Thanks for taking the time and effort to hash out this zombie argument. Often people don’t seem get the extreme derangement of the argument that Chalmers actually makes, and imagine because it is discussed in respectable circles it must make sense.
Even the people who do “understand” the argument and still support it don’t let themselves see the full consequences. Some of your quotes from Richard Chappell are very revealing in this respect. I think you don’t engage with them as directly as you could.
At one point, you quote Chappell:
It’s misleading to say it’s “miraculous” (on the property dualist view) that our qualia line up so neatly with the physical world. There’s a natural law which guarantees this, after all. So it’s no more miraculous than any other logically contingent nomic necessity (e.g. the constants in our physical laws).
But since Chalmers’ “inner light” is epiphenomenal, any sort of “inner light” could be associated with any sort of external expression. Perhaps Chalmers’ inner experience is horrible embarrassment about the arguments he’s making, a desperate desire to shut himself up, etc. That is just as valid a “logically contingent nomic necessity”. There’s no reason whatsoever to prefer the sort of alignment implied by our behavior when we “describe our awareness” (which by Chalmers’ argument isn’t actually describing anything, it is just causal chains running off).
Then you quote Chappell:
… Zombie (or ‘Outer’) Chalmers doesn’t actually conclude anything, because his utterances are meaningless. A fortiori, he doesn’t conclude anything unwarrantedly. He’s just making noises; these are no more susceptible to epistemic assessment than the chirps of a bird.
But we can’t know that Chalmers’ internal experience is aligned with his expressions. Maybe the correct contingent nomic necessity is that everyone except people whose name begins with C have inner experience. So Chalmers doesn’t. That would make all his arguments just tweets.
And because these dual properties are epiphenomenal, there is no possible test that would tell us if Chalmers is making an argument or just tweeting away. Or at least, so Chalmers himself apparently claims (or tweets). So to accept Chappell’s position makes all epistemic assessment of other’s contingent on unknowable facts about the world. Bit of a problem.
As an aside, I’ll also mention that Chappell’s disparaging comments about “the chirps of a bird” indicate rather a blind spot. Birds chirp precisely to generate epistemic assessment in other birds, and the effectiveness of their chirps and their epistemic assessments is critical to their inclusive fitness.
I’d like to see some speculation about why people argue like this. It certainly isn’t because the arguments are intrinsically compelling.
Thanks for taking the time and effort to hash out this zombie argument. Often people don’t seem get the extreme derangement of the argument that Chalmers actually makes, and imagine because it is discussed in respectable circles it must make sense.
Even the people who do “understand” the argument and still support it don’t let themselves see the full consequences. Some of your quotes from Richard Chappell are very revealing in this respect. I think you don’t engage with them as directly as you could.
At one point, you quote Chappell:
But since Chalmers’ “inner light” is epiphenomenal, any sort of “inner light” could be associated with any sort of external expression. Perhaps Chalmers’ inner experience is horrible embarrassment about the arguments he’s making, a desperate desire to shut himself up, etc. That is just as valid a “logically contingent nomic necessity”. There’s no reason whatsoever to prefer the sort of alignment implied by our behavior when we “describe our awareness” (which by Chalmers’ argument isn’t actually describing anything, it is just causal chains running off).
Then you quote Chappell:
But we can’t know that Chalmers’ internal experience is aligned with his expressions. Maybe the correct contingent nomic necessity is that everyone except people whose name begins with C have inner experience. So Chalmers doesn’t. That would make all his arguments just tweets.
And because these dual properties are epiphenomenal, there is no possible test that would tell us if Chalmers is making an argument or just tweeting away. Or at least, so Chalmers himself apparently claims (or tweets). So to accept Chappell’s position makes all epistemic assessment of other’s contingent on unknowable facts about the world. Bit of a problem.
As an aside, I’ll also mention that Chappell’s disparaging comments about “the chirps of a bird” indicate rather a blind spot. Birds chirp precisely to generate epistemic assessment in other birds, and the effectiveness of their chirps and their epistemic assessments is critical to their inclusive fitness.
I’d like to see some speculation about why people argue like this. It certainly isn’t because the arguments are intrinsically compelling.