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entirelyuseless comments on Zombies Redacted - Less Wrong
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Also, regarding the personal things here, I am not surprised that you find it hard to understand me, for two reasons. First, as I have said, I haven't been trying to lay out an entire position anyway, because it is not something that would fit into a few comments on Less Wrong. Second, you are deeply confused about a large number of things.
Of course, you suppose that I am the one who is confused. This is normal for disagreements. But I have good evidence that it is you who are confused, rather than me. You admit that you do not understand what I am saying, calling it "vague hand-waving." In contrast, I understand both what I am saying, and what you are saying. I understand your position quite well, and all of its reasons, along with the ways that you are mistaken. This is a difference that gives me a reason to think that you are the one who is confused, not me.
I agree that it would not be productive to continue a discussion along those lines, of course.
You should take a look at the last comment he made in reply to me, where he explicitly ascribed to me and then attacked (at length) a claim which I clearly stated that I didn't hold in the parent comment. It's amazing how difficult it is for the naive-eliminativist crowd to express cogent arguments or understand the positions which they attack, and a common pattern I've noticed across this forum as well as others.
Yes, I noticed he overlooked the distinction between "I know I am conscious because it's my direct experience" and "I know I am conscious because I say 'I know I am conscious because it's my direct experience.'" And those are two entirely different things.
The first of those things is incompatible with the Zombie Universe Argument, if we take 'knowledge' to mean a probability that one could separate from the subjective experience. You can't assume that direct experience is epiphenomenal, meaning it doesn't cause any behavior or calculation directly, and then also assume, "I know I am conscious because it's my direct experience".
If it seems unfair to suggest that Chalmers doesn't know he himself is conscious, remember that to our eyes Chalmers is the one creating the problem; we say that consciousness is a major cause of our beliefs about consciousness.
I don't think experience is epiphenomenal. As I said, I disagree with the Zombie world argument as proposed.
Nonetheless, it is not true that the first of those things is incompatible with the Zombie argument, even taken in that way. Because knowing I am conscious, not the saying of the words but the being, would itself be epiphenomenal, according to that theory. So direct experience could be the cause of someone knowing that he was conscious, because both of those (experience and knowing) would be epiphenonomenal, so that experience would not be the cause of anything physical (e.g. such as producing sounds that sound like someone saying "I know I am conscious because it's my direct experience.)
...Your comment, paraphrased:
"You think I'm wrong, but actually you're the one who's wrong. I'm not going to give any reasons you're wrong, because this margin is too narrow to contain those reasons, but rest assured I know for a fact that I'm right and you're wrong."
This is, frankly, ridiculous and a load of drivel. Sorry, but I have no intention of continuing to argue with someone who doesn't even bother to present their side of the argument and insults my intelligence on top of that. Tapping out.