:wink:

Nothing is quite like we experience it. All vision shows things from an angle based on where our eyes are, rather than, say, from all directions at once. Everything is filtered, selected, interpreted. This would mean that nothing that we refer to is real.
— Coben

That inference is just invalid.

Everything is always, already interpreted...

Every thing.

Hence, there are things. — Banno

I don't think you understood my post. Please read it again in full and the post I was responding to. I was using a quick reductio and to a large degree we are agreeing.

:chin:

I can't see it.

I can't see it. — Banno

I hope that means you can't find the original post or the one it was replying to..... Here we go....

It's even more basic than that. Colour is a real phenomenon by any account and not a merely "mental" phenomenon.
— Janus

That's debatable and a minority position called color realism. Wavelengths of light and reflective surfaces are real. Whether either of those could be said to be colored in the way we experience color is controversial.

Compare this to feeling hot or cold, which relates to the amount of energy the particles in a volume of space has. Our experience of the energy can result in feeling cold or hot, but the space doesn't feel that way. Similarly, our experience of color relates to visible light reflecting off surfaces of objects.

Even granting color realism, it certainly wouldn't apply to all of our conscious sensations. Kicking a rock and feeling pain is a perceiver dependent experience, not a property of the rock

That's debatable and a minority position called color realism. Wavelengths of light and reflective surfaces are real. Whether either of those could be said to be colored in the way we experience color is controversial.
— Marchesk

Nothing is quite like we experience it. All vision shows things from an angle based on where our eyes are, rather than, say, from all directions at once. Everything is filtered, selected, interpreted. This would mean that nothing that we refer to is real. Since, it seems, actual qualities of the objects of perception lead to our seeing of specific colors, it seems to me there must be some color realism. It would be wrong to think that if there were no experiencers than the empty earth would have trees that look green - to no one, I guess - but it is not a random trait or aspect. Qualities of the things lead to our experiences. Which is the best we can hope for and would constitute a kind of realism, since no perfect realism is possible. Or I suppose I would put it that it's not binary, with perfect realism vs. some non-realism. There are degrees. — coben

I was taking his as saying that our experience of color has nothing to with the objects. I think it has something to do with the objects. He argues that since the qualities we experience are not like the qualities that stimulate the experience, they are [my words] 'mere qualia'. But since....

Nothing is quite like we experience it. All vision shows things from an angle based on where our eyes are, rather than, say, from all directions at once. Everything is filtered, selected, interpreted. This[if we followed you logic] would mean that nothing that we refer to is real.

I added in the bolded this time to make it clearer.

I certainly could have argued this better, but in no way I am denying the existence of things. In fact my argument is quite in the opposite direction, though not focused on that issue. It is arguing there is connection even in those qualia where what we experience is likely quite different from the objects 'out there.'

If we perceive the world as colored in, and science explains it without the coloring in, then the appearance of color needs to be explained. It doesn't matter whether we call colors relational, qualia, secondary qualities, representations, mental paint or whatever. Changing the language use isn't going to help. — Marchesk

There aren't straightforward word-for-word translations - those words have different uses in various philosophies and tend to have a cascade effect onto the use of other words. A case in point is with the terms "experience" and "consciousness" as evidenced by this thread.

One might think that neuroscience or biology would be of help here, but the coloring in isn't found in explanations of neuronal activity or biological systems either. This is why we have questions about whether other animals, infants, people in comas, robots and uploaded simulations are or could be conscious (experience a coloring in in their relation to the environment). We can ask what or whether it's like anything to be a bat or a robot using different terms, and the same issue arises. — Marchesk

You can ask the same kinds of questions about length, mass and time which we also perceive in particular ways. Philosophers can take the concrete findings of science and attempt to untangle the conceptual issues, but it's still up to scientists to do the hard work of investigating, differentiating experiences (such as with the honey sweet/bitter example), and coming up with explanatory models.

Seeing and perception are not the same. — Banno

They're not the same only in the way that a Yorkshire Terrier and "dog" are not the same.

Stick a pin in your arm and see if you still think that pain is an illusion. — Banno

There was a faith-healer from Deal,
Who said, ‘Although pain isn’t real,
If I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.’

If we perceive the world as colored in, and science explains it without the coloring in, then the appearance of color needs to be explained. It doesn't matter whether we call colors relational, qualia, secondary qualities, representations, mental paint or whatever. Changing the language use isn't going to help. — Marchesk

There aren't straightforward word-for-word translations - those words have different uses in various philosophies and tend to have a cascade effect onto the use of other words. A case in point is with the terms "experience" and "consciousness" as evidenced by this thread. — Andrew M

Isn't the study of color-blindness and vision in general a science that includes explaining color? It seems to me that it depends upon the scientific field you're talking about if you want to talk about color. It seems to me that the view from nowhere would leave out the first person because the visual system isn't part of the causal relationships that they are currently talking about. Start talking about visual systems and scientists start using terms like "color", and even use human test subjects to report their first person experiences to study.

Like I said before, color is the interaction between many different things. Color isn't just about the object that is colored. It is also about the light in the environment and the state of your visual system. If we're not talking about light or visual systems, but strictly the causal relationships prior to those interactions, then what need is there to include color in the explanation?

Since the first person is a participant in the world, a theory of everything from a view from nowhere would include and even make predictions about, what happens in the first person.

But that's just wrong. A misuse of words.

Hm. Odd, again, that folk can't see this. — Banno

By folks, do you mean Daniel Dennett and Keith Frankish? They're the ones advancing the view that consciousness is an illusion — a magic show or simulation caused by some hidden mechanism in the brain neuroscience will reveal.

Yep. As well as them hereabouts what think likewise.

Stick a pin in your arm and see if you still think that pain is an illusion. — Banno

The argument I'm opposing in the OP is that since consciousness experiences such as pain don't fit into a scientific understanding of the universe, at least when philosophers start discussing what it's like to be in pain, therefore consciousness must be a sort of illusion caused by some hidden (from introspection) mechanism in the brain which neuroscience will reveal in good time.

I'm saying that experiences are not objects of awareness, because that implies a split between awareness, on the one hand, and experience, on the other. — Wayfarer

I call all the things of which we are aware "objects of awareness". I'm not sure this is contentious usage.

If it's reasonable for me to apply a predicate to something, and to say it is or it isn't, it's so or it's not so, then it's reasonable for me to call that thing a logical object, an object, at least, for thought and discourse. Anything we can speak of may be called an "object" in this sense. Should I suppose there is much more implied when we call a thing an object in this way?

In some cases, we say, an object of discourse is also an object of current perception. To apply two distinct concepts to the same object in this way does not imply a real "split" between two different objects, one that is discussed and another seen or touched; rather there is one object considered under a range of concepts. There is an x; I see x; you see x; we discuss x; it seems x is a stick half under water; from where we stand the stick looks bent....

According to this usage, if I am aware of my own seeing then this seeing of mine is an object of my awareness, it is a thing in the world I am aware of. This formulation does not entail that there is one entity, my seeing, and another entity, my awareness of my seeing. Awareness "belongs to" the seeing, awareness "is in the seeing", or there is no seeing. We need only shift conceptual orientation in the act of seeing, to shift cognitive attention from the proper object of visual perception (the thing seen) to the reflexive object of the same visual perception (the thing that is aware of itself as seeing).

When I look up at the heavens, is it the star I see, or only a snatch of its light? Is it the sky I see, or only a small patch of blue? Is it the airplane I hear, or only a chunk of the soundcloud produced by its jets?

It seems there is no fact of the matter in general with respect to such questions. There is a wide open range of conceptual stances we may take in the face of the same perceptual "presentation-to-consciousness", the same appearance. It seems whenever there is something "present to consciousness", whenever there is consciousness, whenever there is awareness; we may adopt an introspective conceptual stance, and consider the fact of presentation, the fact of appearing, in whatever relevant modes; and we may adopt a reflexive conceptual stance, and consider the fact of awareness itself, and whatever thing is aware; so long as we are equipped with concepts adequate to those stances.


"Awareness implies an object of awareness". On its own this formulation doesn't imply anything about what sorts of things may be objects of awareness, or what sorts of things may have awareness, or what sorts of awareness there may be. If there is awareness, there is awareness of something; and if there is awareness, there is something aware. That's all that's implied by such formulas.

I suppose we should call pure reflexive awareness a limiting case, in which awareness "abides in itself", is aware of itself alone. It seems an empirical question whether and under what circumstances this sort of awareness may be perfectly achievable by animals like us with minds like ours.

I think when we undergo experience, then there's no such division, that we are 'in' or 'undergoing' the experience, which is constitutive of our being at that moment. — Wayfarer

I might agree the awareness is "in the experience". There is no experience without awareness.

I won't say that I myself am "in the experience". I see no reason to suppose that everything I call myself is contained within my experience, any more than everything I call this stick is contained within my experience. Likewise, I won't say "experience is constitutive of my being". I'll say my being is constitutive of my experience. It seems I am a sentient animal, not a pure awareness or a pure experience. It seems the thing we call the awareness of a sentient animal coincides with biological processes, much as the thing we call the digestion or the thing we call the respiration of a sentient animal coincide with biological processes.

I can take up Descartes's offer, and conceive of myself as pure mind. I can also conceive of myself as a turtle. Conceiving doesn't make it so. Perhaps I can learn to restrict my use of the term "I", so it refers only to the experience or the pure awareness of this sentient animal, and not to the rest of that thing. But this extraordinary strain on usage does not inform me about the real connection between this mind and this animal, nor about each "part" I have thus imaginatively divided. The sources of that information remain the same as before. It would remain the case that nothing but empirical investigation -- on my view, including but not limited to the noninferential knowledge we acquire on the basis of introspection -- can inform us about those notionally distinguishable "parts" and their connections.

You might say, well if experience is not an object of awareness, then what is? To which I would respond, all the many objects of experience that surround us at every moment of waking experience. Our conscious experience comprises mainly subject-object relationships - relationships with other beings, who themselves are subjects of experience, and so not simply objects, as well as relationships with the objects that surround us. I don't find the subject-object nature of mundane existence especially problematical or mysterious — Wayfarer

I'm still not sure what distinction you're drawing with your terms "experience" and "awareness"; nor how similar our views may be beneath our divergence in linguistic usage in this particular regard.

We've gone down this road together before: I'm still not sure why you refuse to call the things we may call "subjects" in one analysis "objects" in another analysis, nor how you propose to justify this strange dissent. To call something an "object" is not to entail that this thing is not sentient. To call something a "subject" in a subject-object relation is not to imply that the same thing cannot be taken as an object in a subject-object relation; why should we suppose there is a problem along these lines? It seems to me you take far too much for granted in your use of terms like "subject", "object", and "being", without providing any justification for your uses, which so far seem motivated primarily by arbitrary connotations or prejudicial philosophical ambitions. In any case, it seems you'll need to erect a more general vocabulary, atop the layer in which you carve out by fiat rules for use of terms "subject" and "object" and "being". For I suppose even you will allow that the relations you distinguish as "subject-object" and "subject-subject" relations may be considered generically -- say as subject-[subject OR object] relations. And I suppose it's this more general conceptual layer that most of us seem to have in mind when we use the term "object" to ride over such distinctions.

I don't find any of the relations you indicate to be more "mysterious" than any of the others. A conscious thing is aware of something. The fact that it is aware at all, this remains, at least for now, a special sort of mystery. The thing it is aware of -- whether it is aware of itself, or of another conscious thing, or of a nonconscious thing -- remains for all time a mystery, in that we can never know the whole truth about any thing.

We piece our view of the world together over time, in the manner of Gassendi.

The first sentence in the thread [...] — Wayfarer

I presume I've made my stance on the theme presented in the origin of this discussion about as clear as anyone here has done. With respect to the topic engaged in the sentence you have indicated:

I have made plain that I find it absurd to suggest that consciousness is an illusion, and absurd to suppose that sentience like ours, awareness like ours, consciousness like ours, can be adequately understood as if our minds were nothing but fine-grained complex information-processing machines.

I have sought to clarify that what's at issue here is, specifically, an alleged feature of consciousness we may call "subjective experience with a phenomenal character", not some derivatively so-called "consciousness" without the special feature in question. This point seems to slip perhaps in and out of view in the exchanges of various speakers here among us. I'm told the eliminative materialists argue that the feature in question is an illusion; and I'm aligned with those who oppose that claim.

I have suggested that the best way to handle imaginative claims, like those ascribed to the eliminativist, is to shift the burden (their claim is prima facie false, and seems groundless); criticize the concept (what's the difference between a reliable experience and a reliable illusion of a reliable experience); and challenge correlate assumptions (reject the claim that introspection does not inform us about empirical objects in the empirical world).

There's not enough time in a life to address every outlandish claim made by the metaphysicians, materialist or otherwise. Why waste time sucking every one of their pumps, or responding to every single report of an experiment in which a scientifically measured feature of a situation is not quite what it appears to an introspective reporter?

Materialism is not science. Materialism is metaphysics.

Cut them off at the pass.

So, is representative of 'eliminative materialism', which I remarked seems preposterous to many people. D. B. Hart commented in his review of Dennett's latest book that 'Some of the problems posed by mental phenomena Dennett simply dismisses without adequate reason; others he ignores. Most, however, he attempts to prove are mere “user-illusions” generated by evolutionary history, even though this sometimes involves claims so preposterous as to verge on the deranged.' So that's what I'm aiming at in my remarks above. I'm trying to provide an account for why it is that apparently well-educated and serious academics that describe themselves as 'philosophers', and are so regarded by the public, could entertain an idea that others think is preposterous or deranged. Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not articulating a general philosophy here, I'm simply making a very specific point about what it is that allows 'eliminativists' to argue as they do. — Wayfarer

Do you mean to suggest that anyone who disagrees with you on what you consider basic principles in philosophical conversation should not be counted a "philosopher"? That would strike me as another sort of unwarranted "eliminativism", even less well-founded than that of the eliminative materialists.

I suppose it's a combination of imagination and ignorance that enables metaphysicians and epistemologists, among others, to make claims and weave complex narratives that seem outlandish to many people. It seems there's no end to the variety of fanciful stories that can be conceived. It's not only eliminativist materialists, and it's not only materialists, who should be taken to task for littering our philosophical discourse with boondoggles.


By your "very specific point", do you mean your claim that:

it's just this fact which makes eliminative materialism possible in the first place. — Wayfarer

and by "this fact" do you mean the fact you impute when you say:

experience is not an object even to myself. — Wayfarer

and along these lines, do you mean to suggest that if everyone would use words such as "experience", "awareness", "subject", "object", and "being" like Wayfarer, then the eliminativist's argument would be impossible to articulate?

I've given some indication of the extent to which you'd have to go to make your peculiar use of such terms comprehensible to me, and your objections to my use of them justifiable to me. I just don't see how this lexicography is relevant to the problem at hand.

In particular, as I've argued, the claim that "experience is not an object of awareness" seems absurd.

Aren't we aware of our experiences?

Do you mean to suggest that anyone who disagrees with you on what you consider basic principles in philosophical conversation should not be counted a "philosopher"? — Cabbage Farmer

Not in the least. Just prior to that, I say:

I'm not articulating a general philosophy here, I'm simply making a very specific point about what it is that allows 'eliminativists' to argue as they do. — Wayfarer

I have made plain that I find it absurd to suggest that consciousness is an illusion, and absurd to suppose that sentience like ours, awareness like ours, consciousness like ours, can be adequately understood as if our minds were nothing but fine-grained complex information-processing machines. — Cabbage Farmer

Which means we're basically in agreement.

Cut them off at the pass. — Cabbage Farmer

That's what I'm trying to do.

It seems to me you take far too much for granted in your use of terms like "subject", "object", and "being", without providing any justification for your uses, which so far seem motivated primarily by arbitrary connotations or prejudicial philosophical ambitions — Cabbage Farmer

Sentient beings are subjects of experience. Human beings are rational sentient beings. Objects are insentient. (There are marginal cases, including vegetative life forms and viruses, which aren't relevant here.)

We can regard other beings as objects which is one of the de-humanising tendencies of (for example) behaviourism, which eliminative materialism is an example of. But materialism, generally, is a philosophy based on the fundamental reality of objective physical entities, obviously. I don't see how that's contentious, it's the dictionary definition.

The 'nature of subjective consciousness' is really the subject-matter of the hard problem of consciousness.

I think I may be working with a different notion of "object" than you.

if experience is an object, please send me one. Wrap it up and ship it. If you can’t, why can’t you?

This is a poor, conveniently restricted notion of what it is to be an object. It is uncontroversial, both in ordinary and philosophical parlance, that there are abstract objects.

In any case, are mountains, galaxies, oceans or molecules objects? not according to the definition you presented above.

Oceans, molecules and galaxies are all objects of scientific analysis. But If an experience is an object, then what kind of object is it?

If you tried to explain the concept to a non English speaker, what would you point at?

And also please consider why I’m making this point in regard to the topic of this thread. A web definition of eliminative materialism - Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. It is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind.’ So I’m putting forward this argument as an analysis of this view - I’m not actually trying to tell others here that they’re wrong.

If you tried to explain the concept to a non English speaker, what would you point at? — Wayfarer

I don't disagree with 'experience' being different, however, I am not sure that the argument implicit in this question works. What would you point at to explain matter or atoms or space - since they are everywhere as experience is, the latter at least, in a sense, everywhere? I think perhaps with an incredible amount of miming, perhaps involving comatose patients, sleeping people who you whisper to and then wake and whisper to, bricks and gerbles, having two people one who sees you do something the other facing the wrong way, you might be able to 'point' at experience. IOW I think you could convey to experience' to someone non-verbally, and precisely because they are conscious experiencers, they would have an aha experience...finally getting that it is the experiencing you are
on about and not just 'responding' or 'reaction' (that is active functions) in all your tomfoolery.

i think, actually, it would be very interesting to try. I was great at Charades. And it could be tested.

...because they are conscious experiencers,. — Coben

Which is the point I’m making! You only know what experience is, because you’re a subject of experience yourself.

...because they are conscious experiencers,.../quote] Which is the point I’m making! You only know what experience is, because you’re a subject of experience yourself. — Coben

I only know anything at all because I'm an experiencer.

Agree.

What would the difference between ii and iii be if the automaton had an outer layer that looked like flesh and therefore looked human and behaves like a human? The only real difference here would be one is electronic while the other is biological. Are you saying that biological matter gives rise to subjectivity while electronics cannot? I think that is part of the problem. I think we should be thinking of this from a perspective of information processing which can be performed by both biological and electronic machines. — Harry Hindu

Under a wide range of "ordinary circumstances", human observers would be unable to distinguish (ii) and (iii) from each other or from genuine human beings. But once you poke through the outer layer, anyone would be able to tell them apart. Whether or not anyone happens to tell them apart, (ii) and (iii) would in fact differ in physical, if not "functional", composition.

Having an "outer layer" that resembles something you are not does not make you that thing.

I take it the philosophical puzzles about p-zombies do not mainly involve problems concerning how humans may be deceived by human-like appearances, but rather problems concerning our conceptions of consciousness -- problems purported to go much deeper than the Turing test.

The problem with p-zombies is that one is expecting the same effect from different causes. If we should expect the same results from difference causes, then that throws a wrench into all scientific knowledge that we've accumulated over the centuries. — Harry Hindu

To me it seems the other way around: The problem with p-zombies is that the hypothesis proposes different effects from the same causes. For by definition, the zombies are "molecule-for-molecule" the same as we are, take in information and process it just like we do -- by way of the same physiological processes -- and behave just like we do... but somehow, as yet inexplicably, have no "subjective experience with phenomenal character".

They are identical to us in every feature we may observe in the third-person, no matter how deep you cut into the body of the thing, from whatever physical point of view, in any cross-section, under any microscope, no matter what ideal-physics technological instrument you use to explore that body.

This is not an AI problem or a "wires and pulleys" problem. It's weird metaphysics, or an attempt at some sort of a priori test of our concepts of conscious experience.

For me, a p-zombie is impossible, and it is possible for electronic machines to have a point-of-view because a point-of-view is simply an information superstructure in working memory used to navigate the world. P-zombies must have a point of view in order to behave like humans. If they don't then they can't behave identically to humans and would be illogical to expect one to. — Harry Hindu

We're agreed on one thing at least. P-zombies seem impossible to me too. It's beginning to seem that we support our respective hunches on somewhat different grounds.

I'm not sure what it means to say a "point-of-view is simply an information superstructure in working memory used to navigate the world." Used by what or by whom? What is an "information superstructure"?

Doesn't the p-zombie have any "information superstructures"? Doesn't it "navigate the world"?

I might use a camera to help me navigate the world. But the camera does not navigate. Does the camera have any "information superstructures"? What kinds of things have "information superstructures"?

We say I have a point of view, the camera has a point of view, a painting has a point of view, a narrative has a point of view. I suppose we mean something different in each sort of case by the phrase.

Surely there's room in that hodgepodge for an application of the same phrase to p-zombies. What sort of view does it make sense to say they'd have; what sort of view does it make sense to deny they'd have -- assuming for the sake of argument that the notion of a p-zombie isn't self-defeating.

I asked before, "Is it useful to perceive the apple is red?" I asserted that it wasn't. It is useful to perceive that the apple is ripe.[...] — Harry Hindu

What if I want to arrange a room for a photo shoot or a painting?

What if it saves a hungry animal time, calories, and risk, to forage for red fruit instead of ripe fruit, since, in this forest, the reddest fruits tend to be ripe, and to stand out better from green leaves, so it's more efficient to distinguish red at a distance than it is to distinguish ripe at a distance?

I don't see what this calculus of utility has to do with questions of the subjectivity or objectivity of color and the experience of color; nor with the more general themes we're tracking here.

I wouldn't use the term "subjective" here. I agree that our concepts have an objective property as we can talk about others' minds and their contents as if they are just another part of the world. — Harry Hindu

Let's celebrate this piece of common ground.

Do we agree even to this extent: It's not just "as if" minds are parts of the world. Rather, to all appearances, it seems that each thing we call a mind is in fact part of the world.

Subjective is a property of language use where category errors are made in projecting value, or mental, properties onto objects that have no such properties. — Harry Hindu

Do you mean to say that the only correct use of the term "subjectivity" is in the analysis of erroneous speech acts? I don't believe I'm acquainted with this rule of use.

I agree that people often seem to err by speaking about nonsentient things as if they had value in themselves (e.g., moral, aesthetic, or practical value); by speaking about nonsentient things as if they were sentient; by speaking about nonliving things as if they were living; and by speaking about nonpurposive things as if they were purposive.

But would you say the assessment of errors like these are the only contexts in which it makes sense to employ a distinction between "subjective" and "objective", or between "subjects" and "objects"?

You might say that I am committing the same category error in attributing mental properties to computer-brained robots, — Harry Hindu

It depends on how you propose to characterize "the mental" as a category that applies both to humans and to other information-processing machines (e.g. those that pass the Turing test); and on how you distinguish or decline to distinguish "mentality" in this generic sense from a more specific sort of "mentality" enjoyed by sentient beings.

but I am asserting that computer-brained robots have mental properties of working memory and a central executive (attention) that attends to the sensory information in working memory. — Harry Hindu

I can accept all of this without agreeing that "minds" of this kind (even those that pass the Turing test) "have experience" or "are sentient" in the same way human animals have experience and are sentient.

To all appearances, it seems there's more to minds like ours than taking in, organizing, and acting on information.

There would be a "what it is like" for the computer-brained robot. It would be how the information superstructure is organized in its working memory. The information superstructure would be organized in such a way as to include information about the self relative to the world. That is how the world appears to us via our senses. The world appears located relative to the senses. That is what a point-of-view is, or what some would call, "subjective". — Harry Hindu

I agree that instances of the relevant sort of AI, like the hypothetical (and biological) p-zombies, would make reliable introspective reports just like our reports, informed on similar bases about similar states of affairs.

But, unless you can persuade me that some of these "mental" machines are also sentient just like we are, then I will continue to deny that they are "aware" or "sentient" in the relevant sense, that they are "subjects", that they "have appearances" and are "appeared to", that they have "subjective experience with a phenomenal character", that they have "minds like ours", that there is "something it's like" to be such a machine. Though the resemblance be uncanny.

I agree, and is why computer-brained robots with sensory devices like cameras, microphones, and tactile pressure points where information comes together into a working memory would have "experiences", or a point-of-view. — Harry Hindu

By now you catch my drift: It seems to me we should distinguish between i) generic concepts of "mind", "experience", "point of view", and so forth, which we may agree to apply to a wide range of genuine and artificial minds; and ii) more specific concepts of "mind", such as the genuinely sentient mind and the nonsentient imitation mind.

I suppose this remains a contentious position in our times. It seems there's no definitive way to resolve the dispute on philosophical grounds. So we rehearse our conceptions in the face of strange claims, pending further results of empirical investigation.

Under a wide range of "ordinary circumstances", human observers would be unable to distinguish (ii) and (iii) from each other or from genuine human beings. But once you poke through the outer layer, anyone would be able to tell them apart. Whether or not anyone happens to tell them apart, (ii) and (iii) would in fact differ in physical, if not "functional", composition.

Having an "outer layer" that resembles something you are not does not make you that thing.

I take it the philosophical puzzles about p-zombies do not mainly involve problems concerning how humans may be deceived by human-like appearances, but rather problems concerning our conceptions of consciousness -- problems purported to go much deeper than the Turing test. — Cabbage Farmer

But the "outer layer" of humans is no different than robots. Its just physical stuff - not some mind. That's the point I'm trying to make - no matter how many layers you peel back on a human or a robot, you never get to their mind - why? Why would you say that carbon-based brains possess mind but silicon-based brains don't? What reasons would you have for saying that other than exhibiting some bias?

The problem with p-zombies is that one is expecting the same effect from different causes. If we should expect the same results from difference causes, then that throws a wrench into all scientific knowledge that we've accumulated over the centuries. — Harry Hindu

To me it seems the other way around: The problem with p-zombies is that the hypothesis proposes different effects from the same causes. For by definition, the zombies are "molecule-for-molecule" the same as we are, take in information and process it just like we do -- by way of the same physiological processes -- and behave just like we do... but somehow, as yet inexplicably, have no "subjective experience with phenomenal character".

They are identical to us in every feature we may observe in the third-person, no matter how deep you cut into the body of the thing, from whatever physical point of view, in any cross-section, under any microscope, no matter what ideal-physics technological instrument you use to explore that body. — Cabbage Farmer

I was referring to the behavioral end of the p-zombie argument. It expects p-zombies to behave (the effect we observe) like humans even though the cause of those behaviors are different (subjective vs no subjective causes). I used the example earlier of how p-zombies would us language. How can a human or p-zombie talk about things that they are never informed about - like the existence of color or depth perception?

We're agreed on one thing at least. P-zombies seem impossible to me too. It's beginning to seem that we support our respective hunches on somewhat different grounds. — Cabbage Farmer

Sure. Your take from the molecular end is just as valid. We're both taking about how p-zombies are the result of incoherent causal relationships and therefore an unlikely, if not impossible, scenario.

This is not an AI problem or a "wires and pulleys" problem. It's weird metaphysics, or an attempt at some sort of a priori test of our concepts of conscious experience. — Cabbage Farmer

Exactly. It's an issue of indirect vs naive realism. How do brains and/or minds exist independent of our own visual information processing of them? Are the brains that we experience visually the result of processing visual information about minds?

I'm not sure what it means to say a "point-of-view is simply an information superstructure in working memory used to navigate the world." Used by what or by whom? What is an "information superstructure"?

Doesn't the p-zombie have any "information superstructures"? Doesn't it "navigate the world"?

I might use a camera to help me navigate the world. But the camera does not navigate. Does the camera have any "information superstructures"? What kinds of things have "information superstructures"?

We say I have a point of view, the camera has a point of view, a painting has a point of view, a narrative has a point of view. I suppose we mean something different in each sort of case by the phrase.

Surely there's room in that hodgepodge for an application of the same phrase to p-zombies. What sort of view does it make sense to say they'd have; what sort of view does it make sense to deny they'd have -- assuming for the sake of argument that the notion of a p-zombie isn't self-defeating. — Cabbage Farmer

Well, what is a "view"? What is an "experience" for that matter? How do others' "views" and "experiences" relate to the neurological and computational processes that we visualize (or part of our view)? We never access another's "view" or "experience". We access some neurological or computational counterpart. Why?

I would say that information superstructures exist in memory, and a central executive would be necessary to determine what, or attend to the, information within memory is useful achieving some goal. Your camera has memory and even a small processor that runs a small program for organizing the contents of its memory. Now the question is does your camera have a some degree of a "view" or an "experience"? I think the answer to this question would stem from one's take on the indirect vs direct realism debate.