Comments

  • Donald Hoffman
    ↪wonderer1
    Thanks, that's helpful.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Physicalism is a metaphysical position. — T Clark

    Yes I agree, sorry I made a typo. Corrected above.
  • Donald Hoffman
    (Or do you no longer deny that there is evidence for physicalism?) — wonderer1

    I think I might deny that there is no evidence for physicalism. I'm interested in what people think is evidence for physicalism.

    EDIT: Confusing typo inverted my meaning. Apologies @T Clark Fixed.
  • Donald Hoffman
    I've just tried to explain panpsychism to someone IRL. They said 'A treehugger?'
  • Donald Hoffman
    ↪T Clark
    Yes, that's the hard problem. It's the general question: "How is it exactly that experience is caused by/realised by/is identical with the functions of complex systems? Why can't all these things happen without experience?" A robust theory on consciousness will be able to reliably predict which systems have experience of some kind or another.

    OK, lets assume we've answered that question. There is now a further question: "Why is it that such-and-such function causes/realises/is the taste of chocolate instead of the smell of coffee?" A really robust theory of experience should be able to predict in a principled way what a particular function feels like to be instantiated. And this problem remains for everyone, including dualists, panpsychists, and new-agers, because no one denies the correlation between physical systems and what in particular we experience.
  • Donald Hoffman
    Still physicalism is where progress in understanding is being made, whereas dualism and panpsychism seem to dismiss the possibility of progress being made altogether. — wonderer1

    Panpsychists and dualists probably do typically dismiss the possibility of explaining consciousness (in general terms that would constitute an answer to the hard problem) in terms of complex systems. But this dismissal for many is exactly what motivates them to place consciousness elsewhere in nature than just an emergent characteristic of some complex systems. For my money, the fact that a growing number of philosophers take panpsychism seriously is progress. Bypassing the hard problem instead of trying to solve it is progress. Not that I object to physicalists continuing to theorise, they come up with interesting stuff. Just not a solution to the hard problem. (And before Galen Strawson tells me off, he insists he is a physicalist and a panpsychist at the same time, which last time I read it made sense to me but I've forgotten much of his reasoning.) I personally think the problem of what consciousness is is not hard, I think we know what it is, and we only have to introspect to find out. But the problem of the relationship between consciousness and systems is very obscure for the reasons Hoffman mentions, and I do think science can play a useful role in that.
  • Donald Hoffman
    On the other hand, a lot of progress is being made, in understanding that things like the smell of coffee are a function of coordinated activity in arrays of neurons, and that expecting to find a "particular neural event" accounting for the smell of coffee evinces a lack of sophistication in considering the subject. — wonderer1

    Sure, but that doesn't make the problem any easier does it? If it does, please do explain.
  • Donald Hoffman
    ↪T Clark
    The problem of why such-and-such function is correlated with this experience rather than that is not the hard problem.
  • Donald Hoffman
    One point Hoffman makes very well is that we have made no progress whatever in explaining how it is that a particular neural event is (or causes or realises) a sensation of the smell of coffee rather than, say, the taste of chocolate. And this problem applies regardless of one's view about consciousness - dualists and panpsychists are no further forward on this than physicalists.
  • A (simple) definition for philosophy
    ↪Wayfarer
    Interesting. Didn't know that
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    5hp4sw3wpydg9j3k.png

    Looks like a gem of an article, but I can only see the first page on JSTOR. 1974, well before Chalmers. Makes the same point I did about skepticism raised by @apokrisis.

    The 'Dan' he refers to...
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪apokrisis
    Still no ought, intentionality, consciousness or value
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Banno
    Oh! That's interesting. Which is the most recent convention? Are you being old fashioned or current street?
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    Berkeley had a clear position. — Janus

    He did and he deserves a lot of credit for that. I wish he'd gone panpsychist like Sprigge instead of wheeling God in to look at things when we weren't.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    The subject of my present experience is the laptop screen and text — Banno

    Surely that would be the object of your experience? I suppose either would work. Brits abroad.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    You mean experimentally? - https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3343

    As a bone of contention? - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-023-04251-x     — apokrisis


    I'll read these after you have stood on your head for half an hour. I want a video to prove it.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Tom Storm
    Fair enough
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    [1]So for some reason it is OK for you to use commonsense to make inferences about things you can’t directly know, but science as a formal method for making such inferences does not enjoy the same privilege? [2]It is defeated by the zombies in which you don’t believe? Curious.

    [3]So what does your commonsense tell you about the consciousness of the chair you are sat on? [4]Given the zombie argument that is so legit, how can you know it is either conscious or not conscious[?] It might be just keeping very quiet and still. It might be aware but suffering locked in syndrome.

    Your commonsense is this magical power that transcends mere scientific inference. Please clear up these deep riddles of Nature.     — apokrisis

    I'm not sure if these questions are rhetorical or not. I'll have go anyway, I'm a sucker for a quiz.

    1) You introduced commonsense and science, I was just going with your terms. The inference from analogy, which I suggested was done instinctively by most people (or maybe not, maybe people develop theory of mind some other way, it doesn't matter) might be called commonsense, or it might be philosophy. It doesn't matter. The point is that it isn't a theory of consciousness. It's a conjecture of which other things are conscious. Scientific theories of consciousness are typically functionalist ones, such as yours, the IIT, and others. They do make predictions about what other things are conscious based on the structure and function of those things (less so by analogy, although that may be part of it), but those predictions are not checkable except perhaps by reference to our instincts or common sense or philosophical arguments from analogy. It's entirely understandable that when commonsense and functional theories yield the same predictions, they are considered plausible. Neither are testable though, because we don't have a consciousness-o-meter. And the functionalist theories are wrong, and the inference to other minds is not taken far enough.

    2) The functionalist theories are defeated by the zombies in which I don't believe, yes, because the functionalist theories seem consistent with there being no experiences present. So they might be valuable in some way, but not as explainers of consciousness.

    3) That's an interesting question. My commonsense instinct is that they are not. Of course, what constitutes commonsense I suspect is somewhat culture-relative. I do think they are conscious though, just not in a way that particularly matters to me. I suspect that the content of the consciousness of my chair is so minimal to be of no interest to anything, possibly including the chair.

    4) Several reasons. I have rehearsed the argument for panpsychism from the non-vagueness of the concept of consciousness many times on the forum. There may be an argument from psychological causation and non-overdetermination of the physical, but I have yet to develop that. It's important to keep in mind the broad landscape of theoretical possibilities. Out of those panspychism is the least problematic of the three basic possibilities: panpsychism, emergentism and eliminativism. Eliminatism is false by introspection. Emergentism is extremely problematic for a number of reasons already rehearsed. Panpsychism is problematic, but less so.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    Is it simply the case that idealists are able to accept more 'supernatural' claims because they have determined that nature is ultimately no longer limited by laws of physics? — Tom Storm

    Does idealism break physics?
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    But the larger problem here is that a genetic fallacy is still a genetic fallacy. Bad motivations don't make someone wrong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Sticky this please mods!
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    The Hard Problem pretends to have its ontic ground - zombies as a real possibility despite all that science and commonsense says - but it simply devolves to standard Humean epistemic issue that “we will never really know” that bedevils all rational inquiry and which became precisely the reason for pragmatism becoming standard as the way to move forward after that. — apokrisis

    The point is that what you call science does not rule them out, or indeed in. It has nothing to say on the subject of consciousness itself, although there's still plenty of interesting work to do peripheral to that, like scientifically studying the neural correlates of particular experiences. We don't doubt that other people are conscious because of commonsense (as you say), not science. We infer others are conscious because I am conscious and other people seem to be like me and do roughly similar things under similar circumstances. It's the best explanation of their behaviour. You don't have to do any science for this, and commonsense does it instinctively. So if we know that other people are conscious, but we can't derive that from their structure and function, then that is a clue that examining structure and function may actually be insufficient.

    It's not about unwarranted doubt. We don't doubt. It's about finding a plausible explanation for what we don't doubt.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Wayfarer
    Very interesting! Thanks.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    I'm skeptical of the idea that Daniel Dennett believes anything these days, but anyway, that appears to be gratuitious slander.

    From Wikipedia:

    Some physicalists, such as Daniel Dennett, argue that philosophical zombies are logically incoherent and thus impossible, or that all humans are philosophical zombies;[4][5]     — wonderer1

    I've just realised we may be talking at cross purposes. I've bolded the relevant bit. Eliminativism is exactly the view that nothing is conscious, so humans are philosophical zombies. Dennett oscillates (as far as I can tell) between eliminativism and perhaps a kind of functionalism. Not sure exactly. I only got about a third of the way through Consciousness Explained.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪wonderer1
    Yeah, I've never been able to get to grips with his stuff. I don't think I'm the only one.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    And yet you think it is your gotcha… — apokrisis

    The point about zombies is not whether or not you believe in them (nobody except Daniel Dennett does), but whether a functionalist account like yours plausibly rules them out. Your account of an organism that models its environment and makes predictions based on that model is good, I like it. But the question of whether such a creature is conscious or not remains open. I see nothing in that account that rules out the creature being a zombie - it seems to me all the functions you have described could just as well occur in a creature with no experiences. Using the word 'zombie' is just a convenient and intuitively accessible way of making the point. And being lazy, I like that. As a theory of the self I think your account is much more plausible.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Tom Storm
    @Wayfarer

    I should have just said ontological idealism generally instead of specifying Berkeley. Berkeley is just the original ontological idealist. Religious/spiritual views sometimes find their philosophical justificatory wing (almost exactly like Sinn Fein and the IRA) embracing ontological idealism. Not that I have anything against that.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    What can you say to folk who claim to believe in philosophical zombies? — apokrisis

    No one believes in them.

    EDIT: except eliminatavists I guess
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    Just as Bert will complain neuroscience hasn’t answered the Hard Problem despite the vast insight we now have into the fine detail of cognition as a process. — apokrisis

    My complaint isn't that it hasn't. It's that people think it has.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Tom Storm
    Probably. Sorry, I'm a bit careless
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Michael
    Sure, but when @Banno criticises idealism, he is criticising one kind of idealism, namely solipsism. And he often doesn't say this. I'm not defending idealism in this thread - it's way off topic. It just came up in responses to @Wayfarer.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    @apokrisis @Banno

    Apo's approach to bridging the is/ought gap and his approach to the hard problem of consciousness seem very similar if not the same. But I may have misunderstood. His response to me regarding the hard problem is to say that he has met his burden of showing what consciousness is in terms of making predictive models, and that the burden is now with me to show how that is wrong. And I think he has said similar to @Banno in this thread regarding the is/ought gap. However I don't see the theoretical bridge in either case.

    An interesting topic might be "Is the is/ought gap and the hard problem of consciousness essentially the same problem?"
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Banno
    Thanks, I'm not sure if I read that debate with @Landru Guide Us or not, but your post makes your position clear. I think your position that idealism entails solipsism is very reasonable. I don't agree with it but I won't argue with it here. For myself, I am still undecided about idealism, I think it might be impoverished and insufficient to account for the world, but am not sure. What I would say is that every time you criticise idealism with arguments targeting solipsism, people like me @Michael and other idealist-sympathisers are going to keep popping up saying that you've mischaracterised idealism.

    Some folk here (perhaps @Wayfarer is an example) have an interest in and sympathy for religious/spiritual metaphysics. I wonder if that sometimes engenders an uncomfortable loyalty to ontological idealist metaphysics of a Berkeleyan stripe. If so, it needn't in my view. Just as realism does not entail physicalism, even though they too are natural partners.
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    As biological creatures zombies, we only need to insert ourselves into our worlds in a semiotically constructed fashion. The task is to build ourselves as beings zombies with the agency to be able to hang together in an organismic fashion. — apokrisis
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    In any case, if your idealism claims that the world is inherently mental, it must respond to the three puzzles - other people, that we are sometimes wrong, and novelty. — Banno

    Those three puzzles are more of a problem for solipsism than idealism. But I think you think that idealism readily collapses into solipsism. Is that right?

    From my vague recollections of your views, sometimes you strike me as a kind of linguo-ist, such that the way the world is depends on our language use (as opposed to, say, Berkeley's perceptions). I may have misinterpreted you. But you are definitely a realist - that's your trademark if nothing else. You think there was a universe before language, no? Do you need some kind of (non Kantian) existence-without-categorisation for your own metaphysic?
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    ↪Banno
    You missed off the start of the second sentence! Try again. It matters.

    Nevertheless, I'm not clear what Wayfarer's position is either.

    Apo has nailed his colours to a mast, laudably, but those colours are in a part of the spectrum I'm struggling to see.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Weak resentful men are often the most dangerous and are quite capable of evil — BitconnectCarlos

    Only to the extent that they have the power to. If a person is wholly weak, no matter how resentful they are, they are not dangerous at all.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    evil — BitconnectCarlos

    It's much easier and more tempting for the strong to be evil. Moral culpability can only attach to the strong. If it attaches to the weak, it is only because the weak use what little strength they have to cause harm.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪180 Proof
    Haha!
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    No doubt. — 180 Proof

    I'm learning to live with it
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    If so, then what makes "consciousness" mine? — 180 Proof

    Nothing, I suggest. What makes you 180 Proof is not consciousness, but your body, history, emotions, etc. Consciousness bears subjectivity, but not character/individuation. But this is paradoxical, I concede.
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