Why do you prefer panpsychism to emergentism (leaving aside the issue of weak vs strong)? — Luke

The issue of weak vs strong is precisely the issue, so we can't leave it aside. Well, strong vs weak, and access vs phenomenal consciousness.

I think access consciousness does emerge, weakly. And the specific content of our phenomenal consciousness emerges, weakly, along with it.

The mere having of any phenomenal consciousness at all is the kind of thing that, by the way it's defined, could only emerge strongly. And strong emergence is like magic, so a no go.

I would think that given what we already know about the evolutionary progression of life on earth, minds would slowly emerge. — creativesoul

Access consciousness does, certainly.

And that, I think, is what we ordinarily mean by consciousness.


It really feels like I'm talking around in circles here, and I think it's because people refuse to keep the concepts of access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness separate. They're not at all the same topic, and confusing them for each other is, I think, the root of all the trouble in philosophy of mind. So maybe let's taboo those terms entirely, and speak instead of:

"reflexive awareness and control"
(as opposed to simpler e.g. stimulus-response throughput)
which is a kind of functionality
and is what's meant by "access consciousness"

and

"first-person perspective"
(as opposed to third-person perspective)
which is a kind of metaphysical status
and is what's meant by "phenomenal consciousness"


My position is that:

not everything has reflexive awareness and control, not everything even has any awareness or control, most things just respond to stimuli, or less than even that, react when acted upon in an inert Newtonian way. Out of that simple action-reaction can be built up, or can weakly emerge, stimulus-response, first-order awareness and control, and eventually reflexive awareness and control.

but

everything has a first-person perspective, because the alternative is either that even we do not, or that something is metaphysically special about us.


Merely having a first-person perspective is not supposed to be a substantial thing to claim about something. It's a boring, utterly trivial, mundane thing, that's nothing special. Only the functionality of reflexive awareness and control is special.

The issue of weak vs strong is precisely the issue, so we can't leave it aside. Well, strong vs weak, and access vs phenomenal consciousness.

I think access consciousness does emerge, weakly. And the specific content of our phenomenal consciousness emerges, weakly, along with it.

The mere having of any phenomenal consciousness at all is the kind of thing that, by the way it's defined, could only emerge strongly. And strong emergence is like magic, so a no go. — Pfhorrest

I still don’t understand why you prefer panpsychism to emergentism.

Also, you claim that phenomenal consciousness can "only emerge strongly" and is "like magic", so is impossible. Yet, you also define phenomenal consciousness as having a first-person perspective. Having a first-person perspective is impossible?

everything has a first-person perspective — Pfhorrest

I think you are defining “first-person perspective” in such a way that it has nothing to do with minds.

...everything has a first-person perspective, because the alternative is either that even we do not, or that something is metaphysically special about us. — Pfhorrest

I suggest that our ability to talk about our own thought and belief as well as other people's is special enough. I've no idea what "metaphysically special" is supposed to mean. I've a good idea that rocks cannot think about their own thought and belief as well as other rocks'.

There is another sense of the word that means awareness of something, or knowledge of it; that topic is not directly relevant to philosophy of mind, but rather to epistemology. — Pfhorrest

Given that minds consist entirely of thought and belief, and all knowledge consists of belief, I would think that anything directly relevant to knowledge is directly relevant to minds.

First person perspectives are self reports. All reports require language. First person perspectives require language.

Rocks have none.

I still don’t understand why you prefer panpsychism to emergentism. — Luke

because the alternative is either that even we do not [have phenomenal consciousness], or that something is metaphysically special about us. — Pfhorrest

Also, you claim that phenomenal consciousness can "only emerge strongly" and is "like magic", so is impossible. Yet, you also define phenomenal consciousness as having a first-person perspective. Having a first-person perspective is impossible? — Luke

No, I claim that strong emergence is like magic, and so impossible.

So phenomenal consciousness (like anything else) cannot strongly emerge.

But if it emerges at all, it must emerge strongly, by the way it is defined (as something that no combination of the ordinary behavior of physical stuff can equate to, and therefore not something that can weakly emerge from ordinary physical stuff that completely lacks anything like it).

Therefore it must not emerge at all.

So either it does not exist at all (and we ourselves are zombies), or else it is omnipresent.

We are not zombies, so it must be omnipresent.

I think you are defining “first-person perspective” in such a way that it has nothing to do with minds. — Luke

In a way that is completely insufficient for mind as we usually mean it, sure. But that is a way that some philosophers speak of as "mind". So to address their arguments, I need to address this thing that they call "mind", even if it's not the thing I think we ordinarily mean by "mind".

They talk about the concept of philosophical zombies who behave in every way like a human, so there's nothing behavioral, no test we can do from the third person, to tell if they are zombies. They say these things that certainly act in every way like they have minds could conceivable lack "minds", in the sense of lacking a first-person perspective: though from the outside they seem exactly like humans, from the inside nothing seems like anything because there is no seeming-from-the-inside to them.

And I just say that there's a seeming-from-the-inside (a first person perspective) to anything, and that's completely trivial and nothing special at all for most things, because most things don't have any complicated sensory apparatuses and interpretive intelligence and reflexive awareness and control, and those are the things that make our first-person perspective interesting the way it is.

A rock both doesn't appear to do any of that interesting stuff as seen from the outside, and also doesn't experience what it's like to do any of that interesting stuff from the inside, because it's not doing any of that interesting stuff. But there is still a from-the-inside first-person perspective to a rock, it's just completely without note, like the from-the-outside third-person perspective on the behavior of a rock is.

A rock "doesn't do anything" in a casual sense, it just sits there. But technically it is still doing something, because to be at all just is to do something. It's doing a bunch of boring inert low-level physics stuff (its particles interacting with each other and the air and light and the Higgs field and so on), but nothing we would normally call "doing something". Likewise, a rock "doesn't experience anything" in that casual sense; but in the same boring sense that it technically is doing something, I hold that it's technically experiencing something, just nothing of any note to us, something as dull as the low-level physics behaviors it's doing.

Because its experiences correlate precisely with its behaviors, just like everything's experiences correlate with their behaviors. And only things that behave like our brains do have the kind of experiences that our brains do, which is the important thing for "mind" in the sense that we ordinarily mean it.

"Mind" in the sense that people who talk about zombies mean it is something so trivial, it can't even distinguish a human from a rock. Saying that everything has it is basically a way of insulting the significance of it. It's not something special.

I suggest that our ability to talk about our own thought and belief as well as other people's is special enough. — creativesoul

Indeed, but that's a functional ability, and so not the thing that people talking about philosophical zombies are talking about.

I've no idea what "metaphysically special" is supposed to mean. — creativesoul

That there is something "magical" about human beings. That the thing that differentiates us from rocks is not just the things we're capable of doing, but some kind of "soul" or something. (NB that that is the position I am against).

First person perspectives are self reports. — creativesoul

So you literally cannot experience anything unless you tell someone about it? Wow, maybe something like philosophical zombies exist after all, and you're one of them! If I'm to believe your self-report, at least.

Joking aside, self-reports are things we observe about other people in the third person. They're not the same thing as the experiences being reported.

everything has a first-person perspective, because the alternative is either that even we do not, or that something is metaphysically special about us. — Pfhorrest

Yet you've not explained why you have an issue with there being something metaphysically special about us. We are perhaps the only species to engage in metaphysics. Why on earth would you be surprised to find that it becomes anthropocentric in it's constructs?

Yet you've not explained why you have an issue with there being something metaphysically special about us. — Isaac

I'm surprised to hear you of all people asking for a justification to physicalism. Aren't you hard-core all-there-is-to-the-mind-is-the-brain?

In any case, you've already seen my arguments against the supernatural, as you were engaged extensively in the thread where I presented them. And by "metaphysically special" I mean pretty much "supernatural": that there's something going on with the fundamental ontological status of human beings that is not the same as all of the other stuff in the universe, not the kind of thing we could do empirical science to.

But I'll quote some other writings here to briefly justify that physicalism:

I oppose transcendentalism ... as a direct consequence of my position against fideism. While fideism is only a methodology, a process by which to accept or reject opinions, and does not in itself mean any set of such opinions, there are some kinds opinions that cannot possibly be justified except by fideistic methods, so the rejection of fideism demands the rejection of such opinions. Transcendentalist opinions, as I mean the word, are precisely those that would demand appeals to faith to support them, because they make claims about things that nobody could ever check, those things being beyond all experience.

...

The most archetypical kind of transcendentalist opinion is belief in the supernatural. "Natural" in the relevant sense here is roughly equivalent to "empirical": the natural world is the world that we can observe with our senses, directly or indirectly. That "indirectly" part is important for establishing the transcendence of the supernatural. We cannot, for example, see wind directly, but we can see that leaves move in response to the wind, and so find reason to suppose that wind exists, to cause that effect. Much about the natural world posited by modern science has been discovered through increasingly sophisticated indirect observation of that sort. We cannot directly see, or hear, or touch, or otherwise observe, many subtle facets of the world that are posited by science today, but we can see the effects they have on other things that we can directly observe, including special instruments built for that purpose, and so we can indirectly observe those things.

Anything that has any effect on the observable world is consequently indirectly observable through that very effect, and is therefore itself to be reckoned as much a part of the natural world as anything else that we can indirectly observe. For something to be truly supernatural, then, it would have to have no observable effect at all on any observable thing. Consequently, we would have no way to tell whether that supernatural thing actually existed, as the world that we experience would seem exactly the same one way or the other, so there could be no reason to suppose its existence, no test that could be done to suggest any answer to the question of its existence. And so if we held a belief in it anyway, we would have to do so only on faith; and if we reject appeals to faith, we consequently have to reject claims of the supernatural.

...

But by "faith" I don't mean any particular religious beliefs, such as belief in gods, souls, or afterlives, but rather a more abstract methodology that could underlie any particular opinion about any particular thing. I also don't mean just holding some opinion "on faith", as in without sufficient reason; I don't think you need reasons simply to hold an opinion yourself. I am only against appeals to faith, by which I mean I am against assertions — statements not merely to the effect that one is of some opinion oneself, but that it is the correct opinion, that everyone should adopt — that are made arbitrarily; not for any reason, not "because of..." anything, but "just because"; assertions that some claim is true because it just is, with no further justification to back that claim up. I am against assertions put forth as beyond question, for if they needed no justification to stand then there could be no room to doubt them.

In short, I am against supposing that there are any such things as unquestionable answers.

I object to fideism thus defined on pragmatic grounds. I think it is fine and even unavoidable that we pick our initial opinions arbitrarily, for no good reason. But when we do, we then have a very high chance of those initial opinions just happening to be wrong. If we go on to hold those arbitrary opinions (that we just happened into for no solid reason) to be above question, which is the defining characteristic of fideism as I mean it here, then we will never change away from those wrong opinions, and will remain wrong forever. Only by rejecting fideism, and remaining always open to the possibility that there may be reasons to reject our current opinions, do we open up the possibility of our opinions becoming more correct over time. So if we ever want to have more than an arbitrary chance of our opinions being right, we must always acknowledge that there is a chance that our opinions are wrong.

I'm surprised to hear you of all people asking for a justification to physicalism. Aren't you hard-core all-there-is-to-the-mind-is-the-brain?

In any case, you've already seen my arguments against the supernatural, as you were engaged extensively in the thread where I presented them. And by "metaphysically special" I mean pretty much "supernatural" — Pfhorrest

Ah, then we have crossed wires somewhere. Here's what I get thus far from your argument...

1. There exists a metaphysical construct called 'phenomenal consciousness' or 'first-person experience'.
2. This appears to be unique to humans (or sentient life)
3. It cannot not be there because otherwise we'd be philosophical zombies
4. It cannot appear out of nowhere simply by the action of some cells coming together otherwise that would require supernatural intervention.

So it must have been present feature of the cells (and other objects?) all along, just weakly expressed.

What I don't get (and I think this is @Luke's question as well). Is why you're concerned about a metaphysical construct emerging out of nowhere. It has no implications for physicalism at all. Metaphysical constructs are aspects of the human minds which hold them, they can be attached to absolutely anything by any rules whatsoever. If we want to attach 'first person perspective' to only humans, then what is preventing us from doing so? We made it up after all, we can attach it to whatever we like, surely?

Ah, then we have crossed wires somewhere. Here's what I get thus far from your argument...

1. There exists a metaphysical construct called 'phenomenal consciousness' or 'first-person experience'.
2. This appears to be unique to humans (or sentient life)
3. It cannot not be there because otherwise we'd be philosophical zombies
4. It cannot appear out of nowhere simply by the action of some cells coming together otherwise that would require supernatural intervention.

So it must have been present feature of the cells (and other objects?) all along, just weakly expressed. — Isaac

That sounds pretty much right.

What I don't get (and I think this is Luke's question as well). Is why you're concerned about a metaphysical construct emerging out of nowhere. It has no implications for physicalism at all. Metaphysical constructs are aspects of the human minds which hold them, they can be attached to absolutely anything by any rules whatsoever. If we want to attach 'first person perspective' to only humans, then what is preventing us from doing so? We made it up after all, we can attach it to whatever we like, surely? — Isaac

It sounds like we have different understandings of what a metaphysical claim means. As I understand it, a metaphysical claim -- the predication of a metaphysical construct to something, to say that something is or has a metaphysical construct, or that there exists some metaphysical construct -- is a claim about the thing of which that construct is predicated, not a claim about any human's thoughts. Like, saying "minds are immaterial mental substances" isn't just saying "some people think about minds in terms of immaterial mental substances", it's saying that way of thinking is the right way of thinking about minds.

Saying that only humans have a first-person perspective isn't saying that we (or someone) only think of first-person perspectives when humans are involved, it's saying that there's something incorrect about considering the first-person perspective of anything else. Conversely, when I say that there's a first-person perspective to everything, I'm not saying that people do or ought to think about the first-person perspectives of everything -- most of the time there'd be no point, because the first-person perspectives of most things are dull as rocks -- just that you can consider anything from its first-person perspective.

No, I claim that strong emergence is like magic, and so impossible.

So phenomenal consciousness (like anything else) cannot strongly emerge.

But if it emerges at all, it must emerge strongly, by the way it is defined (as something that no combination of the ordinary behavior of physical stuff can equate to, and therefore not something that can weakly emerge from ordinary physical stuff that completely lacks anything like it).

Therefore it must not emerge at all.

So either it does not exist at all (and we ourselves are zombies), or else it is omnipresent.

We are not zombies, so it must be omnipresent. — Pfhorrest

The only two options for phenomenal consciousness are either strong emergence (i.e. magic/supernatural, so impossible) or else panpsychism? Surely there's another option.

They talk about the concept of philosophical zombies who behave in every way like a human, so there's nothing behavioral, no test we can do from the third person, to tell if they are zombies. They say these things that certainly act in every way like they have minds could conceivable lack "minds", in the sense of lacking a first-person perspective: though from the outside they seem exactly like humans, from the inside nothing seems like anything because there is no seeming-from-the-inside to them.

And I just say that there's a seeming-from-the-inside (a first person perspective) to anything, and that's completely trivial and nothing special at all for most things, because most things don't have any complicated sensory apparatuses and interpretive intelligence and reflexive awareness and control, and those are the things that make our first-person perspective interesting the way it is. — Pfhorrest

I don't follow your leap in reasoning from your first paragraph to your second. Wouldn't a better response be - as you say elsewhere - that the idea of p-zombies is simply incoherent?

Why take the extreme position that everything must have a first-person perspective? I view this as diminishing the usual meaning of the word "mind" to the point that it evaporates entirely. You are no longer talking about the "mind" at that point (in the non-trivial sense), because not everything has one, unless you are a panpsychist. Correct me if I misunderstand you, but I think your position is not that everything has a mind - according to the usual meaning of the word "mind". And therefore, you also aren't using the word "panpsychism" in its typical sense, which I understand to mean that everything does have a mind - according to the usual meaning of the word "mind".

What I don't get (and I think this is Luke's question as well). Is why you're concerned about a metaphysical construct emerging out of nowhere. It has no implications for physicalism at all. — Isaac

Yes, I agree about the (lack of) implications for physicalism.

The only two options for phenomenal consciousness are either strong emergence (i.e. magic/supernatural, so impossible) or else panpsychism? Surely there's another option. — Luke

Or else we are zombies ourselves (which eliminativists would say), but yes basically.

I don't follow your leap in reasoning from your first paragraph to your second. Wouldn't a better response be - as you say elsewhere - that the idea of p-zombies is simply incoherent? — Luke

I only say it's incoherent because I hold that you can't have something without a first-person perspective, and the first-person perspective of anything matches its third-person-observable function, so any "zombie" that's functionally identical to a human must have the same experience as a human and so not actually be a zombie.

Why take the extreme position that everything must have a first-person perspective? I view this as diminishing the usual meaning of the word "mind" to the point that it evaporates entirely. You are no longer talking about the "mind" at that point (in the non-trivial sense), because not everything has one, unless you are a panpsychist. Correct me if I misunderstand you, but I think your position is not that everything has a mind - according to the usual meaning of the word "mind". And therefore, you also aren't using the word "panpsychism" in its typical sense, which I understand to mean that everything does have a mind - according to the usual meaning of the word "mind". — Luke

I did clarify in the OP that my view is specifically pan-proto-experientialism, and not the old-fashioned kind of panpsychism. It's pan"psych"ism about phenomenal "consciousness", which I hold is just the prototypical capacity for experience, not fully fledged actual mind/psyche/consciousness in the usual sense.

Other philosophers talk about "mind" in that other sense though, the sense I think is trivial and not the usual sense, and they seem to find plenty of traction with lay people. So rather than tell people that they're using words incorrectly -- because words just mean whatever we agree to mean by them -- I just distinguish between the different senses of those words that different people mean.

Or else we are zombies ourselves (which eliminativists would say), but yes basically. — Pfhorrest

Why can't phenomenal consciousness emerge weakly?

I only say it's incoherent because I hold that you can't have something without a first-person perspective, and the first-person perspective of anything matches its third-person-observable function, so any "zombie" that's functionally identical to a human must have the same experience as a human and so not actually be a zombie. — Pfhorrest

Yes, which I consider to be a better response than resorting to the extreme position of panpsychism.

I did clarify in the OP that my view is specifically pan-proto-experientialism, and not the old-fashioned kind of panpsychism. It's pan"psych"ism about phenomenal "consciousness", which I hold is just the prototypical capacity for experience, not fully fledged actual mind/psyche/consciousness in the usual sense. — Pfhorrest

I don't see what this has to do with phenomenal consciousness or minds in the usual sense, so it seems irrelevant to philosophy of mind.

Other philosophers talk about "mind" in that other sense though, the sense I think is trivial and not the usual sense, and they seem to find plenty of traction with lay people. — Pfhorrest

Is this the same sense of "mind" you are talking about when you say that a rock has a first-person perspective? Which philosophers talk about "mind" in this other sense?

Yes, which I consider to be a better response than resorting to the extreme position of panpsychism. — Luke

Saying “you can't have something without a first-person perspective” is exactly my kind of panpsychism. If you can’t have something without it, everything has it; and it’s a thing some people call “mind”.

I don't see what this has to do with phenomenal consciousness or minds in the usual sense — Luke

Phenomenal conscious is not about minds in the usual sense, it’s about whatever it is that zombies indistinguishable from humans in the third person could supposedly lack. A zombie world have a mind in the ordinary sense: it would say it has a mind and report on its contents just like you do.

But we’re supposed to suppose it’s conceivable that it might not have the first-person experience it claims to have. That difference between behaving in every way like a human and actually having the same experience as a human is just having a first-person perspective correlating with its behavior. I think that’s such a trivial thing to ask for that it can even be ascribed to rocks, so it’s not actually conceivable that something otherwise indistinguishable from a human would somehow lack it.

Is this the same sense of "mind" you are talking about when you say that a rock has a first-person perspective? Which philosophers talk about "mind" in this other sense? — Luke

The ones who think there could be some difference between a philosophical zombie and a human. Since the zombie they stipulate is behaviorally identical to a human, indistinguishable in the 3rd person, the only supposed difference they’re on about has to be the trivial having-of-first-person-experience like I’m talking about here.

Phenomenal conscious is not about minds in the usual sense, it’s about whatever it is that zombies indistinguishable from humans in the third person could supposedly lack. A zombie world have a mind in the ordinary sense: it would say it has a mind and report on its contents just like you do.

That difference between behaving in every way like a human and actually having the same experience as a human is just having a first-person perspective correlating with its behavior. I think that’s such a trivial thing to ask for that it can even be ascribed to rocks, so it’s not actually conceivable that something otherwise indistinguishable from a human would somehow lack it. — Pfhorrest

That's not how I understand it. Zombies lack our first-person experience of the world in the non-trivial sense: they lack the sense experiences normal humans have of sight, sound, taste, etc, but they outwardly act the same as humans. It seems that you want to diminish these experiences to almost nothingness in order to accomodate zombies and rocks being able to have them. You don't need to do that. Simply say that zombies can't be without sense experiences (in the non-trivial sense) because it's incoherent that a zombie could outwardly act the same while having no sense experiences. This will save you ascribing your diluted notion of first-person experience to rocks.

they lack the sense experiences normal humans have of sight, sound, taste, etc, but they outwardly act the same as humans — Luke

Which requires that they have brains and sense organs that function just the same as ours, and so can “see”, “hear”, etc, in every functional way — a zombie could explain over the phone a scene it is witnessing, for example. The only thing lacking is whether they “really experience” all of those fully functional senses. That is the trivial difference that I ascribe to everything.

Experience is not equivalent to first person perspective. The latter is a kind of the former; experience from a human's point of view. More pointedly, not all human experience is on equal footing either. Language acquisition and use quite literally changes how humans experience the world. First person perspectives are descriptions, first hand accounts, of one's own experience. Thus, first person perspectives consist in part at least of naming and descriptive practices. They are certainly existentially dependent upon language use.

All joking aside.

Which requires that they have brains and sense organs that function just the same as ours, and so can “see”, “hear”, etc, in every functional way — a zombie could explain over the phone a scene it is witnessing, for example. The only thing lacking is whether they “really experience” all of those fully functional senses. That is the trivial difference that I ascribe to everything. — Pfhorrest

Zombies have no inner experience or phenomenal consciousness, by definition. What is it you think you are ascribing to everything? The absence of phenomenal consciousness?

What is it you think you are ascribing to everything? — Luke

The trivial thing that zombies still lack, after all of their functionality that gives every appearance of them being conscious to a 3rd person observer has already been accounted for.

The trivial thing that zombies still lack, after all of their functionality that gives every appearance of them being conscious to a 3rd person observer has already been accounted for. — Pfhorrest

What is this “trivial thing”? It is an absence of inner experience. You even refer to it as a “lack” of something. How can you ascribe this as some sort of positive quality to everything? The first-person experience which you define as being synonymous with phenomenal experience is the thing humans have that zombies do not have, by definition. You seem to be trying to ascribe this lack of phenomenal consciousness to everything and calling it panpsychism. This is the antithesis of panpsychism.

It seems like you're somehow understanding everything I'm saying backwards.

Take a human being, in concept. Subtract everything about them that a philosophical zombie also has going on -- which is just about everything, because zombies are definitionally indistinguishable from humans, at least in the third person.

Whatever you have left is the difference between a human being and a philosophical zombie; that's the thing that the zombie is missing, which if it had it, it would be a real human.

In other words it's the only thing a human has that a zombie lacks, completely separate from all of the things that humans and zombies have in common.

NB that things they have in common include talking about their favorite music, complaining about bad days at work, and sharing the fears for the future of humanity. Whatever it is that is different about them, it's unrelated to any of that kind of stuff.

And whatever that is, that's what I ascribe to everything.

In that case, I fail to understand why you consider it trivial. Having a perspective on the world via sight, sound and touch; being able to taste strawberries and smell perfumes. These things are far from trivial to me.

What reason do you have to assume that rocks might have this same kind of first-person experience? And how might a zombie conceivably function without them?

Having a perspective on the world via sight, sound and touch; being able to taste strawberries and smell perfumes. These things are far from trivial to me. — Luke

A zombie can do all those things, but supposedly it's conceivable that despite doing all that it would not actually experience the things that it does. It's that actually experiencing the things that we do that makes a humans different from a zombie.

A zombie can put a strawberry in his mouth and describe to you its complex palette and the similarity of its taste to other foods, and those comparisons can even be accurate since it has all the same olfactory sensors as a real human. But, supposedly, it "doesn't actually taste", despite giving every appearance of seeming to taste.

What reason do you have to assume that rocks might have this same kind of first-person experience? — Luke

I don't think rocks can see, or taste, or smell, or anything like that, because they don't actually do the things that humans do when we see, taste, smell, etc. But I think a rock has the same capacity to experience what it does that humans have -- and that "actually experiencing the things that we do" is the difference between a human and a zombie.

A rock just doesn't really do much, so there isn't really much there to experience. Its experience is as trivial as its behavior, but just as its behavior is technically there, just in a super pedantic sense, so too is its experience.

And how might a zombie conceivably function without them? — Luke

I don't think a zombie could function without them, because I don't think anything can be without them, which is why I think zombies can't exist.

It's that actually experiencing the things that we do that makes a humans different from a zombie. — Pfhorrest

Right, so why do you consider “actually experiencing the things that we do” to be trivial?

I don't think rocks can see, or taste, or smell, or anything like that, because they don't actually do the things that humans do when we see, taste, smell, etc. But I think a rock has the same capacity to experience what it does that humans have — Pfhorrest

We might say that humans have the capacity to perceive and experience the world because we have - among other things - sensory organs. What gives rocks “the same capacity to experience what it does”?

A rock just doesn't really do much, so there isn't really much there to experience. Its experience is as trivial as its behavior, but just as its behavior is technically there, just in a super pedantic sense, so too is its experience. — Pfhorrest

I’m not sure whether you’re just conflating a rock’s (outward) behaviour with its experience here, but I doubt that you are talking about a rock’s perceptions, or that ‘inner’ perspective which distinguishes humans from zombies. If you think a rock has this, then please explain why.

Right, so why do you consider “actually experiencing the things that we do” to be trivial? — Luke

Because in comparison to all of the functional differences between a human and a rock, that difference between a human and a zombie is tiny.

Take the concept of a rock without phenomenal consciousness. Now add the concept of phenomenal consciousness to it and you still have... a rock. Nothing really notable has changed: it doesn’t have any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that.

Now take that original rock without phenomenal consciousness concept, and make all of the many, many, many changes it would take to instead have a concept of a philosophical zombie: you have to build up the chemical processes needed to built the cellular processed needed to build the biological processes needed to build the neurological processes needed to convincingly “pretend” all of the perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, etc, of a human being.

Take the concept of the rock with phenomenal consciousness and make all those same many changes to it, and you now have the concept of a real human.

Take that real human and somehow make that functionality “just pretend“, and you’re back to a philosophy zombie.

We might say that humans have the capacity to perceive and experience the world because we have - among other things - sensory organs. — Luke

Perception is not the same thing as experience in the senses being used here. A philosophical zombie has sense organs and can use them in all the ways a real human can, they just don't “really experience” using them.

I’m not sure whether you’re just conflating a rock’s (outward) behaviour with its experience here, but I doubt that you are talking about a rock’s perceptions, or that ‘inner’ perspective which distinguishes humans from zombies. If you think a rock has this, then please explain why. — Luke

You’re not distinguishing the functionality of brain processes from the kind of metaphysical having of a first person perspective that the zombie people are on about. All of the stuff happening in our brains is still behavior. You seem to imagine that only
gross bodily movements count as behavior. You could easily tell a zombie from a human if zombies had no brain activity; but because zombies are stipulated to be indistinguishable from humans, they must have that same brain activity. But somehow they “don’t really experience” it.

A rock doesn’t have a brain to be active, so it can’t experience what it’s like to have that kind of brain activity. But it can experience what it’s like to be a rock, which is... not much.

Because in comparison to all of the functional differences between a human and a rock, that difference between a human and a zombie is tiny. — Pfhorrest

Yet this tiny, trivial difference leads you to believe that zombies cannot exist.

Take the concept of a rock without phenomenal consciousness. Now add the concept of phenomenal consciousness to it and you still have... a rock. Nothing really notable has changed: it doesn’t have any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that. — Pfhorrest

Then in what sense have you “added” phenomenal consciousness to a rock? In what sense does it have phenomenal consciousness at all if it “doesn’t have any perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, anything like that”?

Now take that original rock without phenomenal consciousness concept, and make all of the many, many, many changes it would take to instead have a concept of a philosophical zombie: you have to build up the chemical processes needed to built the cellular processed needed to build the biological processes needed to build the neurological processes needed to convincingly “pretend” all of the perception, memory, feelings, thoughts, dreams, etc, of a human being.

Take the concept of the rock with phenomenal consciousness and make all those same many changes to it, and you now have the concept of a real human.

Take that real human and somehow make that functionality “just pretend“, and you’re back to a philosophy zombie. — Pfhorrest

I think we already agree that humans and zombies are functionally equivalent but that zombies lack phenomenal consciousness, so I’m not sure of your point here. Is it that there’s a large functional difference between rocks and humans? I don’t see how it’s relevant to phenomenal consciousness.

A philosophical zombie has sense organs and can use them in all the ways a real human can, they just don't “really experience” using them. — Pfhorrest

The only way I can make sense of this is if you think that our phenomenal consciousness has no causal influence, or that it is an unnecessary appendage to human function. In that case, why do you believe that zombies cannot exist?

A rock doesn’t have a brain to be active, so it can’t experience what it’s like to have that kind of brain activity. But it can experience what it’s like to be a rock, which is... not much. — Pfhorrest

Not much or nothing? It makes all the difference between having and not having phenomenal consciousness.

I'd like to raise an objection along the lines that your model makes no allowance for judgement, other than in the section on sapience. However this account is insufficient to provide an account of rational judgement, in particular, 'rational judgement' comprising the interpretation of signs, symbols and meaning.

In one the papers that Apokrisis cites, Howard Pattee's Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis, we read the following:

The concept of Biosemiotics requires making a distinction between two categories, the material or physical world and the symbolic or semantic world. The problem is that there is no obvious way to connect the two categories. This is a classical philosophical problem on which there is no consensus even today. Biosemiotics recognizes that the philosophical matter-mind problem extends downward to the pattern recognition and control processes of the simplest living organisms where it can more easily be addressed as a scientific problem. In fact, how material structures serve as signals, instructions, and controls is inseparable from the problem of the origin and evolution of life. Biosemiotics was established as a necessary complement to the physical-chemical reductionist approach to life that cannot make this crucial categorical distinction necessary for describing semantic information. Matter as described by physics and chemistry has no intrinsic function or semantics. By contrast, biosemiotics recognizes that life begins with function and semantics.

Biosemiotics recognizes this matter-symbol problem at all levels of life from natural languages down to the DNA. Cartesian dualism was one classical attempt to address this problem, but while this ontological dualism makes a clear distinction between mind and matter, it consigns the relation between them to metaphysical obscurity. Largely because of our knowledge of the physical details of genetic control, symbol manipulation, and brain function these two categories today appear only as an epistemological necessity, but a necessity that still needs a coherent explanation. Even in the most detailed physical description of matter there is no hint of any function or meaning.

The problem also poses an apparent paradox: All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures and therefore must obey all the inexorable laws of physics. At the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws. — Howard Pattee

Copy available here.

Note he says 'Even in the most detailed physical description of matter there is no hint of any function or meaning.' And this applies to physicalism, including yours. So your physicalist model doesn't offer any actual explanation of the nature of mind. Instead, what I think you do is take the ability of the mind to make rational judgements as a given - indeed as it must be, in order for you to produce an argument of such a kind. But if 'the nature of mind' is what is at issue, then your argument throughout assumes what it is supposed to be proving - that is, it begs the question! You could not, after all, set aside the power of rational judgement, and then approach it in an objective way, as an object of perception, as something apart from one's cognition, as reason is always required to make such a judgement in the first place. So generally speaking what is likely to happen is that one uses it, without recognising that one is doing so.

It's a bit akin to how in quantum mechanics, one physical system can be said to "observe" another physical system and in doing so collapse the "observed" system from a state of probabilistic superposition into a definite classical state, but that doesn't really imply anything substantial about the "observer"; it doesn't require something like a human being to do the observation, it just requires any kind of object to interact with the other object — Pfhorrest

This too is a contested point. Whether a physical measurement, or the effect of an object on a recording device, constitutes 'an observation' is not at all obvious nor a matter of consensus.

What you're not seeing throughout is the role that the observing mind plays in orchestrating experience, coming to conclusions, and making judgements. You write as if this is something that is simply an inevitable corollary of what is understood about physics, but that is the precise error of physicalism:

what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients, -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it. A confusion which comes about all the more easily as, on the one hand, the senses are, in actual fact, more or less permeated with reason in man, and, on the other, the merely sensory psychology of animals, especially of the higher vertebrates, goes very far in its own realm and imitates intellectual knowledge to a considerable extent. — Jacques Maritain

So - there is an implicit dualism in my argument, as you might notice. But it's important to note that I don't adhere to the Cartesian notion of 'res cogitans' - there is no 'spiritual substance' in the sense that this has come to be interpreted. But neither is there 'res extensia' - the supposed 'physical substance' which constitutes all extended bodies. I think the duality is not between mind and matter in that sense, but that instead intelligence, or reason, or what was known in the earlier philosophical tradition as nous, is 'that which perceives things as they truly are'. But, taking a leaf from nondualist philosophy of mind, this faculty is itself never the object of perception, and as today's empiricism wishes to ground itself wholly in objects of perception, then as far as it is concerned, this is a faculty that can't be accounted for, or doesn't really exist. There are of course many open questions left by that account, but considering the nature of the subject, this is preferable to settling for an apparent answer that doesn't really account for what it is trying to explain.

Because in comparison to all of the functional differences between a human and a rock, that difference between a human and a zombie is tiny. — Pfhorrest

What I'm having trouble figuring out is why you place so much importance upon the notion of philosophical zombies, and Mary's Room, and(I suspect) what it's like to be a bat... These are all thought experiments, and while some have proven very helpful in expanding human knowledge about the world and/or ourselves, most result from gross misunderstandings of what human thought and belief is and how it works.

Brains in vats do not do anything.

The difference between the human and a zombie is wholly determined by an imaginary and stipulated entity called a "philosophical zombie"(which we cannot get wrong, aside from an accounting malpractices of earlier and/or current conventional standards) and human experience(which we can get wrong because that existed in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it). The differences between humans and philosophical zombies are established solely by virtue of comparison/contrast; a comparative analysis of both. That requires knowing enough about them first.

As previously mentioned:Humans existed in their entirety prior to our talking about it. I find no reason at all to believe that the same holds good for philosophical zombies. Rather they are an idea that rests it's laurels upon logical possibility alone. Logical possibility alone does not warrant belief.

Aside from that more than adequate rejection, if one already knows enough about human thought and belief, one can also know that A.)being indistinguishable from a human and B.)not having first person experience is an impossible combination. It's like proposing an apple pie and a zombie apple pie and further claiming that they are indistinguishable aside from the zombie having neither filling nor crust. The difference between the two would be blatantly obvious. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

There is no such set of actual circumstances. Being indistinguishable from a human means that we cannot perceive any difference. The problem, of course, is that a creature without a mind does not do anything, and as a direct result, and we would take note of the differences immediately. Our apple pie would be devoid of crust and filling.

Biosemiotics recognizes this matter-symbol problem at all levels of life from natural languages down to the DNA. — Howard Pattee

Swap "recognizes" with "presupposes".

I think we already agree that humans and zombies are functionally equivalent but that zombies lack phenomenal consciousness... — Luke

Not because such circumstances are actually possible, but rather simply because we can assert that they are.