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And I define materialism in this world as immune to the pZombie argument.
Yes! You are very close here to what I'm saying we need to do. An acceptable definition of 'physical' will be a definition that makes zombies logically impossible.
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And insist by divine fiat that this state of affairs is logically possible.
But you are still missing the central point of why we are talking about zombies in the first place. You can't simply plop the impossibility of zombies in by fiat - divine or otherwise. Well...technically you could just plop it in there, but it would be a pointless exercise because it would be just trivial wordplay and it would not help us to understand the nature of qualitative experience or the physical world in any way. It would not motivate a new avenue of research, etc. An adequate definition of physical should accomplish at least 2 things:
(1) It should encompass all (or as many as possible) of the benefits of our current definitions (in other words, the change should be a minimal as possible)
(2) It should imply the logical impossibility of zombies in a non-trivial way (e.g., we can't simply add "And zombies are impossible" to the definition.
So, perhaps you can help me out here: What would you say is a good definition of our current concept of 'physical'? In other words, what, exactly, do you mean when you say that pain is nothing but a physical process?
Pain is an input signal that tells you that you are out of design parameters. You then can trick the brain to thinking either there is pain or no pain by messing with the signal.
You can't just plop zombies in front of us like they are real, well you can, but that distorts what is going on. at least 'till we learn more that is. What we can talk about is what we know. That electrons move, molecules/ions move, and we "think". If we reach static equilibrium we stop "thinking". Zombies need some type of fluid to be present. This fluid would then need to transport fuel and stay sterile. To do this we would ... bla bla bla ... you get the point ... no more zombies.
That would be why I excerpted his Appendix detailing those OTHER possible neuroscience explanations, Arq . . . not just his opinions.
All the ones he thought he could reject on the 'whatever is left must be the truth' method. I recall that he was a bit too eager to reject some possibilities out of hand, though the claim that clinically he was dead and yet intense mental activity was going on - or so he claimed, was impressive. I recall that some other bods in the you -tube had other suggestions, but the bottom line is that nobody really knows what happened so coming to conclusions, no matter how convincing they may feel, is premature and not scientific.
What will our descendants have in common with computers one or two thousand years from now? They will evolve blindingly fast. They will have as much in common with mankind as we do with fruit flies.
I just hope they will be ethical and have a heart.
There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do not hold.
Therefore, facts about consciousness are further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts.
I get the point that the parellel world is just a hypothetical one to make a philosophical point. It does not have to exist nor even be logically likely, but just logically possible.
But what made me say that it made no sense was that the premise did not follow the implied conditions of proposing logically possible parellel worlds.
It bothered me all along that a critter had been handily imagined as lacking qualiative experiences so as to make the case that there needs to be 'Something More' about consciousness. I mentioned that this seemed to prove the failure of physicalism no more than imagining limbless critters (Limbies, I thing Gaylen called them) proved that anatomical physicalism had failed.
I was told that limbless humans is logically impossible, but turning it around in my head. I can't help but think that if it is possible to imagine a race of humanoids without qualia, it is possible to imagine a race of humanoids without limbs. in short one is declared logically possible to prove a point and the other is declared logically impossible to stop the point being invalidated.
Further, I don't see that it follows that positive facts about consciousness in our world not holding in the zombie world proves that materialism has failed or dualism (There is something more to consciousness than the material) is the logical conclusion.
As I say it is easily stated that qualia -less humans are logically possible but limbless humans are not. But, when I think about it, the logical possibility of a race of critters having no consciousness or not being able to access it seems to recede. Think about zombies (as described in fantasy about Voodoo) or about people brain -damaged so they cannot access their feelings and about people who have lost limbs and ask whether one proves something about mental physicalism and the other doesn't about anatomical physicalism.
This is why all along I have felt there was something fishy about Chalmer's zombies. It was constructed out of nothing to prove a point, and if it doesn't work in practical terms, being told that, as a tyro not to say ignoramus in philosophy, I don't understand that the practical aspect don't apply in philosophical constructs, does not reassure me.
The point about applying practical facts to philosophical propositions may be inconvenient, just as it is inconvenient to Zeno's paradox that in the actual world, the arrow does move. The error in Zeno - but only because we know - in practical terms - that it is wrong - is the implied premise that there is an indivisible and irreducible existent point at which the arrow is at rest is invalid. This I wonder whether the practical objections to the Chalmer zombie premise imply a false premise somewhere.
I'm not saying that just because I want to save monism (He said ) , I am saying it because that proposition above didn't make sense to me, because it did not seem to Follow nor be based on justified assumptions. As I said, just because you can imagine it doesn't make it so, read, logically possible, while something equally weird like Limbies is conveniently not logically possible. Why not, if we can imagine it?
If what seems to make sense as I set it out isn't applicable to philosophy, then perhaps the philosophy ought to be declared inapplicable to our real world.
Not making declarations here so much as expressing puzzlement about the argument being made.
P.s. I wonder whether the problem may be in the rather vague (not to say blunderbuss) term 'do not hold'. Does that mean they do not logically work, or do not logically exist in that other world, or the zombies cannot access those qualia or feelings even through they are there? A race of beings without experiences rather than one that cannot access them (unlikely as that sounds) is surely logically impossible - or factually impossible, and being able to imagine the factually impossible making it logically possible feels wrong to me right down in my practical psyche.
Agreed , limbless people or critters have nothing to do with an impact on value conciousness, the attribute would be a logical outcome of boundary and law in the given world. The constants cannot be defied in the imagined hypothetical identical world otherwise it would not be anything close physically to this world,
If its suggested the constants have nothing to do with things such as photosynthesis and the dynamic evolution of matter, which had consciousness to be, the suggestion we are talking about logically implies proof otherwise.
So in a nutshell it seems a philosophical blunder, a blunder because the suggestion of logic automatically implies it is absolutely illogical to suggest, consciousness would be out of the dynamic evolution of matter which would be a fanciful idea only.
Last edited by Sophronius; 11-18-2014 at 12:16 PM..
Speaking in plain American, off topic but equally important, what I see is one near term problem of smart programming:
Worth re-posting here -
"Probably better threads to bring this up, but lets say a future world government gave over logistics to a computer application and that AI was moving food around the globe.
Its possible that the autonomous AI could decide that it is more efficient to cut back shipments to, let's say, Russia. Only full grain ships operate. Oops! Millions starve.
So a Strong AI needs to have an understanding of ethics. Otherwise, computer intelligence without a "soul" couldn't be implemented in many areas. And this is a BIG problem.
In my opinion, since one-half of the stock trades today are conducted through algorithms (weak AI), they are being undertaken with no consideration to the damage they do. Hedge funds make puts executed by their computer applications in microseconds without human intervention to drive stock prices down.
I don't think collateral damage means that much to machine "intelligence"."
What will our descendants have in common with computers one or two thousand years from now? They will evolve blindingly fast. They will have as much in common with mankind as we do with fruit flies.
I just hope they will be ethical and have a heart.
"logical solutions" don't need a "heart", they need foresight. emotions can hold us back. But maybe it was designed to.
Think about every extinction event. It has left behind something for the next life form. From O2, a nitch, to oil. We are smack dab in the middle of one right now. what will we leave? I think information and high resource concentrations. All this philosophy and fancy writing junk aside, most of it is bumblebee smidginz anyway, they will have the information. It is stored right now. We will create the access points for them. Because that is what proteins do, make it possible for the next step to be taken.
Or: Think about the outer layer of the brain being 1/2 inch thicker. They will have as much in common with us as we do apes. We will, if we don't make a machine version first or kill ourselves, crack the dna code to grow what we need .. a bigger brain. The machine part will make the "brain case" suitable for space travel. Thus earth reproduces.
It all adds up to a "good" or "nice "borge". They will ask you if you want to assimilate. If you say "no." they will give you the help you need, or not, and leave. We will be as irrelevant to them as a monkey is to you. But it doesn't matter. only life matters, it keeps "nothing" from becoming "real".
lmao, and we are stuck on qualia.
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Originally Posted by Mistermobile
I don't think collateral damage means that much to machine "intelligence"."
it doesn't mean much to us either. Just look at what we are doing to the earth and our human friends.
But you are still missing the central point of why we are talking about zombies in the first place. You can't simply plop the impossibility of zombies in by fiat - divine or otherwise.
Why not? Isn't that where the whole idea of them being not-impossible is coming from in the first place? No need to provide a reason to ignore something that there's no reason to accept in the first place.
But in any case, I already gave the definition of consciousness I was using that implies that pZombies aren't a coherent concept, so mission accomplished I guess.
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Well...technically you could just plop it in there, but it would be a pointless exercise because it would be just trivial wordplay
Yes, exactly. Assuming the thing you want to conclude and then being surprised you've concluded it doesn't really do much other than waste time and ink. Given this weakness, I'm not sure why the pZombie thing gets so much attention. The hidden assumption of dualism needed to make it work in the first place seem pretty obvious to me, and that makes the whole thing totally pointless.
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So, perhaps you can help me out here: What would you say is a good definition of our current concept of 'physical'? In other words, what, exactly, do you mean when you say that pain is nothing but a physical process?
Why don't you just tell us what parts of consciousness current methods of scientific investigation can't explain? I'm not the one telling everyone that science is inherently unable to do its job here.
Yes! You are very close here to what I'm saying we need to do. An acceptable definition of 'physical' will be a definition that makes zombies logically impossible. But you are still missing the central point of why we are talking about zombies in the first place. You can't simply plop the impossibility of zombies in by fiat - divine or otherwise. Well...technically you could just plop it in there, but it would be a pointless exercise because it would be just trivial wordplay and it would not help us to understand the nature of qualitative experience or the physical world in any way. It would not motivate a new avenue of research, etc. An adequate definition of physical should accomplish at least 2 things:
(1) It should encompass all (or as many as possible) of the benefits of our current definitions (in other words, the change should be a minimal as possible)
(2) It should imply the logical impossibility of zombies in a non-trivial way (e.g., we can't simply add "And zombies are impossible" to the definition.
So, perhaps you can help me out here: What would you say is a good definition of our current concept of 'physical'? In other words, what, exactly, do you mean when you say that pain is nothing but a physical process?
Yes I see the point now. You handle the argument that zombies logically possible lack qualia as a loose statement just to make the proposition work by saying that can be disproven by an explanation of pain or other qualitative experiences in purely physical terms. I'd suggest that the general physical process can be described, but I gather that it must be described all the way down to nano -level where the question of the qualia -pixels and what they are and how they operate to transmit senory input into the mind comes up. If we have no explanation, model or mechanism, then we can't answer the question except in very general terms.
Let me refer back to the Limbies. Until recently, while we could explain in general terms why people lost limbs or lacked them, before the genome-coding was discovered, we couldn't even explain it in general terms and even now there is a lot that isn't known down to nano -level.
Thus the promissory note on physical explanation of qualia is valid, and credible and it is too early to call it in. The best we can say is that dualism in respect of consciousness at least is on the table as we cannot make the qualia -less zombies logically impossible. But, while materialism has failed to disprove dualism in respect of consciousness (which hardly discredits materialism is other aspects) that failure surely does not mean that materialism can never make a full or at least adequate physical explanation, let alone that leading to the conclusion that there isn't one.
It is rather handy for dualism that it doesn't need to explain anything, jut demand that materialism/monism does. but then, I suppose that goes with the territory, if you are claiming to be the logical default.
Why don't you just tell us what parts of consciousness current methods of scientific investigation can't explain? I'm not the one telling everyone that science is inherently unable to do its job here.
It's not so much the "methods of scientific investigation" that are the problem, but rather the currently defined concepts being used in fundamental physics and/or materialist philosophies. The fundamental particles and laws of physics, as currently defined, do not address the elements of qualitative experience at all, and thus these concepts cannot exclude the logical possibility of zombies. Quantum mechanics gives us vague but tantalizing hints of how, maybe, "observers" might have to be written into the mathematical models of physics (the "projection postulate" of quantum mechanics), but it leaves us hanging and wallowing in controversy (e.g., "the measurement problem", "Schrodinger's cat", "Wigner's friend", etc.). My guess/hope/speculation is that, maybe, if we can find a way to link the qualitative phenomenology of experience to the projection postulate, we might bridge the "explanatory gap" or "the hard problem." I don't have time to spell these ideas out any further at the moment, but I'm trying to show the general direction of my thinking.
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Nope. That's not what I meant.
) , I am saying it because that proposition above didn't make sense to me, because it did not seem to Follow nor be based on justified assumptions. As I said, just because you can imagine it doesn't make it so, read, logically possible, while something equally weird like Limbies is conveniently not logically possible. Why not, if we can imagine it? 
