Because yours doesn’t do any work; as Eliezer said, if you postulate different laws for consciousnesses then you don’t actually end up less confused about how consciousness works.
I don’t see why this has to be the case. We posited different laws for fields (they don’t behave like particles), but that doesn’t mean they don’t do any work. The dualists I’m describing (and an actual example may or may not exist) aren’t describing some completely parallel psychological realm unconnected to the physical realm. They believe one can build good theories where fundamental psychological variables are causally entangled with physical variables, kind of like field variables are causally entangled with particle variables.
I agree that if these psychological properties are completely epiphenomenal then they do no work, but I don’t see why they’d have to be. That’s a substantive question. Maybe it will turn out that laws like the Weber-Fechner law are the best we can do in the relevant domain, that we can’t come up with equally useful generalizations that don’t appeal to sensations (a hypothetical example; for all I know, we have already done better in this particular case). In that case, our best theory has sensations as an irreducible component, but I don’t see why that makes it mysterious or magical.
If successful reductions are evidence for the general thesis of reductionism, then the absence of a successful reduction is evidence against the thesis. Weak evidence, perhaps, but evidence nonetheless. And the longer the absence persists, the stronger evidence it is.
I’d be more charitable if dualists got their alternative laws to do actual predictive work, even if they just predicted properties of personal experience. But no, it happens that the people who do all the useful work are neurologists. This is the universe saying “hint” pretty loudly.
Well, psychophysics is a field, even though it doesn’t presume dualism. Dualists are claiming that we can’t do better. Their position is largely a negative one, and so difficult to construct a research program around. I generally dislike positions of that kind in science, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be right. Also, I suspect the intersection of “dualists” and “neurologists” is not the empty set. Some of the neurologists doing useful work might be dualists of some stripe.
In any case, I didn’t intend to debate the efficacy (or lack thereof) of dualists. Like I said, I’m no dualist. Perhaps all dualists are crappy philosophers, terrible scientists and horribly confused individuals. Doesn’t affect the point I was making.
Neither do I, I think it’s evidentially true.
Um… OK, then I don’t see where we disagree. In the original comment you responded to, I was simply saying that “consciousness” isn’t just a label for a set of neural interactions. If you think dualism is false based on evidence, then I presume you agree. After all, if you believed that “consciousness” simply meant a set of neural interactions, then “consciousness is not reducible to neural interactions” would be false based on the meanings of the words alone, not based on empirical evidence.
I don’t see why this has to be the case. We posited different laws for fields
Sorry, let me restate my point.
if you postulate [merely the existence of] different laws for consciousnesses then you don’t actually end up less confused about how consciousness works.
Actually stating the bridging laws might help with this.
good theories where fundamental psychological variables are causally entangled with physical variables, kind of like field variables are causally entangled with particle variables.
I don’t see what making the psychology fundamental even buys you.
In that case, our best theory has sensations as an irreducible component
My standard is “could a superintelligence reduce these laws to underlying simple physics?” It’s possible that psychology will turn out to be practically irreducible; I have no beef with that claim. I don’t buy that it’s fundamentally irreducible though.
If successful reductions are evidence for the general thesis of reductionism, then the absence of a successful reduction is evidence against the thesis
to the extent that a reduction would have been expected. Give neurology some time. We’re making good progress. Remember, there was a time we didn’t even know what the brain was for. In that time, dualism would have had a much easier stance, and its island has only gotten smaller since. Winds of evidence and all.
Dualists are claiming that we can’t do better.
That we can’t, even in theory, do better. That we, as in cognitively limited humans, can’t do better is merely implausible.
Um… OK, then I don’t see where we disagree. In the original comment you responded to, I was simply saying that “consciousness” isn’t just a label for a set of neural interactions.
I think consciousness is just physics. I don’t perceive consciousness as just physics, but then again, I don’t perceive anything as just physics, even things that unambiguously are, like rocks and air and stuff. I can imagine a causal path in the brain that starts with “photons hitting a rose” and ends with me talking about the effing redness of red, and I can, in my imagination, identify this path with “redness”. I suspect this will get clearer as we become able to stimulate specific parts of the brain more easily.
I don’t see why this has to be the case. We posited different laws for fields (they don’t behave like particles), but that doesn’t mean they don’t do any work. The dualists I’m describing (and an actual example may or may not exist) aren’t describing some completely parallel psychological realm unconnected to the physical realm. They believe one can build good theories where fundamental psychological variables are causally entangled with physical variables, kind of like field variables are causally entangled with particle variables.
I agree that if these psychological properties are completely epiphenomenal then they do no work, but I don’t see why they’d have to be. That’s a substantive question. Maybe it will turn out that laws like the Weber-Fechner law are the best we can do in the relevant domain, that we can’t come up with equally useful generalizations that don’t appeal to sensations (a hypothetical example; for all I know, we have already done better in this particular case). In that case, our best theory has sensations as an irreducible component, but I don’t see why that makes it mysterious or magical.
If successful reductions are evidence for the general thesis of reductionism, then the absence of a successful reduction is evidence against the thesis. Weak evidence, perhaps, but evidence nonetheless. And the longer the absence persists, the stronger evidence it is.
Well, psychophysics is a field, even though it doesn’t presume dualism. Dualists are claiming that we can’t do better. Their position is largely a negative one, and so difficult to construct a research program around. I generally dislike positions of that kind in science, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be right. Also, I suspect the intersection of “dualists” and “neurologists” is not the empty set. Some of the neurologists doing useful work might be dualists of some stripe.
In any case, I didn’t intend to debate the efficacy (or lack thereof) of dualists. Like I said, I’m no dualist. Perhaps all dualists are crappy philosophers, terrible scientists and horribly confused individuals. Doesn’t affect the point I was making.
Um… OK, then I don’t see where we disagree. In the original comment you responded to, I was simply saying that “consciousness” isn’t just a label for a set of neural interactions. If you think dualism is false based on evidence, then I presume you agree. After all, if you believed that “consciousness” simply meant a set of neural interactions, then “consciousness is not reducible to neural interactions” would be false based on the meanings of the words alone, not based on empirical evidence.
Sorry, let me restate my point.
Actually stating the bridging laws might help with this.
I don’t see what making the psychology fundamental even buys you.
My standard is “could a superintelligence reduce these laws to underlying simple physics?” It’s possible that psychology will turn out to be practically irreducible; I have no beef with that claim. I don’t buy that it’s fundamentally irreducible though.
to the extent that a reduction would have been expected. Give neurology some time. We’re making good progress. Remember, there was a time we didn’t even know what the brain was for. In that time, dualism would have had a much easier stance, and its island has only gotten smaller since. Winds of evidence and all.
That we can’t, even in theory, do better. That we, as in cognitively limited humans, can’t do better is merely implausible.
I think consciousness is just physics. I don’t perceive consciousness as just physics, but then again, I don’t perceive anything as just physics, even things that unambiguously are, like rocks and air and stuff. I can imagine a causal path in the brain that starts with “photons hitting a rose” and ends with me talking about the effing redness of red, and I can, in my imagination, identify this path with “redness”. I suspect this will get clearer as we become able to stimulate specific parts of the brain more easily.