Cyan—think of the million monkeys at typewriters eventually outputting a replica of Chalmers’ book. The monkeys obviously haven’t given an argument. There’s just an item there that you are capable of projecting a meaningful interpretation onto. But the meaning obviously comes from you, not the monkeys.
Suppose I expend the energy to search through the monkeys’ output, discarding random strings and the large set of near-copies of Chalmers’ book that degenerate into gibberish or have Shakespeare spliced into to the middle. I decide that the string that is Chalmers’ book has meaning, and its arguments convince. In this situation, the meaning obviously comes from me. Zombie/Outer Chalmers’ book is not the outcome of such a process, so I’m not convinced that the meaning can sensibly be located where you put it.
And “expend the energy” is not just a figure of speech here—my efforts will increase entropy in a fashion related to the amount of information I incorporate into my brain structure.
Suppose I expend the energy to search through the monkeys’ output, discarding random strings and the large set of near-copies of Chalmers’ book that degenerate into gibberish or have Shakespeare spliced into to the middle. I decide that the string that is Chalmers’ book has meaning, and its arguments convince. In this situation, the meaning obviously comes from me. Zombie/Outer Chalmers’ book is not the outcome of such a process, so I’m not convinced that the meaning can sensibly be located where you put it.
And “expend the energy” is not just a figure of speech here—my efforts will increase entropy in a fashion related to the amount of information I incorporate into my brain structure.