Win said:
AS:
Let me try this a different way.
Imagine a person who has no position regarding the truth of materialism, idealism or dualism. She hasn't reached a conclusion yet, but is still mulling over the positions.
Under your conception, would she not really be thinking about these questions at all? Or would she really have accepted the truth of one of the positions, only she's just not aware of it?
Or is it that she has to provisionally accept the truth of one of the positions, at least implicitly, before beginning to think about consciousness? How might one find oneself in the position of implicitly assuming the truth of materialism, even when believing that one hasn't?
I think you'll have to admit that it's possible to think about these things without first accepting materialism is true, or false.
This doesn't help at all. Sorry. No, what I will admit, is my judgment that thinking about p-zombies necessarily requires the thinker to assume either that materialism is not true, or never to have believed it true in the first place.
I don't think it's possible to be "neutral" about a materialistic stance once p-zombies are conjured up. The very definition of a p-zombie requires one to reject materialism. Claiming the stance is "neutral" does not make it so.
As I have said before, I believe materialism to be the default worldview of any sensible scientific-minded person with some familiarity with neuroscience and some of its more salient recent empirical observations.
To deviate from the default position is not a neutral stance. You can claim it so, but it isn't. It is a radical departure in some other direction. You choose to depart in the direction of propety dualism. Fine. It's not neutral. It's anti-materialistic--a rejection of the default position.
P-zombies tell us something about logical possibility. Logical possibility tells us something about our world. The natural impossibility of p-zombies has no effect on the argument from conceivability, because it's logical possibility that's required to make the argument go through.
If this is so, then I just don't get this version of "logical possibility" and its bearing on this world.
Actually, I understood Stimpy to be making that point about qualia, not p-zombies.
Technically true, but essential the same as my remark (I was somewhat sloppy). What are p-zombies but humans without qualia? To speak of p-zombies is to speak of qualia.
Anyway, even though he's "explained it to me over and over," I still find his ideas about causation misconceived. And his arguments about qualia in this regard based on a mistaken intuition.
I do not. I must agree with Stimpy. You resort to the mantra "correlation is not causation" to defend this claim. Very tight correlation is indeed highly indicative of a causal relationship, although not entirely dispositive. As between any two tightly-bound variables, usually the only issue is that of which is cause and which is effect.
Perfect correlation is equivalence. Neuroscience provides us solid evidence of nearly perfect correlation. Nearly everyone familiar with the delay in our own conscious awareness of our own volitional actions will conclude that the conscious awareness is the effect, and not the cause, which is of course counterintuitive.
As I understand it, you, as a property dualist, believe there must be some special dualistic property which arises from brains and their structure and function, as you put it. When I asked you before, you responded that the property disappears upon death. I guess now I just don't get where this property is supposed to reside if not in the brain, or as a physical result of its processes.
Dualism isn't "inextricably bound with the definition of p-zombie." There's no need to mention p-zombies at all to make the argument from conceivability. Substitute "person who sees gred not red," where "gred" is a color sensation qualitatively different to red, and the person is otherwise physical indistinguishable from a normal person, for p-zombie and the argument still goes through.
Fine. Switch the two. P-zombies are inextricably bound with the definition of dualism. Happy?
The gred thing is hardly as radical as p-zombie. I don't see how it leads to the same conclusion, either.
As to the last, for a p-zombie universe to exist, dualism would have to be true. To conceive of p-zombies doen't require belief in the truth of dualism. Do you see the difference?
No, I sure don't. And I don't believe it either. I think to conceive of p-zombies as they are defined by the conceivability argument does require a rejection of materialism. I see this as tantamount to accepting dualism, as between the two. (I realize there are other possible worldviews, so no need to list them here.)
Emotions are experienced subjectively. But a p-zombie has them without experiencing them. No one does have them without experiencing them. This doesn't mean that it's logically impossible to have them without experiencing them.
WTF? How can a person or a p-zombie "have" emotions without experiencing them? What does it mean to "have" emotions if one never experiences them?
Are you trying to say having knowledge that emotions exist is the same as "having" them? I find that preposterous, just as Dan Dennett does.
The truth value is the truth value. Genuine belief isn't the same as true belief.
A p-zombie genuinely believes he's not one. He's just mistaken.
Then please explain
how the p-zombie genuinely believes he is not a p-zombie. I cannot understand how he can understand the difference between a p-zombie and a human with qualia, yet somehow not be able to look within himself and determine whether or not he has that same access to qualia.
I maintain that if he cannot, then he doesn't understand the difference. If he does not understand the difference, then how can he have any genuine belief as to the truth or falsity of his answer to the quesiton?
This being a recursive, self-modelling mental architecture.
No. It's the physical analogue underlying our phenomenal judgements. It's what "causes" us to have our beliefs about qualia. It's what's "in our brains," as it were. But it's not a quale.
This just seems to be a restatement of the definition of dualism. Or call it "anti-materialism," if you prefer.
After all, doesn't the materialist respond by stating that the physical analog is the feedback?
Every part of this argument relies on the acceptance of one fact: Qualia exist. *We* know this because *we* have direct acces to the fact of the existence of a phenomenal world.
A p-zombie would say the same thing, but he wouldn't have that direct access.
As I've said before, "qualia don't exist" is a perfectly acceptable position. If, however, you accept their existence, I think you are compelled to accept the falsity of materialism.
OK, perhaps this fundamental talking past one another boils down to our different concepts of "to exist."
Perhaps I do not agree that "qualia" exist in any meaningful sense. Perhaps they are merely a tool useful for describing what we experience, without really having any independent existence outside the recursive feedback loop.
AS
Hmmmm . . .maybe you have in mind physical laws describe rather than compel. I agree saying naturally necessitated would have been more appropriate.
) with given axioms? That is to say that there are things that are just accepted to be true and then we actually build up from these?
