Epiphenomenalists, like physicalists, believe that sensory data causes the neurophysical responses in the brain which we identify with knowledge. They disagree with physicalists because they say that our subjective qualia are epiphenomenal shadows of those neurophysical responses, rather than being identical to them. There is no real world example that would prove or disprove this theory because it is a philosophical dispute. One of the main arguments for it is, well, the zombie argument.

Which seems to suggest that epiphenominalism either begs the question, or multiplies entities unnecessarily by accepting unjustified intuitions.

So my original argument disproving p-zombies would seem to be on just as solid footing as the original p-zombie argument itself, modulo our disagreements over wording.

A few questions, and requests for elaboration:

• In what ways, and for what reasons, did people think that cybersecurity had failed?

• What techniques from cybersecurity were thought to be relevant?

• Any idea what Mallah meant by “non-self-centered ontologies”? I am imagining things like CIRL (https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.03137)

Can you briefly define (any of) the following terms (or give you best guess what was meant by them)?: * meta-machine-learning * reflective analysis * knowledge-level redundancy

It's not about qualia. It's about any arbitrary property.

Imagine a cookie like Oreo to the last atom, except that it's deadly poisonous, weighs 100 tons and runs away when scared.

Because consciousness supervenes upon physical states, and other brains have similar physical states.

But why, how ? If consciousness is not a direct product of physical states, if p-zombies are possible, how can you tell apart the hypothesis "every other human is conscious" from "only some humans are conscious" from "I'm the only one conscious by luck" from "everything including rocks are conscious" ?

Chalmers does not claim that p-zombies are logically possible, he claims that they are metaphysically possible. Chalmers already believes that certain atomic configurations necessarily imply consciousness, by dint of psychophysical laws.

Okay. In that case, I peg his argument as proving too much. Imagine a cookie that is exactly like an Oreo, down to the last atom, except it's raspberry flavored. This situation is semantically the same as a p-Zombie, so it's exactly as metaphysically possible, whatever that means. Does it prove that raspberry flavor is an extra, nonphysical fact about cookies?

Epiphenomenalists do not deny that we have first-hand experience of subjectivity; they deny that those experiences are causally responsible for our statements about consciousness.

Since this is the crux of the matter, I won't bother debating the semantics of most of the other disagreements in the interest of time.

As for whether subjectivity is causally efficacious, all knowledge would seem to derive from some set of observations. Even possibly fictitious concepts, like unicorns and abstract mathematics, are generalizations or permutations of concepts that were first observed.

Do you have even a single example of a concept that did not arise in this manner? Generalizations remove constraints on a concept, so they aren't an example, it's just another form of permutation. If no such example exists, why should I accept the claim that knowledge of subjectivity can arise without subjectivity?

Another more directly worrying question, is why or if the p-zombie philosopher postulate that other persons have consciousness.

After all, if you can speak about consciousness exactly like we do and yet be a p-zombie, why doesn't Chalmer assume he's the only not being a zombie, and therefore letting go of all forms of caring for others and all morality ?

The fact that Chalmer and people like him still behave like they consider other people to be as conscious as they are probably points to the fact they have belief-in-belief, more than actual belief, in the possibility of zombieness.

This argument is not going to win over their heads and hearts. It's clearly written for a reductionist reader, who accepts concepts such as Occam's Razor and knowing-what-a-correct-theory-looks-like. But such a person would not have any problems with p-Zombies to begin with.

If you want to persuade someone who's been persuaded by Chalmers, you should debunk the argument itself, not bring it to your own epistemological ground where the argument is obviously absurd. Because you, and the Chalmers-supporter are not on the same epistemological ground, and will probably never be.

Here's how you would do that.

---- START ARGUMENT ----

Is it conceivable that the 5789312365453423234th digit of Pi is 7?

No, don't look it up just yet. Is it conceivable to you, right now, that it's 7?

For me, yes, it is. If I look it up, and it turns out to be 7, I would not be surprised at all. It's a perfectly reasonable outcome, with predictable consequences. It's not that hard for me to imagine me running a program that calculates and prints the number, and it printing out 7.

Yet, until you look it up, you don't really know if it's 7 or not. It could be 5. It would also be a reasonable, non-surprising and conceivable outcome.

Yet at least one of those outcomes is logically impossible. The exact value of Pi is logically determined, and, if you believe that purely logical conclusions apply universally, then one of those values of 5789312365453423234th digit of Pi is universally impossible.

And yet both are conceivable.

So logical impossibility does not imply inconceivability. This is logically equivalent to saying "conceivability does not imply logical possibility" (A->B => ~B->~A).

If conceivability does not imply logical possibility, then even if you can imagine a Zombie world, it does not mean that the Zombie world is logically possible. It may be the case that the Zombie world is logically impossible. Chalmer's argument does not rule that out. For example, it may be the case that certain atomic configurations necessarily imply consciousness. Or it may be any other case of logical impossibility. What matters is that consciousness as an additional nonphysical entity is not implied by its conceivability.

---- END ARGUMENT ----

I don't believe that I experience qualia. But I recall that in my childhood, I was really fascinated by the question "is my blue your blue?" Apparently this is a really common thing.

But I think it can be resolved by imagining our brains work sort of like artificial neural networks. In a neural network, we can train it to recognize objects from raw pixel data. There is nothing special about red or blue, they are just different numbers. And there is nothing magic going on in the NN, it's just a bunch of multiplications and additions.

But what happens is, those weights change to recognize features useful in identifying objects. It will build a complicated internal model of the world of objects. This model will associate "blue" with objects that are commonly blue, like water and bleggs.

From inside the neural network, blue doesn't feel like it's just a number in it's input, or that it's thoughts are just a bunch of multiplications and additions. Blue would feel like, well, an indescribable phenomenon. Where it lights up it's "blue" neurons, and everything associated with them. It could list those associations, or maybe recall memories of blue things it has seen in the past. But it wouldn't be able to articulate what blue "feels" like.

People raised in a similar environment should learn similar associations. But different cultures could have entirely different associations, and so really do have different blues than you. Notably many cultures don't even have a word for blue, and lump it together with green.

I would hope not. 3 is entirely conceivable if we grant 2, so 4 is unsupported

It's not, and I'm surprised you find this contentious. 3 doesn't follow from 2, it follows from a contradiction between 1+2.

1 states that consciousness has no effect upon matter, and yet it's clear from observation that the concept of subjectivity only follows if consciousness can affect matter, ie. we only have knowledge of subjectivity because we observe it first-hand. P-zombies do not have first-hand knowledge of subjectivity as specified in 2.

If there were another way to infer subjectivity without first-hand knowledge, then that inference would resolve how physicalism entails consciousness and epiphenomenalism can be discarded using Occam's razor.

Of course they would - our considerations of other people's feelings and consciousness changes our behavior all the time. And if you knew every detail about the brain, you could give an atomic-level causal account as to why and how.

Except the zombie world wouldn't have feelings and consciousness, so your rebuttal doesn't apply.

The concept of a rich inner life influences decision processes.

That's an assertion, not an argument. Basically, you and epiphenominalists are merely asserting that that a) p-zombies would somehow derive the concept of subjectivity without having knowledge of subjectivity, and b) that this subjectivity would actually be meaningful to p-zombies in a way that would influence their decisions despite them having no first-hand knowledge of any such thing or its relevance to their life.

So yes, EY is saying it's implausible because it seems to multiply entities unnecessarily, I'm taking it one step further and flat out saying this position either multiplies entities unnecessarily, or it's inconsistent.