight about why conscious experience is related to memory and self-awareness and feelings and first-person perspective etc., as opposed to conscious experience being related to this pile of blankets on my couch” … then I reject that the thing you’re saying is actually the explanation of why there’s conscious experience.
I hope this isn’t coming across as mean. You seem pretty reasonable, maybe you’ll have good responses, that’s why I’m still here chatting :)
Not intentional—I’m just not sure whether you see problems with casual closure or with epistemic usefulness.
I wouldn’t say “any progress”—correct propositions about X and Y are correct even if they may seem trivial. And it sure would be a progress for someone who was forced to believe in dualism or worse as an alternative. And, to be clear, consciousness having a content is not a problem for casual closure—if some specific universe didn’t exist and some other universe existed instead, X and Y would be different. But yes, it’s a solution that is not especially useful except for a narrow purpose of solving the Hard Problem.
Right. Well, if you stretch the definition of an explanation and properties, there are some vague intuition-like mental processes that I believe become streamlined when you accept cosmopsychism. Like, at the stage of “we have no idea how to solve the Hard Problem but I’m sure physicalism will win somehow” people still manage to hope for some kind of moral realism about consciousness, like there is objective fact that someone is in pain. But yeah, you may derive all this stuff from other sources too.
But, why do you think it’s insane? There are no philosophical problems with relation of some mental processes to memory. Science will explain it in the future just fine. “Why there’s conscious experience” always was the only mysterious problem about consciousness. And I’m not even saying that the Hard Problem and it’s solution is interesting, while practical theory of awareness is boring and useless. It’s just as the matter of fact under some reasonable definitions cosmopsychism solves the Hard Problem—that’s the extent of what I’m arguing.
The point is that cosmopsychism together with usual science provides the explanation you want. And no one doubts that science will do it’s part.