On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:09 PM, Stephen P. King <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 9/26/2012 11:29 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > > > On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:24 PM, Stathis Papaioannou > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 3:34 PM, Jason Resch <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> > If it has no causal efficacy, what causes someone to talk about the pain >> > they are experiencing? Is it all coincidental? >> >> There is a sequence of physical events from the application of the >> painful stimulus to the subject saying "that hurts", and this >> completely explains the observable behaviour. > > > But can you separate the consciousness from that sequence of physical > events or not? There are multiple levels involved here and you may be > missing the forest for the trees by focusing only on the atoms. Saying the > consciousness is irrelevant in the processes of the brain may be like > saying human psychology is irrelevant in the price moves of the stock > market. Of course, you might explain the price moves in terms of atomic > interactions, but you are missing the effects of higher-level phenomenon, > which are real and do make a difference. > > >> We can't observe the >> experience itself. > > > I'm not convinced of this. While today, we have difficulty in even > defining the term, in the future, with better tools and understanding of > minds and consciousness, we may indeed be able to tell if a certain process > implements the right combination of processes to have what we would call a > mind. By tracing the flows of information in its mind, we might even know > what it is and isn't aware of. > > Albeit at a low resolution, scientists have already extracted from brain > scans what people are seeing: > > http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16267-mindreading-software-could-record-your-dreams.html > > >> If the experience had separate causal powers we >> would be able to observe its effects: we would see that neurons were >> miraculously firing contrary to physical law, and explain this as the >> immaterial soul affecting the physical world. >> > > It sounds like you are saying either epiphenomenalism is true or > interactionism is true ( > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind)#Dualist_views_of_mental_causation > ). > Both of these are forms of dualism, and I think both are false. > > > Because they assume a substantive and thus separable substrate, the y > are false. > > > > Violations of physics are not required for consciousness to have > effects. After all, no violations of physics are required for human > psychology to have effects on stock prices. > > > Demonstrating that minds are not epiphenomena! > > > Well, it at least shows emergent things can have effects. A truck is an emergent phenomenon, but it can still run you over. So though consciousness might be emergent we can't plainly rule out that it can have no effects. > > >> >> > I find the entire concept of epiphenominalism to be self-defeating: if >> it >> > were true, there is no reason to expect anyone to ever have proposed >> it. If >> > consciousness were truly an epiphenomenon then the experience of it and >> the >> > resulting wonder about it would necessarily be private and >> non-shareable. >> > In other words, whoever is experiencing the consciousness with all its >> > intrigue can in no way effect changes in the physical world. So then >> who is >> > it that proposes the theory of epiphenominalism to explain the mystery >> of >> > conscious experience? It can't be the causally inefficacious >> experiencer. >> > The only consistent answer epiphenominalism can offer is that the >> theory of >> > epiphenominalism comes from a causally efficacious entity which in no >> way is >> > effected by experiences. It might as well be a considered a >> > non-experiencer, for it would behave the same regardless of whether it >> > experienced something or if it were a zombie. >> >> The experiencer would behave the same if he were a zombie, since that >> is the definition of a zombie. > > > Dualist theories, including epiphenominalism, lead to the notion that > zombies are logically consistent. I don't think zombies make any sense. > Do you? > > > These dualisms consider mind and body to be separable, this is where > they fail. If Mind and body are merely distinct aspect of the same basic > primitive then we get a prediction that zombies are not possible. > Right, and I think the converse is also true. If zombies are not possible, then dualism must be wrong. > Every mind must have an embodiment and every body must have (some kind of) > a mind. > > > > >> I know I'm not a zombie and I believe >> that other people aren't zombies either, but I can't be sure. >> > > If you were a zombie, you would still know that you were not a zombie, > and still believe other people are not zombies either, but you could not be > sure. > > > How does this follow the definition of a zombie? They have no qualia > thus no ability to reason about qualia! > Zombies can reason. They can do absolutely everything you can do, except they are not conscious. They are also completely identical and indistinguishable, from you. The only one who could (in principle) know they are a zombie is the zombie itself, but they don't know anything the non-zombie doesn't, for both the zombie and non-zombie brains have identical information content. If you ask it if it is conscious, it will still say yes, and believe it. It will not consider itself to be lying, it will in fact, believe itself to be telling the the truth. There would be no lie detector test to that could detect this lie, the lie is so good, the zombie itself believes it. The zombie is in fact, as certain of its own consciousness as the non-zombie. > > > > This follows because the notion of knowing, which I define as possessing > information, applies equally to zombie and non-zombie brains. Both brains > have identical information content, so they both know exactly the same > things. > > > Then what makes a zombie a zombie??? > > Right, I don't see that the difference makes a difference to anyone or anything, so the truth that there is still some difference must be questioned. If there is no difference then the whole notion of zombies becomes inconsistent. > > They both know what red is like, they both know what pain is like. > It's just there is some magical notion of there being a difference between > them which is completely illogical. Zombies don't make sense, and > therefore neither do dualist theories such as epihenominalism. > > > No, the reports that are uttered by a zombie, if we are consistent are > not reports of knowledge any more than the output of my calculator is > knowledge! > But ask the zombie what it can see, and it can describe everything it sees, inspect its brain and you can see the information flow from the retinas to be processed by the visual cortex, and eventually make it to utterances of what it is looking at. It knows what it is seeing, it's brain contains that knowledge in the same way any other brain does. You can even watch its hippocampus store memories of what it saw, and when you ask it what it saw a few minutes ago, you can watch this knowledge come out of its brain just as it does in a non-zombie brain. So in what sense could its knowledge be any less valid than the knowledge in a non-zombie brain? Remember, zombies are 100% physically identical to their non-zombie counterparts, in every third-person observable way. > > > > >> >> > Epiphenominalism is forced to defend the absurd notion that >> epiphenominalism >> > (and all other theories of consciousness) are proposed by things that >> have >> > never experienced consciousness. Perhaps instead, its core assumption >> is >> > wrong. The reason for all these books and discussion threads about >> > consciousness is that experiences and consciousness are causally >> > efficacious. If they weren't then why is anyone talking about them? >> >> The people talking about them could be zombies. There is nothing in >> any observation of peoples' behaviour that *proves* they are >> conscious, > > > Consciousness is defined on dictionary.com as "awareness of sensations, > thoughts, surrounds, etc." Awareness is defined as "having knowledge". So > we can say consciousness is merely having knowledge of sensations, > thoughts, surroundings, etc. > > > Right, and it is this that zombies lack. > > Zombies can think, understand, solve problems, answer questions, remember, talk about their beliefs, and so on. They just are not conscious of anything when they do these things. So when a zombie thinks/says/understands/believes he is conscious you might say it thinks is wrong or lying. But in what sense is it lying or in what sense is it wrong? Its brain does the same calculations as the other brain that is telling the truth. Its brain contains the same neural patterns as the other brain that has true beliefs. Daniel Dennett says it well: "when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition".[9]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-8> [10]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-Dennett.2C_1995.2C_p._322-9> He coined the term *zimboes* (p-zombies that havesecond-order beliefs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_logic>) to argue that the idea of a p-zombie is incoherent;[11]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-10> "Zimboes thinkZ they are conscious, thinkZ they have qualia, thinkZ they suffer pains – they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could ever discover!" > > It then becomes a straightforward problem of information theory and > computer science to know if a certain system possesses knowledge of those > things or not. > > > Knowledge, at least tacitly, implies the ability to act upon the data, > not just be guided by it. > > > > This isn't startling. Doctors today declare people brain dead and take > them off life support using the same assumptions. If we had no principles > for determining if something is conscious or not, would we still do this? > Do you worry about stepping on rocks because it might hurt them? We have > good reasons not to worry about those things because we assume there are > certain necessary levels of complexity and information processing ability > needed to be conscious. So perhaps if we can tell with reasonable > certainty something is not conscious, we might also be reasonably certain > that a certain other thing IS conscious. > > Proof, is another matter, and likely one we will never get. Your entire > life could be a big delusion and everything you might think you know could > be wrong. We can never really prove anything. > > > Rubbish! You are making perfection the enemy of the possible. We are > fallible and thus can only reason within boundaries and error bars, so. > Does this knock proofs down? NO! > We might be 99.99999% certain of some belief, but I don't know that we can ever be certain. Some non zero amount of doubt regarding the correctness any proof depends on our own consistency/sanity. This is not to say that seeking out explanations, or evidence, or proof is fruitless. So I don't see this leading to an enemy of the good. > > > > >> because consciousness is not causally efficacious. > > > I disagree with this. > > > I agree with your disagreement! > > > > >> It is >> emergent, at a higher level of description, supervenient > > > Right, it could be emergent / supervenient, but that does not mean it is > causally inefficacious. > > You need to look at the counterfactual to say whether or not it is > casually important. Ask "If this thing were not conscious would it still > behave in the same way?" If not, then how can we say that consciousness is > casually inefficacious? > > >> or >> epiphenomenal - but not separately causally efficacious, or the >> problem of other minds and zombies would not exist. >> >> > There is no problem of zombies if you can show the idea to be > inconsistent. > > Jason > > Nice debate! > Thanks, Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
