Epiphenomenalism says that we do not act in the world, we are merely passengers without the power to so much as twitch our little fingers. This is so plainly absurd that only a philosopher could take it seriously
I’ve been trying to articulate why I find it hard to reconcile this with your endorsing Eliezer’s requiredism, and this is the best I can do:
I don’t think I see a meaningful difference between epiphenomenalism (i.e. brain causes qualia, qualia don’t cause anything) and a non-eliminative materialism that says ‘qualia and brain are not separate things; there’s just matter, and sometimes matter has feelings, but the matter that has feelings still obeys ordinary physical laws’. In both cases, qualia are real but physics is causally closed and there’s no room for libertarian free will.
If the quoted passage referred to that kind of materialism rather than to epiphenomenalism, it would be an argument for libertarianism. And I know that’s not what you intended, but I don’t fully understand what you do mean by it, given that it must not conflict with requiredism (which is basically ‘compatibilism but more so’).
In both cases, qualia are real but physics is causally closed and there’s no room for libertarian free will.
Libertarian FW isn’t ruled out by the causal closure of the physical, it’s ruled out by determinism (physical or not). Causal closure would rule out something like interactionist dualism, but that’s fairly orthogonal to LFW...it could even be deterministic.
I don’t see a difference between that argument and saying that a jumbo jet doesn’t cause anything, only its atoms do.
Happy to leave this here if you’ve had enough, but if you do want a response I’ll need more than that to go on. I’ve been struggling to understand how your position fits together, and that doesn’t really help. (I’m not even sure exactly what you’re referring to as ‘that argument’. Admittedly I am tired; I’ll take a break now.)
I’ve been trying to articulate why I find it hard to reconcile this with your endorsing Eliezer’s requiredism, and this is the best I can do:
I don’t think I see a meaningful difference between epiphenomenalism (i.e. brain causes qualia, qualia don’t cause anything) and a non-eliminative materialism that says ‘qualia and brain are not separate things; there’s just matter, and sometimes matter has feelings, but the matter that has feelings still obeys ordinary physical laws’. In both cases, qualia are real but physics is causally closed and there’s no room for libertarian free will.
If the quoted passage referred to that kind of materialism rather than to epiphenomenalism, it would be an argument for libertarianism. And I know that’s not what you intended, but I don’t fully understand what you do mean by it, given that it must not conflict with requiredism (which is basically ‘compatibilism but more so’).
Libertarian FW isn’t ruled out by the causal closure of the physical, it’s ruled out by determinism (physical or not). Causal closure would rule out something like interactionist dualism, but that’s fairly orthogonal to LFW...it could even be deterministic.
I don’t see a difference between that argument and saying that a jumbo jet doesn’t cause anything, only its atoms do.
Happy to leave this here if you’ve had enough, but if you do want a response I’ll need more than that to go on. I’ve been struggling to understand how your position fits together, and that doesn’t really help. (I’m not even sure exactly what you’re referring to as ‘that argument’. Admittedly I am tired; I’ll take a break now.)