Solipsism is a completely worthless philosophy that deserves no place in any reasonable epistemic discourse. It's like flipping the table: it's a gotcha which leads to nobody winning.
Indeed, it just so happens that consciousness being physical results in precisely that outcome.
I'm not sure you understand what solipsism is. Try checking Wikipedia. Your arguments heavily involve solipsism ("I have special knowledge about my own existence and everything else is suspect and likely illusory.").
See above. Other people appear to be conscious; it requires less assumptions to believe that what I see is real than that what I see is not.
No, other people do not *appear* to be conscious, they just do things.
Reminder: we physicalists view consciousness to be physically and causally linked to behavior. This is like saying "Jim doesn't appear to be happy - he simply smiles and is energetic and says things about being happy." That's what appearing happy
is! It's just a cluster of properties that we've given a name to.
None of the things they do in themselves require consciousness as an explanation
This can only be true under epiphenomenalism, in which consciousness has no physical causal interaction with the physical world.
and an explanation not involving consciousness is a simpler explanation than one involving consciousness.
Can you actually explain human behavior? If so, it's likely to involve abstractions such as "model" and "goal". To a physicalist, that's the stuff that consciousness is made of.
Therefore if we take as our position that consciousness is a physical thing, then it follows that consciousness (except our own, see later) is eliminated by Occam's Razor.
Physicalists don't think that consciousness is a physical object. It is like a computer program - it's fundamentally an abstraction, and it's fully possible to predict the behavior of the computer without referencing anything like a "variable" or a "bit", but that doesn't mean that the program is non-physical except to the extent that it's a logical object.
Which logical object the computer is said to run is fully dependent on the physical state of the computer, so it's distinct from an independent non-physical entity like the consciousness that you describe, but it's also not an added entity which can be added or removed from theories. A theory in which the computer is exactly the same but the program is gone is... incoherent. You cannot remove the program without changing the computer.
This does not follow. I can make a near-identical statements as such which are clearly false:
If the material object that is an electron can explain everything in chemistry without the need of a combustion 'thing' inside the electron, Occam's Razor eliminates not just phlogiston but fire itself if we make combustion a consequence of chemistry.
You are treating consciousness as something that must be a single, unified object. This is not something that can be believed, given the extraordinary evidence we have that all perception is in the brain, yet one still perceives having one consciousness, despite such things as an inability to name what is seen or independently acting limbs.
EDIT: It should be noted that I believe consciousness is basically an illusion. This does not mean I don't believe it exists. There's a difference!
Fire is an empirically observable thing, phlogiston is not.
Fire isn't real. You're just seeing light and heat from a combustion reaction.
Whatever counterargument you have to that argument applies to consciousness as well, assuming that consciousness plays a causal role in behavior. (If it doesn't, then your mind has to be sectioned off - whatever thoughts you can vocalize are in the physical section and cannot be conscious. This includes any thought that you've mentioned here. There are philosophical reasons to reject epiphenomenalism as well, including "what does it mean to 'have consciousness' if there's no connection on your end to the consciousness?" and "why are we postulating unobservable things? how could we know that they existed, even if they did?" and "can something with no causal connection to the rest of existence even be said to exist?")
Empirical things are exempt from Occam's Razor, which applies only to things which are not observable.
What is an "empirical thing"? Things that you've seen? The experience of seeing?
(Somebody's already said what I was going to say about Occam's razor being more "simpler theories are more likely to be true" than "anything which could be something else is definitely that thing", so I won't repeat it, but I'll just gesture at Demonic Gopher and thank them.)
Our current body of physical law represents our observed evidence. It would take an extremely large amount of evidence to overturn modern physics. That's not to say it can't be done - it's happened many times before - but it requires significantly more evidence than "I sat in my armchair and realized that the existence of something which can recognize its existence requires reality to include at least two fundamentally different kinds of monads, one of which comprises the universe as we know it and the other makes up a separate realm of the mind corresponding to my a priori intuitions about how cognition and sensation work."
Evidence means what is empirical. If my empirical self-observation results in the conclusion of dualism, that is equal to all other evidence.
Do you mean "equal" or "equivalent"? If you really meant equal, that's ridiculous - just because something exists doesn't mean that it's equal in magnitude to the sum of everything else.
If equivalent, then possibly. It depends on how your "empirical self-observation" works - does it result in an entanglement between your model of reality and reality itself? "Empirical" or "evidence" means that the state of your beliefs is correlated with the state of reality, through a process of finding observations that are more likely under one possible state than under another. So for your self-observation to truly be empirical, the state of your beliefs needs to be somehow causally entangled with the state of the subject of your beliefs. You shouldn't assume that your intuitions are necessarily true - and if you do make that assumption, that doesn't make your intuitions empirical.
The amusing additional element here is that evidence itself implies consciousness and if consciousness is physical then nobody else actually has consciousness, since I am the only unnecessary monkey, to refer to my previous example to Putnam.
A technical definition of evidence does not require a reference to consciousness-as-you-define-it. (Under my definition, anything that forms and uses a model in a self-interpretive way is conscious, so I do view evidence and consciousness as linked, but not evidence and non-physical epiphenomenal entities.)
It appears I have implicitly assumed reductionism, even as I considered your non-physicalism. Okay. My argument still applies, with this addition: how can the body be noticeably different without the quarks that comprise the body being different? And if there is no noticeable difference between a body that's connected to an external mind and a body that doesn't, how can you determine which one you are? (I'm using Bayesian evidence here - knowing something is equivalent to a high probability of thinking X if and only if X is correct. For this to happen, there must be a causal interaction between X and the body - and not just a causal interaction, but one carrying a number of bits proportional to the complexity of X.)
Because the body is headed towards a number of possible future states that are multiple. The state that actually happens is the state that corresponds to that of the mind. The mind is unable to choose (or perhaps even imagine) what is not within the range of possible future states of the body.
That's not how physics works. There are some apparently probabilistic laws (such as the 2nd law of thermodynamics, most quantum things), but that does not mean that the probabilities can be manipulated by an external mind.
We could always be wrong about physics, but be aware that breaking a probabilistic law is not 'lesser' than breaking, say, a deterministic law like conservation of momentum. It is still opposed by immense amounts of scientific evidence.
To the external observer the situation appears random. In reality it is pseudo-random, but because consciousness is non-physical, no study of the physical world will reveal the pseudo-randomness and doing so would disprove freewill if such an explanation itself ignored consciousness.
If it does not produce an effect on the world, then what does it even mean for this interaction to exist? If this mind-world concordance process affects the world in any way, then by definition it changes the probability of events coming to pass. If it only produces random effects, then the mind has no room to be influencing the world.
What? I'm attempting to steelman this, and the best I can do is "neurons are all functionally identical and therefore theoretically interchangeable, although any particular neuron will have an internal state depending on its history." Even that isn't true, and I don't see how the steelman would support your argument against reductionism.
What I was drawing attention to is the fact that there are no neurons-of-consciousness that are observably different from regular neurons within the brain. So no empirical confirmation for a physical consciousness within the brain.
Physicalists do not think that consciousness lies in specific neurons. It's a collective property of the entire brain.
I don't understand how this connects to its context. Are you saying that the connection lies in the subconscious mind rather than the conscious mind?
The easiest way for the non-dualist to dodge the unnecessary monkey problem is to declare that the brain *is* the physical consciousness, that would in fact work if we were conscious of everything that the brain had in it, knowledge wise. Since the vast majority of things our brain knows were are unconscious of, we start needing a separate physical consciousness within the brain and no such thing empirically observable, so Occam's Razor strikes.
If by "everything the brain has in it" means "all properties of the brain": My computer does not contain a representation of its own atomic structure. Does this mean that the programs are separate from the computer itself?
If you are talking about subconscious knowledge: physicalists do not think that the brain is
only the conscious mind. Multiple programs can run on one computer.
As I see it, this theory generates a testable hypothesis: people will never be wrong (edit: if their beliefs could have been true, and them being true wouldn't violate physical law, only probability). And if it doesn't generate a testable hypothesis, then it's useless as a theory.
The theory can be falsified in two ways. One is that you determine the material universe is entirely deterministic, the other is that you determine that the mind can do anything regardless of the physical laws. It's clockwork universe OR matrix-spoon-bending, either way I'm wrong.
There are additional ways to test your theory. I will generate a truly random number to a thousand digits (non-deterministically). Any result from 0 to 1 is physically possible. I predict an arbitrary number (0.010010001..., say). If the random number matches my prediction, that is evidence toward your theory. If not, it is evidence against it.
If that's too much improbability for the mental concordance force to handle, I will make the RNG binary and repeat it several times. If there is a bias toward my predicted number, then it will show up over time.
Also, I can test the backforce as well. I will ask many friends to predict an RNG's output. I will run the RNG but will hide the results. I am uncertain how your theory says that the universe will change the mind's beliefs to bring them into concordance with reality, but if it happens, I will detect it.
Saying people can't be wrong because of this theory is like saying that people can't climb hills because of gravity. A person who is wrong is constantly having to strain *against* the principle itself, but only if his error is directed at a specific material state. A material thing can be in error about another material thing and so can a consciousness be in error about another consciousness.
So the mental concordance force has a particular strength? How unlikely of an event can it make happen? What counts as a belief?
That is an important detail of the science of wrongness. The brain is not actually separate from the body and the body is not actually separate from the rest-of-the-universe. However to recall back to the question about the colour blue, consciousness imposes onto the world a division, because that division is possible. It is possible for the light spectrum to be divided into colours, therefore divided they are.
Anything that can happen, will? That sounds deterministic to me.
Once we have divided the body from the universe, the body can respond in isolation to the consciousness and therefore can be forced to 'disagree' with other elements of the universe (the law does not apply within the mind or within the material world, only between them). Once we have accomplished this feat, we can exist in perpetual delusion since the elements that disagree with the consciousness have been 'eliminated'.
You can delude yourself about the universe by thinking that all of your beliefs pertain only to your body? That's the last straw. Where are you
getting all this? How could you possibly know this, even if it was true?
This is an empty explanation. It doesn't explain how the arm actually moves, and once you've truly explained how the arm moves (brain sends signal through neurons to cells which release chemicals which provide signal and energy to the structures that reduce a cell's length), you don't need this anymore - there's nothing else to be explained.
We were not talking about how the arm actually moves. We were talking about how free will, if it actually exists could move the arm.
Free will is not something that reaches into the physical world and alters it. It's a feeling that you have when considering different actions to take, and you
could take any of them. What does "could" mean in this context? Only that if I decide to do X, then I will do X. But in reality you only decide on one thing, so (barring Penrose-esque quantum mind hijinks) you couldn't really have done anything else. Free will is what you do when you consider future-counterfactuals with your decisions changed, and your intuitions around it don't correspond to reality.
That's still simply false. The map can incorrectly describe the territory, and the map itself can't affect the territory except to the extent that it is part of the territory.
Indeed, but not forever. The universe will always find a way to bring the two into agreement. The problem as already discussed is that information is also stored physically in *part* of the universe and consciousness has the power to divide up the universe into categories.
Categories aren't part of the basic functioning of the universe either. You are projecting your mind onto physics.
1. Occam's razor does not apply to definitions and categories. "It is strictly simpler for blue to not actually exist, only objects that tend to reflect light of particular wavelengths..." Reductio ad absurdum.
1. Yes, because those things are part of consciousness.
Okay. Consciousness, under physicalism, is a definition/category/cluster. It describes certain kinds of physical processes. It is no more ruled out by Occam's law than blueness is.
2. When you say "you, unaware of it, are arguing against your own existence," you are presupposing that if KittyTac were correct about consciousness being physical, they wouldn't exist. This is combining your beliefs and KittyTac's, and then claiming that the combination is an accurate reflection of KittyTac's beliefs.
2. Yes, it is common for people not to realise the consequences of their beliefs, it's other people's job to point that out. I am not however combining my own beliefs with that of KittyTac's, my beliefs are quite separate.
Under KittyTac's own beliefs, KittyTac is real. "Ah, but if consciousness is physical, then it doesn't exist!" That's your belief, not KittyTac's. Once you start using things in your argument which KittyTac disagrees with, you have ceased to describe KittyTac's beliefs. You are now describing a fusion of KittyTac's beliefs and your own.
Consciousness isn't an explanation, it's a category or an observed process.
Consciousness creates categories. They are therefore related to consciousness, along with all empirically observable objects. Consciousness, not being physical is not subject to Occam's Razor and it eliminates Occam's Razor for all the things it 'touches'.
Contagion is intuitive to humans, but doesn't necessarily correspond to reality. And your version of Occam's razor is significantly different from every other version I've seen, so I simply reject your razor at this point.
Blue doesn't "exist as an entity". It's a category/process of things that reflect light of a particular wavelength. And colors don't really explain things, they only describe them. An actual explanation would be something like "the electrons in this atom, probably for quantum mechanical reasons, resonate more at this frequency than another. When they resonate strongly, they generate additional electromagnetic waves which can travel in a different direction than the original wave."
It exists as an entity because it is empirical.
I don't think we're using words in the same way. I can't interpret this sentence with a coherent meaning.
The type of entity that it is, you have described correctly. It is a category, but remember that the body is *also* a category and consciousness clearly has a special relationship to it.
No, I
don't remember any sort of special relationship between GC-consciousness and the body, because
I don't think GC-consciousness exists. That argument makes sense in your own head but fails to convince anybody else who doesn't already agree with you.
Also, what point are you making? "Categories can have special relationships with non-physical things"? That doesn't mean that blueness is fundamentally different from consciousness.
I would have to ask KittyTac, but I strongly doubt that they consider themselves to be disproving your existence. You are only projecting your views onto them. (Everyone does it - some amount of projection is necessary for social interaction unless you can explicitly model the neurons in someone's brain - but less is better.)
If KittyTac is right, then since I am the only unnecessary monkey (physical consciousness) KittyTac is just a mindless thing like the computer I am writing these words on. The same also applies to you.
You are still projecting your own beliefs. If KittyTac is right, then consciousness isn't an additional thing which may or may not be present without affecting behavior. You can tell it's there because if it weren't in my head, I wouldn't be typing these words. Your argument only works if you introduce your
own beliefs, which
we physicalists do not agree with. If you use those beliefs, you are no longer accurately representing my beliefs or those of KittyTac.
What do you mean by the existence of an existence?
I simply mean the same thing in a different semantic context.
The same thing as what? Different context from what? Or is this an unimportant aside and it doesn't matter if I understand it?
There is only one material consciousness if material consciousness happens to be true, Mine; you are just a complicated thing.
I believe that the consciousness is part of the complication, so I would still be conscious if I were true.
No, they aren't. That's only true in your model, in which consciousness is epiphenomenal. (I think - you're somewhat hard to understand, and you've never made it clear whether you think that consciousness causally/detectably interacts with the physical world.) If you don't consider consciousness to be epiphenomenal, then it's equivalent to blueness - it's just a more complicated physical process.
The question being addressed there is the existence or otherwise of free will. If consciousness is simply a product of the material universe, then there is no free will. Only if free will exists we have to come up with a mechanism for the non-physical consciousness to interact with the physical world without being part of it.
This is a complicated and unnecessary mechanism, justified only by your own intuitions about decisions. The world would look the same with or without the mechanism. Occam's razor applies fully.
I'm not sure you understand physicalists. We don't think that consciousness is an object. We think that it's a process. Occam's razor does apply somewhat to processes, but in a way that's precisely opposite from your use. It's simpler for A and B to both be explained by one thing than for A to be caused by one thing and B by another. This means that your model, in which your externally-observable consciousness is caused by a bidirectional revision of physical reality and your mind to bring the two into concordance, and my externally-observable consciousness is "merely" caused by the interaction of atoms, is at a significant disadvantage.
Both senses of the application of Occam's Razor eliminate everyone but me from existence. We don't need a consciousness process, just as we don't need a consciousness object.
If there's no consciousness process, then the person doesn't think or talk. You know that isn't the case because other people talk.
(We could all be robots programmed to say words, but then who programmed the words? A consciousness process is still required to generate the talking.)
You cannot empirically observe the existence of your "consciousness" (by which I mean everything that you tack onto consciousness, including your non-physical existence) unless there is a causal and informational interaction between your consciousness and your brain. (Or maybe, in some epiphenomenal sense, you can - but not in a way that you could ever communicate, since communication is physical.)
That makes no sense at all. You can always empirically observe your own consciousness because your consciousness is the sum of things you are percieving. That is like saying that you can't observe 10 things because you can observe 10 separate things.
I meant "observe that you are conscious", not the things which happen to be passing through your consciousness at a given point.
It's the difference between seeing your eyes and seeing your field of view.
That statement is false, even if interpreted charitably. It is not the case that KittyTac's philosophy bars conscious beings from existing. Instead, KittyTac has a different operational definition of consciousness.
From KittyTac's perspective he is the one that exists and not the rest of us. Unfortunately there is no KittyTac perspective, since I am the only consciousness if he is right.
No. From KittyTac's perspective, GoblinCookie exists. Stop putting words into people's mouths. What you see as an obvious conclusion, we see as incorrect. Therefore, the conclusion is
not part of our perspective.
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Topic: Dwarves, Philosophy, and Religion (Read 98656 times)