How did you answer the physicalism question? If you think any physical duplicate of our world must also be a mental duplicate then I think you’re committed to the impossibility of zombies.
Think about it this way: Do you think there can be a world where the distribution of micro-physical properties is identical to ours but which does not have tables? Presumably no, because you believe that once microscopic properties are distributed a certain way in some location, you can’t avoid having a table in that location. But you don’t think the same is true of phenomenal experience if you believe zombies are possible. You think that there needs to be something more than just the right distribution of physical properties for consciousness to appear.
I suspect you’re conflating epistemic and metaphysical possibility when you say causeless effects are vanishingly unlikely. Take the sentence “2 + 2 = 5”. I think its metaphysically impossible for that to be true (assuming the meanings of the terms are kept constant) -- there is no possible world in which it is true—but I don’t assign it probability 0 because (as Eliezer has pointed out) I acknowledge that there is some possible sequence of experiences that might lead me to believe it (or increase my credence in it). Thinking something is impossible does not mean assigning it probability 0.
Dennett doesn’t think we’re all zombies, BTW. He’s skeptical of qualia as a coherent concept, but he doesn’t deny that we have phenomenal experience.
I don’t believe mental events have nonphysical causes, which is precisely why I consider zombies to entail causeless effects.
And yeah, perhaps I’m just reading too much into “metaphysically impossible” as distinct from “impossible”; the truth is I really don’t know how to think cogently about what would be impossible if the laws of nature were different.
The “we’re all zombies” bit was intended with tongue in cheek; it’s actually a direct quote of his from some book or another—Consciousness Explained, probably—that I read like 20 years ago and stuck with me. He isn’t entirely serious when he says it, of course, and IIRC has a little footnote that says “To quote this phrase out of context would be the height of intellectual dishonesty.” or words to that effect.
EDIT: That said, another relevant Dennetism that stuck with me was his response to an undergrad at a seminar I was listening in on years back. The undergrad said, in effect, “But I don’t feel like a merely computational process!” and he replied “How do you know? Maybe this is exactly what a merely computational process feels like!”
How did you answer the physicalism question? If you think any physical duplicate of our world must also be a mental duplicate then I think you’re committed to the impossibility of zombies.
Think about it this way: Do you think there can be a world where the distribution of micro-physical properties is identical to ours but which does not have tables? Presumably no, because you believe that once microscopic properties are distributed a certain way in some location, you can’t avoid having a table in that location. But you don’t think the same is true of phenomenal experience if you believe zombies are possible. You think that there needs to be something more than just the right distribution of physical properties for consciousness to appear.
I suspect you’re conflating epistemic and metaphysical possibility when you say causeless effects are vanishingly unlikely. Take the sentence “2 + 2 = 5”. I think its metaphysically impossible for that to be true (assuming the meanings of the terms are kept constant) -- there is no possible world in which it is true—but I don’t assign it probability 0 because (as Eliezer has pointed out) I acknowledge that there is some possible sequence of experiences that might lead me to believe it (or increase my credence in it). Thinking something is impossible does not mean assigning it probability 0.
Dennett doesn’t think we’re all zombies, BTW. He’s skeptical of qualia as a coherent concept, but he doesn’t deny that we have phenomenal experience.
I don’t believe mental events have nonphysical causes, which is precisely why I consider zombies to entail causeless effects.
And yeah, perhaps I’m just reading too much into “metaphysically impossible” as distinct from “impossible”; the truth is I really don’t know how to think cogently about what would be impossible if the laws of nature were different.
The “we’re all zombies” bit was intended with tongue in cheek; it’s actually a direct quote of his from some book or another—Consciousness Explained, probably—that I read like 20 years ago and stuck with me. He isn’t entirely serious when he says it, of course, and IIRC has a little footnote that says “To quote this phrase out of context would be the height of intellectual dishonesty.” or words to that effect.
EDIT: That said, another relevant Dennetism that stuck with me was his response to an undergrad at a seminar I was listening in on years back. The undergrad said, in effect, “But I don’t feel like a merely computational process!” and he replied “How do you know? Maybe this is exactly what a merely computational process feels like!”