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Exactly. One of my more vivid memories is excitedly opening my copy of Jayne's "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and being

Exactly. One of my more vivid memories is excitedly opening my copy of Jayne's "The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and being dismayed as it slowly dawned on me that Jayne's entire book was based on this category error. For the life of me I can't understand why people don't understand this distinction (or choose to ignore it). I can only assume that people ignore the very obvious "magical thing" that is happening in their own heads due to ideological commitments to physicalism or something.

skosch 6y ago
Is physicalism the problem? My understanding is that physicalism is still in good standing – at least when it comes to the conscious experience of qualia. (The concept-of-self encoding obviously doesn't require a physical substrate.)
- breckinloggins 6y ago
  Probably not, but I mean the kind of informal physicalist commitment that says something like "if I can't imagine quantum fields feeling things, then feelings don't exist." I see a lot of that, though less and less these days. I think Chalmers helped clear the air a bit here, though I don't think jumping straight to panpsychism is particularly helpful to the discourse, either.
- chongli 6y ago
  The problem is that physics is not the right level of abstraction and that we do not have an operational theory for working at the right level. I suppose it's also a problem that we can't seem to agree on the definition of consciousness. Anyway, trying to understand consciousness by applying physics is just as silly as trying to understand why your complex fluid dynamics simulation is giving an incorrect result by peering at the CPU's transistors with an electron microscope: it's the wrong level of abstraction. One thing that seems to be making our task a lot more difficult is that evolution doesn't even try to design the biology of systems with clean abstraction boundaries that we can understand. There are so many strange things going on in our bodies that we can barely describe them, never mind understand them. One example is what happens when a person consumes Ayahuasca [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca
tasty_freeze 6y ago
What is this magical thing that is so obvious to you? Something may seem magical without being magical. To the person who survives a tornado while all his neighbors die, the sense they were chosen to live and have a special purpose can be compelling, but is false. Materialism can't explain everything, but there is yet to be any proof that magic explains anything. Lacking that, assuming a physical basis as the explanation is prudent.
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  "assuming a physical basis as explanation is prudent" yeah, good luck making physicality relevant for most explanations. My wife asks why I didn't put the laundry away, for instance. "Physics!" I declare triumphantly. Now, if I put music on and rub her back a bit... Well, ha! There's the magic, my good sir. Imagine walking into a film studio with the idea of film production based exclusively on the principles of physics. No. Magic and physics are no more opposed than biology and physics. When hidden (psychological?) forces clearly underlie economically valuable phenomena (architecture, music, media, etc) respecting the magic is closer to the truth than reducing it to physics. Physics just isn't the right explanatory level. If you'd like to learn more about definitions of magic that aren't "phenomena that don't actually exist", I recommend Penelope Gouk's work on music, science and natural magic in the 17th century. It's about the magic involved at the formation of the Royal Society.
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    physicality n. obsession with physical urges On the subject, you are making a good point comparing social behavior with mental activity. Just like there is no “magic” in the way people interact with each other, there is no magic in how neurons do the same.
    - dr_dshiv 6y ago
      > Just like there is no “magic” in the way people interact with each other, there is no magic in how neurons do the same. Except I am arguing that there is most definitely magic in human interaction.
cscurmudgeon 6y ago
> I can only assume that people ignore the very obvious "magical thing" that is happening in their own heads due to ideological commitments to physicalism or something. You nailed it. People think that accepting consciousness is hard is giving into religion. It need not be that way.
Koshkin 6y ago
It was said elsewhere that a sufficiently advanced “something” is indeed indistinguishable from magic.
justincredible 6y ago
Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication; you can't explain that.
carapace 6y ago
After thinking about it for many years I've come to the conclusion that some people really haven't noticed themselves, (e.g. I think Daniel Dennett is a p-zombie!)
- vladTheInhaler 6y ago
  I know it was an incidental point, but it sounds like you don't think very highly of Dennett. What specifically don't you like?
  - carapace 6y ago
    Oh no, I do not mean that in a pejorative sense. I have a lot of respect for him and his work. It's a way to understand how someone so thoughtful and intelligent and dedicated can seemingly be unaware of the "hard problem". One day it occurred to me that maybe he just hadn't had the "breakthrough" or "epiphany". It's unlikely but not impossible. FWIW, his wikipedia entry says, > He also presents an argument against qualia; he argues that the concept is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism. His strategy mirrors his teacher Ryle's approach of redefining first person phenomena in third person terms, and denying the coherence of the concepts which this approach struggles with. that's specifically what I don't like. In re: the "hard problem" he wants to declare victory without a fight, or a prize.

skosch 6y ago

Is physicalism the problem? My understanding is that physicalism is still in good standing – at least when it comes to the conscious experience of qualia. (The concept-of-self encoding obviously doesn't require a physical substrate.)

breckinloggins 6y ago
Probably not, but I mean the kind of informal physicalist commitment that says something like "if I can't imagine quantum fields feeling things, then feelings don't exist." I see a lot of that, though less and less these days. I think Chalmers helped clear the air a bit here, though I don't think jumping straight to panpsychism is particularly helpful to the discourse, either.
chongli 6y ago
The problem is that physics is not the right level of abstraction and that we do not have an operational theory for working at the right level. I suppose it's also a problem that we can't seem to agree on the definition of consciousness. Anyway, trying to understand consciousness by applying physics is just as silly as trying to understand why your complex fluid dynamics simulation is giving an incorrect result by peering at the CPU's transistors with an electron microscope: it's the wrong level of abstraction. One thing that seems to be making our task a lot more difficult is that evolution doesn't even try to design the biology of systems with clean abstraction boundaries that we can understand. There are so many strange things going on in our bodies that we can barely describe them, never mind understand them. One example is what happens when a person consumes Ayahuasca [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca

tasty_freeze 6y ago

What is this magical thing that is so obvious to you? Something may seem magical without being magical. To the person who survives a tornado while all his neighbors die, the sense they were chosen to live and have a special purpose can be compelling, but is false. Materialism can't explain everything, but there is yet to be any proof that magic explains anything. Lacking that, assuming a physical basis as the explanation is prudent.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
"assuming a physical basis as explanation is prudent" yeah, good luck making physicality relevant for most explanations. My wife asks why I didn't put the laundry away, for instance. "Physics!" I declare triumphantly. Now, if I put music on and rub her back a bit... Well, ha! There's the magic, my good sir. Imagine walking into a film studio with the idea of film production based exclusively on the principles of physics. No. Magic and physics are no more opposed than biology and physics. When hidden (psychological?) forces clearly underlie economically valuable phenomena (architecture, music, media, etc) respecting the magic is closer to the truth than reducing it to physics. Physics just isn't the right explanatory level. If you'd like to learn more about definitions of magic that aren't "phenomena that don't actually exist", I recommend Penelope Gouk's work on music, science and natural magic in the 17th century. It's about the magic involved at the formation of the Royal Society.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  physicality n. obsession with physical urges On the subject, you are making a good point comparing social behavior with mental activity. Just like there is no “magic” in the way people interact with each other, there is no magic in how neurons do the same.
  - dr_dshiv 6y ago
    > Just like there is no “magic” in the way people interact with each other, there is no magic in how neurons do the same. Except I am arguing that there is most definitely magic in human interaction.

cscurmudgeon 6y ago

> I can only assume that people ignore the very obvious "magical thing" that is happening in their own heads due to ideological commitments to physicalism or something. You nailed it. People think that accepting consciousness is hard is giving into religion. It need not be that way.

Koshkin 6y ago

It was said elsewhere that a sufficiently advanced “something” is indeed indistinguishable from magic.

justincredible 6y ago

Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication; you can't explain that.

carapace 6y ago

After thinking about it for many years I've come to the conclusion that some people really haven't noticed themselves, (e.g. I think Daniel Dennett is a p-zombie!)

vladTheInhaler 6y ago
I know it was an incidental point, but it sounds like you don't think very highly of Dennett. What specifically don't you like?
- carapace 6y ago
  Oh no, I do not mean that in a pejorative sense. I have a lot of respect for him and his work. It's a way to understand how someone so thoughtful and intelligent and dedicated can seemingly be unaware of the "hard problem". One day it occurred to me that maybe he just hadn't had the "breakthrough" or "epiphany". It's unlikely but not impossible. FWIW, his wikipedia entry says, > He also presents an argument against qualia; he argues that the concept is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism. His strategy mirrors his teacher Ryle's approach of redefining first person phenomena in third person terms, and denying the coherence of the concepts which this approach struggles with. that's specifically what I don't like. In re: the "hard problem" he wants to declare victory without a fight, or a prize.