By that analogy, then, fake gods can exist only because there is such a thing as real gods; fake ghosts can only exist because there is such a thing as real ghosts; fake magic can only exist because there is such a thing as real magic.
It’s perfectly possible to be ontologically mistaken about the nature of one’s world.
Indeed. There is real agency, so people have imagined really big agents that created and rule the world. People’s consciousness persists, even after the interruptions of sleep, and they imagine it persists even after death. People’s actions appear to happen purely by their intention, and they imagine doing arbitrary things purely by intention. These are the real things that the fakes, pretences, or errors are based on.
But how do the p-zombie and the homunculus even get to the point of having their mistaken ontology?
The p-zombie doesn’t, because the p-zombie is not a logically consistent concept. Imagine if there was a word that meant “four-sided triangle”—that’s the level of absurdity that the ‘p-zombie’ idea represents.
On the other hand, the epiphenomenal consciousness (for which I’ll accept the appelature ‘homunculus’ until a more consistent and accurate one occurs to me) is simply mistaken in that it is drawing too large a boundary in some respects, and too small a boundary in others. It’s drawing a line around certain phenomena and ascribing a causal relationship between those and its own so-called ‘agency’, while excluding others. The algorithm that draws those lines doesn’t have a particularly strong map-territory correlation; it just happens to be one of those evo-psych things that developed and self-reinforced because it worked in the ancestral environment.
Note that I never claimed that “agency” and “volition” are nonexistent on the whole; merely that the vast majority of what people internally consider “agency” and “volition”, aren’t.
EDIT: And I see that you’ve added some to the comment I’m replying to, here. In particular, this stood out:
People’s consciousness persists, even after the interruptions of sleep, and they imagine it persists even after death.
I don’t believe that “my” consciousness persists after sleep. I believe that a new consciousness generates itself upon waking, and pieces itself together using the memories it has access to as a consequence of being generated by “my” brain; but I don’t think that the creature that will wake up tomorrow is “me” in the same way that I am. I continue to use words like “me” and “I” for two reasons:
Social convenience—it’s damn hard to get along with other hominids without at least pretending to share their cultural assumptions
It is, admittedly, an incredibly persistent illusion. However, it is a logically incoherent illusion, and I have upon occasion pierced it and seen others pierce it, so I’m not entirely inclined to give it ontological reality with p=1.0 anymore.
Do you believe that the creature you are now (as you read this parenthetical expression) is “you” in the same way as the creature you are now (as you read this parenthetical expression)?
Yes(ish), on the basis that the change between me(expr1) and me(expr2) is small enough that assigning them a single consistent identity is more convenient than acknowledging the differences.
But if I’m operating in a more rigorous context, then no; under most circumstances that appear to require epistemological rigor, it seems better to taboo concepts like “I” and “is” altogether.
I share something like this attitude, but in normal non-rigorous contexts I treat me-before-sleep and me-after-sleep as equally me in much the same way as you do me(expr1) and me(expr2).
More generally, my non-rigorous standard for “me” is such that all of my remembered states when I wasn’t sleeping, delirious, or younger than 16 or so unambiguously qualify for “me”dom, despite varying rather broadly amongst themselves. This is mostly because the maximum variation along salient parameters among that set of states seems significantly smaller than the minimum variations between that set and the various other sets of states I observe others demonstrating. (If I lived in a community seeded by copies of myself-as-of-five-minutes ago who could transfer memories among one another, I can imagine my notion of “I” changing radically.)
More generally, my non-rigorous standard for “me” is such that all of my remembered states when I wasn’t sleeping, delirious, or younger than 16 or so unambiguously qualify for “me”dom, despite varying rather broadly amongst themselves. This is mostly because the maximum variation along salient parameters among that set of states seems significantly smaller than the minimum variations between that set and the various other sets of states I observe others demonstrating. (If I lived in a community seeded by copies of myself-as-of-five-minutes ago who could transfer memories among one another, I can imagine my notion of “I” changing radically.)
Nice! I like that reasoning.
I personally experience a somewhat less coherent sense of self, and what sense of self I do experience seems particularly maladaptive to my environment, so we definitely seem to have different epistemological and pragmatic goals—but I think we’re applying very similar reasoning to arrive at our premises.
Jobs are a particularly egregious case where tabooing “is” seems like a good idea—do you find the idea that people “are” their jobs a particularly useful encapsulation of the human experience? Do you, personally find your self fully encapsulated by the ritualized economic actions you perform?
But if ‘I’ differ day to day, then doesn’t this body differ day to day too?
Certainly. How far do you want to go? Maps are not territories, but some maps provide useful representations of territories for certain contexts and purposes.
The danger represented by “I” and “is” come from their tendency to blow away the map-territory relation, and convince the reader that an identity exists between a particular concept and a particular phenomenon.
Indeed. There is real agency, so people have imagined really big agents that created and rule the world. People’s consciousness persists, even after the interruptions of sleep, and they imagine it persists even after death. People’s actions appear to happen purely by their intention, and they imagine doing arbitrary things purely by intention. These are the real things that the fakes, pretences, or errors are based on.
But how do the p-zombie and the homunculus even get to the point of having their mistaken ontology?
The p-zombie doesn’t, because the p-zombie is not a logically consistent concept. Imagine if there was a word that meant “four-sided triangle”—that’s the level of absurdity that the ‘p-zombie’ idea represents.
On the other hand, the epiphenomenal consciousness (for which I’ll accept the appelature ‘homunculus’ until a more consistent and accurate one occurs to me) is simply mistaken in that it is drawing too large a boundary in some respects, and too small a boundary in others. It’s drawing a line around certain phenomena and ascribing a causal relationship between those and its own so-called ‘agency’, while excluding others. The algorithm that draws those lines doesn’t have a particularly strong map-territory correlation; it just happens to be one of those evo-psych things that developed and self-reinforced because it worked in the ancestral environment.
Note that I never claimed that “agency” and “volition” are nonexistent on the whole; merely that the vast majority of what people internally consider “agency” and “volition”, aren’t.
EDIT: And I see that you’ve added some to the comment I’m replying to, here. In particular, this stood out:
I don’t believe that “my” consciousness persists after sleep. I believe that a new consciousness generates itself upon waking, and pieces itself together using the memories it has access to as a consequence of being generated by “my” brain; but I don’t think that the creature that will wake up tomorrow is “me” in the same way that I am. I continue to use words like “me” and “I” for two reasons:
Social convenience—it’s damn hard to get along with other hominids without at least pretending to share their cultural assumptions
It is, admittedly, an incredibly persistent illusion. However, it is a logically incoherent illusion, and I have upon occasion pierced it and seen others pierce it, so I’m not entirely inclined to give it ontological reality with p=1.0 anymore.
Do you believe that the creature you are now (as you read this parenthetical expression) is “you” in the same way as the creature you are now (as you read this parenthetical expression)?
If so, on what basis?
Yes(ish), on the basis that the change between me(expr1) and me(expr2) is small enough that assigning them a single consistent identity is more convenient than acknowledging the differences.
But if I’m operating in a more rigorous context, then no; under most circumstances that appear to require epistemological rigor, it seems better to taboo concepts like “I” and “is” altogether.
(nods) Fair enough.
I share something like this attitude, but in normal non-rigorous contexts I treat me-before-sleep and me-after-sleep as equally me in much the same way as you do me(expr1) and me(expr2).
More generally, my non-rigorous standard for “me” is such that all of my remembered states when I wasn’t sleeping, delirious, or younger than 16 or so unambiguously qualify for “me”dom, despite varying rather broadly amongst themselves. This is mostly because the maximum variation along salient parameters among that set of states seems significantly smaller than the minimum variations between that set and the various other sets of states I observe others demonstrating. (If I lived in a community seeded by copies of myself-as-of-five-minutes ago who could transfer memories among one another, I can imagine my notion of “I” changing radically.)
Nice! I like that reasoning.
I personally experience a somewhat less coherent sense of self, and what sense of self I do experience seems particularly maladaptive to my environment, so we definitely seem to have different epistemological and pragmatic goals—but I think we’re applying very similar reasoning to arrive at our premises.
So in the following sentence...
“I am a construction worker”
Can you taboo ‘I’ and “am’ for me?
This body works construction.
Jobs are a particularly egregious case where tabooing “is” seems like a good idea—do you find the idea that people “are” their jobs a particularly useful encapsulation of the human experience? Do you, personally find your self fully encapsulated by the ritualized economic actions you perform?
But if ‘I’ differ day to day, then doesn’t this body differ day to day too?
I am fully and happily encapsulated by my job, though I think I may have the only job where this really possible.
Certainly. How far do you want to go? Maps are not territories, but some maps provide useful representations of territories for certain contexts and purposes.
The danger represented by “I” and “is” come from their tendency to blow away the map-territory relation, and convince the reader that an identity exists between a particular concept and a particular phenomenon.
Is the camel’s nose the same thing as his tail? Are the nose and the tail parts of the same thing? What needs tabooing is “same” and “thing”.
I have also found that process useful (although like ‘I’, there are contexts where it is very cumbersome to get around using them).