(January 25, 2023 at 8:40 am)emjay Wrote: @The Grand Nudger @GrandizerII
From what both of you guys have said, it's becoming more and more clear to me that my own thoughts about pz's never came from Chalmers' formal zombie argument. Ie just because he is the most famous proponent of it, doesn't mean he has sole claim to those sorts of ideas.
So with that in mind, whatever is proved here against his specific argument, or form of the argument, doesn't necessarily disprove whatever private conceptions I have of pz's; it probably does, but just not necessarily. 'Probably does' in the sense that my conceptions of it are just more vague, less fleshed out versions; ie I'm not sure exactly where they came from, but probably just from looking at epiphenomenalism and thinking "what if?"... but not philosophically fleshing out the ideas much further than that, as Chalmers did... and therefore fleshing my own conceptions can only do them good, testing them more rigorously to see if they truly are 'conceivable'. Likewise, since my conceptions are vaguer, and more from an imaginative 'what if?' point of view than a philosophical one, they don't have the same goals either, as Chalmers; ie in thinking about pz's it was never my goal to refute physicalism, as it was for Chalmers.
So with all that said, since we are talking about Chalmers' specific argument, I'm happy to continue if you guys want to. Like I said, if nothing else, it will probably help to flesh out whatever internal conceptions I have of pz's, and more so because there's a bit of controversy here as to what exactly he meant regarding identical worlds... ie we can just look at all the possibilities (hopefully) and therefore be exhaustive.
So at this point it seems we're looking at two different possibilities:
1. An identical world in all respects such that the world is identical, humans are identical, and the natural/causal laws are identical.
2. An identical world in most respects, but differing subtly, in its causal laws.
On the face of it, the first one, TGN's, logically looks like a pretty pointless thing to propose (by Chalmers I mean, not TGN), ie can we imagine an actual world where everything is the same, yet different? No, I don't think we can. Is the question, 'can we theoretically imagine a world where everything is the same yet different?', a different question or the same question?, I'm not sure. That may be one of my internal confusions/conflations. And I'm not sure which of these two best fits my internal questions, probably the latter but they may in effect be the same thing.
Another I think that this makes clear to me is that I am probably conflating the notion of inert with nothing in my conceptions. Ie just because something is contended to be inert, as consciousness is in the case of ep, does not mean it is nothing... so what I mentioned earlier, that I treat the two worlds, this world and zworld, as being tantamount to identical of account of consciousness being causally inert, looks like an error of thinking; they're not identical and can't be treated as such, even by use of the world 'tantamount'.
And looking at Grandizer's view, the second one, I think, in this hindsight, that intuitively my internal question has always been more in line with TGN's interpretation, if not anywhere near as rigorously defined... and clearly starting to unravel when rigorously defined. Ie looking at an identical world in every respect... if there's anything different, even subtly, then it's something different. It's not to say that that can't be a different question... ie in a different but similar world, could life exist without consciousness?... but I don't think it's the same question we, or at least I, have been asking about the possibility of pz's.
I will admit I forgot about the textbook definition of EP, and that's what may have contributed to some of the confusion. If, by epiphenomenalism, you mean the textbook definition which contains the condition that the brain (or physical stuff in general) is the sole producer of consciousness, then sure, PZ is not compatible with that.
When I'm thinking epiphenomenalism, however, I tend to think of it in a general sense (where the emphasis is on [human] consciousness being an epiphenomenon, whatever the combination of producers may be).
And no, I doubt Chalmers would go with the first interpretation that you listed of "physically identical" because I don't think he would commit such a grave error in thinking (he is supposed to be a prominent philosopher of the mind after all, not some amateur ... and he's had plenty of time to think about this). It would basically be saying the actual world somehow magically, supernaturally, produces qualia in us. That does not sound like Chalmers to me.
I think the second interpretation is more likely. Remember, Chalmers is concerned with trying to show that physicalism is false. If he were to posit a zombie world that is almost physically identical to the actual, but not quite, that would not help his point (since the physicalist could just say well, qualia arises in our world because of that extra physical stuff that's not found in the zombie world). But positing a non-physical difference between the two worlds keeps his point intact, from how I understand it.
Anyway, I, too, don't put much stock in the PZ argument because it gets us nowhere anyway. But like I do with various arguments for God, for example, I like to make sure I (and others) are getting the argument right. But yeah, personally, I think it's a bit of a red herring, and it's not my go-to argument for my view on consciousness.
