RichardChappell comments on Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline - Less Wrong

88 Post author: lukeprog 28 March 2011 07:31PM

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Comment author: RichardChappell 30 March 2011 10:48:37PM *  1 point [-]

Good question. It really needed to be stated in more objective terms (which will make the claim less plausible to you, but more logically relevant):

It's a fact that a scenario containing a microphysical duplicate of our world but lacking chairs is incoherent. It's not a fact that the zombie world is incoherent. (I know, we dispute this, but I'm just explaining my view here.)

With the talk of what's easily imaginable, I invite the reader to occupy my dialectical perspective, and thus to grasp the (putative) fact under dispute; but I certainly don't think that anything I'm saying here forces you to take my position seriously. (I agree, for example, that the psychological facts are not sufficient justification.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 30 March 2011 10:59:28PM *  2 points [-]

Okay, but there was some evidence you were trying to draw on that you previously phrased as "it's easy to imagine p-zombies..." -- and presumably that evidence can be concisely stated, without having to learn your full dialectic perspective. Whether or not you think it's "not a fact that the zombie world is incoherent", there was something you thought was relevant, and that something was related (though not equivalent!) to the ease of imagining p-zombies. What was that?

(And FWIW, I do notice you are replying to many different people here and appreciate your engagement.)