About Science making the claim “You’re right, science does have something to say about conscious experience after all … [namely] … that a given physical state of the world either gives rise to conscious experience, or it doesn’t; the same state of the world cannot do both.”
This would just be Solution By Fiat. Hardly a very dignified thing for Science to do.
And don’t forget: Chalmers’ goal is to say “IF there is a logical possibility that in another imaginable kind of universe a thing X does not exist (where it exists in this one), THEN this thing X is a valid subject of questions about its nature.”
That is a truly fundamental aspect of epistemology—one of the bedrock assumptions accepted by philosophers—so all Chalmers is doing is employing it. Chalmers did not invent that line of argument.
About the analogy. It only looks like a bait and switch because I did not spell out the implications properly. I should have asked what would happen if there was no possible way for internal inspection of mental state to be done. If, for some reason, we could not do any physics to say what went on inside the mind when it was either telling the truth or lying, would it be valid to deploy that appeal to preposterousness? You must keep my assumption in order to understand the analogy, because I am asking about a situation in which we cannot ever distinguish the physical state of a lying human brain and a truthtelling human brain, but where we nevertheless had privileged access to our own mental states, and knew for sure that sometimes we lied when we made a genuine protest of innocence. (Imagine, if you will, a universe in which the crucial mental process that determined intention to tell the truth versus intention to deceive was actually located inside some kind of quantum field subject to an uncertainty principle, in such a way that external knowledge of the state was forbidden).
My point is that if we lived in such a universe, and if Eliezer poured scorn on the idea of Appearance-Of-Innocence without Intention-To-Be-Genuine, his appeal would be transparently empty.
I have no idea what dignity has to do with anything here.
As for the analogy… sure, if we discard the assertion that the two systems are physically identical, then there’s no problem. Agreed. The idea that two systems can demonstrate the same behavior at some level of analysis (e.g., they both utter “Hey! I’m conscious!”), where one of them is conscious and one isn’t, isn’t problematic at all.
It’s also not the claim the essay you’re objecting to was objecting to.
This would just be Solution By Fiat. Hardly a very dignified thing for Science to do.
It isn’t solution by fiat; the idea isn’t to add just that statement to science. Rather, the idea is that such a statement already seems probable from basic scientific considerations such as those discussed in the post.
EDIT:
I see now that this is not relevant. The point of the zombie argument is not to refute such considerations, but rather, to illustrate the difference between “the hard problem of consciousness” and other sorts of consciousness.
I am asking about a situation in which we cannot ever distinguish the physical state of a lying human brain and a truthtelling human brain, but where we nevertheless had privileged access to our own mental states, and knew for sure that sometimes we lied when we made a genuine protest of innocence.
So, if we have knowledge that cannot possibly be observed in the physical world, then that proves that there is something else going on? Are you saying, for example, that we somehow know both the position and momentum of a particle with a precision greater than that allowed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and that this gives rise to us either knowing that we are lying or knowing the we are telling the truth?
Well sure, if you start out with the given premise that breaks the laws of physics as we know them, of course you are going to conclude that there is something beyond “mere atoms”. Suppose we know that the sky is actually green, even though all of physics says it should be blue. Clearly our map (aka the laws of physics as we currently know them) doesn’t match the territory (the stuff that’s causing our observations). But it doesn’t seem to be necessary to resort to such wild hypotheses, because it is still quite plausible that consciousness emerges from “mere atoms”. We just don’t know the details of how yet, but we’re working on it. If someday we have a full understanding of the brain, and there doesn’t seem to be anything there to give rise to consciousness, then such wild speculation will be warranted. Today though, the substance dualism argument has no evidence behind it, and therefore an infinitesimally small probability of being true.
Hello. You state that “it is still quite plausible that consciousness emerges from “mere atoms” ”, but you do not explain why you make that statement. In fact you say that one day it will all be totally clear, even if it isn’t yet right now.
I might be wrong, but that’s why I’m asking: Is it not possible to say that about anything?
About Science making the claim “You’re right, science does have something to say about conscious experience after all … [namely] … that a given physical state of the world either gives rise to conscious experience, or it doesn’t; the same state of the world cannot do both.”
This would just be Solution By Fiat. Hardly a very dignified thing for Science to do.
And don’t forget: Chalmers’ goal is to say “IF there is a logical possibility that in another imaginable kind of universe a thing X does not exist (where it exists in this one), THEN this thing X is a valid subject of questions about its nature.”
That is a truly fundamental aspect of epistemology—one of the bedrock assumptions accepted by philosophers—so all Chalmers is doing is employing it. Chalmers did not invent that line of argument.
About the analogy. It only looks like a bait and switch because I did not spell out the implications properly. I should have asked what would happen if there was no possible way for internal inspection of mental state to be done. If, for some reason, we could not do any physics to say what went on inside the mind when it was either telling the truth or lying, would it be valid to deploy that appeal to preposterousness? You must keep my assumption in order to understand the analogy, because I am asking about a situation in which we cannot ever distinguish the physical state of a lying human brain and a truthtelling human brain, but where we nevertheless had privileged access to our own mental states, and knew for sure that sometimes we lied when we made a genuine protest of innocence. (Imagine, if you will, a universe in which the crucial mental process that determined intention to tell the truth versus intention to deceive was actually located inside some kind of quantum field subject to an uncertainty principle, in such a way that external knowledge of the state was forbidden).
My point is that if we lived in such a universe, and if Eliezer poured scorn on the idea of Appearance-Of-Innocence without Intention-To-Be-Genuine, his appeal would be transparently empty.
I have no idea what dignity has to do with anything here.
As for the analogy… sure, if we discard the assertion that the two systems are physically identical, then there’s no problem. Agreed. The idea that two systems can demonstrate the same behavior at some level of analysis (e.g., they both utter “Hey! I’m conscious!”), where one of them is conscious and one isn’t, isn’t problematic at all.
It’s also not the claim the essay you’re objecting to was objecting to.
That’s why I classed it as a Bait and Switch.
It isn’t solution by fiat; the idea isn’t to add just that statement to science. Rather, the idea is that such a statement already seems probable from basic scientific considerations such as those discussed in the post.
EDIT:
I see now that this is not relevant. The point of the zombie argument is not to refute such considerations, but rather, to illustrate the difference between “the hard problem of consciousness” and other sorts of consciousness.
So, if we have knowledge that cannot possibly be observed in the physical world, then that proves that there is something else going on? Are you saying, for example, that we somehow know both the position and momentum of a particle with a precision greater than that allowed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and that this gives rise to us either knowing that we are lying or knowing the we are telling the truth?
Well sure, if you start out with the given premise that breaks the laws of physics as we know them, of course you are going to conclude that there is something beyond “mere atoms”. Suppose we know that the sky is actually green, even though all of physics says it should be blue. Clearly our map (aka the laws of physics as we currently know them) doesn’t match the territory (the stuff that’s causing our observations). But it doesn’t seem to be necessary to resort to such wild hypotheses, because it is still quite plausible that consciousness emerges from “mere atoms”. We just don’t know the details of how yet, but we’re working on it. If someday we have a full understanding of the brain, and there doesn’t seem to be anything there to give rise to consciousness, then such wild speculation will be warranted. Today though, the substance dualism argument has no evidence behind it, and therefore an infinitesimally small probability of being true.
Hello. You state that “it is still quite plausible that consciousness emerges from “mere atoms” ”, but you do not explain why you make that statement. In fact you say that one day it will all be totally clear, even if it isn’t yet right now.
I might be wrong, but that’s why I’m asking: Is it not possible to say that about anything?