If you only got rid of consciousness behavior would change.
Oh, I see, the word “only” here or “just” in your previous comment were throwing me off. I was talking about the following thing that you wrote:
So the idea is that even if consciousness causes things, we could still imagine a physically identical world to ‘the world where consciousness causes the things’. Instead, the things would be caused the same physical way as they are with consciousness, but there would be no consciousness.
[single quotes added to fix ambiguous parsing.]
Let’s label these two worlds:
World A (“the world where consciousness causes the things”), and
World B (the world where “the things would be caused the same physical way as they are with consciousness, but there would be no consciousness”).
Your perspective seems to be: “World A is the truth, and World B is a funny thought experiment. This proposal is type-D dualist.”
I am proposing an alternative perspective: “World B is the true causally-closed physical laws of the universe (and by the way, the laws of physics maybe look different from how we normally expect laws of physics to look, but oh well), and World A is an physically equivalent universe but where consciousness exists as an epiphenomenon. This proposal is type-E epiphenomenalist.”
Is there an error in that alternative perspective?
You might be able to explain Chalmers’ behavior, but that doesn’t capture the subjective experience.
Let’s say I write the sentence: “my wristwatch is black”. And let’s say that sentence is true. And let’s further say it wasn’t just a lucky guess. Under those assumptions, then somewhere in the chain of causation that led to my writing that sentence, you will find an actual watch, and it’s actually black, and photons bounced off of that watch and went into my eye (or someone else’s eye or a camera etc.), thus giving me that information. Agree?
By the same token: Let’s say that Chalmers writes the sentence “I have phenomenal consciousness, and it has thus-and-such properties”. And let’s say that sentence is true. And let’s further say it wasn’t just a lucky guess. Under those assumptions, then somewhere in the chain of causation that led Chalmers to write that sentence, you will find phenomenal consciousness, whatever it is (if anything), with an appropriate place in the story to allow Chalmers to successfully introspect upon it—to allow Chalmers to somehow “query” phenomenal consciousness with his brain and wind up with veridical knowledge about it, analogous to how photons bounce off the watch and carry veridical information about its optical properties into the retina and eventually into long-term memory.
I claim that, if the project I proposed here is successful (i.e. the project to get from QFT+GR to the external behavior of Chalmers writing books), and we combine that with the argument of the previous paragraph (which I understand to be Eliezer’s argument), then we get a rock-solid argument that rules out all zombies, whether type-D, type-E, or type-F. Do you see what I mean?
Oh, I see, the word “only” here or “just” in your previous comment were throwing me off. I was talking about the following thing that you wrote:
[single quotes added to fix ambiguous parsing.]
Let’s label these two worlds:
World A (“the world where consciousness causes the things”), and
World B (the world where “the things would be caused the same physical way as they are with consciousness, but there would be no consciousness”).
Your perspective seems to be: “World A is the truth, and World B is a funny thought experiment. This proposal is type-D dualist.”
I am proposing an alternative perspective: “World B is the true causally-closed physical laws of the universe (and by the way, the laws of physics maybe look different from how we normally expect laws of physics to look, but oh well), and World A is an physically equivalent universe but where consciousness exists as an epiphenomenon. This proposal is type-E epiphenomenalist.”
Is there an error in that alternative perspective?
Let’s say I write the sentence: “my wristwatch is black”. And let’s say that sentence is true. And let’s further say it wasn’t just a lucky guess. Under those assumptions, then somewhere in the chain of causation that led to my writing that sentence, you will find an actual watch, and it’s actually black, and photons bounced off of that watch and went into my eye (or someone else’s eye or a camera etc.), thus giving me that information. Agree?
By the same token: Let’s say that Chalmers writes the sentence “I have phenomenal consciousness, and it has thus-and-such properties”. And let’s say that sentence is true. And let’s further say it wasn’t just a lucky guess. Under those assumptions, then somewhere in the chain of causation that led Chalmers to write that sentence, you will find phenomenal consciousness, whatever it is (if anything), with an appropriate place in the story to allow Chalmers to successfully introspect upon it—to allow Chalmers to somehow “query” phenomenal consciousness with his brain and wind up with veridical knowledge about it, analogous to how photons bounce off the watch and carry veridical information about its optical properties into the retina and eventually into long-term memory.
I claim that, if the project I proposed here is successful (i.e. the project to get from QFT+GR to the external behavior of Chalmers writing books), and we combine that with the argument of the previous paragraph (which I understand to be Eliezer’s argument), then we get a rock-solid argument that rules out all zombies, whether type-D, type-E, or type-F. Do you see what I mean?
I felt like I was following the entire comment, until you asserted that it rules out zombies.