From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 15 Oct 92 16:19:20 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <Bw30pF.JGK@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <7692@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>
>>Sure, but if the "behavior" side wins completely enough they leave the
>>other side without any words with which to say what they want to say.
>>They can't talk about an aspect or component of belief any more,
>>because a belief is just a disposition to behave w/o any conscious
>>component.  So they have to resort to something much more convoluted
>>and indirect.
>
>It's straightforward to e.g. talk about "conscious belief" or
>"functional belief", making the split explicitly where it matters.

At present.

>>Well, I said "something", not necessarily a physical duplicate,
>>because I wanted to establish a more general point.  Can we agree
>>that a correct explanation for some effect has to identify the actual
>>causes of that effect (and that it's not enough to come up with some
>>_other_ causes that would have the same effect)?
>
>If neurons cause the behaviour in the zombie, then neurons
>cause the behaviour in me.  (Maybe the consciousness "also" causes
>the behaviour in me, but I don't know what that would come to.)

Well, do you agree that a correct explanation for some effect has to
identify the actual causes of that effect (and not some other cause
that would have the same effect in a different case)?

Because, at least to me, the idea that thoughts affect behavior, that
it makes a difference that one is aware of (and can usefully consider)
reasons for doing things rather than just mindlessly behaving, is one
of the last things we should give up.  Moreover, I think we have good
reasons for believing it's so.

Consequently, I'm inclined to suspect the soundness of arguments
that conclude it is false, even if I can't immediately find any
flaws in those arguments.

>>If so, what you say above would be right only if my conscious experience
>>has no causal role in forming my beliefs about consciousness.  And I
>>think it's just false that it has no such role.
>
>Well, if so, you're probably going to want to deny the logical
>possibility of zombies.  But you'd better find a *prior* reason
>for doing so -- i.e. a demonstration of a conceptual incoherence
>in the notion.  You can't just assert that it's logically impossible,
>in order to make a desired conclusion come out right.

It works the other way around.  If an argument says this desired
conclusion is false, then I say the argument has a false conclusion
and, consequently, is invalid or has a false premise.  I don't
start by asserting (hence don't just assert) that any particular
part of the argument is at fault.

My "rough and ready" view on zombies is roughly this: maybe some sorts
of zombies are possible, but a zombie physical duplicate of me is
either not possible or would either not be capable of the right
behavior or would produce the behavior because of a different
combination of causes.  Since the last of these seems more than
a bit suspect, I incline towards the other two.

>>The idea that my experience has no impact on these beliefs seems
>>completely fantastic to me.  And if it turns out to be true it
>>will be a pretty sad day for us all.
>
>Well, I think the real story will be a complex double-aspect story
>in which both the physical and consciousness will be seen as two
>aspects of something grander, such as Information with a capital I
>(don't ask me what that is).  So then they'll be two parts of
>the same story.  

Sounds reasonable so far.

>There's no escaping, though, that the physical part of the story
>alone will give you an explanation sufficient to predict behaviour.

I think it's unlikely that it will ever become possible to
predict behavior.  I also think it will be a pretty sad day
for us all if it ever does become possible.

-- jd