Hi Connor. I recently started following you and really enjoy your writing, especially the animal rights stuff. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I’ve been watching this dualism debate on Substack and I’d like to participate if you don’t mind.
"Imagine a world where instead of consciousness arising from functions in the brain, it arises from rocks. Just rocks sitting still doing nothing. The physicalist is committed to saying that these beings are conscious in some sense, but aren’t in another"
If I must imagine this world then I would say the physicalist is only committed to describe the physics of the rock and so the rock must have some measurable way for us to know it has consciousness (communication, movement, intention, etc), otherwise no physicalist in any imaginable world is even going to have this discussion.
If we assume then that the rock has a measurable “consciousness” that means one of two things: The rock has form and function different from rocks in our world (e.g. it could have moving parts or or some otherwise complex dynamic structure) OR there are different laws of physics and different equipment capable of measuring those aspects deemed “conscious” (Forces or energies or whatever you would like to conceive). How else would the imagined philosophers of this world consider that the rock was conscious to begin with?
Also, I think the heat example is actually much better than the H2O one. Although heat, the sensation of warmth (primary intention), can be imagined to come from slow moving particles (secondary intention) it cannot actually come from slow moving particles. At least not without completely changing all of physics in drastic ways (I am working on a way to describe this more clearly in the language of thermodynamics). I can “conceive” of heat in this way but it is metaphysically impossible.
Hi, thanks for the kind words! Always nice to hear that someone enjoys what I write. I'm busy rn so can't reply right now to your responses but thanks for adding your thoughts!
I'm happy to say the primary and secondary meanings don't coincide. When I'm naively conceiving things, I'm using a pretty loose conception of consciousness. Unlike with water/H20, the secondary meaning is the thing in dispute. If I think about it, I think the most likely thing is brain functions.
I can naively imagine rocks being conscious and enjoy a cartoon where they are. But if I take a minute to think about it, I realize "Oh right, there's no brain processing going on in there, I don't think this cartoon is showing me something actually possible!" and then my three-year-old has to deal with my ranting about the scientific inaccuracies in Morphle.
So to me the primary and secondary meanings being pulled out here are just the "naive not thinking about it" vs the "actually thinking about what underlies consciousness", and they seem to pretty obviously not coincide for a physicalist--or for anyone agnostic about what consciousness is.
1. Extension and intension cannot coincide technically (intension is of logical type <s,t>, where s is type of worlds and t is whatever the type of extension is; there are some that prefer to bury s deeper _inside_ t, but it doesn't change the incommensurability).
2. There is an easy way around technicality: have intension be λw.Extension (i.e. have it take the world argument _vacuously_). However, the intension of consciousness (i.e. what it is "created by", if anything) is _what the argument is about_. Accepting Chalmers's "proposal" of intension of consciousness being λw.Extension_of_consciousness is putting your conclusion in your premise. Of course you'll end up with your desired conclusion if you put it among your premises.
I think this argument is missing half of the equation. You can't just look at the primary and secondary intention of consciousness, but also the primary and secondary intention of, P="physically identical to you". You can conceive of a person who is P1 - that would be someone who appears to you to be physically identical to yourself. They have the same appearance, behavior, and course-grained physical properties. But you can't conceive of someone who is literally physically identical to you (P2) - your mind is not big enough to do that. So you can't point to your own conceptual abilities to say that a P2 zombie is possible.
It also seems that if this argument is correct, it implicates dualism just as much as physicalism. After all, dualism says that consciousness is some non-physical substance. But we can conceive of a person who is conscious without any non-physical substance in them, and for any given person with some non-physical substance in them, we can conceive of someone with the same substance but who isn't conscious. So we should conclude that dualism is false because dualism holds that anyone with the right non-physical substance would be conscious. Now perhaps you object to this argument and say, "No, we can't imagine a person who's conscious without a non-physical substance because that non-physical substance is just what consciousness is." But that seems to run into the same 2D semantics argument as the physicalist response. "Consciousness" just means "subjective experience" on both levels of the semantics, so you can't use this out, at least according to the counterargument to physicalism. But then we've proven too much - we've proven both that consciousness can't be physical and that it can't be non-physical.
Also, your argument based on rocks doesn't work against the best forms of physicalism. The existence of a possible world where rocks are conscious is perfectly compatible with physicalism, even if those rocks are physically identical to real-world rocks. This is because almost all forms of physicalism (including functionalism) hold that consciousness is multiply realizable. So even though physicalists hold that in the actual world, consciousness is realized by physical processes, it's metaphysically possible that it could be realized by non-physical processes as well. They just have to have the right functional characteristics (or, if you're not a functionalist, whatever other characteristics make something conscious). In a hypothetical world where rocks have some non-physical substance connected to them that has the right properties, rocks would be conscious. In short, physicalism implies the impossibility of zombies, but not the impossibility of anti-zombies (objects physically identical to non-conscious ones, but which are conscious) because physicalism only entails that the forms of consciousness we know about are physical, not that all consciousness is physical by necessity.
One more objection which I wanted to separate out because it doesn't reflect my position, but there is less to step 4 than appears at first glance which makes the argument consistent with some not exactly dualist theories. So granting step 3 for the sake of argument, what if functionalism or some other physicalist theory is true, but not as a necessary truth, just as a fact or law about the universe we are in. This is compatible with the zombie argument! "If zombies are possible then physical laws of quantum mechanics don't give rise to consciousness" "Yes, but those laws plus the additional law that functionalism is true in this universe do. Zombies can still be metaphysically possible if a universe without that law is." Check mate, aphysicalists!
A panpsychist could respond similarly. Contra dualism, the extra thing to give rise to consciousness need not be an extra *thing* -- an extra fact will do. Like I said I don't really buy this position, though. It retains some of the weird implications of epiphenomenalism, though I think in a milder form than the usual conclusions of the zombie argument. Seems more likely to me that some form of functionalism is a necessary truth, even if it isn't immediately obvious that it is necessary.
Step 2 just strikes me as obviously incorrect; thoroughly disproven by the existence of the field of mathematics. I can conceive of the Riemann hypothesis being true or false but only one of the two is a metaphysical possibility. Metaphysical possibilities aren't a vast array of toggle switches that can be turned on and off independently; they have implications, they have potential contradictions, including non-obvious ones, and it can be difficult to work them out, so no, the fact that you can conceive something isn't the premise of a compelling argument.
But you probably won't find that argument too surprising as I believe you've argued similarly for explaining why you are an interactional dualist and not an epiphenomenal dualist. But the zombie argument is only consistent with epiphenomenal dualism. If you think your consciousness has a casual effect on what you do (for example influencing your writing on the subject) then a being that is in every way like you except that it lacks consciousness should not work -- it's lacking a crucial causal piece, so it should be acting differently. Yet that doesn't stop you from conceiving of it acting the same.
More specific objections:
Water vs H2O: I see two distinct thought experiments you might be engaging in here. One is maybe you are from Titan and just had a bracing swim in an ethane lake, which you call water. But on reflection it seems clear you are using the word water to refer to a different thing than us Earthlings, and not much interesting follows from this possibility. The other thought experiment is, what if NaCl were a liquid that were indistinguishable from water while H2O was a solid salt that could dissolve in it? And if that's the sort of thing you're thinking, then I think you're not really doing the thought experiment. Because the properties of these substances ultimately arise from a very small number of physical laws without enough degrees of freedom to change this and not change all sorts of other things too, but you're not imagining what else would be different, you're imagining this universe since it is clearly a metaphysical possibility but you've toggled this one switch in hopes of getting another metaphysically possible universe which you can then argue about the implications of, and I'm saying that generally doesn't work, you have to flip lots of other switches along with that one to get another metaphysically possible universe, and it's not remotely obvious what all of the switches are, and you certainly can't determine them from conceivability alone.
"Imagine a world where instead of consciousness arising from functions in the brain, it arises from rocks. Just rocks sitting still doing nothing. The physicalist is committed to saying that these beings are conscious in some sense, but aren’t in another." The physicalist is in no way committed to recognizing this world as a metaphysical possibility! This, the idea that we don't even need these complicated brains, that rocks sitting still and doing nothing without any complicated structure that would allow them to integrate a variety of information from their environment and build more complicated thoughts about is perceptions and the fact that it exists in some form capable of experiencing these perceptions -- it's a bit of a stretch to imagine and certainly not a better shared starting premise from which to argue with a physicalist.
Edit: you're right though that Dualism isn't the view that consciousness isn't physical. It also claims physical stuff exists. So, not quite accurate there and I will correct
Well, the idealists wouldn't be able to say that there is a universe with beings (objects?) that are physically identical to our bodies, because they don't think there is a physical plane to begin with.
And yes, if zombies are metaphysically possible, then we can't know for CERTAIN if other people are conscious. We probably have others reasons for thinking they are though, like the fact that a world with many consciousness' better predicts out existance than a world with a single consciousness.
Not read about it before, but my initial impressions are that it's a bit out there. Seems less likely to me than the ordinary view that the physical existed first.
Surely God valuing consciousness would only show that people are in fact conscious, not that zombies are metaphysically impossible? Maybe he can make them if he wants, and he just doesn't want to. However, it doesn't seem like he can make H20 that's not H20
Hi Connor. I recently started following you and really enjoy your writing, especially the animal rights stuff. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I’ve been watching this dualism debate on Substack and I’d like to participate if you don’t mind.
"Imagine a world where instead of consciousness arising from functions in the brain, it arises from rocks. Just rocks sitting still doing nothing. The physicalist is committed to saying that these beings are conscious in some sense, but aren’t in another"
If I must imagine this world then I would say the physicalist is only committed to describe the physics of the rock and so the rock must have some measurable way for us to know it has consciousness (communication, movement, intention, etc), otherwise no physicalist in any imaginable world is even going to have this discussion.
If we assume then that the rock has a measurable “consciousness” that means one of two things: The rock has form and function different from rocks in our world (e.g. it could have moving parts or or some otherwise complex dynamic structure) OR there are different laws of physics and different equipment capable of measuring those aspects deemed “conscious” (Forces or energies or whatever you would like to conceive). How else would the imagined philosophers of this world consider that the rock was conscious to begin with?
Also, I think the heat example is actually much better than the H2O one. Although heat, the sensation of warmth (primary intention), can be imagined to come from slow moving particles (secondary intention) it cannot actually come from slow moving particles. At least not without completely changing all of physics in drastic ways (I am working on a way to describe this more clearly in the language of thermodynamics). I can “conceive” of heat in this way but it is metaphysically impossible.
Hi, thanks for the kind words! Always nice to hear that someone enjoys what I write. I'm busy rn so can't reply right now to your responses but thanks for adding your thoughts!
I'm happy to say the primary and secondary meanings don't coincide. When I'm naively conceiving things, I'm using a pretty loose conception of consciousness. Unlike with water/H20, the secondary meaning is the thing in dispute. If I think about it, I think the most likely thing is brain functions.
I can naively imagine rocks being conscious and enjoy a cartoon where they are. But if I take a minute to think about it, I realize "Oh right, there's no brain processing going on in there, I don't think this cartoon is showing me something actually possible!" and then my three-year-old has to deal with my ranting about the scientific inaccuracies in Morphle.
So to me the primary and secondary meanings being pulled out here are just the "naive not thinking about it" vs the "actually thinking about what underlies consciousness", and they seem to pretty obviously not coincide for a physicalist--or for anyone agnostic about what consciousness is.
Classic stupid loser behaviour
Damn dude. Breaking the philosophical bread here.
Welcome to extensions and intensions.
1. Extension and intension cannot coincide technically (intension is of logical type <s,t>, where s is type of worlds and t is whatever the type of extension is; there are some that prefer to bury s deeper _inside_ t, but it doesn't change the incommensurability).
2. There is an easy way around technicality: have intension be λw.Extension (i.e. have it take the world argument _vacuously_). However, the intension of consciousness (i.e. what it is "created by", if anything) is _what the argument is about_. Accepting Chalmers's "proposal" of intension of consciousness being λw.Extension_of_consciousness is putting your conclusion in your premise. Of course you'll end up with your desired conclusion if you put it among your premises.
I think this argument is missing half of the equation. You can't just look at the primary and secondary intention of consciousness, but also the primary and secondary intention of, P="physically identical to you". You can conceive of a person who is P1 - that would be someone who appears to you to be physically identical to yourself. They have the same appearance, behavior, and course-grained physical properties. But you can't conceive of someone who is literally physically identical to you (P2) - your mind is not big enough to do that. So you can't point to your own conceptual abilities to say that a P2 zombie is possible.
It also seems that if this argument is correct, it implicates dualism just as much as physicalism. After all, dualism says that consciousness is some non-physical substance. But we can conceive of a person who is conscious without any non-physical substance in them, and for any given person with some non-physical substance in them, we can conceive of someone with the same substance but who isn't conscious. So we should conclude that dualism is false because dualism holds that anyone with the right non-physical substance would be conscious. Now perhaps you object to this argument and say, "No, we can't imagine a person who's conscious without a non-physical substance because that non-physical substance is just what consciousness is." But that seems to run into the same 2D semantics argument as the physicalist response. "Consciousness" just means "subjective experience" on both levels of the semantics, so you can't use this out, at least according to the counterargument to physicalism. But then we've proven too much - we've proven both that consciousness can't be physical and that it can't be non-physical.
Also, your argument based on rocks doesn't work against the best forms of physicalism. The existence of a possible world where rocks are conscious is perfectly compatible with physicalism, even if those rocks are physically identical to real-world rocks. This is because almost all forms of physicalism (including functionalism) hold that consciousness is multiply realizable. So even though physicalists hold that in the actual world, consciousness is realized by physical processes, it's metaphysically possible that it could be realized by non-physical processes as well. They just have to have the right functional characteristics (or, if you're not a functionalist, whatever other characteristics make something conscious). In a hypothetical world where rocks have some non-physical substance connected to them that has the right properties, rocks would be conscious. In short, physicalism implies the impossibility of zombies, but not the impossibility of anti-zombies (objects physically identical to non-conscious ones, but which are conscious) because physicalism only entails that the forms of consciousness we know about are physical, not that all consciousness is physical by necessity.
One more objection which I wanted to separate out because it doesn't reflect my position, but there is less to step 4 than appears at first glance which makes the argument consistent with some not exactly dualist theories. So granting step 3 for the sake of argument, what if functionalism or some other physicalist theory is true, but not as a necessary truth, just as a fact or law about the universe we are in. This is compatible with the zombie argument! "If zombies are possible then physical laws of quantum mechanics don't give rise to consciousness" "Yes, but those laws plus the additional law that functionalism is true in this universe do. Zombies can still be metaphysically possible if a universe without that law is." Check mate, aphysicalists!
A panpsychist could respond similarly. Contra dualism, the extra thing to give rise to consciousness need not be an extra *thing* -- an extra fact will do. Like I said I don't really buy this position, though. It retains some of the weird implications of epiphenomenalism, though I think in a milder form than the usual conclusions of the zombie argument. Seems more likely to me that some form of functionalism is a necessary truth, even if it isn't immediately obvious that it is necessary.
Step 2 just strikes me as obviously incorrect; thoroughly disproven by the existence of the field of mathematics. I can conceive of the Riemann hypothesis being true or false but only one of the two is a metaphysical possibility. Metaphysical possibilities aren't a vast array of toggle switches that can be turned on and off independently; they have implications, they have potential contradictions, including non-obvious ones, and it can be difficult to work them out, so no, the fact that you can conceive something isn't the premise of a compelling argument.
I dispute premise 1 as well, but only because I've spent some time thinking about the implications of being physically identical to a non conscious being and found them bizarre enough that I'm finding it harder to conceive. I laid out why in the comments here: https://sampsonetics.substack.com/p/zooming-into-a-zombie-world/comment/62748718?utm_source=activity_item#comment-63439133?utm_source=activity_item
But you probably won't find that argument too surprising as I believe you've argued similarly for explaining why you are an interactional dualist and not an epiphenomenal dualist. But the zombie argument is only consistent with epiphenomenal dualism. If you think your consciousness has a casual effect on what you do (for example influencing your writing on the subject) then a being that is in every way like you except that it lacks consciousness should not work -- it's lacking a crucial causal piece, so it should be acting differently. Yet that doesn't stop you from conceiving of it acting the same.
More specific objections:
Water vs H2O: I see two distinct thought experiments you might be engaging in here. One is maybe you are from Titan and just had a bracing swim in an ethane lake, which you call water. But on reflection it seems clear you are using the word water to refer to a different thing than us Earthlings, and not much interesting follows from this possibility. The other thought experiment is, what if NaCl were a liquid that were indistinguishable from water while H2O was a solid salt that could dissolve in it? And if that's the sort of thing you're thinking, then I think you're not really doing the thought experiment. Because the properties of these substances ultimately arise from a very small number of physical laws without enough degrees of freedom to change this and not change all sorts of other things too, but you're not imagining what else would be different, you're imagining this universe since it is clearly a metaphysical possibility but you've toggled this one switch in hopes of getting another metaphysically possible universe which you can then argue about the implications of, and I'm saying that generally doesn't work, you have to flip lots of other switches along with that one to get another metaphysically possible universe, and it's not remotely obvious what all of the switches are, and you certainly can't determine them from conceivability alone.
"Imagine a world where instead of consciousness arising from functions in the brain, it arises from rocks. Just rocks sitting still doing nothing. The physicalist is committed to saying that these beings are conscious in some sense, but aren’t in another." The physicalist is in no way committed to recognizing this world as a metaphysical possibility! This, the idea that we don't even need these complicated brains, that rocks sitting still and doing nothing without any complicated structure that would allow them to integrate a variety of information from their environment and build more complicated thoughts about is perceptions and the fact that it exists in some form capable of experiencing these perceptions -- it's a bit of a stretch to imagine and certainly not a better shared starting premise from which to argue with a physicalist.
Edit: you're right though that Dualism isn't the view that consciousness isn't physical. It also claims physical stuff exists. So, not quite accurate there and I will correct
Well, the idealists wouldn't be able to say that there is a universe with beings (objects?) that are physically identical to our bodies, because they don't think there is a physical plane to begin with.
And yes, if zombies are metaphysically possible, then we can't know for CERTAIN if other people are conscious. We probably have others reasons for thinking they are though, like the fact that a world with many consciousness' better predicts out existance than a world with a single consciousness.
Not read about it before, but my initial impressions are that it's a bit out there. Seems less likely to me than the ordinary view that the physical existed first.
Surely God valuing consciousness would only show that people are in fact conscious, not that zombies are metaphysically impossible? Maybe he can make them if he wants, and he just doesn't want to. However, it doesn't seem like he can make H20 that's not H20