Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Zombie Rationality

Oh, Jonathan, I know what might help: see my post ...

2008-04-08T11:39:00.000-04:00

Oh, Jonathan, I know what might help: see my post on The Problem of Other Minds -- there I contrast my view with substance dualism (as I understand it).

Jonathan - I granted for sake of argument that z-b...

2008-04-06T20:44:00.000-04:00

Jonathan - I granted for sake of argument that z-belief = belief - qualia, but this isn't really possible: empirically attributed content won't always correspond to mental content for reasons explained above.

"If so, how does the phenomenal aspect have any affect on our rational calculation? I'm just not sure what rational / informational content qualia have"

I have no idea what you're asking here. Qualia don't influence how our brain functions ('calculates'), if that's what you mean. But since they are partly determinative of what it is that we believe or conclude in our reasoning (and also feature in our evidence), they thereby affect the normative fact whether the conclusion of our reasoning is rationally supported by our evidence.

Okay, so it sounds like your view of beliefs is ro...

2008-04-06T15:50:00.000-04:00

Okay, so it sounds like your view of beliefs is roughly what I mean by belief with the addition of qualia. belief = z-belief + qualia. Is that fair?

If so, how does the phenomenal aspect have any affect on our rational calculation? I'm just not sure what rational / informational content qualia have - in fact of course, they can't have effect or else we would no longer be in epiphenomalist territory. They're purely a bonus, a free gift on top as it were.

I must admit, I think I've got a bit confused somewhere along the line with your exact point. When you talk about a person being rational, rather than just a brain, you seem to be implying that there's something else doing the rational stuff, thinking or whatever, other than just the brain. If you're not saying that, I'm not sure why you're saying that the brain in itself isn't rational. But if you are saying that, the thinking needs to take place somewhere. So you're explicitly arguing for the existence of (for the lack of a better word) a soul then?

It seems to me not entirely natural that one could...

2008-04-06T14:59:00.000-04:00

It seems to me not entirely natural that one could deny that a zombie perspective exists. I don't have any major issues with a table perspective existing or a 'richard&elizer' perspective or a 'american' perspective existing.
So it seems to be zombies would have a perspective no matter what you do - and if that is an intelligence empowered perspective (like a human) your getting close to being a human even if you strip out all particular qualia.

Also just thinking... I wonder if one could chop qualia into sub parts. For example red - and cut it down into a thousand parts none of which having any meaning by themselves (but still have something special to them) but all of which remaining epiphenomenal - as a way to study them.

Different mental content will be a result of diffe...

2008-04-06T14:53:00.000-04:00

Different mental content will be a result of different EAC plus the psychophysical bridging laws. EAC alone does not determine mental content, because there is a possible (invert) world where the EAC is the same but the mental content differs. EAC alone is thus coarser grained.

You say... "I just don't think such empirically at...

2008-04-06T14:07:00.000-04:00

You say... "I just don't think such empirically attributable contents [let's call them EAC] can be so fine-grained as real mental content."

But different mental content (in epiphenomenalist view) will be result of different EAC, no? So you have to have as fine grained EAC as fine grained your phenomenology is for this to happen.

So to say, if we see psycho-physical laws as function, that take the physical state, and return the mental state - the function's domain needs to be as fine grained as its range.

Right, I'm perfectly happy to grant some kind of z...

2008-04-06T13:00:00.000-04:00

Right, I'm perfectly happy to grant some kind of z-belief/ pseudocontent for its explanatory/predictive power (see my linked essay, which is very empirically oriented). I just don't think such empirically attributable contents can be so fine-grained as real mental content (as the inverted qualia case demonstrates -- N.B. the nomological impossibility of inverts and zombies is irrelevant to this point).

Jonathan - my acquaintance with meaning, like my acquaintance with qualia, is essentially first-personal. I see them as bound very closely together. I know what it is for me to have a thought that is about something, and part of this (it seems to me) comes from the phenomenal feel of my thoughts. Strip away my qualia, and you've also taken away my thoughts in the fully-fledged sense. Cognitive processing would continue to occur, of course, and outsiders could tell no difference -- my mere z-beliefs suffice for their purposes -- but 'from the inside' things are very different.

(I don't expect hardened materialists to be persuaded by any of this. My argument is more defensive: assuming epiphenomenalism, these other views may reasonably be held, which in turn show why various materialist objections are not insuperable for the epiphenomenalist.)

Richard,1. If you remove possibility of z-beliefs ...

2008-04-06T08:28:00.000-04:00

Richard,

1. If you remove possibility of z-beliefs or something of a sort (mental pattern), there would be no explanation about why you behave as you behave. (I guess as epiphenomenalist you agree that you your behavior should be fully accounted for in physical terms?)

2.I mentioned something about this in the discussion on your other post (and wrote more on it here ), but epiphenomenalist should have account for this z-epiphenomenalist behavior and those z-beliefs. You said that you are not in worse position at all than physicalists, but you are as they have abstract entity in their physical world, that you don't - the awareness that one is conscious. Epiphenomenalists push that one outside of the physical world, so they should provide different explanation for z-epiphenomenalist-behavior, and z-epiphenomenalist-beliefs.

2. Wouldn't z-beliefs (or other NCCs), actually give rise to the beliefs, given the psycho-physical laws? If that is so, in the actual world, such things as inverted qualia can't happen, and you can't use the inverted-qualia example to argue that given same z-beliefs (or something of a kind) you could have different beliefs. It would so appear, that whatever you mean by "partially constituted", it is fully determined by a)physical world and b)psychophysical world, so the beliefs are fully dependent on z-beliefs or something of a kind.

Two questions :a) first, it would be helpful if yo...

2008-04-06T06:54:00.000-04:00

Two questions :

a) first, it would be helpful if you could clarify the above point Genius makes. In a universe identical to this, but without qualia would Richard2 belief that he is a Zombie? As far as I can follow your reasoning, he would act in every way as the original Richard would, writing the exact same post as above, but all this philosophy talk would now be meaningless (I shall resist the urge to make a cruel joke ;) ), as as a Zombie he can't believe anything?

And whether something is meaningful or not, has absolutely no effect on the rest of the physical universe, or else its not epiphenomenal, right?

(Strictly speaking, if whether we have qualia or not has no effect on the rest of the universe, doesn't that imply even if this debate is one day concluded it'll make absolutely no difference to anything else... )

b) I read your other post again, and I still don't see why beliefs need phenomenal content - could you clarify, provide some arguments for this position?

YMMV on this point - I would be prepared to say that my computer has a belief, say, that I have 10 emails unread. It has something real, encoded into information, and it uses that information to make useful and accurate preditions and actions affecting the real world. I'm not sure what more you want in a belief?

Hmm.. If Qualia don't effect the universe then how...

2008-04-05T22:18:00.000-04:00

Hmm.. If Qualia don't effect the universe then how can qualia be used as evidence?

I.e. zombie Richard is 'right now' arguing that qualia are, if anything, part of his evidence that he is not a zombie.

If they have no causal relationship to the words coming out of your mouth or mine, or for that matter on the concept of qualia which we share (as a zombie would mean* qualia) then it pretty much by definition is an irrational position (which may happen to be correct).

*Mean is a neutered concept here - but not too neutered. Zombie richard can explain to me in detail philosophy and also the concept of qualia and what they are like. So he has a structure in his head that defines the term.

and I guess I'm repeating things here but it is a little surprising that real Richard might have an experience additional to zombie Richard that is not in anyway recorded even in the most obscure form in his brain.

My brain ... is in possession of only a subset of ...

2008-04-05T21:03:00.000-04:00

My brain ... is in possession of only a subset of my total evidence. What we've really described here is a defective brain. Let's ... reserve the term 'rational' for brains that give rise to rational people -- people whose beliefs are in line with their total evidence.

But by assumption this subset must be sufficient to produce all of the beliefs that the brain might physically express, such as in words or writing.