tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post8221289368352573932..comments2024-01-16T09:31:45.073-04:00Comments on Anderson Brown's Philosophy Blog: Troubles with the zombie argument in philosophy of mindAnderson Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18358008464457746997noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-57466141959700396352011-08-17T11:43:22.030-04:002011-08-17T11:43:22.030-04:00I can imagine a fitness landscape which selects fo...I can imagine a fitness landscape which selects for being a zombie (by making mental representation punitively costly) within the terms of this gedanken. If our own ability to discriminate zombies from us is not being selected for- indeed, if it is adaptive for us not to notice zombie 'tells'- then, for all we know, we may indeed be living in such a world. Moran (1992) shows how competition between kin might drive genetic polymorphism. <br /><br />More generally, against stochastic fitness landscapes, anything adaptive (as opposed to wholly impossible and imaginary)is going to be radically polymorphic in a sense I am tempted to call reverse mereologically- i.e. it acts like 'a hopeful monster' towards some new and larger whole- in which case, I cant see how arguments that appeal to a 'FIST' can be considered persuasive in our Zeitgeist.<br /><br />On the other hand, rigor of this sort has much to recommend itself for the project of reconstructing Classical Sanskrit Buddhist logic- at least in its influence on the Nyaya School.windwheelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18099651877551933295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-19339074028802198692011-05-15T10:29:52.649-04:002011-05-15T10:29:52.649-04:00Anonymous, You are obviously well-versed in the pr...Anonymous, You are obviously well-versed in the professional discussion of this topic. It would be nice to know who you are and to have an e-mail if you were interested in more discussion. (I can't figure out how to show the comments on the blog).<br />My view is that qualia do not exist. I find support for this view in Hume, Wittgenstein, and some Buddhist philosophy. That is, qualitative experience of the world is not something that can be said to exist in the experienced world. Experience of properties has no properties. <br />I am excited, not daunted, when someone remarks that "most people don't accept those arguments."Anderson Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18358008464457746997noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3736365491401043672.post-72267831925039844342011-05-14T21:05:51.018-04:002011-05-14T21:05:51.018-04:00Interesting analysis, but I think that you're ...Interesting analysis, but I think that you're not being fair to the zombie argument. The argument is usually phrased in terms of 2-dimensional semantics, which eliminates the appearance of question-begging.<br /><br />It's not clear when you say that consciousness can be wholly explicable in material terms whether you think that this it will be explicable a priori or whether it will happen to be a matter of natural law that qualia are caused by certain physical properties.<br /><br />The Zombie argument was really designed to defeat an a posteriori physicalism that claims that dualism could have been true, but just happens not to be. Under this understanding there is no barrier to conceiving of a zombie world (in that conceivability implies only that a proposition is not ruled out a priori). So the argument in this case doesn't involve question-begging because the a posteriori (or type-B) physicalist admits the conceivability of zombies, but denies their possibility.<br /><br />If you mean to say that physicalism should be a priori in the sense that qualia should be logically derivable from the true physical laws, then the full apparatus of the zombie argument is not required. The a priori (type-A) physicalist is making a strong metaphysical claim that is not compatible with a very intuitive thought experiment involving zombies. Because type-A physicalists believe that physics logically entails qualia, they don't have access to a parsimony argument either, since parsimony only tells us which of two logically possible alternative to believe in. We wouldn't use arguments about parsimony in mathematics, for instance, so we can't use them to appeal to claims of logical entailment in philosophy either.<br /><br />At this point the a priori physicalist has to make a substantive argument about why zombies are not actually conceivable, even though they seem to be coherent.<br /><br />As far as zombie intuitions being susceptible to Wittgenstein's language arguments, I guess you're right. I haven't been convinced by those arguments particularly, but I think that the conceivability of zombies is the same as our inability to disprove solipsism a priori. If you think that Wittgenstein has disproved solipsism a priori, then you're right that zombies should also be disproved. I'm just not sure that most people accept those Wittgensteinian arguments against skepticism.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com