C1 wants to say that worlds which are structurally isomorphic are literally the same world.
I don’t think this is a typical or correct view, if you factor existence out of structure. People believe in reality. “Shut up and calculate” has a name precisely because it’s not a universal position. There is a physical difference between real and fictional chair, even if you describe them as having identical structure. It’s just that usually existence is implicit—physics doesn’t talk about fictional chairs. C1 doesn’t have an answer to “relations need relata” because “relations need relata” is correct.
And so is “blue is like a chair”.
They’re arguing that conscious experience of blue and red gives evidence of something that doesn’t purely fit the causal/functional role in the way a chair does.
Yeah, but they don’t have a strong argument. 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? But I don’t believe conceivability arguments are that rigorously justified in the first place. I accept them in case of zombies, mostly because there is a broadly physicalist solution—zombies are different in that they don’t exist. But in the blue/red case you can conceive of a functionally same chair that exists differently as much as you can conceive of spectrum inversion. You don’t even need to be unphysical about it—antimatter chair from an antimatter-dominated world counterfactually annihilates if you bring it to our world.
And more importantly, like C1 says, parsimony—there is no need to think about different kinds of existence, when you can explain everything with one kind. You agree that if we grant intrinsic property of existence, then third-person descriptions describe first-person experience as completely as they describe chair? Because then neurons and atoms are just more precise description of the same reality that you call “I’m seeing blue”. C2 doesn’t have evidence or arguments that say that “blue” is not neurons, if neurons (are high-level description of reality that) intrinsically exists. But then all differences between blue and red are describable by relations (that are about things that exists) and so arguments about inverted spectrum should not change anything.
If you start to say that some “intrinsic property” is needed to realise the structure then C2 has an opening to claim this is the categorical protophenomenal property required to fix phenomenal character.
Well, there isn’t much that makes it “phenomenal”. Chairs also exist. And it’s not unphysical to say that things exist. It supposed to feel acceptable by everyone by design^^. And if you accept it, all phenomenal structure—all differences between red and blue and all first-person descriptions—are as completely describable by relational physics as chairs. In the end physicalist can say it’s not that consciousness maps to existence, it’s just that people confused consciousness with different, perfectly physical concept of existence.
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.
I don’t think this is a typical or correct view, if you factor existence out of structure. People believe in reality. “Shut up and calculate” has a name precisely because it’s not a universal position. There is a physical difference between real and fictional chair, even if you describe them as having identical structure. It’s just that usually existence is implicit—physics doesn’t talk about fictional chairs. C1 doesn’t have an answer to “relations need relata” because “relations need relata” is correct.
And so is “blue is like a chair”.
Yeah, but they don’t have a strong argument. 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? But I don’t believe conceivability arguments are that rigorously justified in the first place. I accept them in case of zombies, mostly because there is a broadly physicalist solution—zombies are different in that they don’t exist. But in the blue/red case you can conceive of a functionally same chair that exists differently as much as you can conceive of spectrum inversion. You don’t even need to be unphysical about it—antimatter chair from an antimatter-dominated world counterfactually annihilates if you bring it to our world.
And more importantly, like C1 says, parsimony—there is no need to think about different kinds of existence, when you can explain everything with one kind. You agree that if we grant intrinsic property of existence, then third-person descriptions describe first-person experience as completely as they describe chair? Because then neurons and atoms are just more precise description of the same reality that you call “I’m seeing blue”. C2 doesn’t have evidence or arguments that say that “blue” is not neurons, if neurons (are high-level description of reality that) intrinsically exists. But then all differences between blue and red are describable by relations (that are about things that exists) and so arguments about inverted spectrum should not change anything.
Well, there isn’t much that makes it “phenomenal”. Chairs also exist. And it’s not unphysical to say that things exist. It supposed to feel acceptable by everyone by design^^. And if you accept it, all phenomenal structure—all differences between red and blue and all first-person descriptions—are as completely describable by relational physics as chairs. In the end physicalist can say it’s not that consciousness maps to existence, it’s just that people confused consciousness with different, perfectly physical concept of existence.
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.