Kaj_Sotala comments on Causal Reference - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 October 2012 10:12PM

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Tags: seq_epistemology causality meaningfulness reference consciousness qualia zombies

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Comment author: dspeyer 21 October 2012 06:47:27AM 4 points [-]

Religion and epiphenomenalogy differ in three important ways:

  • Religion is widespread. Almost everyone knows what it is. Most people have at least some religious memes sticking in their heads. A significant fraction of people have dangerous religious memes in their heads so decreasing those qualifies as raising the sanity waterline. Epiphenomenalogy is essentially unknown outside academic philosophy, and now the lesswrong readership.
  • Religion has impact everywhere. People have died because of other people's religious beliefs, and not just from violence. Belief in epiphenomenalogy has almost no impact on the lives of non-believers.
  • Religious thought patterns re-occur. Authority, green/blue, and "it is good to believe" show up over and over again. The sort of thoughts that lead to epiphenomenalogy are quite obscure.
Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 21 October 2012 08:47:39AM 5 points [-]

Epiphenomenalogy is essentially unknown outside academic philosophy, and now the lesswrong readership.

I'd say it's more widespread than that. Some strands of Buddhist thought, for instance, seem to strongly imply it even if they didn't state it outright. And it feels like it'd be the most intuitive way of thinking about consciousness for many of the people who'd think about it at all, even if they weren't familiar with academic philosophy. (I don't think I got it from academic philosophy, though I can't be sure of that.)

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