pragmatist 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: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 October 2012 08:47:54AM 5 points [-]

Mainstream status:

I haven't yet happened to run across a philosophical position which says that meaningful correspondences between hypotheses and reality can only be pinned down by following Pearl-style causal links inferred as the simplest explanation of observed experiences, and that only this can allow an agent to consistently believe that its beliefs are meaningful.

In fact, I haven't seen anything at all about referential meaningfulness requiring cause-and-effect links with the phenomenon, just like I haven't seen anything about a universe being a connected fabric of causes and effects; but it wouldn't surprise me if either of those ideas were out there somewhere.

(There's a "causal theory of reference" listed in Wikipedia but it doesn't seem to be about remotely the same subject matter; the theory's tenets seem to be that "a name's referent is fixed by an original act of naming", and that "later uses of the name succeed in referring to the referent by being linked to that original act via a causal chain".)

EDIT: Apparently causal theories of reference have been used to argue against Zombie Worlds so I stand corrected on this point. See below.

Comment author: pragmatist 21 October 2012 06:39:05PM *  11 points [-]

As bryjnar points out, all the stuff you say here (subtracting out the Pearl stuff) is entailed by the causal theory of reference. The reason quick summaries of that view will seem unfamiliar is that most of the early work on the causal theory was primarily motivated by a different concern -- accounting for how our words acquire their meaning. Thus the focus on causal chains from "original acts of naming" and whatnot. However, your arguments against epiphenomenalism all hold in the causal theory.

It is true that nobody (that I know of) has developed an explicitly Pearlian causal theory of reference, but this is really accounted for by division of labor in philosophy. People working on reference will develop a causal theory of reference and use words like "cause" without specifying what they mean by it. If you ask them what they mean, they will say "Whatever the best theory of causation is. Go ask the people working on causation about that." And among the people working on causation, there are indeed philosophers who have built on Pearlian ideas. Christopher Hitchcock and James Woodward, for instance.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 October 2012 09:23:12PM 2 points [-]

However, your arguments against epiphenomenalism all hold in the causal theory.

Has anyone made them? I ask because every use I've seen of the 'causal theory of reference' is, indeed, about "accounting for how our words acquire their meaning", something of a nonproblem from the standpoint of somebody who thinks that words don't have inherent meanings.

Comment author: pragmatist 21 October 2012 09:44:48PM 19 points [-]

The issue is broached by Chalmers himself in The Conscious Mind (p. 201). He says:

... it is sometimes said that reference to an entity requires a causal connection to that entity; this is known as the causal theory of reference. If so, then it would be impossible to refer to causally irrelevant experiences.

He goes on to reject the causal theory of reference.

Here is a relevant excerpt from the SEP article on zombies:

But, arguably, it is a priori true that phenomenal consciousness, whether actual or possible, involves being able to refer to and know about one's qualia. If that is right, any zombie-friendly account faces a problem. According to the widely accepted causal theory of reference — accepted by many philosophers — reference and knowledge require us to be causally affected by what is known or referred to (Kripke 1972/80); and it seems reasonable to suppose that this too is true a priori if true at all. On that basis, in those epiphenomenalistic worlds whose conceivability seems to follow from the conceivability of zombies — (worlds where qualia are inert) — our counterparts cannot know about or refer to their qualia. That contradicts the assumption that phenomenal consciousness involves being able to refer to qualia, from which it follows that such epiphenomenalistic worlds are not possible after all. Hence zombies are not conceivable in the relevant sense either, since their conceivability leads a priori to a contradiction. To summarize: if zombies are conceivable, so are epiphenomenalistic worlds. But by the causal theory of reference, epiphenomenalistic worlds are not conceivable; therefore zombies are not conceivable.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 October 2012 10:24:38PM 6 points [-]

Thanks! I stand corrected.

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