You’ve woven a story in which I am wrong, and it will be hard for me to admit that I am wrong. In doing so, you’ve made it tricky for to defend my point in the case that I’m not wrong.
You’re accusing my “conscion” of being the same kind of mysterious answer as phlogiston. It would be, if I were seriously proposing it as an answer to the mystery of consciousness. I’m not.
I view this one-electron universe model as an ontological koan. It makes us think “hey, reality could be this way rather than the way we think it is and we would be none the wiser — let’s try to deepen our understanding of reality in light of that.”
I’ll gladly concede a failure of my writing in not making it clearer that I’m not making any claim that the conscion exists, but rather that thinking about what it would mean for our understanding of consciousness if the conscion did exist, as described. I’m trying to force people to drop their intuition about the “flow” of consciousness. I’m saying that all our observations about consciousness can be equally well explained by this weird conscion hypothesis as can be by the conventional consciousness-as-the-christian-soul hypothesis, so we should notice that many of our intuitions about consciousness have simply been transplanted from theology, and we should not trust those.
We can’t make conclusions about the feeling of flow (whether we should drop it, etc.) by comparing two theories neither of which have the gears to explain it. That’s why I linked to the mysterious answers post.
I’m not trying to explain the theory of flow (not in this post, I do have some thoughts on the matter). I’m merely trying to induce doubt.
The conventional understanding of consciousness as the Christian soul doesn’t explain anything, really, just like the “conscion.” But because it’s tied up in millennia of Christian scholarship, there are suppositions attached to it that are indefensible.
You posted this reply before I finished editing my previous comment to include its second clause, but I’ll respond as though the order were more natural.
That’s the wrong comparison to be making. Suppose the deist idea about the origin of the universe were dominant, and I proposed that God may not have created the universe. After all, deists, what created God? He was an unmoved mover? Well why couldn’t the universe have just been an unmoved movse in the first place? Sound like you’re just passing the recursive buck, deists! I’m not proposing any kind of better explanation, just offering a different non-explanation to induce doubt.
Doubt in what? Well I admit I don’t know all that much about deism, but let’s suppose that deists believed that even though god never intervened in the universe, he had intentions for how the universe should turn out, and it’s our job as his creations to honor his intentions like we would honor the intentions of our fathers. This baggage is not entailed by the core theory of deism, it just came along for the ride when deism evolved from older Christian metaphysics. That’s why even though my proposed alternative to deism is no more an explanation of the origin of the universe than deism is, it brings to attention the fact that that deism’s baggage is unnecessary and we should forsake it.
I’m not saying we need to doubt the conventional understanding of consciousness entirely, rather that we should recognize that it has baggage and forsake it. What’s the evidence that it has baggage? Well conventional intuition makes the idea of person-slices seem suspect, as I described in the post. Person-slices don’t seem suspect when you use the conscion model of consciousness. If the two hypotheses are equally non-explanatory, then it is baggage that causes the different intuition.
Person-slices don’t seem suspect when you use the conscion model of consciousness.
I think this is where the argument cracks. Person-slices could still seem suspect due to some other reasoning, not just due to religion. You’re getting a positive conclusion (“consciousness can be based on person-slices”) from nowhere.
I’m not sure at this point what my goal was with this post, it would be too easy to fall into motivated reasoning after this back-and-forth. So I agree with you that my post fails to give evidence for “consciousness can be based on person-slices,” I just don’t know if I ever intended to give that positive conclusion.
I do think that person-slices are entirely plausible, and a very useful analytical tool, as Parfit found. I have other thoughts on consciousness which assume person-slices are a coherent concept. If this post is sufficient to make the burden of proof for the existence of person-slices not clearly fall to me, then it’s served a useful purpose.
***
By the way, I did give a positive account for the existence of person slices, comparing the notion of a person slice to something that we more readily accept exists:
What would it be like to be a person-slice? This seems to me to be analogous to asking “how can we observe a snapshot of an electron in time?” We can’t! Observation can only be done over an interval of time, but just because we can’t observe electron-slices doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expect to be able to observe electrons over time, nor does the fact that we can observe electrons over time suggest that electron-slices are a nonsensical concept. Likewise, if there’s nothing it’s like to be a person-slice, that doesn’t mean that person-slices are nonsense.
You’ve woven a story in which I am wrong, and it will be hard for me to admit that I am wrong. In doing so, you’ve made it tricky for to defend my point in the case that I’m not wrong.
You’re accusing my “conscion” of being the same kind of mysterious answer as phlogiston. It would be, if I were seriously proposing it as an answer to the mystery of consciousness. I’m not.
I’ll gladly concede a failure of my writing in not making it clearer that I’m not making any claim that the conscion exists, but rather that thinking about what it would mean for our understanding of consciousness if the conscion did exist, as described. I’m trying to force people to drop their intuition about the “flow” of consciousness. I’m saying that all our observations about consciousness can be equally well explained by this weird conscion hypothesis as can be by the conventional consciousness-as-the-christian-soul hypothesis, so we should notice that many of our intuitions about consciousness have simply been transplanted from theology, and we should not trust those.
We can’t make conclusions about the feeling of flow (whether we should drop it, etc.) by comparing two theories neither of which have the gears to explain it. That’s why I linked to the mysterious answers post.
I’m not trying to explain the theory of flow (not in this post, I do have some thoughts on the matter). I’m merely trying to induce doubt.
The conventional understanding of consciousness as the Christian soul doesn’t explain anything, really, just like the “conscion.” But because it’s tied up in millennia of Christian scholarship, there are suppositions attached to it that are indefensible.
Religious Bob: My continuity of experience is due to having a soul that continuously moves from one moment to the next.
You: Imagine another theory, with a particle of consciousness permeating the universe.
Religious Bob: Would that theory also predict continuity of experience?
You: I don’t know, just trying to induce doubt.
Religious Bob: …
You posted this reply before I finished editing my previous comment to include its second clause, but I’ll respond as though the order were more natural.
That’s the wrong comparison to be making. Suppose the deist idea about the origin of the universe were dominant, and I proposed that God may not have created the universe. After all, deists, what created God? He was an unmoved mover? Well why couldn’t the universe have just been an unmoved movse in the first place? Sound like you’re just passing the recursive buck, deists! I’m not proposing any kind of better explanation, just offering a different non-explanation to induce doubt.
Doubt in what? Well I admit I don’t know all that much about deism, but let’s suppose that deists believed that even though god never intervened in the universe, he had intentions for how the universe should turn out, and it’s our job as his creations to honor his intentions like we would honor the intentions of our fathers. This baggage is not entailed by the core theory of deism, it just came along for the ride when deism evolved from older Christian metaphysics. That’s why even though my proposed alternative to deism is no more an explanation of the origin of the universe than deism is, it brings to attention the fact that that deism’s baggage is unnecessary and we should forsake it.
I’m not saying we need to doubt the conventional understanding of consciousness entirely, rather that we should recognize that it has baggage and forsake it. What’s the evidence that it has baggage? Well conventional intuition makes the idea of person-slices seem suspect, as I described in the post. Person-slices don’t seem suspect when you use the conscion model of consciousness. If the two hypotheses are equally non-explanatory, then it is baggage that causes the different intuition.
I think this is where the argument cracks. Person-slices could still seem suspect due to some other reasoning, not just due to religion. You’re getting a positive conclusion (“consciousness can be based on person-slices”) from nowhere.
I’m not sure at this point what my goal was with this post, it would be too easy to fall into motivated reasoning after this back-and-forth. So I agree with you that my post fails to give evidence for “consciousness can be based on person-slices,” I just don’t know if I ever intended to give that positive conclusion.
I do think that person-slices are entirely plausible, and a very useful analytical tool, as Parfit found. I have other thoughts on consciousness which assume person-slices are a coherent concept. If this post is sufficient to make the burden of proof for the existence of person-slices not clearly fall to me, then it’s served a useful purpose.
***
By the way, I did give a positive account for the existence of person slices, comparing the notion of a person slice to something that we more readily accept exists: