Yes, that's what saying consciousness is an illusion amounts to. — Marchesk

Is it consciousness they call an illusion? Or only the so-called phenomenal character, or qualia, or subjective experience... or some such putative feature contentiously associated with consciousness in philosophical discourses?

I mean, for instance, they do agree that there is such a thing as perception and perceptual knowledge? Such thing as observation, and observational reports? And introspection, and introspective reports? They agree there is something we may call awareness, or sentience, or cognizance, or consciousness -- I mean they agree that some animals are aware of some objective features of their environment by virtue of their sensory and perceptual systems, for instance, and have memories and intentions, and behave accordingly, so on?

If so, then it seems it's not consciousness per se that they call an illusion, but only some more subtle aspect that many of us insist belongs to consciousness, something like phenomenal character. Is that right, or am I off the mark in assessing their view?

If so, then it seems it's not consciousness per se that they call an illusion, but only some more subtle aspect that many of us insist belongs to consciousness, something like phenomenal character. Is that right, or am I off the mark in assessing their view? — Cabbage Farmer

That's correct, but it'd kind of a big deal to deny the phenomenal aspect, yes? I understand the argument to be a denial of experiencing pain, pleasure, heat, cold, music, bitter, sweet, joy, anger, indigo, pink, the smell of a rose, the felling of having a body, your private thoughts.

Of course the objective correlation to those experiences remain for the illusionist. I kick a rock and and act as if I have a pain in my foot and my neural activity agrees with my behavior (I'm not faking it), then that's all there is to the pain. With the addition of some mechanism that creates an illusion of feeling the pain.

Nor am I. A p-zombie could not act exactly like a conscious human being because it is by definition not conscious. Even if consciousness were an illusion, we act in many of the ways we do, and say many of the things we do, because we think of ourselves as being conscious, and the p-zombie could not have such a self-reflexive self-understanding. — Janus

I'm still not clear whether there is a consensus view in this conversation with respect to what counts as a zombie, and what features of consciousness the zombie is said not to possess. So far I have the impression that many of us are speaking at cross-purposes, with different conceptions of p-zombie in mind. Is there perhaps an authoritative source in the literature we might turn to for a concise characterization we might use as a guide in this discussion?


I suppose the sincere zombie could rightly think of itself as having both sensory and nonsensory sources of information about objects in its environment, including information about the object it recognizes as itself. I suppose this means the zombie would have something like "concepts" of particulars in the environment that function so as to organize its behaviors, and that one of the things it has an informed concept of is itself.

In other words, I assume the zombie will have reflexive awareness (or reflexive simulated awareness) of some kind. The zombie acquires a sort of perceptual knowledge (or simulated perceptual knowledge), by receiving information about physical objects in the environment through sensory receptors. One of these physical objects is the thing we call the zombie. I see no reason to suppose the (simulated) cognitive equipment of the zombie can't be organized in such a way as to give the zombie noninferential (simulated) knowledge of itself, of states of affairs in the (simulated) cognitive system that function like our own perceptions, memories, intentions, and so on.

In short, it seems to me the "understanding" the zombie has of itself is rather like the "understanding" it has of other things it encounters in the world; except that its "view" of itself is provided by a broader range of informative sources, including not only sensory information, but also (simulated) introspective bases of noninferential (simulated) knowledge acquisition.

In other words, the philosophers imagine their zombies without using the sort of constraint Anscombe employs in depicting her "A"-sayers in "The First Person" (see p. 24 here).


Or else: On what grounds do you suggest the zombies cannot have reflexive awareness?

I'm still not clear whether there is a consensus view in this conversation with respect to what counts as a zombie, and what features of consciousness the zombie is said not to possess. So far I have the impression that many of us are speaking at cross-purposes, with different conceptions of p-zombie in mind. — Cabbage Farmer

A p-zombie is missing the experience of color, sound, taste, smell, feels. Thus it has no subjectivity. The zombie is identical in every other way.

There are some interesting consequences for this argument. An identical p-zombie universe would still have all the same stories we have. But many stories have first person points of view. So how do p-zombies understand reading or watching someone's thoughts or dreams? How do they make sense of a character undergoing intense emotion not apparent to other characters?

What motivates p-zombie Chalmers to make arguments for the hard problem, since the hard problem cannot exist by definition in the p-zombie universe?

Actually, that doesn't follow at all. The only thing that follows from "our experience of the world is not immediate" is itself: our experience of the world is not immediate. — Terrapin Station

Well that section isn't sourced unlike other parts which contains a direct quote from Dennett's new book. I did some googling but could not find the original. It's probably original content based around Libet's free will experiment or something.

reflexive simulated awareness — Cabbage Farmer

(simulated) cognitive equipment — Cabbage Farmer

(simulated) knowledge of itself — Cabbage Farmer

(simulated) introspective bases of noninferential (simulated) knowledge acquisition. — Cabbage Farmer

Can we posit any cogent distinctions between these "simulations" and reflexive awareness, cognitive equipment, knowledge of self and introspective bases of non-inferential knowledge acquisition?

If you are bothering to argue about consciousness (as Dennett inexhaustibly continues to do) I’d argue that you stipulate the reality of consciousness, by default. Whether consciousness is “illusory” (whatever that means) or “real” (ditto) remains irrelevant—engaging with even the idea of consciousness acknowledges consciousness as either phenomenon or epiphenomenon.

(My own argument for its existence, pace Dennett et all, is Dennett’s own ability to argue that it’s illusory.)

Janus:“Can we posit any cogent distinctions between these "simulations" and reflexive awareness, cognitive equipment, knowledge of self and introspective bases of non-inferential knowledge acquisition?”

Exactly.

Here is a podcast interview of Dennett from 2018.

https://thepanpsycast.com/panpsycast2/danieldennett2

At around 29:25, Dennett is asked about Galen Strawson's article concerning Dennett's denial of consciousness being the silliest argument ever made. Dennett responds on the podcast that Strawson has mischaracterized the argument. He is not denying that we're conscious, only that people like Strawson are mistaking the nature of consciousness. There are no qualia, instead there is something akin to the idea of "virtual glue" that performs the functional and informational roles that qualia is supposed to be playing.

So, on the one hand, it can seem like Dennett is only disputing what consciousness is, not that we have it. But then he endorses a 100% functional definition that's all just neural activity. This doesn't even amount to an identity theory where our subjective experiences are identical to certain brain states. It's an elimination in the vein of the Churchlands claiming that belief and desire will have no role in future neuroscience, even though we may continue to use those terms in everyday language.

There are no qualia, instead there is something akin to the idea of "virtual glue" that performs the functional and informational roles that qualia is supposed to be playing. — Marchesk

So there are no "qualia", there is only "virtual glue". Forgive me if I dont see an improvement, or anything different than someone saying, "There is no God, only Allah".

Im not interested in the terms because they are arbitrary when it comes the fringes of our understanding. I want to know why the mind models other minds as grey-colored "qualia"/"virtual glue". How do we even know that we have brains if not the way our minds model other minds? It seems that Dennet is a naive realist that then contradicts himself by saying that grey-colored "qualia" doesnt exist. Its "virtual glue" - as if that is some sort of improvement over our understanding of "qualia".

I found this article by Dennett from the same year:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0342

He states:

For several reasons, researchers have typically either postponed addressing this question [the hard question] or failed to recognize—and assert—that their research on the ‘easy problems’ can be seen as addressing and resolving aspects of the hard question, thereby indirectly dismantling the hard problem piece by piece, without need of any revolution in science.

..the widespread conviction that qualia, thus conceived, must obviously exist if we are to make sense of our introspective access to them, is an illusion, not an optical illusion or auditory illusion, but a theorist's illusion, an artefact of bad theory, not observation. Richard Power nicely captures the source of this illusion. — D Dennett

He then goes on to quote Richard Power:

We know that our perceptions or imaginings of trees, faces, etc. are distinct from the objects themselves. They are internal representations, representations in our minds. — R Power

We understand the concept of representation from external representations, such as pictures, or verbal descriptions. For these representations we can have direct experience of both a representer (e.g. portrait painting) and a representee (e.g. the person painted). Call these the medium and the content. Thus for the Mona Lisa, the medium is a painting that hangs in the Louvre; the content is an Italian woman who modelled for the artist centuries ago. Medium and content may have attributes in common, if the representation is iconic (as they say in Semiotics). Oval partly-brown patches in the painting resemble the oval brown eyes of the Italian lady. But usually medium and content are of different stuff: oil on canvas, in the case of the Mona Lisa, as against human flesh. And in many cases the representation is symbolic, so that medium and content share no features. — R Power

This all seems a bit contradictory. If our minds are only content and not a medium as well, then that is saying that naive realism is the case, but then why bring in "representations"? How can they be "representations" if we access the content and not the medium?

It seems to me that our minds contain both the content and medium and the illusion comes when we confuse the two. Apples are not red. Redness is the medium for the content of ripeness. Redness is the mental representation of ripeness in an apple. When we say that the apple is red, we are confusing the medium with the content. Apples are not red. They are ripe. "The apple is ripe" is a statement that refers to the content and not the medium. Referring to the redness of the apple as a mental property, not an apple property. Not only that, but our use of language is the medium that refers to the content (the qualia) of our minds. We use the word, or sound, "red" to refer to the color that isn't a word or sound, and isn't the property of anything external to the mind.

Just as most, if not all, effects are also causes, and effects are not their causes but are the medium with which we access the causes, so to is redness both a medium and content - an effect of our minds interaction with the world and a cause of our use of language.

That's correct, but it'd kind of a big deal to deny the phenomenal aspect, yes? — Marchesk

Evidently some of the professionals paid to philosophize and to instruct students in their art seem to think it's a pretty big deal. Me personally, I'm not sure there's any deal here at all. It may yet turn out to have been another of those pseudoproblems on which philosophers squander social resources, misleading and confusing each other along with the laity, leaving their own special mess in the literature for two or three generations until academic fashions shift professional attention to some new fantastic output of the rational imagination.

But here we are. I take it part of what's at issue in the zombie discourses is whether we should count cognition without subjective experience and phenomenal character as a form of genuine cognition, or whether we should insist that seeming-cognition without anything like subjective phenomenal character is not genuine cognition, but only, at best, a simulation.

Of course philosophers who deny that any of us have subjective experience with a phenomenal character do not thereby deny that any of us are conscious, in some sense of the term. Likewise, those of us who insist that human consciousness ordinarily involves subjective experience with a phenomenal character do not thereby deny that it is possible for a thing to be conscious in some sense of the term without resembling us in that one respect.

It seems the difficulties in this conversation are in part merely terminological. Perhaps we'd be better prepared for our conversation about zombies if we'd first clear up our use of relevant terms by considering differences and similarities among humans, nonhuman animals, and artificial intelligences, none of which (here by definition) are zombies. I mean terms like "consciousness", "self-consciousness", "sentience", "awareness", "experience", "cognizance", "cognition", "knowledge", "observation", "perception", "introspection", and so on.

Suppose we claim that any AI that passes the Turing test but does not have subjective experience with phenomenal character is not "conscious", but only an artificial simulation of a conscious thing; for, according to us, a thing only counts as "conscious" if it has subjective experience with phenomenal character. This claim doesn't inform us what kind of intelligence AI has, or what kind of consciousness we have; rather it informs us of a rule of use for the word "conscious" and its cognates.

I understand the argument to be a denial of experiencing pain, pleasure, heat, cold, music, bitter, sweet, joy, anger, indigo, pink.

Of course the objective correlation to those experiences remain for the illusionist. I kick a rock and and act as if I have a pain in my foot and my neural activity agrees with my behavior (I'm not faking it), then, that's all there is to the pain. With the addition of some mechanism that creates an illusion of feeling the pain. — Marchesk

Even in cases of pain, the subjective experience is correlated with and directs us to objective states of affairs inside and outside the sentient animal's body.

I expect the illusionist will argue that his sentient animals acquire, process, organize, and act on "information" just like ours do -- only without the subjective experience.


The hard problem here is that when you try to abstract the "subjective experience" from all the objective states of affairs, you come up against the limits of expression and ineffability.

Shift the burden: If the illusion of subjective experience with phenomenal character is the way it appears, then it appears to be a persistent illusion of reliable experience. But what, according to the illusionists, is the difference between a reliable subjective experience with phenomenal character, and the chronic illusion of a reliable subjective experience with phenomenal character?

Here's an outright denial that credits Dennett and P. Churchland:

How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t. The brain has arrived at a conclusion that is not correct. When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong. The machinery is computing an elaborate story about a magical-seeming property. And there is no way for the brain to determine through introspection that the story is wrong, because introspection always accesses the same incorrect information.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-conscious.html

That sounds exactly like the argument that consciousness is an illusion, and at least in this case, it's an outright denial of subjective experience.

One more quote from the same article:

But the argument here is that there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device. When we look at a red apple, the brain computes information about color. It also computes information about the self and about a (physically incoherent) property of subjective experience. The brain’s cognitive machinery accesses that interlinked information and derives several conclusions: There is a self, a me; there is a red thing nearby; there is such a thing as subjective experience; and I have an experience of that red thing. Cognition is captive to those internal models. Such a brain would inescapably conclude it has subjective experience.

~Michael S. A. Graziano

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-conscious.html

A p-zombie is missing the experience of color, sound, taste, smell, feels. Thus it has no subjectivity. The zombie is identical in every other way. — Marchesk

I'll say it has no "subjective experience with phenomenal character"; but allow that it does have simulated subjectivity. It has features we ordinarily associate with subjectivity: It seems to have a point of view; it seems to observe and report reliably; it seems to act rationally with respect to a priority of values and purposes; it acquires, organizes, reports on, and otherwise acts on "information" about its environment, including the part of its environment we identify with the thing in question.

There are some interesting consequences for this argument. An identical p-zombie universe would still have all the same stories we have. But many stories have first person points of view. So how do p-zombies understand reading or watching someone's thoughts or dreams? How do they make sense of a character undergoing intense emotion not apparent to other characters? — Marchesk

Arguably the p-zombies, as well as some sorts of advanced AI, would each have a sort of first-person point of view. I mean, we can say they make reliable introspective reports analogous to ours. For instance about states of appetite and emotion, about goals and plans and intentions, pains, sense-perceptions, memories, daydreams....

Their observations and reports about things outside them as mediated by sense-receptors will be as fine-grained and reliable as ours; and their observations and reports about things inside them as mediated by "introspective processes" will be as fine-grained and reliable as ours. I believe this comes by definition in these discourses; this is part of what it means to be a p-zombie, if there could be such a thing.

Can we posit any cogent distinctions between these "simulations" and reflexive awareness, cognitive equipment, knowledge of self and introspective bases of non-inferential knowledge acquisition? — Janus

Do you mean, what's the difference between the imitation and the genuine article? As I've noted, this seems to me a definitional question, at least in part.

The difference I have in mind is the one I've been chattering about here under the unhappy label "subjective experience with phenomenal character". If there is such a thing, then I suppose ultimately it's an empirical question, which sorts of things in the world have and which do not have subjective experience with phenomenal character.

Once we posit -- the way we do in these strange discourses -- such a difference, we might consider the application of the distinction in relevant fields, to see where there may be lines or fuzzy boundaries to draw among similar objects.


Some of us claim it's self-evident that human animals have subjective experience with phenomenal character. Perhaps the claim that "something exists" is self-evident in a similar way. Both claims seem supported by the fact of experience, of experience like this, the experience of minds like ours.

As I noted a moment ago in my previous post, the hard problem here is that when you try to abstract this putative "subjective experience" from all the objective states of affairs, you come up against the limits of expression and ineffability.


I would put the burden on those who deny there is such a thing as experience in the sense in question. For it seems evident that there are appearances, and that things like us are appeared to.

What motivates p-zombie Chalmers to make arguments for the hard problem, since the hard problem cannot exist by definition in the p-zombie universe? — Marchesk

I haven't read much Chalmers.

I take it the problem can exist in a p-zombie universe, as an object of discourse and figment of rational imagination.

Here's an outright denial that credits Dennett and P. Churchland: — Marchesk

I've brought Graziano's theories to the forum before - primarily his attention-schema theory of consciousness. I believe that what he is proposing is that attention is interpreted as the point of subjectivity. The existence of attention is what provides that feeling of being in your head and attending to the contents of the mind. It is really just a brain mechanism of amplifying certain sensory signals over others.

But Graziano seems to make the same mistake Dennett is making. They both talk about color as if it exists out in the world, when modern science says it doesn't. Electro-magnetic radiation exists out in the world and our brains process information about electromagnetic radiation and the processed information is color. Color and sounds have an aboutness to them. If they didn't then they would be the actual things themselves and color would exist out in the world and naive realism would be the case, and representations wouldn't.

What use is it to know if an apple is red or not? It isn't. It is only useful to know if it is ripe or not, and the existence of color is our way of knowing that the apple is ripe or not.

There are some interesting consequences for this argument. An identical p-zombie universe would still have all the same stories we have. But many stories have first person points of view. So how do p-zombies understand reading or watching someone's thoughts or dreams? How do they make sense of a character undergoing intense emotion not apparent to other characters? — Marchesk

Arguably the p-zombies, as well as some sorts of advanced AI, would each have a sort of first-person point of view. I mean, we can say they make reliable introspective reports analogous to ours. For instance about states of appetite and emotion, about goals and plans and intentions, pains, sense-perceptions, memories, daydreams....

Their observations and reports about things outside them as mediated by sense-receptors will be as fine-grained and reliable as ours; and their observations and reports about things inside them as mediated by "introspective processes" will be as fine-grained and reliable as ours. I believe this comes by definition in these discourses; this is part of what it means to be a p-zombie, if there could be such a thing. — Cabbage Farmer

P-zombies would use language in a way that would never refer to colors or sounds or feelings. They would use language in a way that refers to the causes of colors and sounds and feelings. They wouldn't use terms like, "red", "loud" or "painful". They would use terms like "680 nanometers" (the wavelength of EM energy that is registered as "red" in the mind), "amplitude", or "injury". In a sense they would use language as if they had a view from no where. They would never say that an apple is red. They could only say that the apple is ripe.

The question I have is how does a 680 nanometer wavelength of EM energy convert into the color red? I can imagine wavelengths as black wavy lines and then I can imagine a blotch of the color red as two separate things. Are Graziano and Dennett both saying that there are no wavelengths of EM energy and that red exists out in the world which we access directly?

Good post above (your second-to-last post now) that I agree unfortunately doesn't really clear up what Dennett is claiming very well.

And yeah, it's weird that he seems to be embracing representationalism there via Richard Power.

I find it amusing when Power says, "We know that our perceptions or imaginings of trees, faces, etc. are distinct from the objects themselves"--as if that's worth pointing out. As if anyone thought that a perception of a tree might be, in fact, identical to the tree. I know that Dennett has made comments in that vein a number of times as if he's saying something insightful.

I don't know, a lot of it comes across to me like a bunch of very confused imbeciles trying to figure out how to turn on a light switch.

How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t. The brain has arrived at a conclusion that is not correct. When we introspect and seem to find that ghostly thing — awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels — our cognitive machinery is accessing internal models and those models are providing information that is wrong. The machinery is computing an elaborate story about a magical-seeming property. And there is no way for the brain to determine through introspection that the story is wrong, because introspection always accesses the same incorrect information.

"The brain has arrived at a conclusion"
"Introspect and seem to find x"
"Our cognitive machinery accessing internal models"
"An elaborate story"

ALL of those things are the subjective awareness that he's denying. You can't admit all of that by means of explanation and then turn around and deny it.

Re " . . . is not correct" ". . . is wrong" etc., he's talking about the correspondence between subjective experience and other things that aren't themselves subjective experience. That's fine to talk about that, but it has nothing to do with denying subjective experience qua subjective experience.

Also, to know that subjective experience has something wrong, it's necessary to have subjective experience that you believe is getting things right.

For example, the only way to say that the brain is getting "what green looks like" wrong, you need your brain to be capable of getting "what green looks like" right, whereupon you note that there's a discrepancy.

Electro-magnetic radiation exists out in the world — Harry Hindu

And that electromagnetic radiation is what we're calling color out in the world.

And that electromagnetic radiation is what we're calling color out in the world. — Terrapin Station

Only a narrow band of it. The rest of it has no color for us.

And that electromagnetic radiation is what we're calling color out in the world. — Terrapin Station

As if anyone thought that a perception of a tree might be, in fact, identical to the tree. I know that Dennett has made comments in that vein a number of times as if he's saying something insightful. — Terrapin Station

As if anyone thought that the perception of EM energy (redness) might be identical to the EM energy.

If they arent identical then how can we be referring to the same thing? How does red differ from EM wavelenghts of 680 nm?

P-zombies would use language in a way that would never refer to colors or sounds or feelings. They would use language in a way that refers to the causes of colors and sounds and feelings. They wouldn't use terms like, "red", "loud" or "painful". They would use terms like "680 nanometers" (the wavelength of EM energy that is registered as "red" in the mind), "amplitude", or "injury". In a sense they would use language as if they had a view from no where. They would never say that an apple is red. They could only say that the apple is ripe. — Harry Hindu

The two idioms you gesture at here, which I might distinguish as ordinary language and scientific language, are both cultural products of human animals, cumulatively informed by experience of the empirical world as it appears to us.

I see no reason to suppose that p-zombies -- which are by definition in these discourses, I take it, physically and behaviorally identical to human beings -- would prefer either one of these idioms any more than we do.

You seem to take for granted that the term "red" is primarily subjective. On what grounds would you support such a claim? Concepts like the concepts of red, loud, and painful all seem to have objective associations and criteria, so far as I can tell. They're less precise than the measurements made by those equipped to measure more precisely; but isn't that precision mainly a matter of the instrument employed, not of the distinction between subject and object? I mean, for instance in the first case, the naked eye, and in the second -- what do we use for that -- a spectrometer (the output of which is available to us via the naked eye or some other sense-receptor)?

The question I have is how does a 680 nanometer wavelength of EM energy convert into the color red? I can imagine wavelengths as black wavy lines and then I can imagine a blotch of the color red as two separate things. Are Graziano and Dennett both saying that there are no wavelengths of EM energy and that red exists out in the world which we access directly? — Harry Hindu

I haven't read enough Dennett to answer for him, and I don't believe I'm acquainted with Graziano.

I'm not sure I'd follow you in saying that "wavelengths convert into colors". To me it makes more sense to say that our color concepts range over physical objects. The word "red" is a name primarily for wavelengths of a certain frequency-range with fuzzy boundaries; and is a name derivatively for physical objects that emit or reflect light of the specified range "in ordinary circumstances". I would argue that much traditional puzzling over "secondary qualities" consists in pseudoproblems and misconceptions, and should be cleared up through a rehabilitation of our concept of perception.

What "converts" red light into an experience of red light and an experience of objects that emit or reflect red light? Cognitive systems like ours with sense receptors like ours.

To me it makes more sense to say that our color concepts range over physical objects. The word "red" is a name primarily for wavelengths of a certain frequency-range with fuzzy boundaries; and is a name derivatively for physical objects that emit or reflect light of the specified range "in ordinary circumstances". — Cabbage Farmer

This has it backwards. Our color concepts come from experience prior to any scientific understanding of optics, and then they were mapped onto the science as a correlation with our color experiences.

This is where the scientific explaining away of the phenomenal goes wrong. It assumes science is apriori and experience comes after. But it's the other way around. Science comes from experience. The foundation for science is empiricism. Science is concerned with explaining the various phenemona of perception.

@Marchesk @Janus @Harry Hindu

Maybe I should press this definitional issue:

The p-zombies about which I've heard rumors are not just

i) any AI that passes the Turing test; nor just

ii) any AI automaton that passes the Turing test and outwardly resembles a human and is normally mistaken for a human under a wide range of ordinary circmstances; but rather are

iii) biological creatures physically and behaviorally indistinguishable from human beings (which thus of course pass the Turing test), which creatures -- by definition in these discourses, if yet somehow inexplicably -- lack the thing we here agree to call "subjective experience with phenomenal character".


Isn't it, specifically, the third sort of hypothetical construct we consider in the zombie discourses?

Isn't it, specifically, the third sort of hypothetical construct we consider in the zombie discourses? — Cabbage Farmer

Yes, but I'm skeptical of p-zombie argument because I don't think it makes sense for them to make the same arguments about consciousness. Still, the thought experiment serves a purpose of illustrating what's being debated.

I prefer asking what it's like to be a bat, or whether a computer simulated world could have conscious inhabitants.

This has it backwards. Our color concepts come from experience prior to any scientific understanding of optics, and then they were mapped onto the science as a correlation with our color experiences. — Marchesk

It seems to me I have it the right way, and go a bit further than you allow. I trace the phenomena to the places they seem to appear, even when they appear outside heads.

Our color concepts are informed by a collective experience of color embedded in our language.

Our experience of color, in its turn, is informed by colored objects: light of various ranges of wavelengths, and other things that emit and reflect light of various wavelengths.

So it seems, to all appearances.

This is where the scientific explaining away of the phenomenal goes wrong. It assumes science is apriori and experience comes after. But it's the other way around. Science comes from experience. Its basis is empiricism. — Marchesk

I would reject the claim that the story I tell about color "explains away the phenomenal"; and I believe that story is in line with a contemporary scientific account of color.

I strongly agree, science is rooted in experience of the empirical world. I say science is nothing but a rigorous and systematic extension of ordinary empirical knowledge. Perhaps this indicates a range of common ground? On the other hand, I'm not sure what connection you're trying with this particular line of argument. I've never heard anyone speak in a way that suggested "science is a priori and experience comes after". What do you mean here?

Only a narrow band of it. The rest of it has no color for us. — Marchesk

Right. Particular ranges are what we're calling colors.

As if anyone thought that the perception of EM energy (redness) might be identical to the EM energy.

If they arent identical then how can we be referring to the same thing? How does red differ from EM wavelenghts of 680 nm? — Harry Hindu

Obviously "perception of x" is different than "x," no?

Isn't it, specifically, the third sort of hypothetical construct we consider in the zombie discourses? — Cabbage Farmer

I haven't read every post and I didn't see people arguing with you about that, but yes. That's what a p-zombie is.

Yes, but I'm skeptical of p-zombie argument because I don't think it makes sense for them to make the same arguments about consciousness. — Marchesk

Under physicalism, the argument is incoherent/inconceivable, because the properties of anything are determined by its physical constitution (including dynamic relations of parts). So you couldn't have something that's physically identical yet that has different properties. That's in fact not conceivable (at least outside of doing some very loosey-goosey fantasizing that ignores ontological details--it's akin to saying that it's conceivable that any physical system has any arbitrary property).

I haven't read every post and I didn't see people arguing with you about that, but yes. That's what a p-zombie is. — Terrapin Station

I don't recall anyone arguing about it, but on my read it's been tough to ferret what consensus there may be about the definition we're trying here; and occasionally an interlocutor's remark has led me to wonder if we have different conceptions in mind.

I normally prefer to clear up terms in philosophical conversation before proceeding to agreements and disagreements.


Now at least there are two of us signed on to the same formulation, a formulation which seems adequate for present purposes on my end.

I can't figure out if it's the end or beginning, Terrapin.