It’s called ontic structural realism and it’s a well-known and respected view in philosophy, but I agree it’s not the standard physicalist view (or at least physicalists don’t usually explicitly commit to it in the way C1 does.) One of the things I was motivated to explore with the dialogue is if C1 needs to be committed to it or if they can get away from it.
In particular, I think C1 concedes too much to C2 if they take your suggested line. If the “intrinsic property of existence” you’re positing is categorical rather than relational then it doesn’t actually show up in the laws of physics. There’s no “charge” or “mass” intrinsically because in the equations these quantities could be switched with something that plays the same structural role — there’s no “essence” over and above the physical laws which makes it ‘charge’ rather than ‘scharge’.
If C1 grants all this then they grant everything that C2 wants to say — there are nonphenomenal intrinsic properties that underlie physical reality. The crux just becomes whether these properties have anything to do with phenomenology or not. If the categorical properties are there anyway C1 can’t really claim their theory is more parsimonious. At least C2 is using them for some work (to fix phenomenal character) on C1’s story they’d need to be completely idle.
I’m not sure what is a rigorous way to show that argument from conceivability of world B fails, if we accept the framework of conceivability arguments. Rules of counterfactual behavior are rules of physics and so worlds have different relations, maybe?
I think this is a good suggestion and a pressure point that C1 could press harder. C2 wants to say there’s a counterfactual difference between world A and world B which is relational and that they differ only in the categorical base properties. But if the worlds were ever brought into contact it would result in physical or behavioural differences e.g. “Oh, I see blue now!” so how exactly is the categorical base effecting a physical change if physics is causally closed? C2 has some responses but none feel completely satisfying.
It’s called ontic structural realism and it’s a well-known and respected view in philosophy, but I agree it’s not the standard physicalist view (or at least physicalists don’t usually explicitly commit to it in the way C1 does.) One of the things I was motivated to explore with the dialogue is if C1 needs to be committed to it or if they can get away from it.
In particular, I think C1 concedes too much to C2 if they take your suggested line. If the “intrinsic property of existence” you’re positing is categorical rather than relational then it doesn’t actually show up in the laws of physics. There’s no “charge” or “mass” intrinsically because in the equations these quantities could be switched with something that plays the same structural role — there’s no “essence” over and above the physical laws which makes it ‘charge’ rather than ‘scharge’.
If C1 grants all this then they grant everything that C2 wants to say — there are nonphenomenal intrinsic properties that underlie physical reality. The crux just becomes whether these properties have anything to do with phenomenology or not. If the categorical properties are there anyway C1 can’t really claim their theory is more parsimonious. At least C2 is using them for some work (to fix phenomenal character) on C1’s story they’d need to be completely idle.
I think this is a good suggestion and a pressure point that C1 could press harder. C2 wants to say there’s a counterfactual difference between world A and world B which is relational and that they differ only in the categorical base properties. But if the worlds were ever brought into contact it would result in physical or behavioural differences e.g. “Oh, I see blue now!” so how exactly is the categorical base effecting a physical change if physics is causally closed? C2 has some responses but none feel completely satisfying.