I don’t know whether you missed this or just didn’t spell it out, but the reason that the likelihood ratio is so much in favor of materialism over solipsism is that if solipsism were true, you could experience literally anything, and apparently ordered universes consistent with simple physical laws are a vanishing subset of the possible experiences.
You’d need a solipsist theory that strongly predicts ordered universes without adding in too much complexity, just in order to be in the conversation with the likelihood of qualia being reducible to materialism.
“Qualia being irreducible” is, to be as charitable to you as possible, in the reference class of philosophical positions that some people have seen as unassailable and others have seen as flawed. You don’t get to assign incredibly high probability within this reference class.
(To be uncharitable, it is an intuition for which you cannot provide even what looks like an airtight philosophical argument, just louder reiterations of your intuition.)
I disagree a bit. My point has been that it’s easy for solipsism to explain consciousness and hard to materialism to. But it’s easy for materialism to account for structure and hard solipsism to. Don’t interpret the post as my saying solipsism wins—just that it’s underrated. I also don’t say qualia must be irreducible, just that there’s spookiness if they are.
I don’t know whether you missed this or just didn’t spell it out, but the reason that the likelihood ratio is so much in favor of materialism over solipsism is that if solipsism were true, you could experience literally anything, and apparently ordered universes consistent with simple physical laws are a vanishing subset of the possible experiences.
You’d need a solipsist theory that strongly predicts ordered universes without adding in too much complexity, just in order to be in the conversation with the likelihood of qualia being reducible to materialism.
“Qualia being irreducible” is, to be as charitable to you as possible, in the reference class of philosophical positions that some people have seen as unassailable and others have seen as flawed. You don’t get to assign incredibly high probability within this reference class.
(To be uncharitable, it is an intuition for which you cannot provide even what looks like an airtight philosophical argument, just louder reiterations of your intuition.)
Thanks.
I disagree a bit. My point has been that it’s easy for solipsism to explain consciousness and hard to materialism to. But it’s easy for materialism to account for structure and hard solipsism to. Don’t interpret the post as my saying solipsism wins—just that it’s underrated. I also don’t say qualia must be irreducible, just that there’s spookiness if they are.