Scientist by training, coder by previous session,philosopher by inclination, musician against public demand.
Team Piepgrass: "Worried that typical commenters at LW care way less than I expected about good epistemic practice. Hoping I’m wrong."
By far the best definition I’ve ever heard of the supernatural is Richard Carrier’s: A “supernatural” explanation appeals to ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities.
Physicalism, materialism, empiricism, and reductionism are clearly similar ideas, but not identical. Carrier's criterion captures something about a supernatural ontology, but nothing about supernatural epistemology. Surely the central claim of natural epistemology is that you have to look...you can't rely on faith , or clear ideas implanted in our minds by God.
it seems that we have very good grounds for excluding supernatural explanations a priori
But making reductionism aprioristic arguably makes it less scientific...at least, what you gain in scientific ontology, you lose in scientific epistemology.
I mean, what would the universe look like if reductionism were false
We wouldn't have reductive explanations of some apparently high level phenomena ... Which we don't.
I previously defined the reductionist thesis as follows: human minds create multi-level models of reality in which high-level patterns and low-level patterns are separately and explicitly represented. A physicist knows Newton’s equation for gravity, Einstein’s equation for gravity, and the derivation of the former as a low-speed approximation of the latter. But these three separate mental representations, are only a convenience of human cognition. It is not that reality itself has an Einstein equation that governs at high speeds, a Newton equation that governs at low speeds, and a “bridging law” that smooths the interface. Reality itself has only a single level, Einsteinian gravity. It is only the Mind Projection Fallacy that makes some people talk as if the higher levels could have a separate existence—different levels of organization can have separate representations in human maps, but the territory itself is a single unified low-level mathematical object. Suppose this were wrong.
Suppose that the Mind Projection Fallacy was not a fallacy, but simply true.
Note that there are four possibilities here...
I assume a one level universe, all further details are correct.
I assume a one level universe, some details may be incorrect
I assume a multi level universe, all further details are correct.
I assume a multi level universe, some details may be incorrect.
How do we know that the MPF is actually fallacious, and what does it mean anyway?
If all forms of mind projection projection are wrong, then reductive physicalism is wrong, because quarks, or whatever is ultimately real, should not be mind projected, either.
If no higher level concept should be mind projected, then reducible higher level concepts shouldn't be ...which is not EY's intention.
Well, maybe irreducible high level concepts are the ones that shouldn't be mind projected.
That certainly amounts to disbelieving in non reductionism...but it doesn't have much to do with mind projection. If some examples of mind projection are acceptable , and the unacceptable ones coincide with the ones forbidden by reductivism, then MPF is being used as a Trojan horse for reductionism.
And if reductionism is an obvious truth , it could have stood on its own as apriori truth.
Suppose that a 747 had a fundamental physical existence apart from the quarks making up the 747. What experimental observations would you expect to make, if you found yourself in such a universe?
Science isn't 100% observation,it's a mixture of observation and explanation.
A reductionist ontology is a one level universe: the evidence for it is the success of reductive explanation , the ability to explain higher level phenomena entirely in terms of lower level behaviour. And the existence of explanations is aposteriori, without being observational data, in the usual sense. Explanations are abductive,not inductive or deductive.
As before, you should expect to be able to make reductive explanations of all high level phenomena in a one level universe....if you are sufficiently intelligent. It's like the Laplace's Demon illustration of determinism,only "vertical". If you find yourself unable to make reductive explanations of all phenomena, that might be because you lack the intelligence , or because you are in a non reductive multi level universe or because you haven't had enough time...
Either way, it's doubtful and aposteriori, not certain and apriori.
If you can’t come up with a good answer to that, it’s not observation that’s ruling out “non-reductionist” beliefs, but a priori logical incoherence"
I think I have answered that. I don't need observations to rule it out. Observations-rule it-in, and incoherence-rules-it-out aren't the only options.
People who live in reductionist universes cannot concretely envision non-reductionist universes.
Which is a funny thing to say, since science was non-reductionist till about 100 years ago.
One of the clinching arguments for reductionism.was the Schrödinger equation, which showed that in principle, the whole of chemistry is reducible to physics, while the rise of milecular biology showeds th rreducxibility of Before that, educators would point to the de facto hierarchy of the sciences -- physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology -- as evidence of a multi-layer reality.
Unless the point is about "concretely". What does it mean to concretely envision a reductionist universe? Pehaps it means you imagine all the prima facie layers, and also reductive explanations linking them. But then the non-reductionist universe would require less envisioning, because byit's the same thing without the bridging explanations! Or maybe it means just envisioing huge arrays of quarks. Which you can't do. The reductionist world view , in combination with the limitations of the brain, implies that you pretty much have to use higher level, summarised concepts...and that they are not necessarily wrong.
But now we get to the dilemma: if the staid conventional normal boring understanding of physics and the brain is correct, there’s no way in principle that a human being can concretely envision, and derive testable experimental predictions about, an alternate universe in which things are irreducibly mental. Because, if the boring old normal model is correct, your brain is made of quarks, and so your brain will only be able to envision and concretely predict things that can predicted by quarks.
"Your brain is made of quarks" is aposteriori, not apriori.
Your brain being made of quarks doesn't imply anything about computability. In fact, the computatbolity of the ultimately correct version of quantum physics is an open question.
Incomputability isn't the only thing that implies irreducibility, as @ChronoDas points out.
Non reductionism is conceivable, or there would be no need to argue for reductionism.
Again, those are theories of consciousness, not definitions of consciousness.
I would agree that people who use consciousness to denote the computational process vs. the fundamental aspect generally have different theories of consciousness, but they’re also using the term to denote two different things.
But that doesn't imply that they disagree about (all of) the meaning of the term "qualia"..since denotation (extension, reference)doesn't exhaust meaning. The other thing is connotation, AKA intension, AKA sense.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_reference
Everyone can understand that the qualia are ,minimally, things like the-way-a-tomato-seems-to-you, so that's agreement on sense , and the disagreement on whether the referent is "physical property", "nonphysical property" , "information processing", etc, arises from different theoretical stances.
(I think this is bc consciousness notably different from other phenomena—e.g., fiber decreasing risk of heart disease—where the phenomenon is relatively uncontroversial and only the theory about how the phenomenon is explained is up for debate.
That's an odd use of "phenomenon"...the physical nature of a heart attack is uncontroversial, and the controversy is about the physical cause. Whereas with qualia, they are phenomenal properly speaking..they are appearences...and yet lack a prima facie interpretation in physical (or information theoretic) terms. Since qualia do present themselves immediately as phenomenal, then outright denial ...feigning anaesthesia or zombiehood.. is a particular poor response to the problem. And the problem is different to "how does one physical event cause another one that is subsequent in time"...it's more like "how or whether qualia, phenomenal consciousness supervenes synchronously on brain states". .
With consciousness, there are a bunch of “problems” about which people debate whether they’re even real problems at all (e.g., binding problem, hard problem). Those kinds of disagreements are likely causally upstream of inconsistent terminology.)
If you don't like the terminology, you can invent better terminology. Throughout this exchange , you have been talking in terms of "consciousness" , and I have been replying in terms of "qualia", because "qualia" is a term that was invented to hone in on the problem, on the aspects of consciousness where it isn't obviously just information processing. (I'm personally OK with using information theoretic explanations, such as global workplace theory, to address Easy Problem issues , such as Access Consciousness).
Theres a lot to be said for addressing terminological.issues, but it's not an easy win for camp #1.
If it was that easy to understand, we wouldn’t be here arguing about it.
Definitions are not theories
Even if there is agreement about the meaning of the word, there can also be disagreement about the correct theory of qualia. Definitions always precede theories -- we could define "Sun" for thousands of years before we understood its nature as a fusion reactor. Shared definitions are a prerequisite of disagreement , rather than just talking past each other.
The problem of defining qualia -- itself, the first stage in specifying the problem --can be much easier than the problem of coming up with a satisfactory theoretical account, a solution. It's a term that was created by an English speaking philosopher less than a hundred years ago, so it really doesn't present the semantic challenges of some philosophical jargon.
(The resistance to qualia can also be motivated by unwillingness to give up commitments -- bias, bluntly -- not just semantic confusion)
My claim is that arguments about qualia are (partially) caused by people actually having different cognitive mechanisms that produce different intuitions about how experience works.
Semantic confusions and ideological rigidity already abound, so there is no need to propose differing cognitive mechanisms.
Theories about how qualia work don't have to be based on direct intuition. Chalmers arguments are complex, and stretch over 100s of pages.
Well, I’m glad you’ve settled the nature of qualia. There’s a discussion downthread, between TAG and Signer, which contains several thousand words of philosophical discussion of qualia.
Again, the definition is one thing and the "nature"...the correct ontological theory...is another. The definition is explained by Wikipedia, the correct theory , the ultimate explanation is not.
Seriously, I definitely have sensations.
"Sensation" is ambiguous between a functional capacity -- stopping at a red light -- and a felt quality -- what red looks like. The felt quality is definitely over and above the function, but that's probably not your concern.
I just think some people experience an extra thing on top of sensations, which they think is an indissoluble part of cognition, and which causes them to find some things intuitive that I find incomprehensible.
It's true that some people have concluded nonphysical theories from qualia... but it doesn't follow that they must be directly perceiving or intuiting any kind of nonphysicalism in qualia themselves. Because it's not true that every conclusion has to be arrived at immediately, without any theoretical, argumentative background. Chalmers' arguments don't work that way and are in fact quite complex.
Physics is a complex subject that needs to be learnt. To know what is physical is therefore not a matter of direct intuition...so to know that qualia are not physical is also not a matter of direct intuition.
There's no existing, successful, physical or computational theory of qualia. The people who think qualia aren't physical, aren't necessarily basing that on some kind of direct perception, and don't necessarily know less physics than the people who do.
Consciousness itself is overloaded (go figure!) since it can refer to both “a high-level computational process” and “an ontologically fundamental property of the universe”.
Again, those are theories of consciousness, not definitions of consciousness.
Qualia can be a synonym for consciousness (if you are in Camp #2) or mean something like “this incredibly annoying and ill-defined concept that confused people insist on talking about” (if you’re in Camp #1). I recommend only using this term if you’re talking to a Camp #2 audience.
There are many more than two possibilities. You can take consciousness seriously, in Chalmer's sense, and accept that there is a Hard Problem, without denying that there are other, easier aspects to consciousness.. Chalmers accepts that there are easy problem as well.
And the definition problem becomes much easier if you remember that definitions aren't theories.
Free will in the general context means that you are in complete control of the decisions you make, that is farthest from the truth. Sure you can hack your body and brain ...
Why "complete" control? You can disprove anything , in a fake sort of way, by setting then bar high -- if you define memory as Total Recall, it turns out no-one has a memory.
Who's this "you" who's separate from both brain and body? Shouldn't you be asking how the machine works? A machine doesn't have to be deterministic , and can be self-modifying.
When Robert Sapolsky says there is no free will, he means that if we know your current body state perfectly, we can predict with 100% accuracy what you will do in the next moment given an input.
We can't, in general. Theres no perfect predictability in the human sciences.
I specifically mentioned wife instead of a generic friends
Then you you are picking a special case to make a general point.
If we sufficiently understand how the brain and body works we should be able to predict.
Why? Determinism isn't a fact. We don't have evidence of physical determinism, so we can't make a bottom up argument, and we dont have perfect predictability in psychology, either.
Why would anyone ever care if a god could predict their actions, when no such god exists, and humans can only make bad guesses?I
Predictability implies determinism, determinism implies no (libertarian) free will.
Possibly we are just in one of the mathematical universes that happens to have an arrow of time—the arrow seems to arise from fairly simple assumptions, mainly an initial condition and coarse graining
You are misunderstanding the objection. It's not just an arrow of time in the sense of order, such as increasing entropy, it's the passingness of the time. An arrow can exist statically, but that's not how we experience time. We don't experience it as a simultaneous group of moments that happen to be ordered , we experience one moment at a time. A row of houses is ordered but not one-at-a-time, like a succession of movie frames.
The valence of pleasure and pain is not just a sign change, they serve vastly different psychological functions and evolved for distinct evolutionary reasons.
And the associate qualia? What's the mathematical theory of qualia? Is it bottom-up ...we have some mathematical descriptions of qualia, and it's only a matter of time before we have the rest...or top-down...everything is mathematical, so qualia must be...?
(Extensively reviesed and edited).
Reductionism is not a positive belief, but rather, a disbelief that the higher levels of simplified multilevel models are out there in the territory.
Things like airplane wings actually are, at least as approximations. I don't see why you are.approvingly quoting this: it conflates reduction and elimination.
But the way physics really works, as far as we can tell, is that there is only the most basic level—the elementary particle fields and fundamental forces.
If that's a scientific claim ,it needs to be treated as falsifiable, not as dogma.
You can’t handle the raw truth, but reality can handle it without the slightest simplification. (I wish I knew where Reality got its computing power.)"
It's not black and white. A simplified model isn't entirely out there, but it's partly out there. There's still a difference between an aeroplane wing and horse feathers.
Vitalistic force (§3.3) is an intuitive concept that we apply to animals, people, cartoon characters, and machines that “seem alive” (as opposed to seeming “inanimate”).
It amounts to a sense that something has intrinsic important unpredictability in its behavior
The intuitive model says that the decisions are caused by the homunculus, and the homunculus is infused with vitalistic force and hence unpredictable. And not just unpredictable as a state of our limited modeling ability, but unpredictable as an intrinsic property of the thing itself—analogous to how it’s very different for something to be “transparent” versus “of unknown color”, or how “a shirt that is red” is very different from “a shirt that appears red in the current lighting conditions
Unpredictability is the absence of a property: predictability. Vitalistic force sounds like the presence of one. It's difficult to see why a negative property would equate to a positive one. We don't have to regard an unpredictable entity as quasi-alive. We don't regard gambling machines in casinos as quasi alive. Our ancestors used to regard the weather as quasi alive, but we don't -- so it's not all that compulsive. We also don't have to regard living things as unpredictable --an ox ploughing a furrow is pretty predictable. Unpredictability and vitalism aren't the same concept, and aren't very rigidly linked, psychologically.
It doesn’t veridically (§1.3.2) correspond to anything in the real world (§3.3.3).
Except..
Granted, one can argue that observer-independent intrinsic unpredictability does in fact exist “in the territory”. For example, there’s a meaningful distinction between “true” quantum randomness versus pseudorandomness. However, that property in the “territory” has so little correlation with “vitalistic force” in the map, that we should really think of them as two unrelated things.
So let's say that two different things: unpredictableness , non-pseudo randomness could exist in the territory, and could found a real, non-supernatural version of free will. Vitality could exist in the territory too -- reductionism only requires that it is not fundamental, not that it is not real at all. It could be as real as an airplane wing. Reduction is not elimination.
However, that property in the “territory” has so little correlation with “vitalistic force” in the map, that we should really think of them as two unrelated things
So what is the definition of vitalistic force that's a) different from intrinsic surprisingness b) incapable of existing in the territory even as an approximation?
The strong version of the homunculus , the one-stop-shop that explains everything about consciousness, identity, and free will, is probably false...but bits and pieces of it could still be rescued.
Function: it's possible that there are control systems even if they don't have a specific physical location.
Location: Its quite possible for higher brain areas to be a homunculus (or homunculi) lite, in the sense that , they exert executive control, or are where sensory data are correlated. Rejecting ghostly homunculi because they are ghostly doesn't entail rejecting physical homunculi The sensory and mirror homunculi.
Vitalism: It's possible for intrinsic surprisingness to exist in the territory, because intrinsic surprisingness is the same thing as indeterminism.
There's also a further level of confusion about whether your idea of homunculus is observer or observed.
Are "we" are observing "ourselves" as a vitalistic homunculus , observing the rest of ourselves? If the latter, which is the real self, the the observer or the homunculus?
As discussed in Post 1, the cortex’s predictive learning algorithm systematically builds generative models that can predict what’s about to happen
No one has discovered a brain algorithm, so far.
the suite of intuitions related to free will has spread its tentacles into every corner of how we think and talk about motivation, desires, akrasia, willpower, self, and more
And now we come to the part of the argument where an objective unbiased assessment of free will. concludes that the concept (or rather concepts) are so utterly broken and wrong that any vestige has to be "rooted out".
Now, I expect that most people reading this are scoffing right now that they long ago moved past their childhood state of confusion about free will. Isn’t this “Physicalism 101” stuff?
It's the case that a lot of people think that the age old problem of free will is solved at a stroke by "physics, lol"... but there are also sophisticated naturalistic defences.
There are two dimensions to the problem: the what-we-mean-by-free-will dimension, and the what-reality-offers-us dimension. The question of free will partially depends on how free will is defined, so accepting a basically scientific approach does not avoid the "semantic" issues of how free will, determinism , and so on, are best conceptualised.
I don’t know what people mean by “free will” and I don’t think they usually do either.
Professional philosophers are quite capable of stating their definitions, and you at capable of looking them up.)
Mr. Yudkowsky has no novel insight to offer into how the territory works, nor any novel insight into the correct semantics of free will. He has not solved either sub problem, let alone both. He has proposed a mechanism (not novel) about how the feeling of free will could be a predictable illusion, but that falls short of proving that it is..he basically relies on having an audience who are already strongly biased against free will.
To dismiss fee will, just on the basis of Physicalism, not even deterministic physics, is to tacitly define it as supernatural. Does everyone define it that way? No,there are compatibilists and naturalistic libertarians.
Compatibilism is a naturalistic theory of free will, and libertarianism can be.
(https://insidepoliticalscience.com/libertarian-free-will-vs-compatibilism/)
To provide a mechanism by which the feeling of free will could be an illusion , which he had done, , does not show that it actually is an illusion, because of the usual use laws of modal logic -- he needs to show that his model is the only possibility, not just a possibility. (These problems were pointed out long ago, of course).
It is possible, in the right kind universe to have libertarian free will backed by an entirely physical mechanism, since physics be indeterministic ... and to have a veridical perception of it. The existence of another possibility, where the sense of free will is illusory, doesn't negate the veridical possibility. "Yes,but physicalism " doesn't either.
You don’t observe your brain processes so you don’t observe them as deterministic or indeterministic .. An assumption of determinism has been smuggled in by a choice of language, the use of the word “algorithm". But, contrary to what many believe, algorithms can be indeterministic.
If someone demonstrated that brains run on an indeterministic algorithm, that fulfils the various criteria for libertarian free will, would you still deny that humans have any kind of free will?
Didn’t Eliezer Yudkowsky describe free will as “about as easy as a philosophical problem in reductionism can get, while still appearing ‘impossible’ to at least some philosophers”?
Questions can seem easy if you don't understand their complexities.
Yudkowsky posted his solution to the question of free will along time ago, and the problems were pointed out almost immediately. And ignored for over a decade.
More precisely: If there are deterministic upstream explanations of what the homunculus is doing and why, e.g. via algorithmic or other mechanisms happening under the hood, then that feels like a complete undermining of one’s free will and agency (§3.3.6)
Why? How can you demonstrate that without a definition of free will Obviously , that would have no impact given the compatibilist definition of free will, for instance?
I have had a lot of discussions on the subject , and I have noticed that many laypeople believe in dualism, or a ghost -in-the-machine theory. In that case, I suppose lead that the machine is do it could be devastating. But..I said laypeople. Professional philosophers generally don't define FW that way, and don't think that dualism and free will are the same thing.
Typical definitions are:-
The ability or discretion to choose; free choice.
The power of making choices that are neither determined by natural causality nor predestined by fate or divine will.
A person's natural inclination; unforced choice.
And if there are probabilistic upstream explanations of what the homunculus is doing and why, e.g. the homunculus wants to eat when hungry, then that correspondingly feels like a partial undermining of free will and agency, in proportion to how confident those predictions are.
That's hardly an undermining of libertarian free will at all..LFW only requires that you could have done otherwise..not that you could have done anything at all, or that you could defy statistical laws.
The way intuitive models work (I claim) is that there are concepts, and associations / implications / connotations of those concepts. There’s a core intuitive concept “carrot”, and it has implications about shape, color, taste, botanical origin, etc. And if you specify the shape, color, etc. of a thing, and they’re somewhat different from most normal carrots, then people will feel like there’s a question “but now is it really a carrot?” that goes beyond the complete list of its actual properties.
There's way of thinking about free will and selfhood that is just a list of naturalistically respectable properties , and nothing beyond. Libertarianism doesn't require imperceptible essences, on the naturalistic view, it could just be the operation of a ghost-free machine.I
According to science, the human brain/body is a complex mechanism made up of organs and tissues which are themselves made of cells which are themselves made of proteins, and so on.
Science does not tell you that you are a ghost in a deterministic machine, trapped inside it and unable to control its operation. Or that you are an immaterial soul trapped inside an indetrministic machine. Science tells you that you are, for better or worse, the machine itself.
Although I have used the term "machine", I do not intend to imply that a, machine is necessarily deterministic. It is not known whether physics is deterministic, so "you are a deterministic machine" does not follow from "you are entirely physical". The correct conclusion is "you are no more undetermined than physics allows you to be".
So the scientific question of free will becomes the question of how the machine behaves, whether it has the combination of unpredictability, self direction, self modification and so on, that might characterise free will... depending on how you define free will.
There is a whole science of self-controlling machines: cybernetics. Airplane autopilots and , more recently, self driving cars are examples. Self control, without indeterminism is not sufficient for libertarian free will, but indeterminism without self control is not either
All of those things can be ascertained by looking at a person (or an animal or a machine) from the outside. They don't require a subjective inner self... unless you define free will that way. If you define free will as dependent on a ghostly inner self, then you are not going to have a scientific model of free will.
As a typical example, Loch Kelly at one point mentions “the boundless ground of the infinite, invisible life source”. OK, I grant that it feels to him like there’s an infinite, invisible life source. But in the real world, there isn’t. I’m picking on Loch Kelly, but his descriptions of PNSE are much less mystical than most of them. "
I grant that it feels to you like you have certain knowledge of the universe's true ontology, but at best what you actually have a set of scientific models -- mental constructs, maps -- that make good predictions. I am not saying I have certain knowledge that the mystical ontology is certainly correct, I am saying we are both behind Kantian veils. Prediction underdermines ontology. So long as boundless life source somehow behaves just like matter, under the right circumstances, physics can't disprove it -- just as physicalism requires matter to behave like consciousness, somehow, under the right circumstances
The old Yudkowsky post “How An Algorithm Feels From Inside” is a great discussion of this point.
As has been pointed out many times, there is no known reason for an algorithm to feel like anything from the inside
This Cartesian dualism in various disguises is at the heart of most “paradoxes” of consciousness. P-zombies are beings materially identical to humans but lacking this special res cogitans sauce, and their conceivability requires accepting substance dualism.
Only their physical possibility requires some kind of nonphysicality. Physically impossible things can be conceivable if you don't know why they are physically impossible, if you can't see the contradiction between their existence and the laws of physics. The conceivability of zombies is therefore evidence for phenomenal consciousness not having been explained, at least. Which it hasn't anyway: zombies are in no way necessary to state the HP.
The famous “hard problem of consciousness” asks how a “rich inner life” (i.e., res cogitans) can arise from mere “physical processing” and claims that no study of the physical could ever give a satisfying answer.
A rich inner life is something you have whatever your metaphysics. It doesn't go.away when you stop believing in it. It's the phenomenon to be explained. Res Cogitans, or some other dualistic metaphysics, is among an number of ways explaining it...not something needed to pose the problem.
The HP only claims that the problem of phenomenal consciousness is harder-er than other aspects of consciousness. Further arguments by Chalmers tend towards the lack of a physical solution, but you are telescoping them all into the same issue.
We have also solved the mystery of “the dress”:
But not the Hard Problem: the HP is about having any qualia at all, not about ambiguous or anomalous qualia. There would be an HP if everyone just saw the same.uniform shade of red all the time.
As with life, consciousness can be broken into multiple components and aspects that can be explained, predicted, and controlled. If we can do all three we can claim a true understanding of each
If. But we in fact lag in understanding the phenomenal aspect, compared to the others. In that sense, there is a defacto hard-er problem.
The important point here is that “redness” is a property of your brain’s best model for predicting the states of certain neurons. Redness is not “objective” in the sense of being “in the object".
No, that's not important. The HP starts with the subjectivity of qualia, it doesn't stop with it.
Subjectivity isn't just the trivial issue of being had by a subject, it is the serious issue of incommunicability, or ineffability.
Philosophers of consciousness have committed the same sins as “philosophers of life” before them: they have mistaken their own confusion for a fundamental mystery, and, as with élan vital, they smuggled in foreign substances to cover the gaps. This is René Descartes’ res cogitans, a mental substance that is separate from the material.
No, you can state and justify the HP without assuming dualism.
Are you truly exercising free will or merely following the laws of physics?
Or both?
And how is the topic of free will related to consciousness anyway?
There is no “spooky free will”
There could be non spooky free will...that is more than a mere feeling. Inasmuch as Seth has skipped that issue -- whether there is a physically plausible, naturalistic free will -- he hasn't solved free will.
There are ways in which you could have both, because there are multiple definitions of free will, as well as open questions about physics. Apart from compatibilist free will, which is obviously compatible with physics, including deterministic physics, naturalistic libertarian free will is possible in an indeterministic universe. NLFW is just an objectively determinable property of a system, a man-machine. Free will doesn't have to be explained away, and isn't direct require an assumption of dualism.
But selfhood is itself just a bundle of perceptions, separable from each other and from experiences like pain or pleasure.
The subjective e, sense -of-self is,.pretty much by definition. Whether there are any further objective facts, that would answer questions about destructive teleportation and the like, is another question. As with free will, explaining the subjective aspect doesn't explain away the objective.aspect.
First, computationalism doesn’t automatically imply that, without other assumptions, and indeed there are situations where you can’t clone data perfectly,
Thats a rather small nit. The vast majority of computationalists are talking about classical computation.
Indeed, I was basically trying to say that computationalism is so general that it cannot predict any result that doesn’t follow from pure logic/tautologies,
That's not much of a boast: pure logic can't solve metaphysical problems about consciousness, time, space, identity, and so on. That's why they are still problems. There's a simple logical theory of identity, but it doesn't answer the metaphysical problems, what I have called the synchronic and diachronic problems.
Secondly, one could semi-reasonably argue that the inability to clone physical states is an artifact of our technological immaturity, and that in the far-future, it will be way easier to clone physical states to a level of fidelity that is way closer to the level of copyability of computer programs.
Physicalism doesn't answer the problems. You need some extra information about how similar or different physical things are in order to answer questions about whether they are the same or different individuals. At least, if you want to avoid the implications of raw physicalism --along the lines of "if one atom changes, you're a different person". An abstraction would be useful -- but it needs to be the right one.
Third, I gave a somewhat more specific theory of identity in my linked answer, and it’s compatible with both computationalism and physicalism as presented, I just prefer the computationalist account for the general case and the physicaliskt answer for specialized questions.
You seem to be saying that consciousness is nothing but having a self model, and whatever the self believes about itself is the last word...that there are no inconvenient objective facts that could trump a self assessment ("No you're not the original Duncan Idaho, you're ghola number 476. You think you're the one and only Duncan because you're brain state is a clone of the original Duncan's"). That makes things rather easy. But the rationalist approach to the problem of identity generally relies on bullet biting about whatever solution is appealing -- if computationalism is is correct, you can be cloned, and the you really are on two places at once.
My main non-trivial claim here is that the sense of a phenomenal experience/awareness fundamentally comes down to the fact that the brain needs to control the body, and vice-versa, so you need a self-model of yourself, which becomes a big part of why we say we have consciousness, because we are referring to our self models when we do that.
Well, how? If you could predict qualia from self control, you'd have a solution --not a dissolution --to the HP.
Another reason why the hard problem seems hard is that way too many philosophers are disinclined to gather any data on the phenomenon of interest at all, because they don’t have backgrounds in neuroscience, and instead want to purely define consciousness without reference to any empirical reality.
Granting that "empirical" means "outer empirical" .... not including introspection.
I don't think there is much evidence for the "purely". Chalmers doesn't disbelieve in the easy problem aspects of conscious.
We’re talking about “physical processes”
We are talking about functionalism -- it's in the title. I am contrasting physical processes with abstract functions.
In ordinary parlance, the function of a physical thing is itself a physical effect...toasters toast, kettles boil, planes fly.
In the philosophy of mind, a function is an abstraction, more like the mathematical sense of a function. In maths, a function takes some inputs and or produces some outputs. Well known examples are familiar arithmetic operations like addition, multiplication , squaring, and so on. But the inputs and outputs are not concrete physical realities. In computation,the inputs and outputs of a functional unit, such as a NAND gate, always have some concrete value, some specific voltage, but not always the same one. Indeed, general Turing complete computers don't even have to be electrical -- they can be implemented in clockwork, hydraulics, photonics, etc.
This is the basis for the idea that a compute programme can be the same as a mind, despite being made of different matter -- it implements the same.abstract functions. The abstraction of the abstract, philosopy-of-mind concept of a function is part of its usefulness.
Searle is famous critic of computationalism, and his substitute for it is a biological essentialism in which the generation of consciousness is a brain function -- in the concrete sense of function.It's true that something whose concrete function is to generate consciousness will generate consciousness..but it's vacuously, trivially true.
The point is that the functions which this physical process is implementing are what’s required for consciousness not the actual physical properties themselves.
If you mean that abstract, computational functions are known to be sufficient to give rise to all.asoexs of consciousness including qualia, that is what I am contesting.
I think I’m more optimistic than you that a moderately accurate functional isomorph of the brain could be built which preserves consciousness (largely due to the reasons I mentioned in my previous comment around robustness.
I'm less optimistic because of my.arguments.
But putting this aside for a second, would you agree that if all the relevant functions could be implemented in silicon then a functional isomorph would be conscious?
No, not necessarily. That , in the "not necessary" form --is what I've been arguing all along. I also don't think that consciousnes had a single meaning , or that there is a agreement about what it means, or that it is a simple binary.
The controversial point is whether consciousness in the hard problem sense --phenomenal consciousness, qualia-- will be reproduced with reproduction of function. It's not controversial that easy problem consciousness -- capacities and behaviour-- will be reproduced by functional reproduction. I don t know which you believe, because you are only talking about consciousness not otherwise specified.
If you do mean that a functional duplicate will necessarily have phenomenal consciousness, and you are arguing the point, not just holding it as an opinion, you have a heavy burden:-
You need to show some theory of how computation generates conscious experience. Or you need to show why the concrete physical implementation couldn't possibly make a difference.
@rife
Yes, I’m specifically focused on the behaviour of an honest self-report
Well,. you're not rejecting phenomenal consciousness wholesale.
fine-grained information becomes irrelevant implementation details. If the neuron still fires, or doesn’t, smaller noise doesn’t matter. The only reason I point this out is specifically as it applies to the behaviour of a self-report (which we will circle back to in a moment). If it doesn’t materially effect the output so powerfully that it alters that final outcome, then it is not responsible for outward behaviour.
But outward behaviour is not what I am talking about. The question is whether functional duplication preserves (full) consciousness. And, as I have said, physicalism is not just about fine grained details. There's also the basic fact of running on the metal
I’m saying that we have ruled out that a functional duplicate could lack conscious experience because: we have established conscious experience as part of the causal chain
"In humans". Even if it's always the case that qualia are causal in humans, it doesn't follow that reports of qualia in any entity whatsoever are caused by qualia. Yudkowsky's argument is no help here, because he doesn't require reports of consciousness to be *directly" caused by consciousness -- a computational zombies reports would be caused , not by it's own consciousness, but by the programming and data created by humans.
to be able to feel something and then output a description through voice or typing that is based on that feeling. If conscious experience was part of that causal chain, and the causal chain consists purely of neuron firings, then conscious experience is contained in that functionality.
Neural firings are specific physical behaviour, not abstract function. Computationalism is about abstract function
"it" isn't a single theory.
The argument that Everettian MW is favoured by Solomonoff induction, is flawed.
If the program running the SWE outputs information about all worlds on a single output tape, they are going to have to be concatenated or interleaved somehow. Which means that to make use of the information, you gave to identify the subset of bits relating to your world. That's extra complexity which isn't accounted for because it's being done by hand, as it were..