The correct response would have been, “Why is my primitive any more mysterious or magical than yours?”
Because yours doesn’t do any work; as Eliezer said, if you postulate different laws for consciousnesses then you don’t actually end up less confused about how consciousness works. Besides, I’ve never seen anybody even attempt to write down such a law, they’re just referred to as this amorphous anyblob.
I’d be more charitable if dualists got their alternative laws to do actual predictive work, even if they just predicted properties of personal experience. But no, it happens that the people who do all the useful work are neurologists. This is the universe saying “hint” pretty loudly.
Without these “psycho-physical” laws, we don’t have any good explanations of the phenomenal quality of conscious experience
But that’s my point, psychophysical laws don’t explain anything either, especially if you never get called on actually providing them! The only definition those laws have is that they ought to allow you to explain consciousness, but they never actually get around to actually doing so! This isn’t reason, it’s an escape hatch.
All that said, I AM NOT A DUALIST. I just don’t think the rejection of dualism is virtually a priori true
Neither do I, I think it’s evidentially true. (If they haven’t argued themselves into epiphenomenality again, then it’s a priori true, or at least obvious.)
A question, just to make sure we’re not totally talking past each other: What is the kind of evidence that would lead you to update in the direction of dualism being true?
Scientists cutting into a living brain and finding the interface points, brains doing physically impossible computational feats, physical systems behaving differently in the presence of brains. Hard to say more than that in the absence of specific predictions.
I gave a prediction in my other comment. Do you agree that the continuing absence of a substantive reductive theory, or even an adequate approach to a reductive theory, of phenomenal consciousness is (weak) evidence against reductionism? If so, do you consider it (weak) evidence for dualism?
Also, not all dualists are substance dualists. Chalmers doesn’t believe that brains are getting signals from some non-physical realm.
Chalmers has been declared silly in an Eliezer article somewhere on here; I agree with it completely, so just read that instead.
Regarding evidence: in fact, I’ll go the other way around, and say that the brain is a triumph of reductionism in progress. Starting from when we thought the brain was there to cool the blood, and we had no idea where reason happened, the realm of dualism has only gotten smaller; motor control, sensoric processing, reflexes, neuronal disorders disabling specific aspects of cognition—the reductionist foundation for our minds has been gaining strength so predictably that I’d call a complete reductionist explanation of consciousness a matter of when, not if.
You failed to count all the myriad aspects of minds that have reductionst explanations. Consciousness is what’s left.
You failed to count all the myriad aspects of minds that have reductionst explanations. Consciousness is what’s left.
I don’t see how this alters the claim that the continuing absence of a reductive theory of consciousness is evidence against reductionism. Counting all the myriad aspects doesn’t change that fact, and thatt’s the only claim I made. I didn’t say that the continuing absence of a reduction has demonstrated that reductionism is false. I’m only claiming that Pr(Reductionism | No Reduction of Consciousness available) < Pr(Reductionism).
I think the existence of the Bible is evidence for Jesus’s divinity. That doesn’t mean I’m discounting the overwhelming evidence telling against his divinity.
Fair enough. I just think that seen in the context of the human mind, so far the evidence in general comes down fairly solidly on the side of reductionism, so I wouldn’t recommend clinging to consciousness as the dualist liferaft in the metaphorical reductionist storm.
Because yours doesn’t do any work; as Eliezer said, if you postulate different laws for consciousnesses then you don’t actually end up less confused about how consciousness works.
I don’t see why this has to be the case. We posited different laws for fields (they don’t behave like particles), but that doesn’t mean they don’t do any work. The dualists I’m describing (and an actual example may or may not exist) aren’t describing some completely parallel psychological realm unconnected to the physical realm. They believe one can build good theories where fundamental psychological variables are causally entangled with physical variables, kind of like field variables are causally entangled with particle variables.
I agree that if these psychological properties are completely epiphenomenal then they do no work, but I don’t see why they’d have to be. That’s a substantive question. Maybe it will turn out that laws like the Weber-Fechner law are the best we can do in the relevant domain, that we can’t come up with equally useful generalizations that don’t appeal to sensations (a hypothetical example; for all I know, we have already done better in this particular case). In that case, our best theory has sensations as an irreducible component, but I don’t see why that makes it mysterious or magical.
If successful reductions are evidence for the general thesis of reductionism, then the absence of a successful reduction is evidence against the thesis. Weak evidence, perhaps, but evidence nonetheless. And the longer the absence persists, the stronger evidence it is.
I’d be more charitable if dualists got their alternative laws to do actual predictive work, even if they just predicted properties of personal experience. But no, it happens that the people who do all the useful work are neurologists. This is the universe saying “hint” pretty loudly.
Well, psychophysics is a field, even though it doesn’t presume dualism. Dualists are claiming that we can’t do better. Their position is largely a negative one, and so difficult to construct a research program around. I generally dislike positions of that kind in science, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be right. Also, I suspect the intersection of “dualists” and “neurologists” is not the empty set. Some of the neurologists doing useful work might be dualists of some stripe.
In any case, I didn’t intend to debate the efficacy (or lack thereof) of dualists. Like I said, I’m no dualist. Perhaps all dualists are crappy philosophers, terrible scientists and horribly confused individuals. Doesn’t affect the point I was making.
Neither do I, I think it’s evidentially true.
Um… OK, then I don’t see where we disagree. In the original comment you responded to, I was simply saying that “consciousness” isn’t just a label for a set of neural interactions. If you think dualism is false based on evidence, then I presume you agree. After all, if you believed that “consciousness” simply meant a set of neural interactions, then “consciousness is not reducible to neural interactions” would be false based on the meanings of the words alone, not based on empirical evidence.
I don’t see why this has to be the case. We posited different laws for fields
Sorry, let me restate my point.
if you postulate [merely the existence of] different laws for consciousnesses then you don’t actually end up less confused about how consciousness works.
Actually stating the bridging laws might help with this.
good theories where fundamental psychological variables are causally entangled with physical variables, kind of like field variables are causally entangled with particle variables.
I don’t see what making the psychology fundamental even buys you.
In that case, our best theory has sensations as an irreducible component
My standard is “could a superintelligence reduce these laws to underlying simple physics?” It’s possible that psychology will turn out to be practically irreducible; I have no beef with that claim. I don’t buy that it’s fundamentally irreducible though.
If successful reductions are evidence for the general thesis of reductionism, then the absence of a successful reduction is evidence against the thesis
to the extent that a reduction would have been expected. Give neurology some time. We’re making good progress. Remember, there was a time we didn’t even know what the brain was for. In that time, dualism would have had a much easier stance, and its island has only gotten smaller since. Winds of evidence and all.
Dualists are claiming that we can’t do better.
That we can’t, even in theory, do better. That we, as in cognitively limited humans, can’t do better is merely implausible.
Um… OK, then I don’t see where we disagree. In the original comment you responded to, I was simply saying that “consciousness” isn’t just a label for a set of neural interactions.
I think consciousness is just physics. I don’t perceive consciousness as just physics, but then again, I don’t perceive anything as just physics, even things that unambiguously are, like rocks and air and stuff. I can imagine a causal path in the brain that starts with “photons hitting a rose” and ends with me talking about the effing redness of red, and I can, in my imagination, identify this path with “redness”. I suspect this will get clearer as we become able to stimulate specific parts of the brain more easily.
Because yours doesn’t do any work; as Eliezer said, if you postulate different laws for consciousnesses then you don’t actually end up less confused about how consciousness works. Besides, I’ve never seen anybody even attempt to write down such a law, they’re just referred to as this amorphous anyblob.
I’d be more charitable if dualists got their alternative laws to do actual predictive work, even if they just predicted properties of personal experience. But no, it happens that the people who do all the useful work are neurologists. This is the universe saying “hint” pretty loudly.
But that’s my point, psychophysical laws don’t explain anything either, especially if you never get called on actually providing them! The only definition those laws have is that they ought to allow you to explain consciousness, but they never actually get around to actually doing so! This isn’t reason, it’s an escape hatch.
Neither do I, I think it’s evidentially true. (If they haven’t argued themselves into epiphenomenality again, then it’s a priori true, or at least obvious.)
A question, just to make sure we’re not totally talking past each other: What is the kind of evidence that would lead you to update in the direction of dualism being true?
Scientists cutting into a living brain and finding the interface points, brains doing physically impossible computational feats, physical systems behaving differently in the presence of brains. Hard to say more than that in the absence of specific predictions.
I gave a prediction in my other comment. Do you agree that the continuing absence of a substantive reductive theory, or even an adequate approach to a reductive theory, of phenomenal consciousness is (weak) evidence against reductionism? If so, do you consider it (weak) evidence for dualism?
Also, not all dualists are substance dualists. Chalmers doesn’t believe that brains are getting signals from some non-physical realm.
Chalmers has been declared silly in an Eliezer article somewhere on here; I agree with it completely, so just read that instead.
Regarding evidence: in fact, I’ll go the other way around, and say that the brain is a triumph of reductionism in progress. Starting from when we thought the brain was there to cool the blood, and we had no idea where reason happened, the realm of dualism has only gotten smaller; motor control, sensoric processing, reflexes, neuronal disorders disabling specific aspects of cognition—the reductionist foundation for our minds has been gaining strength so predictably that I’d call a complete reductionist explanation of consciousness a matter of when, not if.
You failed to count all the myriad aspects of minds that have reductionst explanations. Consciousness is what’s left.
I don’t see how this alters the claim that the continuing absence of a reductive theory of consciousness is evidence against reductionism. Counting all the myriad aspects doesn’t change that fact, and thatt’s the only claim I made. I didn’t say that the continuing absence of a reduction has demonstrated that reductionism is false. I’m only claiming that Pr(Reductionism | No Reduction of Consciousness available) < Pr(Reductionism).
I think the existence of the Bible is evidence for Jesus’s divinity. That doesn’t mean I’m discounting the overwhelming evidence telling against his divinity.
Fair enough. I just think that seen in the context of the human mind, so far the evidence in general comes down fairly solidly on the side of reductionism, so I wouldn’t recommend clinging to consciousness as the dualist liferaft in the metaphorical reductionist storm.
I don’t see why this has to be the case. We posited different laws for fields (they don’t behave like particles), but that doesn’t mean they don’t do any work. The dualists I’m describing (and an actual example may or may not exist) aren’t describing some completely parallel psychological realm unconnected to the physical realm. They believe one can build good theories where fundamental psychological variables are causally entangled with physical variables, kind of like field variables are causally entangled with particle variables.
I agree that if these psychological properties are completely epiphenomenal then they do no work, but I don’t see why they’d have to be. That’s a substantive question. Maybe it will turn out that laws like the Weber-Fechner law are the best we can do in the relevant domain, that we can’t come up with equally useful generalizations that don’t appeal to sensations (a hypothetical example; for all I know, we have already done better in this particular case). In that case, our best theory has sensations as an irreducible component, but I don’t see why that makes it mysterious or magical.
If successful reductions are evidence for the general thesis of reductionism, then the absence of a successful reduction is evidence against the thesis. Weak evidence, perhaps, but evidence nonetheless. And the longer the absence persists, the stronger evidence it is.
Well, psychophysics is a field, even though it doesn’t presume dualism. Dualists are claiming that we can’t do better. Their position is largely a negative one, and so difficult to construct a research program around. I generally dislike positions of that kind in science, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be right. Also, I suspect the intersection of “dualists” and “neurologists” is not the empty set. Some of the neurologists doing useful work might be dualists of some stripe.
In any case, I didn’t intend to debate the efficacy (or lack thereof) of dualists. Like I said, I’m no dualist. Perhaps all dualists are crappy philosophers, terrible scientists and horribly confused individuals. Doesn’t affect the point I was making.
Um… OK, then I don’t see where we disagree. In the original comment you responded to, I was simply saying that “consciousness” isn’t just a label for a set of neural interactions. If you think dualism is false based on evidence, then I presume you agree. After all, if you believed that “consciousness” simply meant a set of neural interactions, then “consciousness is not reducible to neural interactions” would be false based on the meanings of the words alone, not based on empirical evidence.
Sorry, let me restate my point.
Actually stating the bridging laws might help with this.
I don’t see what making the psychology fundamental even buys you.
My standard is “could a superintelligence reduce these laws to underlying simple physics?” It’s possible that psychology will turn out to be practically irreducible; I have no beef with that claim. I don’t buy that it’s fundamentally irreducible though.
to the extent that a reduction would have been expected. Give neurology some time. We’re making good progress. Remember, there was a time we didn’t even know what the brain was for. In that time, dualism would have had a much easier stance, and its island has only gotten smaller since. Winds of evidence and all.
That we can’t, even in theory, do better. That we, as in cognitively limited humans, can’t do better is merely implausible.
I think consciousness is just physics. I don’t perceive consciousness as just physics, but then again, I don’t perceive anything as just physics, even things that unambiguously are, like rocks and air and stuff. I can imagine a causal path in the brain that starts with “photons hitting a rose” and ends with me talking about the effing redness of red, and I can, in my imagination, identify this path with “redness”. I suspect this will get clearer as we become able to stimulate specific parts of the brain more easily.