Both eliminative materialism and reductionism can acknowledge that consciousness is not necessary for explanation and seek a physical explanation. But while eliminativists conclude that there is no such thing as consciousness, reductionists say we simply would have discovered that consciousness is different from what we might have initially thought and is a physical phenomenon. Is there a reason you favor the former?
One might think eliminativism is metaphysically simpler but reductionism doesn’t really posit more stuff, more like just allowing synonyms for various combinations of the same stuff.
Reductionism seems much more charitable. If you can interpret someone either as talking falsely nearly all the time or as often speaking truth, even if some of what they said would need to be revised, I think you’d need a compelling reason to attribute the false claims.
Reductionism also seems necessary to make sense of our values, which often makes essential reference to consciousness. How would an eliminativist make sense of suffering being bad if there’s no such thing as conscious suffering? Strictly speaking, a classical hedonic utilitarian who is an eliminative materialist seems committed to the view that nothing really matters and everything is permitted.
I am not fully committed to eliminative materialism, just trying to push it as far as possible, as I see it as the best chance at clarifying what consciousness does.
As for the last paragraph, if your analysis is correct, then it just means that a classical hedonic utilitarian + eliminative materialist would be a rare occurrence in this world, since such agents are unlikely to behave in a way that keeps itself existing.
If the project of eliminative materialism is fully finished, it would completely remove value judgments from human language. In the past, human languages refer to the values of many things, like the values of animals, plants, mountains, rivers, and some other things. This has progressively narrowed, and now in Western human language, only the values of biological neural networks that are carried in animal bodies are referred to. If this continues, this could lead to a language that does not refer to any value, but I don’t know what it would be like.
The Heptapod language seems to be value-free, and describes the past and the future in the same factual way. The human languages describes only the past factually, but the future valuefully. A value-free human language could be like the Heptapod language. In the story Story of Your Life, the human linguist protagonist who struggled to communicate with the Heptapods underwent a partial transformation of mind, and sometimes sees the past and future in the same descriptive, value-free way. She mated with her spouse and conceived a child, who she knew would die in an accident. She did it not because of a value calculation. An explanation of “why she did it” must instead be like
On a physical level, because of atoms and stuff.
On a conscious level, because that’s the way the world is. To see the future and then “decide” whether to play it out or not, is not physically possible.
In a language consistent with deterministic eliminative materialism, value judgments don’t do anything, because there are no alternative scenarios to judge about.
I am not sure about nondeterministic eliminative materialism. Still, if consciousness and free will can be eliminated, even with true randomness in this world, value judgments still seem to not do anything.
Suppose I build a deterministic agent which has a value function in the most literal sense, ie. it has to call the function to get the values of various alternative actions in order to make a decision about which to perform. Would you still say it has no use for value judgements?
An agent, an entity that acts, cannot say “what will be, will be”, because it makes decisions, and because the decisions it makes are a component of the future. If it does not know the decision it will make before it makes it, it will be in a state of subjective uncertainty about the future. Subjective uncertainty and objective deyetminism are quite compatible.
I think it is possible that you are being misled by fictional evidence. In Arrival, the Heptapods knowledge of the future is a straightforward extension of a fixed future, but everything we know indicates considerable barriers between determinism and foreknowledge
One might think eliminativism is metaphysically simpler but reductionism doesn’t really posit more stuff, more like just allowing synonyms for various combinations of the same stuff.
I don’t think Occam’s razor is the main justification for eliminativism. Instead, consider the allegory of the wiggin: if a category is not natural, useful, or predictive, then in common English we say that the category “isn’t real”.
A category made up of 1 the Statue of Liberty 2 The current Pope and 3 my toothbrush, for all its insane bagginess, and poor fit to reality is made up of things which themselves exist. So it’s much too hasty to conclude lack of reality from poor fit.
Yes, I do think consciousness is such a category. The OP mentions, under the heading of consciousness, issues of what I would call personal identity and qualia. I can’t think of any reason why having the one would grant you the other.
Both eliminative materialism and reductionism can acknowledge that consciousness is not necessary for explanation and seek a physical explanation. But while eliminativists conclude that there is no such thing as consciousness, reductionists say we simply would have discovered that consciousness is different from what we might have initially thought and is a physical phenomenon. Is there a reason you favor the former?
One might think eliminativism is metaphysically simpler but reductionism doesn’t really posit more stuff, more like just allowing synonyms for various combinations of the same stuff.
Reductionism seems much more charitable. If you can interpret someone either as talking falsely nearly all the time or as often speaking truth, even if some of what they said would need to be revised, I think you’d need a compelling reason to attribute the false claims.
Reductionism also seems necessary to make sense of our values, which often makes essential reference to consciousness. How would an eliminativist make sense of suffering being bad if there’s no such thing as conscious suffering? Strictly speaking, a classical hedonic utilitarian who is an eliminative materialist seems committed to the view that nothing really matters and everything is permitted.
I am not fully committed to eliminative materialism, just trying to push it as far as possible, as I see it as the best chance at clarifying what consciousness does.
As for the last paragraph, if your analysis is correct, then it just means that a classical hedonic utilitarian + eliminative materialist would be a rare occurrence in this world, since such agents are unlikely to behave in a way that keeps itself existing.
If the project of eliminative materialism is fully finished, it would completely remove value judgments from human language. In the past, human languages refer to the values of many things, like the values of animals, plants, mountains, rivers, and some other things. This has progressively narrowed, and now in Western human language, only the values of biological neural networks that are carried in animal bodies are referred to. If this continues, this could lead to a language that does not refer to any value, but I don’t know what it would be like.
The Heptapod language seems to be value-free, and describes the past and the future in the same factual way. The human languages describes only the past factually, but the future valuefully. A value-free human language could be like the Heptapod language. In the story Story of Your Life, the human linguist protagonist who struggled to communicate with the Heptapods underwent a partial transformation of mind, and sometimes sees the past and future in the same descriptive, value-free way. She mated with her spouse and conceived a child, who she knew would die in an accident. She did it not because of a value calculation. An explanation of “why she did it” must instead be like
On a physical level, because of atoms and stuff.
On a conscious level, because that’s the way the world is. To see the future and then “decide” whether to play it out or not, is not physically possible.
Because values are intrinsically non physical? Because agents dont have preferences? Because agents dont want to talk about preferences?
In a language consistent with deterministic eliminative materialism, value judgments don’t do anything, because there are no alternative scenarios to judge about.
I am not sure about nondeterministic eliminative materialism. Still, if consciousness and free will can be eliminated, even with true randomness in this world, value judgments still seem to not do anything.
Suppose I build a deterministic agent which has a value function in the most literal sense, ie. it has to call the function to get the values of various alternative actions in order to make a decision about which to perform. Would you still say it has no use for value judgements?
An agent, an entity that acts, cannot say “what will be, will be”, because it makes decisions, and because the decisions it makes are a component of the future. If it does not know the decision it will make before it makes it, it will be in a state of subjective uncertainty about the future. Subjective uncertainty and objective deyetminism are quite compatible.
I think it is possible that you are being misled by fictional evidence. In Arrival, the Heptapods knowledge of the future is a straightforward extension of a fixed future, but everything we know indicates considerable barriers between determinism and foreknowledge
I don’t think Occam’s razor is the main justification for eliminativism. Instead, consider the allegory of the wiggin: if a category is not natural, useful, or predictive, then in common English we say that the category “isn’t real”.
A category made up of 1 the Statue of Liberty 2 The current Pope and 3 my toothbrush, for all its insane bagginess, and poor fit to reality is made up of things which themselves exist. So it’s much too hasty to conclude lack of reality from poor fit.
Yes, I do think consciousness is such a category. The OP mentions, under the heading of consciousness, issues of what I would call personal identity and qualia. I can’t think of any reason why having the one would grant you the other.