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The Zombie Argument and its Implications
Submitted by Scott Scheule on Mon, 2008-06-16 11:59.
I wish to clarify my thoughts on the zombie argument for dualism. There are two issues I've puzzled over lately: 1. Chalmers's defense of epiphenomenalism, and 2. Whether the proper interpretation of the zombie argument is the disjunctive: Type-D (interactionist dualism), Type E (epiphenomenalism), or Type-F (panprotopsychism) as Chalmers claims, or--as his opponents claim--the only option, if the zombie argument goes through, is Type-E dualism, i.e. epiphenomenalism.
I discuss the latter first.
To recount, the zombie argument goes like this: If we can conceive of physically identical versions of ourselves that nonetheless lack consciousness, then such beings are logically possible. If such beings are logically possible, consciousness is not logically entailed by physical facts alone. Hence, physicalism is false and some form of dualism is true.
The forms of this true dualism on the table are as follows: 1. Type-D dualism: interactionist dualism. Consciousness, though non-physical, can have effects on the physical world. 2. Type-E dualism is epiphenomenalism, in which consciousness has no effect on the physical world. 3. Type-F dualism is panprotopsychism, in which the essence of the physical is in fact consciousness, or protoconscious properties. I'm not familiar with Type-F dualism, and will not discuss it in depth.
NB: I am not sure where Leibniz's parallelism would fit. It is closest to, but not, Type-E, and should probably be classed alone as Type-P.
Type-E dualism is the easiest target, because it leads to the odd question of how we're able to talk about consciousness if it has no causal power. Assuming this criticism is good—as later I will deny—the opponent of the zombie argument would be much advantaged if he could prove the only possible outcome of the argument is Type-E dualism, and not the more defensible full disjunctive of Types D through F.
The argument to show that only Type-E dualism is an option to the zombie proponent goes like this: the zombie argument requires a mirror of the physical world without consciousness. If consciousness has physical effects, we cannot mirror the physical world without it. Ergo, the only option left to the zombie proponent is the brand that contains a consciousness that has no effect on the physical world--Type-E dualism.
Chalmers, in correspondence, denies the second line in the argument: "If consciousness has physical effects, we cannot mirror the physical world without it." This is wrong, says Chalmers, because we can mirror the physical world sans consciousness even if consciousness has physical effects: the result will be a world where some physical events occur, but without causes (those events that would have been caused by consciousness were consciousness not removed from the world). Odd, yes, but it remains logically possible--which is all the zombie argument requires to go through.
When Chalmers made this point to me, I was unsure if it worked, because I wasn't sure that effects without causes were logically possible. The more I reflect on it, however, the more I think Professor Chalmers is correct. I can conceive of effects without causes. Indeed, as I pointed out to Chalmers, if the universe we have had a beginning, it might very well have been a causeless effect.
The result is that the dualist can retain casually efficacious consciousness, even through the zombie argument. He has all options on his plate: Types D through F.
As to the second issue, that of Type-E dualism and Chalmers's defense, remember the question is "How can we talk about consciousness if consciousness has no effect?"
Chalmers's move is to deny a causal theory of reference: to wit, he denies that we need to have a causal connection to things we reference. Chalmers's zombie twin says: "I am conscious" and is wrong. Chalmers says "I am conscious" and is right. Even if his own consciousness has no connection to what Chalmers is saying, what Chalmers says is nonetheless true. His consciousness has not caused the belief, it is the belief. Ergo, says Chalmers, epiphenomenalism remains viable.
I see nothing wrong with the argument. The only objections I've found have been ones insisting that a causal theory of reference must be true. Richard Chappell, on his blog and in correspondence, points out that it surely is not—we can speak of, for instance, the dead space outside the boundaries of our light cone, or things that don't exist, like unicorns. Neither of these can have any causal influence on us, and yet we refer to them easily.
I know of no counter.
If these defenses succeed, the metaphysical landscape is as follows: the zombie argument, if its premises are correct, proves that physicalism is false and some form of dualism is true. Type-D, Type-E, and Type-F dualisms are all possible candidates. Type-E dualism, though superficially flawed, remains viable.
It should be noted that Chalmers admits the zombie argument is weaker than the inverted spectrum argument, et al, so we are dealing with one of the more easily criticized arguments for dualism. Nonetheless, I see no flaw.
References
Chalmers's extensive analysis of the zombie argument, among others, occurs in his The Conscious Mind. This is also where he presents his defense of epiphenomenalism. One can also find a more specific presentation in his paper, The Content and Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief, available here. Richard Chappell has an easily understood summary of that argument on his own blog, here.
For a more thorough explanation of varieties of dualism and materialism, see Chalmers's paper Consciousness and its Place in Nature, available online here.
Chappell's argument against a causal theory of reference is on his blog, here.
Update: I don't plan on responding to points Chalmers has answered elsewhere; that would be boring and unproductive. Those looking for responses to their questions can find Chalmers's publications on consciousness, including those I have not listed above, here. His online collection of papers on consciousness, by himself and other authors, is here. I once again stress his paper on the epistemology of phenomenal belief, which is apropos and contains the counterargument, referenced and briefly summed above, in minute philosophical detail.
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Logical entailment
Very little follows from lack of logical entailment. Llack of logical entailment cannot carry the burden that Chalmers places on it. Reductive explanations modify the language, altering it to introduce logical entailment between low-level facts and high-level facts. Water had in fact but not in logic always been H2O. Before the discovery of the identity the English language (along with all other languages) contained in itself no logical (formal, usable in logical deductions) connection between water and H2O. Once the discovery was made, then the fact that water was in fact H2O could be internalized by the language, making the fact of the identiy accessible for the first time to arguments proceeding by logical deduction.
Logical connections await discovery. Before it was discovered that the evening star was the same object as the morning star (if there ever was a "before" - this is a common philosophical hypothetical case, don't know if it's historically accurate), then the language as it existed was not usable to deduce their identity by means of pure deductive argument - that is, logically. The statement, "the evening star is Venus" did not logically entail the statement, "the morning star is Venus". You could have visited the finest logicians of the time, and not a single one of them would have found a way to logically deduce the identity of the morning star and the evening star. Once it was realized that they were the same star, then "the morning star" would be accepted in the dictionaries as referring to the same entity as "the evening star", and then, and only then, would the statement "the evening star is Venus" logically entail the statement "the morning star is Venus".
The only objection that I can see to the above is for you to assert that logical entailment means more than merely what the finest logicians of the day are able to deduce, means more even than what a perfect logician (who can deduce anything deducible in principle) living in that day and limited to the language as it existed in that day was able to deduce.
First of all, I'm not actually sure what you could possibly mean by "logical entailment" at a certain time in a certain language if you think it goes beyond what the logicians of the day (even idealized logicians of the day) would be able to derive purely by rigorous logical deduction.
Second of all, if you mean something stronger, then the inference from conceivability to logical deduction is weakened. After all, it was conceivable to people at a certain time that water was not H2O and that the evening star was not the morning star. Surely you don't want to make too much out of that.
What I foresee for consciousness, by the way, is that scientific advance will be accompanied by linguistic innovation - as it was in the case of water - and that in the language of the future physical facts will indeed logically entail what people in the future mean by consciousness. Linguistic innovation will moreover render the inverted spectrum argument logically inaccessible. You can't coherently talk about inverting the spectrum if, for example, in a descriptive language created for the spectrum in which the points of the spectrum are defined purely in terms of their relationship to each other and to referents in the real world. It would be a change similar to the change made when physics abandoned the notion of absolute rest, replacing it with the notion of multiple "rest frames".
I am sure that Chalmers, if he took interest, would be able to wipe the floor with me. I am no match, especially now, since I have barely thought about the subject in the nearly two decades since we discussed consciousness. In fact I would have preferred to find something, anything else on the web that took up the challenge - let the professional philosophers battle the professional philosophers - but sadly I have been able to find very little, possibly because Chalmers's argument is truly that irrefutable, but more likely, I think, because it hasn't received all that much attention in recent years.
Entailment and H2O
Hi Constant, three quick points in response:
(1) Chalmers' zombie argument has received a heap of philosophical attention -- see here.
(2) "Entailment" is standardly defined in terms of possible worlds. P entails Q iff there is no logically possible world where P is true and yet Q false (i.e. the Q worlds are a subset of the P worlds).
(3) I address the 'water = H2O' analogy here. For (much, much) more on conceivability-possibility inferences, see my paper 'modal rationalism'.
1 2 3
1) Okay, but this does not solve my problem, which is to find a professional answer so that I don't have to answer. I've clicked through to the five most promising-looking ones, and they aren't what I'm looking for. I'm actually a bit surprised and annoyed, because I am sure that there has been discussion along the lines I'm looking for, and I'm not finding it.
2) Since I find little helpful on what exactly is a possible world, I will say that a possible world is a lingo, a way of talking about a description in a given language, which description is not self-contradictory according to the logic - by which I mean the formal inferential structure - of the language. Thus, in the language(s) spoken by people prior to the discovery that H2O equals water, it was not self-contradictory to assert that H2O is not water, and therefore it was correct, at that time and in that language, to talk about a possible world in which H2O is not water. However, once it became known that H2O is water, then this was accepted into the language as a newly discovered true statement (and therefore, from the point of view of logical inference, as a new axiom). At this point, the statement that H2O is not water became self-contradictory, since (by simple substitution in accordance with the new axiom) this statement was true iff H2O is not H2O, which has the form A is not A and therefore is a self-contradiction.
Now, the only way I can see to deny any of the above is to assert that my concept of a possible world is wrong. It is not merely a roundabout way of talking about a description which fails to contradict itself according to the logic of the language. Rather, it is a roundabout way of talking about a description which fails to contradict itself even when an omniscient being fills in all the missing axioms (axioms like, water is H2O).
But then the problem is that we are ourself a semi-ignorant society. There are many axioms missing from our current language - which is to say neither more nor less than that there are many scientific discoveries which we have yet to make. We do not know ahead of time what these axioms will be. Since we do not know this ahead of time, we do not know whether there is a possible world which is a zombie world - for the exact same reason that logicians of the sufficiently distant and ignorant past had no way of knowing whether there was a possible world in which water is not H2O.
3) Your argument doesn't seem to address mine. If a possible world is merely a roundabout way of talking about a description which is not self-contradictory (at least, not within the logical inferential structure of the language itself as it exists at the current moment in time, ignoring the future logical impact of undiscovered scientific truths once they are introduced into the language as new axioms), then I am happy to stipulate that there is a Zombie world without phenomenal stuff. But if a possible world corresponds to a description which is not and never will be self-contradictory even once all the science is done - how do I have any way of knowing that now?
Science doesn't affect logical space
"we do not know whether there is a possible world which is a zombie world - for the exact same reason that logicians of the sufficiently distant and ignorant past had no way of knowing whether there was a possible world in which water is not H2O."
You might want to re-read the linked post of mine more closely. My point was precisely that scientific discoveries do not shrink the space of possibilities. You are misunderstanding the significance of the claim that water is necessarily H2O. This doesn't tell us anything at all about how the possible worlds are that we didn't already know. All that has changed is how we describe them.
To repeat: We once thought there was a possible world, let's call it "Twin Earth", which had a certain qualitative nature: the lakes and rivers of Twin Earth are filled with some non-H2O substance, some other watery stuff, let's call it XYZ. Because of this, we might have been tempted to describe this as a world in which 'water isn't H2O'. Later, scientists discover that the watery stuff in our world - what we call 'water' - is H2O. Since we are committed to using 'water' to refer to 'the actual watery stuff', whatever it may be -- H2O, as it happens -- we will no longer describe Twin Earth as a possible world in which 'water isn't H2O'. That sentence won't apply to it. But we still think that Twin Earth is a possible world, with the same qualitative nature we always thought it had.
Even after all our scientific discoveries so far, none of them change the fact that there is a possible world where the watery stuff is not H2O. (We just don't apply the word 'water' to that other stuff; but this is mere semantics.) Similarly, after any future scientific discoveries, if you think that the zombie world is currently logically possible, it will still be logically possible in future, just like Twin Earth. (Certain words might apply differently, but we can avoid that by using a purely descriptive/qualitative vocabulary, e.g. 'watery stuff' rather than names or rigid designators like 'water'.)
And, since you grant there is a possible world where the (physical duplicate) human-ish creatures lack any phenomenal-ish aspect, it follows that the physical-ish stuff does not strictly suffice for the phenomenal-ish stuff. That is: materialism is false.
Same physics
The zombie world has the same physics as our world. Is it unreasonable to insist that Twin Earth have the same physics as our world?
Under the constraint that Twin Earth has the same physics as our world, in fact the only chemical that can take the role of water is H2O. It is the only chemical that will freeze at that temperature, boil at that temperature, have that color, interact in that way with other chemicals, and so on and so forth. The only one that will do all these things.
If it is true that science doesn't affect logical space, then before the discovery that water was H2O, XYZ Twin Earth under the constraint of same physics was not a possible world, and yet people did not know that XYZ Twin Earth under the constraint of same physics is not a possible world. Generalizing, people do not know what is or is not a possible world under the constraint of same physics. What people believe to be a possible world under the constraint of same physics, may in fact not be a possible world.
Same applies to zombie world, however you describe it.
A Specified Physics
We're approaching the crux of the issue. Of course we can't make judgments of 'sameness' about other worlds until we know what we're comparing them to, i.e. until we know about our world. But 'sameness' is a shortcut. What really matters is the specification of physics itself. Let 'L' abbreviate the full specification of the laws of physics. We won't know a priori that L correctly describes the physics of the actual world. But one could know a priori that L is logically incompatible with Twin Earth. So the conjunction "Twin Earth and L" was never logically possible.
Similarly, let 'P' abbreviate the full specification of (third-personal, non-experiential) microphysical truths. We don't know a priori that P [written out in full] is actual. And, right now, we admittedly don't know exactly what P says. But we have some idea: enough, perhaps, to be reasonably confident that P does not entail Q (where 'Q' stands for some fact about our phenomenal experiences). Whatever the precise details of P might be, it's a general principle (most plausibly) that you can't get from facts about causal structure and function to facts about phenomenal experience. Or so the property dualist will suggest. (Obviously it's open to the materialist to deny this, but it seems awfully ad hoc of them.)
Reply to Richard
Laying my cards on the table. Here's what I think. I think that conscious experiences and the physical world are the same thing in the same sense as water and H2O are the same thing. The difference between H2O and water is a matter of perspective. Alternatively, we might call it a matter of approach, or a matter of coordinate system. We can perceive the same thing from different angles; we can approach it from different directions; we can describe it using different coordinate systems. What these three things (perspective, approach, coordinate system) have in common is that there are multiple perspectives, approaches, coordinate systems available for perceiving, approaching, or representing the same thing. I believe that the multiplicity of perspectives, of approaches, and of coordinate systems has the potential to create an illusion that a single thing is multiple things. The same thing perceived from different angles, approached from different directions, and represented in different ways can seem to be two distinct things.
If we take a cup of water and hold it up to our face we see what we have long recognized as water. If we take that same cup of water and examine it with the help of various scientific instruments we observe what we have for some time recognized as H2O.
The same is true, I believe, of conscious experience.
With this in mind, let us consider once again the parallel between H2O/water and physics/consciousness.
Part of the problem is ignorance. We don't know at this time exactly how to think of experience and its relationship to the world. The functionalists have one idea; others have different ideas. In order to proceed so that I can deliver the point I am trying to deliver, I need to pick one of these hypotheses. I'm asking that it be accepted for now for the sake of communication. Let's say that a certain conscious experience is the firing of a certain neuron in the brain. (I'm well aware of many philosophical arguments against this - I pick this hypothesis not because it is most likely, but because it is the one easiest to deal with for my current purpose.)
Suppose, then, that a certain conscious experience is the firing of a certain neuron. A scientist observing the firing of the neuron in someone else's brain is in fact witnessing that other person's conscious experience, though he does not realize it because it appears to him under the guise of a firing neuron. Meanwhile, the person whose neuron is firing is witnessing his own conscious experience. The second person immediately recognizes this as a certain sort of conscious experience, and he is analogous to a person holding up a cup of water and witnessing that it is water. The scientist meanwhile is analogous to someone who examines the cup of water with the help of scientific instruments and discovers that it is H2O. These two individuals have, in truth, not witnessed two distinct things (a neuron firing, a conscious experience) but rather a single thing, which appears under two guises when examined from two perspectives.
Now let us consider XYZ Twin Earth in the light of all this. In XYZ Twin Earth, there is watery stuff (but it is not water, where water is H2O, it is XYZ). Recall what you wrote earlier:
(I have replaced your emphasis with mine to pick out what is most relevant here)
Applying the analogy we've been looking at just now (water:H20::experience:neuron-firing), then analogy to XYZ Twin Earth would be a world where something looks to the individual like the same experience as before, but in place of the neuron firing the scientist with his instruments observes something different. This is actually the reverse of the zombie world idea, so we need to flip around XYZ Twin Earth to create an analogy to zombie world. But before we do this, it may be instructive to add in the laws-of-physics constraints. In a world with our physics, the only thing that can seem like water from the perspective of someone handling water in a mundane way is, in fact, H2O. Anything else would look different or smell different or feel different or something different. The neuron analogy is this: only a firing neuron will look, to the person whose neuron it is, like a conscious experience. Substitute anything else and it will behave sufficiently differently that it cannot fill the shoes of the firing neuron. (This comes close to one of Searle's theses - but keep in mind that this is a consequence of the choice that I made earlier between different hypotheses about consciousness. Had it instead adopted a functionalist hypothesis, the result might have been different.)
Now let us flip XYZ Twin Earth. To start, we imagine that the same neuron fires in the same way but there is no conscious experience. The Twin Earth analogy is that H2O does not fill the day to day role of water. So XYZ drops out of this; what we are now talking about is H2O, and we are imagining a world in which H2O is not watery stuff. The corresponding logical possibility to the possibility of zombie world is the possibility of a world in which H2O is not watery stuff. Since we are applying physical-law constraints, the more precise analogy is the possibility of a world with our physics in which H2O is not watery stuff.
This, I would like to propose, is in fact impossible, even if it is conceivable to someone who does not understand the physics of water. And anogously, I would like to propose that zombie world may in fact be impossible.
Using Eliezer
Possibly a better analogy to the inverted spectrum argument and its potential dissolution into incoherence, is Eliezer's discussion of inverted particle locations. Suppose you have two particles of the same type in different locations. Now imagine that they are exchanged: the first particle is now in the location that the second particle was at, and vice versa. As Eliezer points out, this is not a distinct state of affairs. It is the same state of affairs as the state we started out with. Particles do not have individual identity. As Eliezer writes (to pick one out of many similar statements):
Trying to prove the epiphenomenality of consciousness by the inverted spectrum argument is a bit like trying to prove the epiphenomenality of particle location by the inverted particle location argument. To extend this example to the discussion of logical possibility: until language incorporated the fact of the illusion of individuality, then it was logically possible (in the logic of the language) for the two particles to switch places and for this to be a distinct state of affairs. Once the language incorporates the discovery that photons have no individuality, then and only then does it become logically impossible, in the logic of that language, for the two photons to switch places and for this to be a distinct state of affairs. Similarly, even if, in today's language, a zombie world is logically possible, that does not mean it always be logically possible. A scientific discovery can alter the language for discussing consciousness, as QM altered the language for discussing particles.
Eliezer also likes to talk a lot about confusing the map with the territory. This metaphor is easily applied to what I am saying about the use of a lack of logical entailment to draw strong conclusions about reality. Lack of logical entailment is analogous to a hole in the map (in this case, the language whose logic lacks a certain entailment). It cannot be used to deduce a hole in reality.
Imagination and logically possiblility
Haven't read the other comments but the error is in this paragraph. I don't feel like making an detailed argument but perhaps you can see the problem with a few substitutions.
Now you may well say, "... but given what "we" know we cannot imagine physically identical beings that are invisible". Well then just imagine a child or a pre-scientific person imagining this. That is given sufficient ignorance we can imagine pretty much anything.
Since we are extremely ignorant of consciousness we can certainly imagine more than we would if we understood it. Especially if we understood it's future-to-be-known physical nature.
Chalmers is a simple philosophical mistake. Just because we can imagins something in our ignorance doesn't mean it's "logically possibile".
Reading suggestion
Brian, you might try reading something by Chalmers, e.g. his 'Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?', which distinguishes 'Prima Facie Vs. Ideal Conceivability' in the very first section.
My post 'How To Imagine Zombies' also goes some way to addressing your concern. We are not just imagining the sentence "a physical duplicate of me lacks X". Rather, the proposition we take to be logically possible is that [insert full microphysical description of the duplicate] lacks X.
(As a general rule, apparent "simple philosophical mistakes" are more often simple misunderstandings.)
Simple philosophical mistakes
Possibly. And yet great philosophers do make mistakes which, in retrospect, are enormous. The mistake that David Chalmers's argument reminds me most of is the ontological proof of God's existence. From Wikipedia:
The argument is absurd on its face, it may be one of the most ludicrous arguments in all of philosophy, because of the way it infers reality from concept. And David Chalmers's argument, as described above by Scott, makes a similar move. It starts with concept, and ends with reality, and it looks suspiciously similar on the way. I think that in retrospect philosophers will find the argument ludicrous - as some philosophers do already.
OK, I tried reading some of
OK, I tried reading some of "Conceivability Entail Possibility" and I come across this:
That doesn't seem concievable to me. There is an issue of semantics here. Does the word "meter" even mean the same thing in a "world with different laws" where things can travel faster than the speed of light? I contend that meter does not carry the same semantics in worlds with "different laws". So the very example he wishes to sway me with the obviousness of fails. Doesn't matter what definition of "concieve" he comes up with.
He defines Ideal Conceivabilty thusly.
This is easy enough to understand and quite imaginary.
Now that I've read that section in full and skimmed the definitions for several of his other notions of conceivability I don't see how it helps his position at all.
I'm not of the opinion that pure a-priori reasoning can get you very far. For instance I don't believe that even if you had a " full microphysical description" of something you could reason out all it's properties and implications in full.
So it wouldn't surprise me at all that if you had a "full microphysical description of the duplicate" that you wouldn't be able to deduce consciousness from that description. Hell, I don't think you'd be able to reason out the "name" of the duplicate if you didn't know who was duplicated on a purely physical description.
Furthermore the description of a single person might not be enough information in the first place. You might need to describe not only the particles that make up that person but also the entire universe in order to properly represent "who" they are. Consciousness may be a property of immersion and interaction with the world.
If I pull the hard drive out of my computer and use it as a paperweight does it still "store and retrieve data"? If I extract it completely from the universe as some partial discription how will the reasoner know that it was part of a computer and not the apex of a stack of paper?
I also read your post and there was a commenter there doing a pretty bang up job criticizing it. Critics understand that things can be built bottom up and that is even more problematic.
You seem to think you can deduce things about the system from the outside merely by looking at the physical description. I don't believe that is possible for at least three reasons. I think reason is limited. I think first person perspective is important. I think physical context is important. I've discussed the first let me cover the second and third.
I think you need first person human perspective to have true human moral understanding. A third person supra-intelligence capable of deducing consciousness from physicality is not going to have that perspective. So, in fact, it will not be able to grasp on a gut level why one should not murder another human. It will in fact feel no compunction about killing humans whatsoever.
Human moral understanding is NOT the result of a single person tabula-rasa figuring things out for themselves. It's an iterative process. Having the description of a single person is not enought to "deduce" such. Having a bunch of people is not enough. In fact, moral understanding is also historically contingent.
First person perspective includes all these things. History, memory, being plugged into a universe, being in a place, having referents.
For instance, how is a being going to deduce from the physical description of me what it means to say "I loved Donna". That is, without the description of Donna? Hell, even I don't remember why I loved her and that information may, or may not even still be something that can be fully comprehended having a complete description of the entire universe now?
This in no way undermines the fact that Donna was a real physical being and that ALL of my contact with her was physically based. I DID NOT have direct mental access to her consciousness. Even when she expressed the thought "I don't love you" that was mediated by physical sound waves.
Despite a complete physical description of me you cannot know what that meant? Why? Well for instance to my knowledge she was a girl. In fact, she might have been a transvestite in which case the meaning of my love has a whole new connotation. The meaning would be changed to "I loved a man baby a man". This is one reason why physical context is important.
The fact that context matters makes for an explostion to the problem of deducing things from the bottom up.
Knowledge is not gained in that way anyhow. If and went we understand how consciouness arises from physicality it is not going to be a foundationalist description. As I was pointing out to Scott knowledge isn't foundationalist. Your very "bottom up" notion assumes we can have knowledge without being imbedded in the system we are having knowledge about. It also assumes that there is a foundation to build up from.
What if it's all free floating? What if the universe exists merely out of the possibility of the relationships that exist within it?
Brian, Furthermore the
Brian,
This reminded me of an exchange between Roderick Long and Kevin Vallier. Roderick wrote:
I actually read that once
Micha,
I believe I read that exchange once although I had forgotten it. My last sentence was harkening back to Constants Minsky quote. That I was aware of.
The notion of where sematics lie came from thoughts I had after reading John Searles Chinese Room argument. There was an issue of semantics there. I believe semantics is a bi-product of the evolution of self interested entities. Such semantics can then be injected into the extended phenotype of the replicator and extended by replicators generated by prior replicators.
Remember those wind up toys that you place on the table that can sense the edge by a button that drops down and engages a wheel to redirect them. Well that button is a sensor and when it is in it's proper environment, on an empty table, it being down means, sematically, "You are at the edge of a table". So even in the most simple of devices you can have semantics.
Searles belief that computer code cannot have semantics is an enormous mistake because the code is not defined by it's syntax alone. It does interact with an environment and borrows meaning from it's designers, us, the replicators. Should we one day create self replicating AI devices they might eventually and in an iterative fashion find meaning of their own. In the meantime their "meaning" is circumscribed by ours.
Reality is Math
Here's a new article in the direction of "The Universe is Math".
I once wrote a college paper for English in which I speculated that the universe was just "a big number" and that all possible universes exist, but the only interesting ones we those which evolved self aware beings. I was inspired by doing Godel's proof in one of my math classes. In all math systems there are conjectures that cannot be proven true or false. One can get to different mathematical systems for these conjectures just by assuming the true or false. I thought this might somehow be underlying quantum bifurication, or be similar. Might be that our universe divides when there is no proof the math should go one way or another.
If this is true any doppleganger that was in a universe exactly like ours would in fact be the same universe.
Also we already have the doppleganger effect running on the same underlying physics. They are called twins and yes they are both conscious. In fact the physics is robust enough that one can have quite a bit of variation on the human body and they are all conscious. Look around you.
I don't see how believing in a zombie world with the same physics is any different than believing that you are the only concious being and everyone else is zombies.
Global Supervenience
Yes, that's exactly right, though of course it has no bearing on the zombie argument since we are talking about a whole duplicate universe, and not just some local portion of it.
Zombies
Scott,
Excuse me if I got the wrong end of the stick but you seem to consider keeping a number of contradictory options (and therefore a number of false options) on the table as a positive for dualists. That doesn't sound like a very good policy to universalize.
> Odd, yes, but it remains logically possible
to be fair one should say "it SEEMS to me to be logically possible".
To me (and I believe most physicists) the universe is a string of equations. To have an effect which is fundamentally (in the relevant sense) without a cause is to produce a equation that is in error. Just like it is hard to imagine two objects in physical configuration space that are identical physically.
>we can speak of, for instance, the dead space outside the boundaries of our light cone, or things that don't exist, like unicorns.
here is Elizers response
"It is because, in this particular case, if "consciousness" does not refer to something that is among other things the cause of David Chalmers's philosophy papers, it is not clear what... the word "consciousness" could possibly mean. We are not talking about an artificially constructed concept like "unicorn" here. We're talking about a sense of inner awareness that seems very real to us, and that, in an intuitive sense, would obviously seem to make us write about "a sense of inner awareness"."
"If you accept the above statement, it directly falsifies the zombie argument. You do not have to look hard for an unspecified contradiction. It is right there."
Constant,
Re the lack of recent debate - I believe I read Chalmers saying something along the line of "the people involved in the zombie debates retreated to their respective corners". This is how some philosophical debates seem to work - you just have to wait for the supporters of the other side to die of old age.
A long wait
Probably. This is because in the end, arguments don't manage to undermine anybody's position, and so the position will be abandoned when its advocates are good and ready. As has been pointed out to me in years past, the internal logical consistency of a position and impermeability to attack is an extremely weak criterion for distinguishing the true from the false, the sane from the insane. Essentially any position at all can be indefinitely defended as tenable. Because it is so easy to rigorously defend the tenability of essentially any position at all, and to do so indefinitely, if you are willing to work hard enough at it, the mere ability to do so is not especially impressive. What gets me about this case is that Chalmers goes further than merely advocating the tenability of dualism. He thinks that the mere tenability of the zombie argument actively argues against materialism, which goes one step too far. It is as though solipsists used the fact that they can withstand criticism indefinitely (and they can) as proof that solipsism is actually true, rather than merely tenable (along with a million other lunacies).
Anyone who thinks otherwise has, I would argue, not been paying attention to online arguments, which go on forever precisely because both sides remain (logically, though not sanely) tenable in the face of all the contrary arguments. I would argue that what distinguishes the right side from the wrong side in arguments is (if the participants are reasonably competent) not that one side has logic on its side and the other does not, but that one side is sane and the other is lunatic. There is really no way to determine which side is sane purely by seeing which side is able to withstand criticism. Both sides can withstand criticism. Materialism easily withstands direct criticism, which is presumably why Chalmers does not challenge it directly but advocates dualism and then defends the tenability of dualism against challenges (which, as we might have predicted, is not all that hard). See also Scott's defense of the possibility of non-causal reference. He doesn't prove that in the case of consciousness reference is in fact not causal. Rather, he merely maintains the tenability of the claim that reference to consciousness is not causal. That is a much, much easier task. Meanwhile the materialists are cast, in Scott's account, in the role of attackers.
To explain this schematically, one side claims P and the other side claims not-P. The second side mounts any number of arguments against P, and all of these are shot down. But the refutation of arguments against P is not in itself proof of not-P. Meanwhile, the first side launches arguments against not-P, and these are all shot down. As in the other direction, the failure of these arguments does not prove P. So in the end, both sides walk away still convinced that they are right. (This does not apply with absolute universality. However, it applies pretty well. For example, I wrote just now that the arguments are "shot down" and therefore refuted. But of course, as anyone who attends online debates knows, frequently even whether an individual claim is refuted is highly debatable, and discussion will go on endlessly about whether a particular minor point was in fact defeated.)
Anyway, this is why it will never quite die. At least, not until people are good and ready to move on.
Correction
Correction: Chalmers purports to attack materialism. However the offensive argument is built up out of defensive arguments: the conceivability (and therefore tenability) of zombie worlds (not their reality), the logical possibility (and therefore tenability) of zombie worlds (not their reality). The main part of the edifice is defensive even if the ultimate aim is offensive. It could be. You don't know that it's not. Because it's conceivable. It's possible.
Further correction
Constant, I think you're confusing two senses of 'possibility'. Chalmers' argument is not actually anything to do with what's "conceivable" or "possible" in the folk sense of what you "don't [yet] know" to be false. When philosophers talk about [logical or metaphysical] 'possibility', they have in mind a more robust and objective notion (i.e. independent of our actual mental states). It's certainly not an argument from ignorance.
Response
GNZ,
I know Eliezer's response. As I said, Chalmers's move is to deny a causal theory of reference--see his paper on the epistemology of phenomenal belief. This is all in his book (though the paper is a much more sophisticated presentation of the book's argument)--the fact that Eliezer continues to harp (with so much emotion) on a point that Chalmers not only admits but responds to in his book, as if that point were fatal to Chalmers, makes Eliezer hard to take seriously. I don't mind people not being up to date on an obscure niche like the zombie argument of the philosophy of the mind--but if people are going to opine on that area, and with such confidence, while demonstrating such ignorance, I will likely ignore them.
Eliezer seems to have given up his causal theory of reference, but wants to modify it to something vague, like "A causal theory of reference holds... in areas when it really feels, "intuitively," like it does. Consciousness is such an area." That's not exactly watertight, and it in no way responds to Chalmers's counter.
Eliezer
Some experts do hold a causal theory of reference in the sense that Eliezer would mean on reflection and exposure to the literature. Similarly other experts hold other theories more similar to Chalmers's and there is a substantive secondary debate that could be had there.
Considering that, what I presume is being said here, is that Eliezer should, for the sake of argument, assume that Qualia have meaning if he wants to argue about the zombie argument, and that to not make that assumption and then to present it as proof that the argument is false is ignorant or dishonest.
Would that be right?
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