TheAncientGeek comments on Zombies Redacted - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 July 2016 08:16PM

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Comment author: TheAncientGeek 05 July 2016 06:25:55PM *  -2 points [-]

. Once you accept epiphenomenalism is nonsense, you are left with something like nonmaterial "souls" at best

Perhaps, so long as you have also refuted physicalist monism.

That seems to take all the magic out of it though. It's no longer something that's "beyond science". It's some set of laws that could be understood just like physics, just not the physics we know currently. If you are uncomfortable with the idea that we are "just atoms", and don't feel like that explains qualia or experience, just getting new laws of physics isn't going to help.

If you have a reason for thinking that no physics can possibly explain consciousness, then you would reject the Extra Physics family of theories, but if you beef is just with the present state of physics, then you might not.