Yeah, I thought you might go to Chalmers’ Zombie Universe argument, since the Mary’s Room argument is an utter failure and the linked sequence shows this clearly. But then phrasing your argument as a defense of Mary’s Room would be somewhat dishonest, and linking the paper a waste of everyone’s time; it adds nothing to the argument.
Now we’ve almost reached the actual argument, but this wall of text still has a touch of sophistry to it. Plainly none of us on the other side agree that the Martha’s Room response “denies the evidence of our own experience.” How does it do so? What does it deny? My intuition tells me that Martha experiences the color red and the sense of “ineffable” learning despite being purely physical. Does Chalmers have a response except to say that she doesn’t, according to his own intuition?
Mary’s Room is an attempt to disprove physicalism. If an example such as Martha’s Room shows how physicalism can produce the same results, the argument fails. If, on the other hand, one needs an entirely different argument to show that doesn’t happen, and this other argument works just as well on its own (as Chalmers apparently thinks) then Mary’s R adds nothing and you should forthrightly admit this. Anything else would be like trying to save an atheist argument about talking snakes in the Bible by turning it into an argument about cognitive science, the supernatural, and attempts to formalize Occam’s Razor.
The Zombie Universe Arguments seems like the only extant dualist claim worth considering because Chalmers at least tries to argue that (contrary to my intuition) a physical agent similar to Martha might not have qualia. But even this argument just seems to end in dueling intuitions. (If you can’t go any further, then we should mistrust our intuitions and trust the abundant evidence that our reality is somehow made of math.)
Yeah, I thought you might go to Chalmers’ Zombie Universe argument, since the Mary’s Room argument is an utter failure and the linked sequence shows this clearly. But then phrasing your argument as a defense of Mary’s Room would be somewhat dishonest, and linking the paper a waste of everyone’s time; it adds nothing to the argument.
Now we’ve almost reached the actual argument, but this wall of text still has a touch of sophistry to it. Plainly none of us on the other side agree that the Martha’s Room response “denies the evidence of our own experience.” How does it do so? What does it deny? My intuition tells me that Martha experiences the color red and the sense of “ineffable” learning despite being purely physical. Does Chalmers have a response except to say that she doesn’t, according to his own intuition?
Chalmers does not mention zombies in the quoted argument, in view of which your comment would seem to be a smear by association.
Saying that doesnt make it so, and putting it in bold type doesn’t make it so.
You have that the wrong way around. The copied passage is a response to the sequence. It neefs to be answered itself,.
You also don’t prove physicalism by assuming physicalsm.
Mary’s Room is an attempt to disprove physicalism. If an example such as Martha’s Room shows how physicalism can produce the same results, the argument fails. If, on the other hand, one needs an entirely different argument to show that doesn’t happen, and this other argument works just as well on its own (as Chalmers apparently thinks) then Mary’s R adds nothing and you should forthrightly admit this. Anything else would be like trying to save an atheist argument about talking snakes in the Bible by turning it into an argument about cognitive science, the supernatural, and attempts to formalize Occam’s Razor.
The Zombie Universe Arguments seems like the only extant dualist claim worth considering because Chalmers at least tries to argue that (contrary to my intuition) a physical agent similar to Martha might not have qualia. But even this argument just seems to end in dueling intuitions. (If you can’t go any further, then we should mistrust our intuitions and trust the abundant evidence that our reality is somehow made of math.)
Possibly one could construct a better argument by starting with an attempt to fix Solomonoff Induction.