It’s not surprising that a system should have special insight into itself.
It’s not surprising that an information-processing system able to create representations of its own states would be able to represent a lot of useful facts about its internal states. It is surprising if such a system is able to infallibly represent its own states to itself; and it is astounding if such a system is able to self-represent states that a third-person observer, dissecting the objective physical dynamics of the system, could never in principle fully discover from an independent vantage point. So it’s really a question of how ‘special’ we’re talking.
If a type of system had special insight into some other, unrelated, type of system, then that would be peculiar.
I’m not clear on what you mean. ‘Insight’ is, presumably, a causal relation between some representational state and the thing represented. I think I can more easily understand a system’s having ‘insight’ into something else, since it’s easier for me to model veridical other-representation than veridical self-representation. (The former, for instance, leads to no immediate problems with recursion.) But perhaps you mean something special by ‘insight.’ Perhaps by your lights, I’m just talking about outsight?
If every systems had insights (panpsychism) that would also be peculiar.
If some systems have an automatic ability to non-causally ‘self-grasp’ themselves, by what physical mechanism would only some systems have this capacity, and not all?
if you have a just one, coarse-grained kind of stuff, and there is just one other coarse-grained kind of stuff, such that the two together cover the space of stuffs, then it is a mystery why you do not have both, ie every possible kind of stuff. A concrete example is the predominance of matter over antimatter in cosmology, which is widely interpreted as needing an explanation.
If you could define a thingspace that meaningfully distinguishes between and admits of both ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ facts (or properties, or events, or states, or thingies...), and that non-question-beggingly establishes the impossibility or incoherence of any other fact-classifications of any analogous sorts, then that would be very interesting. But I think most people would resist the claim that this is the one unique parameter of this kind (whatever kind that is, exactly...) that one could imagine varying over models; and if this parameter is set to value ‘2,’ then it remains an open question why the many other strangely metaphysical or strangely anthropocentric parameters seem set to ‘1’ (or to ‘0,’ as the case may be).
But this is all very abstract. It strains comprehension just to entertain a subjective/objective distinction. To try to rigorously prove that we can open the door to this variable without allowing any other Aberrant Fundamental Categorical Variables into the clubhouse seems a little quixotic to me. But I’d be interested to see an attempt at this.
A concrete example is the predominance of matter over antimatter in cosmology, which is widely interpreted as needing an explanation.
Sure, though there’s a very important disparity between observed asymmetries between actual categories of things, and imagined asymmetries between an actual category and a purely hypothetical one (or, in this case, a category with a disputed existence). In principle the reasoning should work the same, but in practice our confidence in reasoning coherently (much less accurately!) about highly abstract and possibly-not-instantiated concepts should be extremely low, given our track record.
The quantitative properties (Chalmers calls them stuctural-functional) of physicalism and intrinsically qualitative properties form a dyad that covers property-space
How do we know that? If we were zombies, prima facie it seems as though we’d have no way of knowing about, or even positing in a coherent formal framework, phenomenal properties. But in that case, any analogous possible-but-not-instantiated-property-kinds that would expand the dyad into a polyad would plausibly be unknowable to us. (We’re assuming for the moment that we do have epistemic access to phenomenal and physical properties.) Perhaps all carbon atoms, for instance, have unobservable ‘carbonomenal properties,’ (Cs) which are related to phenomenal and physical properties (P1s and P2s) in the same basic way that P1s are related to P2s and Cs, and that P2s are related to P1s and Cs. Does this make sense? Does it make sense to deny this possibility (which requires both that it be intelligible and that we be able to evaluate its probability with any confidence), and thereby preserve the dyad? I am bemused.
It’s not surprising that an information-processing system able to create representations of its own states would be able to represent a lot of useful facts about its internal states. It is surprising if such a system is able to infallibly represent its own states to itself; and it is astounding if such a system is able to self-represent states that a third-person observer, dissecting the objective physical dynamics of the system, could never in principle fully discover from an independent vantage point. So it’s really a question of how ‘special’ we’re talking.
I’m not clear on what you mean. ‘Insight’ is, presumably, a causal relation between some representational state and the thing represented. I think I can more easily understand a system’s having ‘insight’ into something else, since it’s easier for me to model veridical other-representation than veridical self-representation. (The former, for instance, leads to no immediate problems with recursion.) But perhaps you mean something special by ‘insight.’ Perhaps by your lights, I’m just talking about outsight?
If some systems have an automatic ability to non-causally ‘self-grasp’ themselves, by what physical mechanism would only some systems have this capacity, and not all?
If you could define a thingspace that meaningfully distinguishes between and admits of both ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ facts (or properties, or events, or states, or thingies...), and that non-question-beggingly establishes the impossibility or incoherence of any other fact-classifications of any analogous sorts, then that would be very interesting. But I think most people would resist the claim that this is the one unique parameter of this kind (whatever kind that is, exactly...) that one could imagine varying over models; and if this parameter is set to value ‘2,’ then it remains an open question why the many other strangely metaphysical or strangely anthropocentric parameters seem set to ‘1’ (or to ‘0,’ as the case may be).
But this is all very abstract. It strains comprehension just to entertain a subjective/objective distinction. To try to rigorously prove that we can open the door to this variable without allowing any other Aberrant Fundamental Categorical Variables into the clubhouse seems a little quixotic to me. But I’d be interested to see an attempt at this.
Sure, though there’s a very important disparity between observed asymmetries between actual categories of things, and imagined asymmetries between an actual category and a purely hypothetical one (or, in this case, a category with a disputed existence). In principle the reasoning should work the same, but in practice our confidence in reasoning coherently (much less accurately!) about highly abstract and possibly-not-instantiated concepts should be extremely low, given our track record.
How do we know that? If we were zombies, prima facie it seems as though we’d have no way of knowing about, or even positing in a coherent formal framework, phenomenal properties. But in that case, any analogous possible-but-not-instantiated-property-kinds that would expand the dyad into a polyad would plausibly be unknowable to us. (We’re assuming for the moment that we do have epistemic access to phenomenal and physical properties.) Perhaps all carbon atoms, for instance, have unobservable ‘carbonomenal properties,’ (Cs) which are related to phenomenal and physical properties (P1s and P2s) in the same basic way that P1s are related to P2s and Cs, and that P2s are related to P1s and Cs. Does this make sense? Does it make sense to deny this possibility (which requires both that it be intelligible and that we be able to evaluate its probability with any confidence), and thereby preserve the dyad? I am bemused.