From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 21:46:25 GMT

In article <1992Sep25.144907.20077@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>In article <Bv4B8r.FG9@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>>The facts about consciousness, it seems to me, are not [entailed
>>by the physical facts].  Nobody so far has
>>provided a hint of an argument as to why they might be,
>
>Yes, indeed, someone has.  You have yourself.  You gave a complete
>explanation of why intelligent beings would believe they have qualia
>and say they have qualia, whether they do or not.  You are then in the
>peculiar position of saying that your talk about qualia has no
>connection with your qualia at all!!!  In fact, it is logically
>possible (in your view, applied from my standpoint) that David
>Chalmers is a zombie, expounding the valid (for you) argument that
>facts about qualia must be separate from physical fact, and convincing
>some of us people with qualia of this fact about ourselves (and maybe
>some of us zombies, too).  Notice that the qualia are _completely out
>of the loop_.

The point is, no matter how much you dislike epiphenomenalism, that
this is in no sense a demonstration of an entailment relation.  For
that to go through, you'd have to hold that talk about qualia is
*logically sufficient* for qualia themselves: i.e., that a qualialess
system that talked about its qualia was not only empirically silly
but conceptually incoherent.  And that's what's obviously false.
The physical facts *entail* that a system will talk about qualia,
which in turn *suggests* very strongly that the system has qualia,
but it certainly doesn't *entail* it, unless you're a behaviourist
about qualia (which I think, at bottom, that you're not).

>>do below.  (To be fair, Randall Holmes has provided an argument,
>>but it's less a demonstration of an entailment than an assertion
>>that the alternative, epiphenomenalism, is logically impossible.)
>
>But I did not say this.  I think that treating consciousness as
>epiphenomenal is silly.  We certainly could insist to the bitter end
>that the facts about consciousness are different from the physical
>facts, but we can only do so _by fiat_, if your account of the
>physical facts, or anything like it is correct (which I accept as
>being the case).

Look: you need more than "epiphenomenalism is silly" for your
argument.  For your argument above to go through, you literally
need "epiphenomenalism is logically impossible", which it
manifestly isn't.

I certainly agree that the best argument for physicalism is
"Consider the Alternatives" -- neither epiphenomenalism nor
interctionist dualism are attractive positions.  But currently
we're considering physicalism on its own terms -- which
require an entailment relation.  It's no good slipping out of
the call for such an entailment by pointing to how bad things
will be if physicalism is false.

>>other way around.  You show me a *good* physical explanation of
>>consciousness, and I'll accept physicalism.  Right now, I don't
>>have a ghost of a clue what such an explanation would come to,
>>and neither, it seems to me, does anybody else.
>
>As I said, you gave the explanation yourself.

And as I said, an explanation of why we talk about qualia isn't
remotely close to being an explanation of qualia themselves.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech