On 27 Sep 2012, at 04:24, Stathis Papaioannou 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. We can't observe the
experience itself. 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.
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. I know I'm not a zombie and I believe
that other people aren't zombies either, but I can't be sure.
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, because consciousness is not causally efficacious.
You can approximate consciousness by "belief in self-consistency".
This has already a "causal efficacy", notably a relative self-speeding
ability (by Gödel "length of proof" theorem). But "belief in self-
consistency" is pure 3p, and is not consciousness, you get
consciousness because the machine will confuse the belief in self-
consistency with the truth of its self-consistency, and this will
introduce a quale. The machine can be aware of it, and (with enough
cognitive ability) the machine will be aware of its non
communicability, making it into a personal quale.
I think you are doing a confusion level, like if matter was real, and
consciousness only emerging on it. I thought that some times ago you
did understand the movie graph argument, so that it is the illusion of
brain and matter which emerges from consciousness, and this gives
another role for consciousness: the bringing of physical realities
through number relations being selected (non causally, here).
Consciousness is what makes notions of causal efficacy meaningful to
start with.
I think it is the same error as using determinacy to refute free-will.
This would be correct if we were living at the determinist base level,
but we are not. Consciousness and free-will are real at the level
where we live, and unreal, in the big 3p picture, but this concerns
only the "outer god", not the "inner one" which can *know* a part of
its local self-consistency, and cannot know its local future.
Bruno
It is
emergent, at a higher level of description, supervenient or
epiphenomenal - but not separately causally efficacious, or the
problem of other minds and zombies would not exist.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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