So to summarize the state of this thread:

"Qualia" have a number of definitions because philosophers can't seem to agree on what they are (ironic much?) but to the best of my knowledge have no scientific definition.

"P-zombies" are a thought experiment that has never been observed in reality. In fact, no philosopher has been found who was cracked enough to even suggest that they might exist in the real. And given what we know about the mental state of philosophers that's saying a lot.

All of this bafflegab is just camouflage for a massive argument from ignorance that can be summarized as 'I don't understand how sentience evolved so the theory of evolution must be wrong.'

And all of that is about as rigorous and scientific as trying to overturn the Copenhagen Interpretation of QCD by wondering if Schrodinger's cat is frightened by the quantum vacuum.

(January 23, 2023 at 12:30 am)Paleophyte Wrote: So to summarize the state of this thread:

"Qualia" have a number of definitions because philosophers can't seem to agree on what they are (ironic much?) but to the best of my knowledge have no scientific definition.

"P-zombies" are a thought experiment that has never been observed in reality. In fact, no philosopher has been found who was cracked enough to even suggest that they might exist in the real. And given what we know about the mental state of philosophers that's saying a lot.

All of this bafflegab is just camouflage for a massive argument from ignorance that can be summarized as 'I don't understand how sentience evolved so the theory of evolution must be wrong.'

And all of that is about as rigorous and scientific as trying to overturn the Copenhagen Interpretation of QCD by wondering if Schrodinger's cat is frightened by the quantum vacuum.

Succinct and on-point. Well done.

Boru

Quotes below by Paleophyte (for some reason, I'm having a problem with doing the quotes properly here).

Quote:"Qualia" have a number of definitions because philosophers can't seem to agree on what they are (ironic much?) but to the best of my knowledge have no scientific definition.

Qualia isn't the only concept that suffers from this problem. Try defining "intelligence" in a way that perfectly captures it, and in a way that is universally agreed upon by relevant experts. Or "love". Or "energy".

We know there is "something" about which we are trying to come up with adequate descriptions, but there is nevertheless a struggle to do so. And it's not just philosophers who struggle with this.

Quote:"P-zombies" are a thought experiment that has never been observed in reality. In fact, no philosopher has been found who was cracked enough to even suggest that they might exist in the real. And given what we know about the mental state of philosophers that's saying a lot.

P-zombies only need to be considered conceivable (and, subsequently, metaphysically possible), not physically possible, for the thought experiment to work.

Quote:All of this bafflegab is just camouflage for a massive argument from ignorance that can be summarized as 'I don't understand how sentience evolved so the theory of evolution must be wrong.'

That may be Dmitry's mistake, sure. No one else is saying that, however.

Quote:And all of that is about as rigorous and scientific as trying to overturn the Copenhagen Interpretation of QCD by wondering if Schrodinger's cat is frightened by the quantum vacuum.

I guess this was said in jest, so no need to respond to this seriously.

IDK if being conceivable is enough for the thought experiment to work. Consider the anti-zombie conceivability argument. Proceeds in exactly the same way, but presents a contradiction which can only be resolved by the p-zombie conceivability advocate denying that conceivability is possibility (or outright denying conceivability). Let's recall that the conceivability argument is in this pickle even after it's already given up on physical possibility.

I would personally be amazed if there was anything that only a human being could do, myself - acting like us isn't even high on the list of hurdles imo. Once we ask the evolutionary question, though, we've given up on those abstractions. The question is no longer whether or not some abstract w could x some way, but how a specific y z's, and how it came to be in possession of it's z'er.

(January 23, 2023 at 7:08 am)GrandizerII Wrote: Qualia isn't the only concept that suffers from this problem. Try defining "intelligence" in a way that perfectly captures it, and in a way that is universally agreed upon by relevant experts. Or "love". Or "energy".

We know there is "something" about which we are trying to come up with adequate descriptions, but there is nevertheless a struggle to do so. And it's not just philosophers who struggle with this.

We do know that love, hate, hunger and other feelings are dependent for their existence on brains: human brains, and the brains of other animal species, such as chimpanzees, dogs and whales, too.

Rocks don’t feel love, joy or jealousy, and mountains do not love. These emotions are intensely real to those who experience them, but they didn’t exist before brains did.

So in order to have emotions one has to have matter and more precisely a brain.

It is possible that emotions like these – and perhaps other emotions that we can’t begin to dream of – could exist on other planets, but only if those planets also contain brains – or something equivalent to brains.

Energy is also a state of the matter but people do get confused sometimes. For example, in one episode of ST Voyager, the ship's hologram says that he is made of pure energy, but he is not because he is made of chips and other computer parts and eats whatever the computer uses to get its energy, it is only projected into space but that doesn't make it immaterial.

(January 23, 2023 at 9:44 am)Fake Messiah Wrote:

(January 23, 2023 at 7:08 am)GrandizerII Wrote: Qualia isn't the only concept that suffers from this problem. Try defining "intelligence" in a way that perfectly captures it, and in a way that is universally agreed upon by relevant experts. Or "love". Or "energy".

We know there is "something" about which we are trying to come up with adequate descriptions, but there is nevertheless a struggle to do so. And it's not just philosophers who struggle with this.

We do know that love, hate, hunger and other feelings are dependent for their existence on brains: human brains, and the brains of other animal species, such as chimpanzees, dogs and whales, too.

Rocks don’t feel love, joy or jealousy, and mountains do not love. These emotions are intensely real to those who experience them, but they didn’t exist before brains did.

So in order to have emotions one has to have matter and more precisely a brain.

It is possible that emotions like these – and perhaps other emotions that we can’t begin to dream of – could exist on other planets, but only if those planets also contain brains – or something equivalent to brains.

Energy is also a state of the matter but people do get confused sometimes. For example, in one episode of ST Voyager, the ship's hologram says that he is made of pure energy, but he is not because he is made of chips and other computer parts and eats whatever the computer uses to get its energy, it is only projected into space but that doesn't make it immaterial.

^This. The idea that there is some sort of a hypothetical ‘veil’ between my experiences and my perception of them doesn’t strike me as tenable.

Boru

Zombie-boat. Yes, sure, here on earth boats float the way we all understand - but couldn't there be some other world, zombie world, where all things were completely equal and yet the boat does not float? The question, truly, with p-zombies and zombie-boats is not whether there might be more than one way to experience or to float, but how any of these ways would succeed in one instance, and yet utterly and completely fail in all other cases explicitly equivalent.

Honestly, I think we're already in the position where we find ourselves having been fundamentally wrong about the subject. One of the people responsible for this whole bit considered every other living thing on earth bio-automata.

(January 23, 2023 at 7:08 am)GrandizerII Wrote:

Quote:"P-zombies" are a thought experiment that has never been observed in reality. In fact, no philosopher has been found who was cracked enough to even suggest that they might exist in the real. And given what we know about the mental state of philosophers that's saying a lot.

P-zombies only need to be considered conceivable (and, subsequently, metaphysically possible), not physically possible, for the thought experiment to work.

And if things had been left as a thought experiment I'd be fine with that. Dmitry wants to take it a whole lot further though by trying to incorporate it into apologetics.

Leaving that aside, I have to wonder if philosophical zombies are even conceivable. The notion is to have something that is indistinguishable from a human by every measure despite lacking sentience or qualia. While we're at it, let's have philosophical fire, which is indistinguishable from actual fire despite lacking heat or light. Seems like a contradiction to me.

I suppose I'd just a hide-bound old functionalist - for which I make no apology -, but it seems that we know enough (though granted not everything) about neurobiology and psychology to confidently reduce the whole discussion about qualia and p-zombies to little more than wordplay.

Boru

I don't think it's wordplay at all... but each to their own. I still find pz's intuitively conceivable, albeit not being as committed to the idea as I have been in the past. They lead to some paradoxes, though, for me, so that sometimes suggests that an idea is incoherent or badly framed... and therefore probably not conceivable in the strictest sense of the word. But for me, my own paradoxes are very hard to put into words, suggesting to me they're more semantic than logical. So yeah, it's one big clusterfuck thinking about all this I find But if you believe epiphenomenalism is a possibility - as has always been, at least in the past, my default position - I think the possibility/conceivability of pz's naturally follows from that, at least intuitively if not coherently.(jury's still out on its coherency I think, for many people, me included).