Ah, the topic that frustrates me more than any other. If only you could see some of the ripostes that I have considered writing:
“Every illusionist is declaring to the world that they can be killed, and there’s no moral issue, because despite appearances, there’s nobody home.”
“I regret to inform you that your philosophy is actually a form of mental illness. You are prepared to deny your own existence rather than doubt whatever the assumptions were which led you in that direction.”
“I wish I could punch you in the face, and then ask you, are you still sure there’s no consciousness, no self, and no pain?”
“I would disbelieve in your existence before I disbelieved in my own. You should be more willing to believe in a soul, or even in magic microtubules, than whatever it is you’re doing in this essay.”
Illusionism and eliminativism are old themes in analytic philosophy. I suppose what’s new here is that they are being dusted off in the context of AI. We don’t quite see how consciousness could be a property of the brain, we don’t quite see how it would be a property of artificial intelligence either, so let’s deny that it exists at all, so we can feel like we understand reality.
It would be very Nietzschean of me to be cool about this and say, falsehoods sometimes lead to truth, let the illusionist movement unfurl and we’ll see what happens. Or I could make excuses for you: we’re all human, we all have our blindspots...
But unless illusionist research ends up backing itself into a corner where it can no longer avoid acknowledging that the illusion is real, then as far as discovering facts about human beings goes, it is a program of timidity and mediocrity that leads nowhere. The subject actually needs bold new hypotheses. Maybe it’s beyond the capacity of most people to produce them, but nonetheless, that’s what’s needed.
In denying certain properties of consciousness, illusionists are typically also denying that basic moral/axiological intuitions need to be grounded in them.
Obviously illusionists deny the inferences you are drawing, i.e. that it’s fine to kill people, that people don’t exist, or that they have no grounds to avoid being punched in the face. For those points to be more forceful, you need to show that (for example) it can pretty much only be bad to kill people because of the kinds of deep, extra phenomenal consciousness stuff which illusionists deny. That is, you are saying “if illusionism then [patently crazy conclusion], not [patently crazy conclusion], ∴ not illusionism”. But the illusionist just denies “if illusionism then [patently crazy conclusion]”.
Of course, one reaction is “it’s totally obvious that illusionism implies crazy conclusions, if you can’t see that, then we’re living on different planets”.
One reason I think a non-realist or illusionist research agenda is not inherently timid and mediocre, is that it is trying to answer very hard but pretty well-scoped empirical questions (e.g. the meta-problem) which don’t currently have good answers, and where hypotheses are falsifiable. And I think that’s a hallmark of successful scientific agendas: at the very least, it’ll either generate interesting and testable new explanations, or it will fail. Compare realist approaches, where it’s less clear to me how to decisively rule out bad explanations (because it’s often unclear what testable predictions they are supposed to make). So I worry realist framings lack the engine for proper, cumulative progress.
Ah, the topic that frustrates me more than any other. If only you could see some of the ripostes that I have considered writing:
“Every illusionist is declaring to the world that they can be killed, and there’s no moral issue, because despite appearances, there’s nobody home.”
“I regret to inform you that your philosophy is actually a form of mental illness. You are prepared to deny your own existence rather than doubt whatever the assumptions were which led you in that direction.”
“I wish I could punch you in the face, and then ask you, are you still sure there’s no consciousness, no self, and no pain?”
“I would disbelieve in your existence before I disbelieved in my own. You should be more willing to believe in a soul, or even in magic microtubules, than whatever it is you’re doing in this essay.”
Illusionism and eliminativism are old themes in analytic philosophy. I suppose what’s new here is that they are being dusted off in the context of AI. We don’t quite see how consciousness could be a property of the brain, we don’t quite see how it would be a property of artificial intelligence either, so let’s deny that it exists at all, so we can feel like we understand reality.
It would be very Nietzschean of me to be cool about this and say, falsehoods sometimes lead to truth, let the illusionist movement unfurl and we’ll see what happens. Or I could make excuses for you: we’re all human, we all have our blindspots...
But unless illusionist research ends up backing itself into a corner where it can no longer avoid acknowledging that the illusion is real, then as far as discovering facts about human beings goes, it is a program of timidity and mediocrity that leads nowhere. The subject actually needs bold new hypotheses. Maybe it’s beyond the capacity of most people to produce them, but nonetheless, that’s what’s needed.
Thanks for the comment.
In denying certain properties of consciousness, illusionists are typically also denying that basic moral/axiological intuitions need to be grounded in them.
Obviously illusionists deny the inferences you are drawing, i.e. that it’s fine to kill people, that people don’t exist, or that they have no grounds to avoid being punched in the face. For those points to be more forceful, you need to show that (for example) it can pretty much only be bad to kill people because of the kinds of deep, extra phenomenal consciousness stuff which illusionists deny. That is, you are saying “if illusionism then [patently crazy conclusion], not [patently crazy conclusion], ∴ not illusionism”. But the illusionist just denies “if illusionism then [patently crazy conclusion]”.
Of course, one reaction is “it’s totally obvious that illusionism implies crazy conclusions, if you can’t see that, then we’re living on different planets”.
One reason I think a non-realist or illusionist research agenda is not inherently timid and mediocre, is that it is trying to answer very hard but pretty well-scoped empirical questions (e.g. the meta-problem) which don’t currently have good answers, and where hypotheses are falsifiable. And I think that’s a hallmark of successful scientific agendas: at the very least, it’ll either generate interesting and testable new explanations, or it will fail. Compare realist approaches, where it’s less clear to me how to decisively rule out bad explanations (because it’s often unclear what testable predictions they are supposed to make). So I worry realist framings lack the engine for proper, cumulative progress.