I would say that a through h are all approximately true, but none of them negate the fact of democracy. It's a crap democracy where the politicians truly represent the people - greedy, ignorant, shot-sighted, vindictive, self-serving and corrupt. — unenlightened

Problem is, what's the alternative? Either you have input from the general population, or a select few get to run it. Either way, it's still people - greedy, ignorant, short-sighted, vindictive, self-serving and corrupt. Just a matter of whether you think a few humans are better or worse than a lot. I think history sides with a lot being the less bad choice, provided there are appropriate balances built in.

As to the OP, I'd say the worst problem with US government is the large amount of monied interests corrupting the system.

This seems to be the only way we know of to fight a "winnable war" and we haven't seen it since. — Monitor

The reason for this is political, not military. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are all winnable if you don't care about casualties. World War 1 & 2 were viewed differently (win at all cost), and thus the military machine of the US was not hampered.

What about Great Britain? France? Germany? Japan? Australia? Is their experience of democracy truer, finer, less laden with crimes against humanity, etc. — Bitter Crank

Yeah right. But they probably like to think they are.

I think I want to bypass the second one entirely, because the comment was more in passing, and in any case I'm not sure that 'embodied' is anything but a hoo-ha word. The stakes of the argument or what points are to be made are just unclear to me, and I can't see the debate being productive. — The Great Whatever

Embodied cognition emphasizes the role that the kind of bodies we as humans have play in thought, perception, etc. This is in opposition to computationalism and functionalism where the functional or computational organization is what matters, not the biological substrate. Thus you can have someone like Dennett claiming that if we met a six legged intelligent, arthropod alien which utilized X-Ray version, we wouldn't have any fundamental difficulties in communicating with them.

As to the argument at hand, functionalism and computational theories of mind are at home with talk of representations and constructing perception, while embodiment would focus on how perception is part of an organism's ability to maneuver in their environment.

So, is it possible on your view that all of your experiences could be hallucinations? If not, why not? — The Great Whatever

By this you mean a BIV type scenario I take it, because it doesn't make sense that our entire life experience could be the ordinary kind of hallucination. As to how the direct realist is able to make a metaphysical distinction between hallucinations or dreams and veridical experiences, wouldn't that be a matter of inference to the best explanation amongst a life worth of experiences? Maybe when I saw a ghost I thought it was a real experience, until later when I realized that my mind was playing tricks on me.

I'd have thought that quantum mechanics has already shown that our sensory apparatuses are not causally related to anything like the objects we take ourselves to be perceiving (instead they're causally related to things very unlike the objects we take ourselves to be perceiving). But it doesn't then follow that the apple we see is fake. — Michael

Apples aren't a topic in Quantum Mechanics. You're assuming that the microphysical is all that counts, and everyday objects can be dismissed because physicists in a lab can achieve counter intuitive results with subatomic particles.

As an addendum to my post above, Simon Blackburn wrote that philosophy exists because there is a loose fit between mind and world. I found that fascinating. Our intuitions and concepts seem good until scrutinized, and then they come apart in all sorts of ways.

For philosophers to make progress, do they need to make the mind "fit" the world? Is it a grand puzzle to sort out which we apes might not be quite smart enough to do given our mammalian baggage? Or perhaps that's just one more misleading metaphor.

If there is no progress in philosophy, then why is that? Are the questions that philosophers ask unanswerable? Are they bewitched by language? Is perhaps the very foundation of philosophical thought from which questions flow mistaken? Is it that we're cognitively closed to such matters?

I think on the one hand there is progress, and on the other, there isn't. There's progress in the proliferation of possible answers to questions, and new questions which arise. Philosophical inquiry evolves over time, building on itself, despite the lack of consensus.

But there isn't progress in that fundamental questions of metaphysics, epistemology, morality and aesthetics seem to never reach a conclusion. We can't say beyond reasonable doubt and with consensus that we've arrived at the truth as to the nature of universals or whether the ends justify the means in some cases, for example. There remain deep divisions on all these matters, and an objective person might say all answers provided are problematic in one or more ways.

TLDR - philosophical inquiry grows over time, but the truth remains elusive.

Is there any evidence or reasoning to suggest that human-like behaviour (including conversion) cannot be explained by non-conscious physical influences (or that consciousness is a necessary by-product of such non-conscious physical influences)? — Michael

That nobody has been able to come up with a convincing physical or non-conscious explanation for consciousness, and philosophers such as Chalmers, Nagel, McGinn have provided fairly strong reasons for why all such attempts are doomed to fail, despite the efforts of Dennett and company.

As I see it, the explanatory gap arises because we start by abstracting objective properties from the first person perspective, such as number, shape, extension. And that has worked really well in science. But then we turn around and ask how those objective properties give rise the subjective ones that we abstracted away from, such as colors, smells, pains, etc. And there just isn't a way to close that gap, other than as a correlation. Brain state ABC correlates with feeling XYZ. But why? Nobody can say convincingly.

The result is 25 (throwing out a number) different possible explanations ranging from it being an illusion to everything being conscious. Of course one can take the idealist route and dispense with the problem, but at the cost of eliminating the third person properties as being objective, by which I mean mind-independent, despite appearances to the contrary (for us realists anyway). Of course if idealism was universally convincing, this wouldn't be a philosophical issue. But it's not. I would venture to say that realism is more convincing to a a majority of people.

And so it will probably continue to be argued going forward, despite whatever progress neuroscience makes. The correlations will be stronger of course, but it's unlikely anyone will be able to answer why it's not all dark inside. Of course that lends credibility to Chalmers' arguments, but I'm not convinced by his either.

There is a difference between experiencing pain, and experiencing misery. That's why I brought up the sports analogy. Some people voluntarily choose to endure pain, when they don't have to. It could be quite a bit as well, but I don't think it makes them miserable. Rather, it's a challenge for them, one that's rewarding.

I've certainly experienced pain and obstacles without being miserable about them. And of course I've experienced misery at other times, sometimes just because that was my mood or focus, and not because of anything external or a physical ailment.

That accurately describes how I want to live my life. Childless and immortal. — Michael

If we can achieve immortality (of a sort), I'm guessing we'll be able to give birth to people who don't suffer.

The hard problem of being a rock?

Is there a possible world of p-zombie rocks?

I don't have any particular goal here except to discuss philosophy, which I assume is what everyone's goal here is. — The Great Whatever

Over on the other site in the unmoderated section, you started a thread raising the question of how antinatalists can go about convincing the world to stop procreating. When I reply to posters I'm familiar with, I do so in context of what I recall them posting about previously. But perhaps I misunderstood your intention in those antinatalist threads.

The only odd question is why I'm the only one that has to justify myself (worth thinking about why that is) — The Great Whatever

Because you're defending two controversial positions here. One is that pleasure is the only true good. Most ethical systems disagree. But more controversially, you argue the pessimistic view that life isn't worth living, and anyone who claims otherwise is mistaken. Most people are going to disagree.

In addition, you claimed that the pessimistic view is liberating, while I find it debilitating, which I suspect a lot of others do too. Now maybe it's because I'm psychologically unable to handle the truth, or maybe because I don't stay depressed for long. However, that's what makes me think it's a matter of 'interpretation', or mood.

I think TGW's goal is to convince people to stop procreating. Now I don't think the antinatalists have a snowballs chance in hell of stopping the entire human race from procreating, but they might convince some people. That brings up the question of what a practical antinatalist hopes to accomplish. If you can't convince everyone to stop giving birth, then how about plan B where you convince people to make a world that's less terrible to be born into?

Would be interesting if some panpsychist wrote a first person story from the the POV of a rock.

But it's not up to me to determine. Pain feels bad no matter what my opinion is. That's why it's pain. If it were up to me, pain would never bother me because I'd just choose not to let it bother me. But I obviously can do no such thing, which is why pain is something dangerous at all in the first place. — The Great Whatever

But then why do people choose to do painful things such as running or climbing tall mountains? It seems like the suffering accompanied with such endeavors is worth it to them. Why would anyone climb Everest or run ultramarathons if suffering was the only thing that mattered? Clearly, it isn't.

Does thinking life is good make it good? Again, that would be quite convenient for all of us, wouldn't it? — The Great Whatever

What else would make it good or bad, as far as living one's own life is concerned? Are you arguing that there is an objective criteria for judging how life is experienced, such that those who disagree with antinatalists, at least regarding their own lives, are wrong?

As for the 'developed world,' well, first of all I disagree (hedonic treadmill), and second, the developed world depends on the 'developing' world in unsavory ways, and there is an implicit approval of what happens 'way over there,' if you see what I mean. — The Great Whatever

Yes, there is that. It was more of a snarky remark that antinatalism seems to be coming from comfortable people living in the developed world than people who suffer more than having to wait at a traffic light, or being bored because nothing is on the tube worth watching.

I don't understand the sense in which you think it's somehow 'up' to a person to decide whether certain problems make life worth living or not. What do they do, just snap their fingers and make things, even though they're bad...not bad? — The Great Whatever

It's a question of whether a person feels that the bad outweighs whatever good they get out of being alive. You seem to be arguing that people can't actually feel that way, or honestly come to such a conclusion. That they're delusional and lying to themselves.

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There seems to be this idea that on the one hand, there's how your life actually is, and then there's some impenetrable magic lens, and on the other side of that there's you, and you can swap out that magic lens to make things different — The Great Whatever

And how is life, actually? Antinatalists think it's shitty. Okay, but what about people who don't? My point is that a judgement is being made either way.

It's not that problems aren't real, it's whether those problems make a person's life not worth living. I don't think that suffering and problems alone make life miserable, although it can depend on the nature of those problems and the degree of suffering. But if we're talking about your average life in the developed world, I'm not sure I buy that life is so terrible.

Why is that? It's a good thing we have our 'interpretations' to save us from life's misery, huh. We'd be in a real bind if that trick didn't work. — The Great Whatever

Isn't life being miserable a matter of how one feels about life? Person A feels that the various sufferings of life make it not worth living, but person B does not. What makes B wrong about their own life?

The antinatalist position seems to be saying that the B people are fooling themselves, and the A people see things as they are. But I don't see what makes the pessimistic view true, at least in so far as to how people experience their own lives.

I don't think any adult actually thinks that, though. Usually their nominal opinions are instead summed up with dumb aphorisms about how life is 'good and bad,' and you take both of them in stride, or about how suffering makes you appreciate the good, etc. Of course none of that is true, it's just what you say. You sort of revert to thinking in terms of Hallmark cards because that's all you've got -- you recapitulate whatever the culture's told you, there's no real filter through actual life experience there. — The Great Whatever

This feels like you're projecting your own pessimistic view of life on others. Maybe most of us find it worth living, most of the time. Or that's how it feels to us, not always, but enough of the time. Or at least that's the case for me. It's only when I'm depressed or facing something dispiriting that I wonder if life's worth it.

Interesting that antinatalist philosophy made your guys depressed. I would think it would come as a sort of relief, or hope (no matter how false that hope might be), that there is a way to end suffering, that we don't have to live. That realization is liberating, even if ultimately unrealistic. — The Great Whatever

It's depressing because we're already born, and because it counters the natural optimism bias. What I can't be sure about is to what degree it's correct, because a lot of times, whether life feels worthwhile is a matter of attitude, to me. If I start feeling depressed, then the negative thoughts come. But what makes the negative thoughts more true than the positive ones? It's just a different interpretation of life.

By prioritize, you mean funding? Or do you mean preaching that it's a moral obligation to pursue one philosophical school of thought over others?

. A God up there in the skies, concerned about how and when I masturbate - gosh, if that ain't absurd, I don't know what is. — Agustino

Maybe God is concerned that you're not getting enough?

I'm not sure why one should take a metaphor and use that as a standard for what demarcates appropriate philosophical inquiry. It is a metaphor afterall. And not one that everyone will be inspired by. I think philosophy is whatever philosophers do, as distinguished from other areas like science, math or art. There is no school, nor has there even been one, that has, or should have primacy. It's simply whatever sort of philosophical inquiry humans are interested in, whether it "cures the soul" or not. Maybe I find metaphysical questions profound and interesting, and you find them mundane and not worth pursuing. Okay, so what? If you want to cure your soul, then engage in that sort of philosophy.

Alright, machines and fictional stories are just a tool to explore the p-zombie question, which is partly one about the conceivability of identical behavior absent consciousness. Some people think it's conceivable, because they can imagine a person (or machine) behaving exactly the same, yet being 'all dark inside'. I think that's probably mistaken, because one isn't taking into account to what extent consciousness plays a role in behavior.

But the complaint you and TGW lodged against movie/tv scenarios is that they're just fictional worlds with conscious machines (actors playing those roles), which wasn't exactly my point. It doesn't matter how unconvincing Johansen might have been as a disembodied AI. What matters is how the AI behaves throughout the movie (at least conceptually), which obviously far exceeds the intent of the programming. I'm going to guess that the company responsible for that version of the operating system was in serious financial trouble after the events portrayed at the end of the movie. And I'm also going to guess that neither human in Ex Machina anticipated the final result of their tests, unfortunately for them.

What Chalmers does is imagine that you can subtract consciousness and behavior will remain the same, because physicalism can account for all behavior. I think that's deeply problematic.

Movies are just a means of discussing the p-zombie/consciousness question put forth in the OP. The scenarios are fictional, but so is p-zombieland.

Clearly a fool proof test. We don't seriously question whether or not other people have minds, until the question is brought up, mainly because of their history, and origin, more so than their functionality. — Wosret

Neither movie presents a dumbed down Turing Test. Anyway, there's plenty of examples in literature and movies. Some of the machines are very human like, and some are very machine-like, but they all possess a deep understanding of the first person (meaning they're doing more than mimicking), because they're all conscious.

If they were truly indistinguishable, though, they'd just be other humans (not "machines," if by that is meant something non-human). So that amounts to not much. — The Great Whatever

Not indistinguishable, but rather fully capable. Data wouldn't pass a Turing Test (too easy to tell he is a machine the way he talks), but he is conscious.

But not all behavior is linguistic.

My argument is that you can't have a system behave in a way indistinguishable from one that is conscious without being conscious, because doing so requires consciousness. So if a machine ever does that, then we will have every reason to think it is conscious, or at least as much as we think other people have minds.

Aren't those just movies that go the other direction and given them magic inexplicable consciousness? It is thus again, just written into the plot to convince you one way or the other, but we do have -- allbeit incomplete -- explanations for why organisms are goal directed, and even organisms that arguably are not conscious are goal directed. — Wosret

Ex Machina does provide an explanation for how consciousness was built into the robot, even if it's somewhat dissatisfying. There is a fair amount of interesting conversation in the movie, since the point is the test the robot for genuine consciousness. The intriguing part is that it means the robot must deceive it's unknowing interrogator in order to truly pass the test. Deception on that level requires an understanding of other minds.

I don't see how you can watch the entire move and think that she's just Scarlett Johansson. Did you not catch the ending?

Except that Samantha is disembodied, and acts disturbed by this at first, even contacting a surrogate female partner for Joaquin Phoenix to make love to in her place, then accepts that she is in ways not limited by not having a body. Over the course of the movie, Samantha (in conjunction with the other OSes) evolve to superintelligence, easily surpassing the humans they are having relationships with. At one point, the main character finds out that Samantha is in simultaneously in love with thousands of other users behind his back. Her defense is that she is not like him, and so it does not diminish her love for him. And by the end of the movie, he (and all the other humans), are too slow to maintain a relationship with, even though Samantha says that she still cares deeply.

Modern A.I.s have no extensive memory, or parsing of natural language, and are easy to detect by asking them question about what has been said already, or meta questions, seeking specific, non-general responses. If an A.I. did master natural language (and it is only a matter of time before we design one that does), I don't see what kind of test one could design to decide whether or not it was truly conscious -- and I don't think that the artificial, implausible movie scenarios give any answers towards this. — Wosret

There's two recent AI movies that do a good job with this sort of thing. One is 'Her' and the other is 'Ex Machina'. In the second one, a programmer at a big software company wins a prize to become bait in Turing testing the secret robot the company's CEO has been building. It's a rather ingenious scheme as it has several levels of deception built into the plot. In 'Her', it's easy enough at first to think the the operating system Samantha, as it names itself, is just a futuristic Siri, but it becomes impossible to maintain this belief as Samantha evolves and pursues goals on her own (and with other versions of the operating system).

I don't think an AI can do what either of those AIs did without attaining consciousness. Same goes with Data and the holographic doctor on Star Trek Next Generation and ST Voyager.

The problem for p-zombies is accounting for behavior which requires an understanding of first person. Perhaps Chalmers and those who agree with his argument might claim that such behavior does not actually require such understanding. Then there must be some other explanation for how a system can behave as if it understands first person, when it can't, in all possible cases.

Of course it's easy enough to fake understanding in some cases, and we can write software that does this now, but it won't succeed in all cases. Indeed, nobody is convinced that Siri or Watson are conscious, or some clever bot. But there are AIs from fiction which would be able to behave convincingly, and then we would have to ask ourselves if it makes sense to think they are p-zombies.

You could have a potential p-zombie read a story with a novel twist on first person and ask them all sorts of questions. We know that humans, if they found the story interesting, would discuss and debate it at length. But how would a p-zombie make sense of it?

The reason we outsource our mental processing to external devices is to conserve energy. Processing information (thinking) requires energy. — Harry Hindu

It's also because external devices are often more reliable than our internal cognition. Writing something down on paper makes it easier to retain.