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Certainly Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. Chalmers is not a physicalist, and the logical/metaphysical possibility of zombies forms part of his

by foldr 3y ago

Certainly Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. Chalmers is not a physicalist, and the logical/metaphysical possibility of zombies forms part of his argument against physicalism. If you want, you can just stamp your foot down and insist on physicalism (and thereby dismiss whole swathes of the philosophical literature on consciousness), but from Chalmers' point of view you'd just be begging the important questions. My point regarding Dennett is that his overall picture of consciousness also contains highly counterintuitive elements (such as e.g. his denial of any form of privileged access [1], which is not just an ad-hoc speculation tacked on to his main theory but a necessary consequence of it). I agree that Chalmers' epiphenominalism is counterintuitive too. I don't think anyone has succeeded in arriving at an overall philosophical account of consciousness that is entirely satisfying and free of implausible or counterintuitive elements. I think it's important to have a certain amount of empathy here and understand that people genuinely differ in their plausibility judgments in this domain. For example, I personally find epiphenomenalism, though implausible, to be less implausible than the denial of privileged access; I suspect you have the inverse judgment. It is unclear how to weigh these sorts of considerations against each other. [1] > I see no other way to force this issue into the open than to defend an admittedly counterintuitive theory and await enlightenment on what, exactly, I have left out. The view that I wish to defend is that our privileged access extends to no images, sensations, impressions, raw feels, or phenomenal properties at all. There are indeed all sorts of interesting things going on in our heads that have characteristics or play roles that might tempt us to call them images or sensations or impressions, but our access to these events is not only not privileged; it is highly indirect, inferential and uncertain. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-9479-9_6 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-9479-9_...

pdonis 3y ago
> Certainly Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. Ok, good, we agree on that. > his denial of any form of privileged access Not of any form, no. Dennett was fine with the notion that we have privileged access to what it is like to be us (to use Thomas Nagel's phrase--Dennett's often-used term was "heterophenomenological world"). We have a direct experience of what it is like to be us, and that experience is real. Dennett just insisted that that, in itself, tells us nothing about how accurate our "what it is like to be us" is as a representation of the underlying processes going on in our brains. There are indeed images, sensations, raw feels, phenomenal properties in our "what it is like to be us"--in Dennett's terms, those are indeed intentional objects in our heterophenomenological worlds. But that, in itself, does not mean that, for example, if we say we have a mental image, there must actually be an image somewhere in our brains. There are real underlying processes going on, but we can't infer from our direct experience of having a mental image that any of those underlying processes involve images. > I think it's important to have a certain amount of empathy here It's not a matter of empathy; it's a matter of being consistent about the implications of one's views. I'm a physicalist, just as Dennett was. You agree that, for example, Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. No amount of "empathy" can overcome that contradiction. I have to pick one or the other. I pick physicalism, not because of any lack of "empathy" for Chalmers or anyone else, but because, all things considered, that's what I pick. And having picked physicalism, I have to deny that Zombie-Chalmers is a valid concept, in order to be consistent. Just as Chalmers, to be consistent with his belief that Zombie-Chalmers is a valid concept, has to deny physicalism.
- foldr 3y ago
  Pretty much everyone agrees that the existence of a distinction between zombie and non-zombie Chalmers is inconsistent with strong physicalism. That is the whole point. Regarding empathy, I'm saying that you appear not to understand why physicalism might not be the non-negotiable ur-assumption for someone else that it is for you. Chalmers is arguing against physicalism, so to point out that his position is inconsistent with it is not a very interesting response. You're certainly free to make your own judgment about the centrality of physicalism to your belief system; it just doesn't work as a rejoinder to Chalmers' arguments. We could have an extended discussion of exactly which aspects of privileged access Dennett denies, but the broader point here is that he himself acknowledges the counterintuitive nature of his position on it. > [Physicalism] is everybody's default assumption when dealing with anything that matters in practical terms. No, it isn't. People assume that things which they take to be physical objects (such as cars) will obey physical laws. They can perfectly well do this without the additional assumption that the contents of the universe are exhausted by physical entities. Indeed, when dealing with people (who surely matter in practical terms!) it is probably a minority of the world's population who assume them to be wholly physical. The idea that non-physicalists must be worried about their cars exhibiting ghostly non-physical behavior is just silly. It is like saying that someone who does not believe that everything in the universe is made of wood must be worried that their wooden table might actually be made of chocolate. Believing in the existence of non-wooden things doesn't preclude treating wooden things as instances thereof. Almost everyone believes that there exist wholly physical objects governed wholly by physical laws, even if they don't think that all objects fall under this category.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > you appear not to understand why physicalism might not be the non-negotiable ur-assumption for someone else that it is for you Oh, I understand that just fine. I just don't agree with non-physicalists. I could equally well say that non-physicalists who claim that Dennett denied the reality of consciousness do not understand why their implicit assumption that consciousness must be something non-physical is not the non-negotiable ur-assumption for Dennett (and me) that it is for them. They simply fail to understand that physicalists like Dennett and me are not saying that consciousness doesn't exist. We're just saying that it's a physical process. Real consciousness--real feelings of pain, suffering, joy, and everything else that phenomenalists wax poetic about--is a physical process. It is no answer at all to say that, gee, I can't imagine how that could possibly be true, so I'm going to assume you actually mean that all those things don't exist. But that's basically what Dennett's critics have said for decades. You talk about empathy: I think that line of criticism shows an astounding lack of empathy. > People assume that things which they take to be physical objects (such as cars) will obey physical laws. No, they don't. Most people have no idea what the actual applicable physical laws are. People assume that things they are familiar with will show the regularities they are familiar with them having. Those regularities, to a physicalist, are all grounded ultimately in underlying physical laws, but the connection is very complex, even for objects much simpler than cars. Scientists still don't completely understand how molecules work in terms of the underlying laws of physics of atoms and elementary particles. That doesn't stop them from being able to build accurate models of molecules using higher-level regularities. The physicalist program for consciousness is simply applying to it the same methods we already apply successfully to all sorts of complex systems.
pdonis 3y ago
> you can just stamp your foot down and insist on physicalism (and thereby dismiss whole swathes of the philosophical literature on consciousness), but from Chalmers' point of view you'd just be begging the important questions And to Dennett (and me), as a physicalist, Chalmers's claim that zombies are a coherent concept is begging the important questions. So if we're going to take that approach, we're just at an unresolvable impasse. However, physicalism is not just a doctrinaire assumption. It's everybody's default assumption when dealing with anything that matters in practical terms. If Chalmers has a problem with his car, he's going to assume there is some physical reason for it and take it to a mechanic. He's not going to wonder if his car has lost some non-physical essence of carhood and become a zombie car. And cognitive science is taking a similar approach to consciousness, finding physical processes that underlie various conscious activities of people's minds (as well as unconscious ones). Dennett simply said that he expects that that process is sufficient to explain consciousness. Chalmers disagrees (as do many others), saying that no matter how many discoveries cognitive science makes, it will never fully explain consciousness. In the end, though, neither Chalmers nor Dennett nor any other philosopher is going to resolve that issue just by making arguments. Ultimately it's going to come down to whether, once we have enough cognitive science under our belts, our intuitions about what that science is telling us will change or not. Particularly if, once we have enough cognitive science under our belt, we are able to build robots that are behaviorally indistinguishable from human beings, that tell us they are conscious and describe their conscious experiences the same way humans do. Some like Chalmers (or Searle) might still remain holdouts even then, saying that those robots are actually zombies, unlike us humans (because, in Searle's terms, our human brains have biological "causal powers" that the robots' brains don't), but those claims will seem a lot less plausible in the face of the actual existence of such robots. Or perhaps it will turn out that we are never able to build such robots, and cognitive science ends up hitting blank walls where it is simply unable to account for some aspects of human consciousness, in which case our intuitions will go the other way, making Chalmers and Searle seem a lot more plausible and Dennett seem a lot less so. We'll see. I know which way I'm betting (and which way Dennett did), but we'll see.

by foldr 3y ago

pdonis 3y ago

> Certainly Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. Ok, good, we agree on that. > his denial of any form of privileged access Not of any form, no. Dennett was fine with the notion that we have privileged access to what it is like to be us (to use Thomas Nagel's phrase--Dennett's often-used term was "heterophenomenological world"). We have a direct experience of what it is like to be us, and that experience is real. Dennett just insisted that that, in itself, tells us nothing about how accurate our "what it is like to be us" is as a representation of the underlying processes going on in our brains. There are indeed images, sensations, raw feels, phenomenal properties in our "what it is like to be us"--in Dennett's terms, those are indeed intentional objects in our heterophenomenological worlds. But that, in itself, does not mean that, for example, if we say we have a mental image, there must actually be an image somewhere in our brains. There are real underlying processes going on, but we can't infer from our direct experience of having a mental image that any of those underlying processes involve images. > I think it's important to have a certain amount of empathy here It's not a matter of empathy; it's a matter of being consistent about the implications of one's views. I'm a physicalist, just as Dennett was. You agree that, for example, Zombie-Chalmers is inconsistent with physicalism. No amount of "empathy" can overcome that contradiction. I have to pick one or the other. I pick physicalism, not because of any lack of "empathy" for Chalmers or anyone else, but because, all things considered, that's what I pick. And having picked physicalism, I have to deny that Zombie-Chalmers is a valid concept, in order to be consistent. Just as Chalmers, to be consistent with his belief that Zombie-Chalmers is a valid concept, has to deny physicalism.

foldr 3y ago
Pretty much everyone agrees that the existence of a distinction between zombie and non-zombie Chalmers is inconsistent with strong physicalism. That is the whole point. Regarding empathy, I'm saying that you appear not to understand why physicalism might not be the non-negotiable ur-assumption for someone else that it is for you. Chalmers is arguing against physicalism, so to point out that his position is inconsistent with it is not a very interesting response. You're certainly free to make your own judgment about the centrality of physicalism to your belief system; it just doesn't work as a rejoinder to Chalmers' arguments. We could have an extended discussion of exactly which aspects of privileged access Dennett denies, but the broader point here is that he himself acknowledges the counterintuitive nature of his position on it. > [Physicalism] is everybody's default assumption when dealing with anything that matters in practical terms. No, it isn't. People assume that things which they take to be physical objects (such as cars) will obey physical laws. They can perfectly well do this without the additional assumption that the contents of the universe are exhausted by physical entities. Indeed, when dealing with people (who surely matter in practical terms!) it is probably a minority of the world's population who assume them to be wholly physical. The idea that non-physicalists must be worried about their cars exhibiting ghostly non-physical behavior is just silly. It is like saying that someone who does not believe that everything in the universe is made of wood must be worried that their wooden table might actually be made of chocolate. Believing in the existence of non-wooden things doesn't preclude treating wooden things as instances thereof. Almost everyone believes that there exist wholly physical objects governed wholly by physical laws, even if they don't think that all objects fall under this category.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > you appear not to understand why physicalism might not be the non-negotiable ur-assumption for someone else that it is for you Oh, I understand that just fine. I just don't agree with non-physicalists. I could equally well say that non-physicalists who claim that Dennett denied the reality of consciousness do not understand why their implicit assumption that consciousness must be something non-physical is not the non-negotiable ur-assumption for Dennett (and me) that it is for them. They simply fail to understand that physicalists like Dennett and me are not saying that consciousness doesn't exist. We're just saying that it's a physical process. Real consciousness--real feelings of pain, suffering, joy, and everything else that phenomenalists wax poetic about--is a physical process. It is no answer at all to say that, gee, I can't imagine how that could possibly be true, so I'm going to assume you actually mean that all those things don't exist. But that's basically what Dennett's critics have said for decades. You talk about empathy: I think that line of criticism shows an astounding lack of empathy. > People assume that things which they take to be physical objects (such as cars) will obey physical laws. No, they don't. Most people have no idea what the actual applicable physical laws are. People assume that things they are familiar with will show the regularities they are familiar with them having. Those regularities, to a physicalist, are all grounded ultimately in underlying physical laws, but the connection is very complex, even for objects much simpler than cars. Scientists still don't completely understand how molecules work in terms of the underlying laws of physics of atoms and elementary particles. That doesn't stop them from being able to build accurate models of molecules using higher-level regularities. The physicalist program for consciousness is simply applying to it the same methods we already apply successfully to all sorts of complex systems.

pdonis 3y ago

> you can just stamp your foot down and insist on physicalism (and thereby dismiss whole swathes of the philosophical literature on consciousness), but from Chalmers' point of view you'd just be begging the important questions And to Dennett (and me), as a physicalist, Chalmers's claim that zombies are a coherent concept is begging the important questions. So if we're going to take that approach, we're just at an unresolvable impasse. However, physicalism is not just a doctrinaire assumption. It's everybody's default assumption when dealing with anything that matters in practical terms. If Chalmers has a problem with his car, he's going to assume there is some physical reason for it and take it to a mechanic. He's not going to wonder if his car has lost some non-physical essence of carhood and become a zombie car. And cognitive science is taking a similar approach to consciousness, finding physical processes that underlie various conscious activities of people's minds (as well as unconscious ones). Dennett simply said that he expects that that process is sufficient to explain consciousness. Chalmers disagrees (as do many others), saying that no matter how many discoveries cognitive science makes, it will never fully explain consciousness. In the end, though, neither Chalmers nor Dennett nor any other philosopher is going to resolve that issue just by making arguments. Ultimately it's going to come down to whether, once we have enough cognitive science under our belts, our intuitions about what that science is telling us will change or not. Particularly if, once we have enough cognitive science under our belt, we are able to build robots that are behaviorally indistinguishable from human beings, that tell us they are conscious and describe their conscious experiences the same way humans do. Some like Chalmers (or Searle) might still remain holdouts even then, saying that those robots are actually zombies, unlike us humans (because, in Searle's terms, our human brains have biological "causal powers" that the robots' brains don't), but those claims will seem a lot less plausible in the face of the actual existence of such robots. Or perhaps it will turn out that we are never able to build such robots, and cognitive science ends up hitting blank walls where it is simply unable to account for some aspects of human consciousness, in which case our intuitions will go the other way, making Chalmers and Searle seem a lot more plausible and Dennett seem a lot less so. We'll see. I know which way I'm betting (and which way Dennett did), but we'll see.