OK, so we agree that talk that refers to mental states is necessarily talk that refers to brain states.

So let's take two people (Jack and Jill) who were marooned on a desert island when they were kids. They know essentially nothing about the world. They don't even know they have a brain in their skull. So Jack stubs his toe and tells Jill he's in pain. Jack's talk of pain is a reference to a mental state and therefore is also a reference to a brain state. So there's three problems with this:

1. Epistemological: the identity of mind adherent has to claim that Jack, in the scenario, is referring to a brain state. But Jack doesn't know anything about brains, let alone brain states. Does it make sense to say that someone who doesn't know they're referring to brain states is really referring to brain states when they talk about being in pain? If that's true, shouldn't the person be aware they're communicating all this brain-state information to another person when they talk of pain?

2. Is it possible for a person who doesn't even have the concept of a brain and what it does, let alone a word for it, to refer to brain states? That seems like an absurdity.

3. Informational: When Jack tells Jill he's in pain, he's giving her information. Her store of knowledge increases. Jill knows a new fact about Jack: he's in pain. The identity theory of mind entails that information about brain states was exchanged when Jack told Jill he's in pain.

And that's it.

It's hardly crucial, as this is a red herring. The sounds we're talking about are heard; Bob hears a sound and describes it to Sheila. Neither Bob nor Sheila are required to know that these things they hear are vibrations carried to their ears over a medium to talk about the sounds; all they need is to be able to sense and distinguish states of this sort. They can both do this because they can hear sounds.

You're making a conflation. You have a word in mind (call it "sound1") which refers simply to vibrations in the air. The people from long ago don't have that word because they don't know even know air can vibrate. When they talk about sound, they're using their word (call it "sound2") which refers simply to what they're hearing, which is why hearing is so important to the definition.

The problem with your objection is that sound1 is not identical to sound2. In other words, the vibrations in the air are not identical to the mental state of hearing. You're claiming they are, through the conflation I talked about.

In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.

Yes, that's what sound is specifically in the domain of physics. Sound as it's defined in the broad sense of the word includes "hearing". It's an incomplete definition if it doesn't talk about hearing. That's the essence of sound: you can hear it.

mechanical radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium (such as air) and is the objective cause of hearing
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sound#:~:text=Log%20In-,Definition%20of%20sound,the%20objective%20cause%20of%20hearing

Nice argument. However, it seems to demonstrate (or assume?) only that brain state vocabulary is not identical to mental state vocabulary. How do you get from there to brain states are not mental states?

Thanks.

Let me start simple. If X=Y then talk of X is talk of Y, even if the words are in different languages. If a word refers to X, and X=Y, that word also refers to Y. How can it not if X is identical to Y? Agreed? For example, if I'm talking about bachelors, I'm necessarily also talking about unmarried men, right?

So the claim the identity theory of mind adherent makes is mental states are identical to brain states. They're one and the same. Equal to each other in every way. If that's true, then talk that refers to mental states is necessarily talk that refers to brain states.

Tell me where you disagree so far.

Nope. People may have no idea that sound is vibration of a medium such as air, but still be able to talk about sounds. People may have no idea that mental states are brain states but still be able to talk about brain states in the same fashion.

That's not what sound is.

1. vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.

You left off a crucial part. Sound is heard. If we're being accurate, two people from long ago aren't talking about sounds (vibrations in the air), they're talking about what they heard. The word for "sound" they're using isn't like ours because our refers to "vibrations in the air" while their word would strictly refer to the mental state of hearing a noise (or maybe Zeus throwing lighting bolts or something)

The flaw in the argument would be the suppressed premise of what kind of communication the second kind is?

If brain state vocabulary is "scientific", it needs to said what class of vocabulary is instead employed to talk about mental states. Is it merely "unscientific" (a vague contrary claim)?

Examples of scientific language would be talk of neurotransmitters, synpaptic gaps, certain chemicals, etc. Clearly it is vocabulary that is in the domain of science. Two neuroscientists talking about a paper in a journal are going to almost be speaking another language, as far as non-scientists are concerned.

The argument needs to clarify in what way such communication could be meaningful.

Mental communication is meaningful if accurate information about mental states has been exchanged.

Scientific vocabulary is meaningful in its pragmatic application. If we talk about the world generally as a machine, and thus the brain as a specific kind of mechanism, then the pragmatic effect of this form of language is that - implicitly - we should be able to build this damn thing.

We are viewing the conscious brain as an example of technology - natural technology - that we can thus hope to replicate once we put what it is and what it does into the appropriate engineering language.

So "scientific" vocabulary isn't neutral. It has meaning in terms of what it allows us to build. It is all about learning to see reality as a machine (a closed system of material and efficient causes).

That's all fine, but I don't see the connection to the argument. All you have to grant me is that brain state language is scientific. It clearly is. Papers about brain states in neuroscience journals are almost impenetrable to me, the scientific jargon is so dense.

Of course, science is a broad enough church that it doesn't have to reduce absolutely everything to mechanism. And the aim can be also to regulate flows in the world as a substitute to making a machine. Engineering covers that gamut.

But you see the issue. Brain states language is itself a reflection of a particular reason for describing nature. It aims to extract a blueprint of a machine.

I don't see the issue. You haven't refuted that brain state language is scientific. You seem to be saying why it's scientific. I'm just claiming it IS scientific.

Then where does mental state vocabulary fit in to the picture? In what sense is it meaningful to someone or some community of thinkers? What is the larger goal in play?

If someone tells you they're in pain (a mental state word, obviously), they've communicated information to you. You know more now than you did before they talked to you. That's meaningful communication.

To be commensurate, the two linguistic communities would have to share the same goal. And they are going to be talking at cross-purposes to the degree that they don't. And in both cases, they may be talking meaningfully (ie: pragmatically), but also, they are both just "talking". They are both modelling the noumenal from within their own systems of phenomenology.

10. Therefore, (1) is false.

I don't think goals have anything to do with this. Maybe I'm missing your point.
— RogueAI

The conclusion can't be so definite as "mental state vocabulary" is too ill-defined here. What makes it meaningful?

The fact that information was exchanged and knowledge was acquired. "I am in pain" gives you information about me. You know more about me than you did before. That makes it meaningful. If it was just gibberish, you wouldn't have any new knowledge.

I don't know, let's find out how absurd this is. Can Bob and Shiela communicate their mental states? Donning my physicalist hat, if you say yes, then it's not absurd to say 5 is false. If you say no, you're ipso facto saying 6 is false.

Don't don any hat then. Pretend you're agnostic. Doesn't it sound absurd to claim that two people who don't even know what a brain is or that they even have one are capable of talking about brain states? Hasn't the term "brain state" at that point lost all meaning?

Ok ignoring the fact you havent refuted my counter points, Why would that be absurd? When they talk about what they see they are talking about the colour spectrum, retinae, light particles...any number of things they have no knowledge about yet are still talking about. They just dont know that they are talking about those things cuz they lack the words/concepts. Same with mental and brain states. They do t even need to know they have brains to talk about mental or brain states.

???

OK, let me defend (5) then.

Bob and Sheila are two cavepeople from 20,000 years ago. I have no problem claiming that Bob and Sheila from 20,000 can talk about their mental states. But does a physicalist want to claim that anyone 20,000 years ago used "brain state vocabulary"? Isn't that prima fascia absurd? In fact, I can just make Bob and Sheila two people from the Blue Lagoon who don't even know they have brains.

I don't think (6) can be false. What would prevent Bob and Sheila from talking about their mental states in a meaningful way? Humans have been doing that since long before anything about brains was known.

let me try try this:

Imagine there are two people from 20,000 years ago who know nothing about brains. One of them stubs his toe and complains about the pain. The other expresses sympathy. Meaningful communication about mental states was exchanged. Information about those mental states was exchanged. Now, if mental states are identical to brain states (alike in every way), doesn't that entail that those two ancient people were talking about their brains? And isn't that an absurdity?

If chemical state ABC = physical state XYZ, then physical state XYZ = chemical state ABC.

If a=b, then b=a

Can we agree, as a general rule, that if X and Y are identical (similar in every detail; exactly alike), then talk of X is the same as talk of Y? Any counterexamples?

Its just normal vocabulary, nothing about the vocabulary used for brain states is special. Its just words, with meanings, that some people know and some people do not and you communicate by using the shared vocabulary in order to clarify the meaning of the vocabulary that is not shared.

...Ive officially used the word “vocabulary” more times in a single day than ive ever used it....

Not really:

Global CNS correction in a large brain model of human alpha-mannosidosis by intravascular gene therapy

Intravascular injection of certain adeno-associated virus vector serotypes can cross the blood–brain barrier to deliver a gene into the CNS. However, gene distribution has been much more limited within the brains of large animals compared to rodents, rendering this approach suboptimal for treatment of the global brain lesions present in most human neurogenetic diseases. The most commonly used serotype in animal and human studies is, which also has the property of being transported via axonal pathways to distal neurons.

I know it's not exactly neural correlate stuff, but that stuff is just as dense. That is obviously very scientific language by any standard use of the word "scientific".

No one except basically everyone. If you model the physics of a system of particles that bind together into atoms and molecules that then interact with each other, you end up modelling chemical reactions for free. But, you could also just talk about the chemical reactions, without having to talk about that physics stuff at all. One reduces to the other, but not vice versa.

Chemistry is not identical to physics, that's absurd.

i·den·ti·cal
/ˌīˈden(t)ək(ə)l/
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See definitions in:
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adjective
1.
similar in every detail; exactly alike.
"four girls in identical green outfits"

2.
LOGIC•MATHEMATICS
expressing an identity.
"an identical proposition"

Nobody can communicate about anything without shared vocabulary, this is a red herring and your whole argument depends upon it. Further, it is false to claim that brainstate vocabulary must be scientific, we are talking about it and neither of us are using strictly scientific vocabulary. Lastly, even if scientific vocabulary was the only vocabulary for brainstates it doesnt prevent communication, one would simply have to relay the meaning of the vocabulary being used.
Im afraid your argument is only clever semantics and structure and falls short of its goal.

You think the best move is to deny (2)? Brain state vocabulary isn't scientific? What is it then?

I emailed this to a famous philosopher of mind on the off chance she was bored and didn't have anything better to do. Apparently, she didn't. She said people would take issue with (3). She said:

"i think most people would deny 3. you can communicate about clark kent without communicating about superman"

And I replied that Clark Kent is not identical to Superman. They're the same person, but there are obvious differences between the two.

Cool. If mental states merely represent brains states, it isn’t contradictory for mental states to have a logic vocabulary while still allowing brain states their scientific vocabulary.

Again, my argument is strictly against brain state=mental state.

If mental states are representations of brain states A), what does that mean, exactly, and B) don't you run into the same problem? if mental states represent brain states, then two people who know nothing about brains shouldn't be able to meaningfully talk about representations of brain states. But they can, because even if they don't know anything about brains, they certainly know about their own mental states. So, if they can talk about their mental states without knowing anything about brains, and mental states are representations of brain states, they're talking about representations of brain states without knowing anything about brain states. How is that possible? Can you give me an example of two people not knowing anything about X able to meaningfully talk about representations of X?

Besides, nobody, not even scientists, think in brain state vocabulary terms, so either what we consider thinking isn’t real, or another vocabulary is justified because it is.

There is a definite scientific vocabulary when it comes to brains: neurons, synapses, receptors, potential, etc.

You've just got the relation backward: mental states are a kind of brain state, and talking about brain states can tell you things about mental states, but not necessarily vice-versa.

I'm arguing against the position that equates the two (identity theory). My argument doesn't work against dualists.

Like how a description of subatomic particles can tell you what's going on in chemistry, but you don't have to know anything about that deep physics to talk about chemistry.

Except no one thinks chemistry is identical to physics or subatomic particles. I'm arguing strictly against people who claim mental states are identical to brain states. If that's the case, then two people who know nothing about brains shouldn't be able to meaningfully communicate about their own mental states. But of course we know they can.

I think we're headed for a no true scotsman, where every example I give of religion and philosophy is going to elicit the same response from you: nope, not philosophy, not religion, not science. Until we get to whatever arbitrary definition you've come up with for these things. So, no thanks.

But what would morality consist in if not moral thinking and the actions proceeding therefrom? Or are you suggesting that moral thinking cannot be correct or incorrect, and that hence there is no morality, that is no good or bad behavior?

And the actions proceeding therefrom. Morality is not just "moral thinking". Morality has to do with the rightness and wrongness of actions. If free will is impossible, then talking about the rightness or wrongness of what a person does would make as much sense as talking about the rightness or wrongness of what a blender does. A machine is a machine and without free-will, we're just biological machines.

But again, to retroactively call tool-making and cave art "science" or animistic beliefs "religious discussion" is a just confusion.

Discussions of animistic beliefs aren't religious discussions? What an odd thing to claim.

I don't think we have anything either. Or, to put it more precisely, if we have alien stuff, then I think the zoo hypothesis solution to the Fermi Paradox is right, to the point that we're being deceived about the universe on a massive scale.

"Regardless of whether there is free will, whatever that is taken to mean, it is obvious that moral thinking goes on, from which it follows that there is morality."

Well, it follows that moral thinking is going on.

Solipsism obviously isn't true, so...

I don't see the obviousness, but I would certainly prefer it not to be true.

How would morality exist without free will?

I guess it would be. I completely misread your poll. I could have sworn there were two options: moral objectivism and moral relativism. Funny, how the mind plays tricks on us.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm too stupid to understand Goodman.

How would morality exist if solipsism is true? How could morality exist if free will is impossible?

There should be an option for "morality doesn't exist".

No, it isn't. Looking under a rock is not science. If we define that as "science," then apes do science as well. It's an absurd definition.

Looking under a rock CAN be science. It isn't always science and it isn't always not science. The scientific method wasn't codified until recently, but I don't think you can invent something without doing science. It might be really primitive science, but the essence will still be there: hypothesis, experimentation, analysis, and conclusion. How would one develop, say a canoe, without doing all that?

No, this is completely wrong.

Logic is a branch of philosophy, which is what the above poster is talking about. Philosophy has not been going on since humans "created art" -- that's as meaningless as to say science was going on. All we know with high likelihood is that there was creativity present, that these early people (say 100,000 years ago) had language, and that thinking was going on.

To say this equates to "philosophy, science, and logic" is pure confusion.

I don't see any reason to assume the homo sapiens of any given time period were any less intelligent than we are. I'm sure, at the very least, they had metaphysical discussions about the nature of reality, religious discussions, and ethical dilemmas to sort out.

Well, the explanation for that seems straightforward: a) ETI's have only been able to emerge in a durable way relatively recently in cosmological time b) not enough time has elapsed to see the emergence of a Type II civilization, given the time-lag in communication between us and Andromeda (much less galaxies further out).

Andromeda is too close away for that to be an issue. Stars like our sun have been around for billions of years, and for most of our own history, life was unicellular, so there's been plenty of time for someone to be ahead of us. I see no reason to suspect that the window for reaching technological advancement is so narrow, that nobody has done it yet. Nobody? Out of all the billions of life-permitting planets in this galaxy alone? Nobody is, say, a million years ahead of us? And out of all the galaxies in our local group, nobody is, say, 20 million years ahead of us?

I just don't think we have reason to believe we're that special. I think there's a competing theory that doesn't violate the mediocrity principle so badly: this is a simulation, and the creators want to save on computing power, so it's just us in the universe.

Of course, a Dyson Sphere might seem to an advanced ETI like Steampunk seems to us; a quaint way of extrapolating about the future. Essential to the history of our species has been the discovery of more and more efficient ways of generating energy; we may be on the cusp of (another) energy revolution, one that makes the need to capture the energy of a star much more trouble than it is worth...

But it's not trouble to capture a star's energy, that's the thing. If you're figuring on some fantastic new energy source, then you must also figure on miraculous advances in other areas, like nanomachines. It would take almost no effort at all to swarm a star with solar collectors if you have advanced enough self-replicating machines. Under no scenario is it plausible for an advanced civ to let its star's energy radiate out into space if it has the means to easily gather it, store it, and/or use it for computation.

Computation is the big thing. We can already see how no matter how much you have, it's nice to have more, and computation requires energy, so if there are advanced civs, they're going to harness as much energy as possible. That means harnessing whatever future energies there are (if any) AND all the current energy sources, and that means we should see Dyson Swarms.

also it's worth pointing out, that we won't need energy to keep pace with an expanding population, since the demographic transition strongly suggests that the total species population will go into a permanent reduction sometime this century. The ratio of energy available per person may soon be off-chart. It makes sense further to say that "we" biologicals might never engage in interstellar exploration & conquest, instead that will be left up to Homo Superior who will replace us.

We will always need computation, so we will always need energy.

My rule of thumb has always been that good philosophy is immediately clear and understandable: Plato's allegory of the Cave is perfect, so is Nagel's experience machine, "what it's like to be a bat", Thomson's violinist analogy, Rawls "veil of ignorance" and Hume's Riddle of Induction. Here's what I consider "bad philosophy" (Goodman's modern riddle of induction):

"For some arbitrary future time t, say January 1, 2030, for all green things observed prior to t, such as emeralds and well-watered grass, both the predicates green and grue apply. Likewise for all blue things observed prior to t, such as bluebirds or blue flowers, both the predicates blue and bleen apply. On January 2, 2030, however, emeralds and well-watered grass are bleen and bluebirds or blue flowers are grue. The predicates grue and bleen are not the kinds of predicates used in everyday life or in science, but they apply in just the same way as the predicates green and blue up until some future time t. From the perspective of observers before time t it is indeterminate which predicates are future projectible (green and blue or grue and bleen)."

What a mess. This, to me, gives philosophy a bad name.

Philosophy can always help, specifically the branch called epistemology (study of knowledge).

“If someone tells me there is a horse in the field behind their house, I won’t need any more evidence to believe them than their word… but, if they tell me there is a unicorn, I wouldn’t believe it even if they showed me photographs”.

This is an example of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", which you may have heard. The claim that unicorns (mythological creatures) exist is extraordinary for obvious reasons. Extraordinary claims tend to not be true because they usually turn out to be mistaken ordinary claims (e.g., UFO claims). So if a claim is extraordinary, it can usually be safely dismissed unless the person making the claim provides really compelling evidence. Sometimes it's wrong to dismiss extraordinary claims. "The Earth is round" was probably an extraordinary claim for much of our history. It certainly doesn't look round. Same with the Earth going around the sun. Quantum mechanics makes a lot of extraordinary claims. Quantum physicists still can't agree on what's going on in experiments that have been around for decades (e.g., Many Worlds Interpretation vs. Copenhagen Interpretation).

Another thing that's helpful to do is assign degrees of belief to claims. The claim "there's a unicorn in the backyard" would be assigned a very low degree of belief (percentage). The claim "the sun will rise tomorrow" would be assigned a very high percentage. Claims that have a high degree of belief are "safe" claims to believe in- you probably won't be wrong. Claims with low degrees of belief require evidence to "safely" believe in.

When Davis is quoted as saying "we couldn't make it ourselves," I think the "we" he is referring to is the United States military, not humankind.

If the U.S. military couldn't make it, who could?

Explain why "it would make no sense" for interstellar travelers' "system" not to be "filled with space habitats and energy collectors" or other such megastructures.

So they're going to do interstellar travel, but they're not going to colonize or build space habitats and solar collectors? That, right there, is silly. But here are reasons:

1. You don't put all your eggs in one basket. Existential threats exist.
2. You don't leave energy lying around if you can cheaply collect and store it (this goes back to the implication that if interstellar travel is possible, efficient antimatter production and storage is possible). Spare energy is never a bad thing to have.
3. You increase available computing power.
4. Population pressures (possibly mitigated by population controls)
5. Convenience (there are benefits to space habitats)

Of course the Elder-hypothesis is highly unlikely, but it rises in probability as we eliminate alternative explanations. I don't think the "Rare Earth" hypothesis is viable. Almost certainly there are civilizations advanced beyond us in other galaxies, but at inter-galactic distances (esp with an expanding universe) there is not even the theoretical possibility of Contact with them.

That's true. Given enough galaxies, it's not too improbable that we might be the first in this galaxy. The problem is that we can see all these other galaxies. We've surveyed about 100,000 now, looking for large-scale megastructures, chunks of "missing galaxy" because of Dyson swarm activity, other stuff like that. But we haven't seen any evidence of any of it. That would mean we're either the "elder" race out of all the galaxies we can see (highly unlikely), or there's a filter or limiting factor that kicks in that stops a civ from colonizing and building Dyson swarms. I can see hitting a wall on the colonizing front- maybe there's insolvable tech issues. But on Dyson swarms? We're already in the early (early early) stage in building ours. There doesn't seem to be any limiting tech factor in swarming a star with tons of solar panels. Unless you just don't need that much power, and that would mean a tech great computing filter in our near future, because if there's a way to compute, and a convienent power source, you're going to push your computation power as high as it will go, and that would mean swarming the system with solar collectors to the point where it would be very obvious to us.

Ironically enough, I think a future-Filter explanation is part of the reason why we are (probably) among the Elders. I've read that earlier in the history of our galaxy, the neutron-star collisions needed for trace-element nucleosynthesis were more frequent than they are today; and the gamma-ray bursts associated with just those energetic events would wipe out existing life anywhere within a considerable portion of the galaxy that was in the vicinity of these events. It might well have been the case that complex life and even civilization arose in the relatively recent cosmological past, that was dispatched in this way. Just as in the way that life on Earth emerged soon after meteor-impact abated enough to make it possible, intelligent life emerging now and hereafter has a more stable cosmological environment to develop in.

I'm sympathetic to that hypothesis. But, like I said, we can see other galaxies, and we don't see any evidence of anyone else around. Everywhere we look, the universe looks pristine and untouched. How can that be? Are we the first in the observable universe???

If I was a materialist, I would believe the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we're in a simulation, and in the world of the simulators there are limits on computing power. The simulators don't want to waste computation on alien races. I also expect us to hit a wall on computer progress. That would be another way to save on computing power. But maybe not. If we're the only intelligent things in the simulation, they may have computing power to spare to let us continue improving our computers. But anyway...

It's likely of course that we are not the very first; as I said, we can say that notionally we have one to two dozen ETI's roughly contemporary with us in the The Milky Way. Just as in the case of the Age of Exploration in the history of Earth, those civilizations that become interstellar space-faring civilizations first will have the ability to subject the entire galaxy to an imperial conquest.

This should already have happened in other galaxies.

All this suggests that we are probably "alone" (though we may have a couple dozen rough contemporaries elsewhere in the galaxy) - meaning, we are Elders, we're the ones who can strike out into the undiscovered country of the galaxy and make its real estate our own.

Yeah, that's possible, but it's highly highly unlikely that we would be the first "Elder" race. Stars like the sun and planets like Earth have been around a long long time. Someone else should be ahead of us by now, if not this galaxy, then other galaxies, and then it would be a very short time (as far as the universe goes) to completely colonize a galaxy. Since we don't see this in any of the galaxies we've looked at, I think a filter hypothesis is more likely.

Hi. So, is this the evidence you've come to believe should happen if they exist? [/quote]

Hi! That is the evidence I believe should happen if they exist AND have the technology to cross interstellar distances. Yes, their system should be filled with space habitats and energy collectors. It would make no sense for it to not be.

Your use of language was wrong. I don't think it's semantically nitpicking in these kinds of identity questions.

That doesn't follow. It depends on how you define "you" in this context.

I'm going by the definition we've all agreed on for "you" and "me" and "I". Those are singular pronouns. They can't refer to more than one person (well, "you" can, but not in the context we're using it).

Thanks for the link! I have to read up on this. It's been 20 years since I was in class.

Something about meat is special.

That's very ad hoc. It's much simpler to avoid the special pleading and just go with idealism.

I agree with you that consciousness isn't computable. That would be another case of special pleading: series XY...Z of switching actions/q-bit whatevers produces a conscious experience but series AB...C doesn't? That makes no sense. What's so special about XY...Z? Why should the order in which switches are pulled have anything to do with consciousness?