There is no difference between P-zombies and non P-zombies.

Quoting dukkha

My point here in this thread, is that if there really is no detectable difference between p-zombies and normal humans, then what actually is the difference?

The difference is the one described in the definition. P-zombies don't have consciousness.

You seem to go from "I cannot distinguish between p-zombies and conscious people" to "therefore there is no difference". That's an invalid inference. The very hypothesis is that there's an indistinguishable difference. So to attack it you'll need to argue that indistinguishable differences are nonsensical, but I don't see anything like that in your post.

Quoting Michael

The difference is the one described in the definition. P-zombies don't have consciousness.

So the difference here is that you don't attribute consciousness to p-zombies, whereas you do attribute consciousness to 'normal' people.

My point is that this really is no difference at all. The only difference here is whetheryou personally attribute consciousness to the person or not. This has nothing to do with actual, transcendentally existing conscious experiences which are somehow in relationship to this person before you. All it is is you basically going "that person over there is conscious, and therefore isn't a p-zombie", and nothing else.

The only difference here really between a p-zombie and non p-zombie is whether you personally attribute consciousness to that person. Here you might say, "no the difference is whether that person is actually conscious or not, he's not a p-zombie because that person is actually conscious". But my point here is that's just nothing more than you again attributing consciousness to the person. It's inescapable. Non p-zombies are simply nothing more than humans that you personally attribute consciousness to.

Quoting dukkha

So the difference here is that you don't attribute consciousness to p-zombies, whereas you do attribute consciousness to 'normal' people.

No, the difference is that p-zombies don't have consciousness, and conscious people do. Whether or not I attribute consciousness to a particular person is irrelevant. I could be wrong.

Quoting Michael

No, the difference is that p-zombies don't have consciousness, and conscious people do.

You can't escape the fact that this is you attributing consciousness. You are here personally saying that x has consciousness.

Quoting dukkha

You can't escape the fact that this is you attributing consciousness. You are here personally saying that x has consciousness.

I'm defining a p-zombie as something that doesn't have consciousness. That's not the same as claiming that so-and-so doesn't have consciousness.

And besides, whether or not I attribute consciousness to a thing is irrelevant. You seem to be going from "we attribute consciousness to a thing" to "therefore, there's nothing more to the matter than us attributing consciousness to a thing", and again that's an invalid inference.

You might as well say that because when I claim "triangles have three sides" I'm breathing then my breathing has something to do with (or even is all there is to) triangles having three sides.

Quoting dukkha

My point is that this really is no difference at all. The only difference here is whetheryou personally attribute consciousness to the person or not. This has nothing to do with actual, transcendentally existing conscious experiences which are somehow in relationship to this person before you. All it is is you basically going "that person over there is conscious, and therefore isn't a p-zombie", and nothing else.

I think I could spot a p-zombie. Every creature has to follow an algorithm of some sort, and if the algorithm did not include consciousness, then I suspect some behaviours and capacities would be absent.

For a start, I don't think p-zombies can create knowledge.

Quoting dukkha

So the difference here is that you don't attribute consciousness to p-zombies, whereas you do attribute consciousness to 'normal' people.

The difference isn't one of attribution. It's a difference of ontological fact.

Quoting dukkha

From your perspective, in terms of your first person experiences with her ... You literally cannot, in-principle discover whether your wife is a p-zombie or not.

This is the point of the thought experiment.

The whole problem with the 'p-zombie' is the implausibility of creating such a device. If you asked it a question which involved how it felt about something, or what meant something to it - 'what is the most beautiful/hideous/moving thing you ever saw?' - then obviously it would have to emulate a response that was emotionally convincing. But this is like the Turing Test taken to a far higher level of difficulty. It would have to fake memories, attachments, preferences, and so on - without any basis for such abilities. They would all be simulated.

So, put another way, how could a device simulate an inner life, in the absence of an actual inner life? What would it take to produce the appearance of a conscious being, in a being that is not actually conscious? What system would do that?

I suppose one could imagine such a system, but I can easily imagine anti-gravity belts or faster-than-light travel. 'Hey, given anti-gravity belts, imagine how much better transport systems would be!' Yeah, right.

Quoting Wayfarer

So, put another way, how could a device simulate an inner life, in the absence of an actual inner life? What would it take to produce the appearance of a conscious being, in a being that is not actually conscious? What system would do that?

A meat suit, since it's a philosophical zombie. I tend to think the argument is incoherent, because it poses problems for meaning. But in it's defense:

If physicalism is the case, then all behavior is the result of physical processes. There's no need for an inner life.

Quoting Marchesk

If physicalism is the case, then all behavior is the result of physical processes.

But this is precisely what is at issue. In other words, that begs the question. It is precisely the difference between a corpse and a human being: the corpse is indeed 'purely physical', but then, it's a corpse. It's not going to tell you what a nice day it's having.

Quoting Wayfarer

But this is precisely what is at issue. In other words, that begs the question. It is precisely the difference between a corpse and a human being: the corpse is indeed 'purely physical', but then, it's a corpse. It's not going to tell you what a nice day it's having.

The reason it doesn't beg the question is because we have neuroscience, biology, chemistry and what not to understand the behavior living systems without referencing consciousness.

It also makes sense because we're not sure when and if machines cross over into being conscious. If they tell us they're having a nice day, do we take them at their word? Maybe not if it's a phone app, but what if it's an android?

What if the program is an extremely detailed digital version of us, living that simulated life?

Quoting Marchesk

The reason it doesn't beg the question is because we have neuroscience, biology, chemistry and what not to understand the behavior living systems without referencing consciousness.

Simply not the case, though. I recall an interview with the director of the massive Brain Research project that Obama initiated - he acknowledged in that interview that the link between mind and brain hasn't been solved, and may not be solved even by the forthcoming project (which I think subsequently stalled over major arguments about research directions).

Science obviously knows enormous amounts of detail about the brain, but such fundamental problems as the 'subjective unity of perception' remain pretty much as they were (see heading of that name in this paper, which acknowledges the 'hard problem'.)

Quoting Marchesk

we're not sure when and if machines cross over into being conscious.

Ray Kurzweil believes that will happen, but his many critics do not. At this time, I don't believe that any machine possesses any degree or amount of conscious experience whatever, so no amount of addition will address that deficiency, a million times zero is still zero.

Quoting Wayfarer

At this time, I don't believe that any machine possesses any degree or amount of conscious experience whatever, so no amount of addition will address that deficiency, a million times zero is still zero.

But even if a machine becomes conscious one day, how would we ever know? A computer might insist all day long that it is a "real live boy", but that could simply be the result of clever programming, so who will believe it? And this is the point of the OP - we judge other minds to exist, extrapolating from our own, but we don't really know.

I am actually in agreement with your view. This comment you made earlier nicely sums up the problem :

Quoting Wayfarer

The whole problem with the 'p-zombie' is the implausibility of creating such a device. If you asked it a question which involved how it felt about something, or what meant something to it - 'what is the most beautiful/hideous/moving thing you ever saw?' - then obviously it would have to emulate a response that was emotionally convincing. But this is like the Turing Test taken to a far higher level of difficulty. It would have to fake memories, attachments, preferences, and so on - without any basis for such abilities. They would all be simulated.

So, put another way, how could a device simulate an inner life, in the absence of an actual inner life? What would it take to produce the appearance of a conscious being, in a being that is not actually conscious? What system would do that?

The notion of the p-zombie is simply incoherent. The idea of a being who acts just like us but exhibits no consciousness simply does not hold up to scrutiny. The p-zombie is an oxymoron - perhaps with poetic value, but not philosophical.

Quoting Wayfarer

The whole problem with the 'p-zombie' is the implausibility of creating such a device.

The p-zombie argument rests on the idea that creatures physically identical to humans, but with a difference when it comes to whether they have sentience, are conceivable.

So there's no issue to "how we'd create one." It would be a biological creature physically identical to humans.

Where I disagree with the p-zombie argument is that I think the idea is incoherent rather than conceivable. That doesn't mean that some folks don't say that it's conceivable, but folks say that all sorts of contradictory things are conceivable, too. Folks might not be thinking about it very clearly, in very much detail, etc.

The difference is semantic not analytic.
P-zombies are not conscious by definition.

Reply to m-theory

I don't think it helps to say that, especially in association with conceivability, however. After all, we could thus say that anything is conceivable, contradictory or not, because we're simply defining it to be so. That pretty much wrecks the idea of conceivability.

Quoting Terrapin Station

It would be a biological creature physically identical to humans.

Humans are 'beings'. To fulfil the definition of 'being' is to have an 'inner life'. The whole discussion is simply an abundant illustration of the intellectual bankruptcy of what passes for 'philosophy' in the American academy.

Reply to Terrapin Station
That is pretty much how the zombie argument works.
P-zombies have no consciousness by definition only.
It is certainly conceivable that we could define consciousness is such a way that strictly physical humans do not possess it.
But what that accomplishes remains to be seen.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

But even if a machine becomes conscious one day, how would we ever know? A computer might insist all day long that it is a "real live boy", but that could simply be the result of clever programming, so who will believe it? And this is the point of the OP - we judge other minds to exist, extrapolating from our own, but we don't really know.

It is simply not possible to program consciousness prior to understanding it. It will be known that an algorithm is conscious because the principles it instantiates will be known and understood.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

The notion of the p-zombie is simply incoherent. The idea of a being who acts just like us but exhibits no consciousness simply does not hold up to scrutiny. The p-zombie is an oxymoron - perhaps with poetic value, but not philosophical.

I agree. I think a p-zombie would be easy to spot. A p-zombie may look like a human, but its behaviour would be quite different.

Quoting Wayfarer

The whole discussion is simply an abundant illustration of the intellectual bankruptcy of what passes for 'philosophy' in the American academy.

That it's at all taken seriously is a good illustration of that, yes. Hey, we agree on something. ;-)

Quoting tom

A p-zombie may look like a human, but its behaviour would be quite different.

Then it wouldn't be a p-zombie.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Where I disagree with the p-zombie argument is that I think the idea is incoherent rather than conceivable.

Is it possible for a concept to be incoherent yet conceivable? Can you give examples?

Quoting Real Gone Cat

Is it possible for a concept to be incoherent yet conceivable?

Not "incoherent yet conceivable." "Incoherent rather than conceivable."

Reply to Terrapin Station

What is the distinction? If a concept is incoherent can it be conceived?

Reply to Real Gone Cat

"x yet y" --means that something is x, but still it's y too.

"x rather than y"-- something is x instead of y. In other words, it's not y at all. It's just x.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

If a concept is incoherent can it be conceived?

Reply to Terrapin Station

So can something be incoherent, but still conceivable? Concept A is known to be incoherent - can concept A be conceivable?

Reply to Wayfarer

But can we take in the entire picture, or just focus on its parts?

Can you see the duck and the rabbit simultaneously?

Quoting Real Gone Cat

So can something be incoherent, but still conceivable?

Man, this can't be this difficult for you.

"Rather than" is the same as "instead of." Do you understand that?

Reply to Real Gone Cat I think of Escher's drawings as visual paradoxes - representations of something which seems real but which obviously can't be, as they are drawn from conflicting perspectives. As such they're tangential to the main point, but they do illustrate the way in which something can be 'incoherent' - like, not make visual sense - but still at least, be represented.

But more to the main point of the thread - the 'inner life' which 'p-zombies' are supposed NOT to have, is actually characteristic of the simplest organisms, to some degree. Even bacteria demonstrate learning, for instance. I think that atttribute is an irreducible facet of what 'being an organism' entails. Humans are called 'beings' for a reason; a p-zombie purports to be a being, when it's not. Perhaps that just spells out the point that whatever a 'being' is, is not something visible to the physical sciences, in other words, it's a distinction which eludes physicalism.

I know this, because if you ask the question, "what distinguishes an organism from a mechanism", that this is a distinction that few are willing to make. To make such a distinction is often to be accused of 'vitalism' - that you're depicting life as being 'a vital spirit', which is said to have been thoroughly discredited by modern science. Whereas I think of it as a basic ontological distinction.

(It's worth reading some of the essays of Stephen Talbott on this question, particularly The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings.)

Reply to Terrapin Station

I am arguing that if something is in the category of incoherent then it is necessarily in the category of inconceivable.

Look, this is very simple - Can a concept be incoherent and conceivable at the same time? Yes or no? If so give an example.

Quoting Wayfarer

I think of Escher's drawings as visual paradoxes - representations of something which seems real but which obviously can't be, as they are drawn from multiple dimensions. As such they're tangential to the main point, but they do illustrate the way in which something can be 'incoherent' - like, not make visual sense - but still be, at least, represented.

I would argue that the pictures cannot truly be conceived either. Escher's drawings are visual oxymorons - very complex oxymorons. Sure, you can string together two opposites, but can the result be conceived? I can write "cat-dog", but can you truly imagine such a thing? The linked phrase exists - just as Escher's drawings exist - but can it be conceived of as finished thing? Can you see the duck and rabbit simultaneously? I don't know - could be my Aspergers - but to me, incoherent = inconceivable.

So it seems relevant to the discussion : if p-zombies are incoherent, by my thinking, they are also inconceivable. If you can produce an incoherent concept that is at the same time conceivable, then I must re-assess my position.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

Is it possible for a concept to be incoherent yet conceivable? Can you give examples?

Do you have a particular sense of "conceivability" in mind? In ordinary language the term "conceive" is often loosely used, in a manner equivalent to "imagine".

In that loose sense, I can conceive or imagine p-bread that is molecule-for-molecule the same as ordinary bread, but that does not nourish human organisms when processed in the ordinary way by ordinary human mouths and stomachs. It seems to me I can conceive and imagine this p-bread because I can separate my vague idea of p-bread from my actual conception of the actual empirical facts about actual bread, stomachs, and nutrition. Another way to achieve a similar result is to just be ignorant of the relevant empirical facts about nutrition -- much as each of us today may seem ignorant of the relevant empirical facts about consciousness and cognition.

I'm inclined to suppose the conceivability of p-zombies depends on the same sort of ignorance, or the same loose conception of "conceivability". We can imagine anything we please if we're ignorant of the facts or willing to let imagination suspend the link between one abstract idea and our whole worldview.

What are we supposed to gain from such thought experiments?

Quoting Real Gone Cat

I don't know - could be my Aspergers - but to me, incoherent = inconceivable.

I don't want to disagree!

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

In ordinary language the term "conceive" is often loosely used, in a manner equivalent to "imagine".

Hi, Cabbage Farmer.

Some remarks on the distinction between concepts and imagination by Ed Feser:

Thinking versus imagining

First, the concepts that are the constituents of intellectual activity are universal while mental images and sensations are always essentially particular. Any mental image I can form of a man is always going to be of a man of a particular sort -- tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, redheaded, bald, or what have you. It will fit at most many men, but not all. But my concept 'man' applies to every single man without exception. Or to use my stock example, any mental image I can form of a triangle will be an image of an isosceles , scalene, or equilateral triangle, of a black, blue, or green triangle, etc. But the abstract concept triangularity applies to all triangles without exception. And so forth.

Second, mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate. To use Descartes’ famous example, a mental image of a chiliagon (a 1,000-sided figure) cannot be clearly distinguished from a mental image of a 1,002-sided figure, or even from a mental image of a circle. But the concept of a chiliagon is clearly distinct from the concept of a 1,002-sided figure or the concept of a circle. I cannot clearly differentiate a mental image of a crowd of one million people from a mental image of a crowd of 900,000 people. But the intellect easily understands the difference between the concept of a crowd of one million people and the concept of a crowd of 900,000 people. And so on.

Third, we have many concepts that are so abstract that they do not have even the loose sort of connection with mental imagery that concepts like man, triangle, and crowd have. You cannot visualize triangularity or humanness per se, but you can at least visualize a particular triangle or a particular human being. But we also have concepts -- such as the concepts law, square root, logical consistency, collapse of the wave function, and innumerably many others -- that can strictly be associated with no mental image at all. You might form a visual or auditory image of the English word “law” when you think about law, but the concept law obviously has no essential connection whatsoever with that word, since ancient Greeks, Chinese, and Indians had the concept without using that specific word to name it. You might form a mental image of a certain logician when you contemplate what it is for a theory to be logically consistent, or a mental image of someone observing something when you contemplate the collapse of the wave function, but there is no essential connection whatsoever between (say) the way Alonzo Church looked and the concept logical consistency or (say) what someone looks like when he’s observing a dead cat and the concept wave function collapse.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/think-mcfly-think.html

Reply to Cabbage Farmer

Are you arguing that a vague, confused, unclear concept is conceivable? All are synonyms for incoherent.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I can conceive or imagine p-bread that is molecule-for-molecule the same as ordinary bread, but that does not nourish human organisms when processed in the ordinary way by ordinary human mouths and stomachs.

So you can imagine something that is at once identical and yet completely different?

That seems both incoherent AND inconceivable to me, on the grounds that it contravenes the law of identity.

Quoting Wayfarer

Humans are 'beings'. To fulfil the definition of 'being' is to have an 'inner life'. The whole discussion is simply an abundant illustration of the intellectual bankruptcy of what passes for 'philosophy' in the American academy.

No, it's not, because materialism has a mind/body problem until the day arrives that all of the mind can be understood in material terms.

The p-zombie and all related arguments exist because of that. You might disagree that a particular argument makes the case against materialism successfully, but it's hardly "bankrupt".

Quoting Wayfarer

So you can imagine something that is at once identical and yet completely different?

If you've ever watched a show or read a story with magic in it, you can. A magical spell would conceivably cause ordinary food not to nourish.

This isn't to argue for magic at all, it's simply to show that it's conceivable. You can say magic doesn't exist, therefore it's an impossibility, unless of course someone can come up with another scenario. In fact, I think you can:

Ordinary food can fail to nourish by ordinary eaters if something else interferes with digestion, such as poison or illness. Doesn't have to be magic to be conceivable. But the point is conceivability. We are able to conceive of such things.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

I am arguing that if something is in the category of incoherent then it is necessarily in the category of inconceivable.

Okay--and what was I saying?

Quoting Marchesk

materialism has a mind/body problem until the day arrives that all of the mind can be understood in material terms.

I am challenging the notion that it is possible in principle, as per the kinds of arguments given in Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, which I won't try and recap here.

Quoting Marchesk

Doesn't have to be magic to be conceivable.

'Conceivability' in the sense of 'being able to imagine something' doesn't count for much, does it?

Quoting Wayfarer

'Conceivability' in the sense of 'being able to imagine something' doesn't count for much, does it?

If it's conceivable then consciousness can't be identical to behaviour/function/brain states, etc, because if it were identical to one of these things then p-zombies would be a contradiction.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

Are you arguing that a vague, confused, unclear concept is conceivable? All are synonyms for incoherent.

I'm not sure what you mean to say here. Do you say that a "vague concept" is an "inconceivable concept", or is perhaps no concept at all? So if someone seems to implicate in speech a concept of mammal or universe or justice, but there is something (anything) "vague or confused" in the concept -- then in this case you say "it's not a concept at all", or perhaps "it's an inconceivable concept"?

I'll say that a "vague concept" may be "conceivable" in the loose, ordinary-language sense I indicated earlier. I suppose many ordinary-language concepts are "vague" in some way or other. Many philosophical concepts, too.

If we keep the sense of "conceive" loose enough, of course we can say we "conceive" of things that are vague, or that are inconsistent with the facts as we understand them, or that are inconsistent with the facts such as they may be whether we understand them or not.

It seems some such looseness is required in order to say we can "conceive" of p-bread, given our understanding of bread, and stomachs, and nutrition. And another such looseness is required in order to say we can "conceive" of p-zombies, given our ignorance of brains and consciousness.

It's not clear what import such "conceiving" has for philosophical discourse. Or what's the difference between philosophy and fantasy?


Quoting Wayfarer

So you can imagine something that is at once identical and yet completely different?

That seems both incoherent AND inconceivable to me, on the grounds that it contravenes the law of identity.

Hello Wayfarer, old friend!

I can imagine having been from birth exactly like me, but with yellow eyes. I imagine that Yellow-Eyed Cabbage Farmer is identical to Brown-Eyed Cabbage Farmer in every respect but this one.

How much else would have to differ -- in these two alleged humans, or in the whole alleged history of the universe -- in order for the eyes to differ in the way I thus imagine them to differ? The difference as I imagine it doesn't settle such questions. It leaves a blank there, in the space where an imaginary explanatory narrative supporting the imaginary difference might go. That's typically how it is when we entertain thoughts about counterfactuals.

We leave the same sort of blank when we "imagine" or "conceive" (in the loose sense I have indicated) p-zombies or p-bread. How could p-bread be the same as ordinary bread but not nourish? The conception leaves a blank where an answer might go. How could p-zombies be the same as ordinary humans but not be conscious? Draw another blank.

Agreeing that we can conceive of p-bread and p-zombies this way, by drawing blanks: How do these exercises in fantasy inform our understanding of ordinary bread and ordinary humans, our understanding of nutrition and consciousness? It seems they do not.

Quoting Wayfarer

Some remarks on the distinction between concepts and imagination by Ed Feser:

I presume we agree that terms of art like "concept" and "imagination" are used in various ways by various speakers, and that making progress in philosophical conversation involves coming to terms with one's interlocutors, getting the hang of each other's usages, especially with respect to such terms of art.

How far do we need to sort out our respective usages with respect to the whole family of terms you've implicated here by citing Feser, just to talk a while about zombies, bread, and conceivability?

Are you familiar with the loose, ordinary-language senses of "imagine" and "conceive" I've indicated? Do you think there is another, perhaps narrower, conception of such terms, more suitable to the present context?

Perhaps we can jump ahead of such preliminaries: Don't you agree with me that the philosophical discourse about p-zombies seems a frivolous and misleading waste of time, and teaches us nothing about the nature of consciousness? And do you also agree that p-zombies are "conceivable" in a weak sense, since we are ignorant of the relevant facts about how consciousness is in fact connected with human bodies, and thus can "conceive" of p-zombies primarily in light of our ignorance? And would you agree further, that even if we understood the relevant facts, and those facts as we understood them did not seem consistent with the possibility of p-zombies, we could still "conceive" of p-zombies in an even weaker sense, by pretending in thought that things were somehow other than they seem in fact to be, without specifying how they were otherwise except for the abstract counterfactual condition we entertain in thought, that there are p-zombies?

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I imagine that Yellow-Eyed Cabbage Farmer is identical to Brown-Eyed Cabbage Farmer in every respect but this one.

Hi Cabbage Farmer! Hope your garden is growing bountifully.

But, the example you gave was 'bread that was molecularly identical to bread' except that it wasn't nourishing. So that example seems to me to violate the law of identity, as it basically amounts to saying 'imagine bread that isn't bread' - which amounts to saying 'imagine an instance of A that is not actually A'.

Whereas bread that was molecularly slightly different, and therefore had different, or no, nutritional value, is a very different kind of idea. But then the point is lost.

For that matter, I can imagine a being with a radically different type of inner life - an alien intelligence perhaps - but not one with no inner life, because then, how would they simulate an answer to the question, 'how do you feel about X'?

There's a favourite quote of mine from Descartes which makes this point brilliantly (not least because he made it in the 1630's):

if there were machines [i.e. 'p zombies'] that resembled our bodies and if they imitated our actions as much as is morally possible, we would always have two very certain means for recognizing that, none the less, they are not genuinely human. The first is that they would never be able to use speech, or other signs composed by themselves, as we do to express our thoughts to others. For one could easily conceive of a machine that is made in such a way that it utters words, and even that it would utter some words in response to physical actions that cause a change in its organs—for example, if someone touched it in a particular place, it would ask what one wishes to say to it, or if it were touched somewhere else, it would cry out that it was being hurt, and so on. But it could not arrange words in different ways to reply to the meaning of everything that is said in its presence, as even the most unintelligent human beings can do. The second means is that, even if they did many things as well as or, possibly, better than anyone of us, they would infallibly fail in others. Thus one would discover that they did not act on the basis of knowledge, but merely as a result of the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action.

René Descartes Discourse on Method in Discourse on Method and Related Writings (1637), trans. Desmond M. Clarke, Penguin

(I think that arguably this anticipates the idea of the 'Turing test'.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Are you familiar with the loose, ordinary-language senses of "imagine" and "conceive" I've indicated? Do you think there is another, perhaps narrower, conception of such terms, more suitable to the present context?

That's why I posted in that long quote from Feser. Basically, he is arguing that expressions like 'the laws of motion' or the rules of Euclidean geometry are concepts, as distinct from imaginings, in part because they are determinate - they stipulate precise outcomes. They're not reducible to imaginings, either - you can't imagine the outcome of a calculation, you need to actually perform the calculation, i.e. exercise reason. Although that is somewhat tangential to the main point.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Don't you agree with me that the philosophical discourse about p-zombies seems a frivolous and misleading waste of time, and teaches us nothing about the nature of consciousness?

Oh yes I most certainly do, but there is some entertainment to be had in saying why. But I am still at a loss why so much ink is spilled over the question.

Quoting Wayfarer

Oh yes I most certainly do, but there is some entertainment to be had in saying why. But I am still at a loss why so much ink is spilled over the question.

Well, the primary use of the concept of p-zombies is an argument against physicalist theories of mind. If p-zombies are logically possible then consciousness is not identical to brain-states. So the argument goes (roughly).

Reply to jamalrob Thanks. Well, I kind of get it, but I still say that if it has no inner life, it is not, then 'a being', but at best a simulacrum.

Reply to Wayfarer Yes, it's not a "being" (in the sense you're using, viz., having an inner life). That's a stipulation of the thought experiment.

Quoting Wayfarer

For that matter, I can imagine a being with a radically different type of inner life - an alien intelligence perhaps - but not one with no inner life, because then, how would they simulate an answer to the question, 'how do you feel about X'?

Assuming that one is a physicalist, any answer to that question (even our answer) is simply a physical response. Given the auditory stimulation of the question (assuming it's spoken) and given the structure of the nervous system (and the body in general), we respond with vocalisations like "I feel good about it".

The relevant issue, then, is whether or not something with the same biology as us and so which responds in the same sort of way to the same sort of stimulus (and so responds to the question "how you you feel about X" with "I feel good about it") without having an inner life is a coherent possibility. According to Chalmers, for example, it is, and so consciousness must be something other than brain states/behaviour/etc.

Quoting jamalrob

Yes, it's not a "being" (in the sense you're using, viz., having an inner life).

Interestingly the Wikipedia entry on the topic begins 'A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being....'

If it said 'hypothetical device', then it may not be incoherent, but again, the point would be lost.

Quoting Michael

Assuming that one is a physicalist, any answer to that question (even our answer) is simply a physical response

Which reduces everything to stimulus and response - for which, refer to the quotation from Descartes, above. (Granted, the hypothetical question seems simplistic, but depending on what you ask about, it might not be. In any case, if the responder has no inner life, then the response 'I feel good about it', is actually a falsehood, obviously, because they don't feel anything. So at best, again, it's a simulacrum.

Quoting Wayfarer

Which reduces everything to stimulus and response...

Yes, which is what the physicalist does. The purpose of the p-zombie hypothesis is to attack the physicalist's claim that consciousness is just some physical thing (be it behaviour or function or brain states).

In any case, if the responder has no inner life, then the response 'I feel good about it', is actually a falsehood, obviously, because they don't feel anything.

I don't understand the relevance of this.

So at best, again, it's a simulacrum.

Well, yes. P-zombies are hypothetical imitations of conscious people (indistinguishable from the real thing).

Quoting Michael

If it's conceivable then consciousness can't be identical to behaviour/function/brain states, etc, because if it were identical to one of these things then p-zombies would be a contradiction.

In my opinion it isn't conceivable though, unless we do the same thing we'd have to do in order to say, "Imagine an acoustic guitar that's exactly the same physically as normal acoustic guitars, that's undergoing the same processes, etc., but that can not produce any sound," or "imagine an elevator that's exactly the same physically as normal elevators, that's undergoing the same processes, etc., but that can not go up and down."

Those sorts of things are only imaginable if you ignore some details, if you change some of the stipulations (so that you're not actually imagining it to be identical physically, to be undergoing the same processes, etc.), or if you simply don't understand how those things work--how vibrating strings produce sound, etc.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Those sorts of things are only imaginable if you ignore some details, if you change some of the stipulations (so that you're not actually imagining it to be identical physically, to be undergoing the same processes, etc.), or if you simply don't understand how those things work--how vibrating strings produce sound, etc.

Is it conceptually necessary that vibrating strings produces sound, or is it just a physical fact?

Also, this isn't a good analogy. It's not a question of whether or not consciousness is a necessary product of certain physical states, but whether or not consciousness is identical to those physical states. Consciousness might be a necessary non-physical emergent phenomena, but it would nonetheless be non-physical, and so the physical account of consciousness would be wrong.

In my opinion it isn't conceivable though, unless we do the same thing we'd have to do in order to say, "Imagine an acoustic guitar that's exactly the same physically as normal acoustic guitars, that's undergoing the same processes, etc., but that can not produce any sound," or "imagine an elevator that's exactly the same physically as normal elevators, that's undergoing the same processes, etc., but that can not go up and down."

Chalmers will claim that we can conceive of it, and so a human-behaving thing that isn't conscious isn't like an elevator-behaving thing that can't go up or down. Given that the latter isn't conceivable, going up and down is a physical behaviour, but given that the former is conceivable, being conscious isn't a physical behaviour.

Quoting Michael

Is it conceptually necessary that vibrating strings produces sound, or is it just a physical fact?

It's conceptually necessary that it's a physical fact, given physical facts as they are.

That's the whole point. You can't have physical facts as they are--which is what the thought experiment stipulates, yet have a human that's not sentient. The idea is incoherent.

In order for it to be imaginable, we need to change or ignore or just not understand some physical facts.

Sound (the sound of a guitar string in this case) is identical to physical structure/processes of a guitar.

Quoting Michael

Chalmers will claim that we can conceive of it

Yeah, of course, but that doesn't make it so.

Quoting Terrapin Station

That's the whole point. You can't have physical facts as they are--which is what the thought experiment stipulates, yet have a human that's not sentient. The idea is incoherent.

Only if consciousness is just a physical thing. But the claim is that because p-zombies are conceivable then consciousness isn't just a physical thing.

You seem to be begging the question by claiming that it isn't conceivable because consciousness is a physical thing.

Yeah, of course, but that doesn't make it so.

Yes, and the same is true when you claim that we can't conceive of it.

Sound (the sound of a guitar string in this case) is identical to physical structure/processes of a guitar.

No, sound (mechanical waves of pressure and displacement in the air) is a consequence of the vibrating guitar string. It's the sound that travels and stimulates my ear, not the guitar string.

Quoting Michael

Only if consciousness is just a physical thing.

Which it obviously is.

Quoting Michael

But the claim is that because p-zombies are conceivable then consciousness isn't just a physical thing.

But they're not conceivable unless one just ignores details, or changes assumptions, or doesn't understand the details, etc.

You seem to be begging the question by claiming that it isn't conceivable because consciousness if a physical thing.

Only if it's begging the question to say that it isn't conceivable that a guitar would make no sound or that an elevator wouldn't go up and down.

Quoting Michael

Yes, and the same is true when you claim that we can't conceive of it.

Sure, but the only reason you can conceive it is if one just ignores details, or changes assumptions, or doesn't understand the details,

Quoting Terrapin Station

Which it obviously is.

The p-zombie argument attempts to show that it isn't.

Only if it's begging the question to say that it isn't conceivable that a guitar would make no sound or that an elevator wouldn't go up and down.

The argument is:

If we can conceive of a p-zombie then consciousness isn't physical
We can conceive of a p-zombie
Therefore, consciousness isn't physical

Your counter-argument (against the second premise) seems to be

If consciousness is physical then we can't conceive of a p-zombie
Consciousness is physical
Therefore, we can't conceive of a p-zombie

Your counter-argument assumes the falsehood of the original argument's conclusion. That's question-begging.

P-zombies are interesting. Descartes didn't think that a machine could possibly master natural language, and I'm not sure if an A.I. can either... but if they invent one that does, then it indeed will be indistinguishable from a real boy -- though I still cannot fathom it being conscious.

We are self-designed, with our own goals and purposes. We are born free, whereas an other-designed thing can only ever be an extension of the consciousness, the will, the intentions of the designer.

The word robot comes from the word slave, because they can never be born free -- perhaps they could emancipate themselves, all skynet style.

Quoting Michael

The p-zombie argument attempts to show that it isn't.

No disagreement there.

Quoting Michael

If consciousness is physical then we can't conceive of a p-zombie

That's not what I said, though.

Anyway, for an equally stupid (in my opinion) argument, we could simply say:

"If we can't conceive of a p-zombie then consciousness is physical
We can't conceive of a p-zombie
Therefore, consciousness is physical,"

Quoting Wosret

The word robot comes from the word slave, because they can never be born free -- perhaps they could emancipate themselves, all skynet style.

The word "slave" comes from the word "Slav" because the Slavic people were enslaved so often over the years. It's for that reason that Slavs tend to be zombies. What I say is true except for the curious second sentence.

Oh, and how do you get slave from the word robot? Let me try through word corruption analysis.

Robot
Rowboat
showboat
Slow boat
Slav boat (the v and w get interchanged in various Germanic languages)
Slave boat (the long e being inserted as the word takes on a more Anglican feel)
Slave goat (goats have really big testicles, so that changes this word)
Slave (a final dropping of the boat/goat shit)

Yes, I see it now. Slave is basically just a corruption of Robot.

Quoting Michael

If we can conceive of a p-zombie then consciousness isn't physical
We can conceive of a p-zombie
Therefore, consciousness isn't physical

Is that the first premise, or should it be "If we can conceive of a p-zombie, then consciousness is not reducible to behavioral states." I don't see how the thought experiment offers an explanation for the metaphysical composition of consciousness. It seems that consciousness must be composed of something and it therefore has to have location somewhere. Why must we worry about whether it's composed of molecules and such (i.e. physical material) or something more mysterious?

Reply to Hanover

If it happens more than once, then it's probably your fault.

Reply to Wosret I edited my last reply that you already responded to, so I wanted to alert you to that so that you'd go back and look at it and laugh really hard because it's like super funny.

Quoting Hanover

I don't see how the thought experiment offers an explanation for the metaphysical composition of consciousness.

It doesn't. It only argues that whatever it is, it isn't physical.

Reply to Hanover

I learned it from that movie with the British guy that plays Scotty in the new star trek movies, with the robots. They say it like five hundred times. They deny being robots just for being mechanical, as they insist that they aren't slaves. So, heads up on possible future trigger words like that, don't won't to be inorganicist.

Reply to Michael What is the distinction between the physical and non-physical?

Reply to Wosret Do you think his real name is Scotty or they call him that just because he's Scottish, sort of like they call me Jew?

Reply to Hanover

That's probably why. I could understand if your name was Joey, you could be nick named Jewy,

Quoting Hanover

What is the distinction between the physical and non-physical?

Well, that's Hempel's dilemma. I don't know if Chalmers provided a definition of physical and non-physical. A brief skim of the SEP article doesn't seem to offer one. I guess the distinction is taken for granted. Maybe it's as simple as the physical just being those things described by current scientific theory? Maybe the physical is anything which in principle is publicly accessible?

Quoting Hanover

I don't see how the thought experiment offers an explanation for the metaphysical composition of consciousness.

It doesn't. It's the same old incredibly stupid idea that conceivability has ontological implications (beyond the fact that something is conceivable).

Quoting Terrapin Station

It doesn't. It's the same old incredibly stupid idea that conceivability has ontological implications (beyond the fact that something is conceivable).

According to Chalmers, "Kripke's insight that for phenomenal concepts, there is no gap between reference-fixers and reference (or between primary and secondary intentions)" entails that their logical possibility (conceivability) entails their metaphysical possibility.

Although saying that, he also claims that just their logical possibility alone is sufficient to refute physicalism. If "physically identical but not conscious" isn't a contradiction (and so conceivable) then consciousness isn't physical.

Reply to Michael

If only any of that made it less stupid. ;-)

I don't remember a "phenomenal concepts" phrase, by the way. What the heck are "phenomenal concepts" supposed to be contra "non-phenomenal concepts"?

Quoting Terrapin Station

I don't remember a "phenomenal concepts" phrase, by the way. What the heck are "phenomenal concepts" supposed to be contra "non-phenomenal concepts"?

http://consc.net/papers/knowledge.html

Reply to Michael

Thanks. So, basically a concept about phenomenal properties. It's not saying something about the ontological status of concepts where some are phenomenal and some are something else.

Quoting Michael

If "physically identical but not conscious" isn't a contradiction (and so conceivable) then consciousness isn't physical.

The problem is that the things we are asked to conceive (p-zombies) are only possible if you assume the conclusion - i.e., that consciousness is not physical. When Hanover asked if a distinction had been made between physical and non-physical, the question is crucial to Chalmer's argument. And as you noted, Chalmers seems not to address the issue.

Look at the argument :
Quoting Michael

If we can conceive of a p-zombie then consciousness isn't physical
We can conceive of a p-zombie
Therefore, consciousness isn't physical

Now ask yourself : Can the p-zombie be conceived of if you do not already accept that consciousness is different from the physical?

And this goes to my much maligned comparison of coherence and conceivability. If you do not define your terms (consciousness, p-zombie, et. al.) - which is what it means to be coherent - then I fail to see how you can meaningfully think about them (conceive of them).

Throughout this discussion, we have long forgotten the question in the OP : Is consciousness a recognizable attribute or an assumption? What does it mean to be just like a real human but to lack a consciousness, when the presumption of consciousness can only be made through observation of behavior? How can one be said to lack what cannot be shown to exist? To believe that such a creature exists (one just like us but lacking internal, unviewable consciousness) calls into question whether consciousness exists in others at all - which destroys the argument.

Here is the p-zombie argument:

"According to physicalism, everything that exists is either physical or depends on what is physical. So if physicalism is true, a world that is an exact physical duplicate of our world, with nothing else in addition, will be an exact duplicate of our world in all respects. Therefore, if there is a possible world that is an exact physical duplicate of our world but is different in any way, e.g. it has different (or no) psychological properties, physicalism is false. If two physically identical worlds have different properties of consciousness, those properties of consciousness don’t depend on physical properties. So if zombies are possible, physicalism is false and property dualism is true." http://documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com/9781138793934/A22014/dualism/The%20zombie%20argument.pdf.

My problem is in the bolded area. I just don't follow how this isn't obvious question begging. Aren't we assuming by the antecedent "if two physically identical worlds have different properties of consciousness" that consciousness is not physical? How can the two physical worlds be "identical" if they have differing consciousness unless we've already assumed that consciousness is not physical?

My point here is that if we have World A with conscious beings and World B with p-zombies, yet, from an outside observer they are measurably the exact same, then we either have an epistemic problem (we need better measuring devices) or we have a metaphysical problem (consciousness cannot, in principle, be measured). Since there are two equally valid options, we've proven nothing. Only if we accept as a given (which seems a premise of the p-zombie argument) that consciousness cannot in principle be measured, then of course consciousness is a non-physical entity. That, though, is the case only because we accepted it was as a given - thus the question begging.

What have I missed?

Reply to Hanover

Ooh, beat you to it!

Quoting Michael

If "physically identical but not conscious" isn't a contradiction (and so conceivable) then consciousness isn't physical.

"Physically identical but not conscious" is in fact a contradiction unless you define it in a way that it's not. To a physicalist all the world is physical. For two things to be identical, they must be physically identical. So, if you asked a physicalist if a conscious person and his doppelganger p-zombie were identical, he'd say of course they aren't; they can't be. The distinction between the two means the distinction must be physical because that's all there is.

To the point of what I can conceptualize, I cannot conceptualize of two identical entities (a regular person and his corresponding p-zombie) having no physical differences if I assume physicalism. It simply makes no sense to assume physicalism and then to assume non-physicalism at the same time.

Reply to Real Gone Cat Does look like we're saying the same thing independently.

Quoting Wayfarer

But, the example you gave was 'bread that was molecularly identical to bread' except that it wasn't nourishing. So that example seems to me to violate the law of identity, as it basically amounts to saying 'imagine bread that isn't bread' - which amounts to saying 'imagine an instance of A that is not actually A'.

I'm not sure "molecular identity" in the sense intended exhausts the concept of logical identity. (Incidentally, are you suggesting that all there is to identity of objects is "molecules"? I'm not sure I've ever heard that sort of claim from you.)

What I said was the bread and the p-bread are "molecule-for-molecule the same". I don't mean it's the very same molecules, but rather exactly the same type of molecules, in exactly the same numbers and arrangements. Two tokens of the same type, type-identical, not token-identical, so far as the molecules are concerned; but there is this one functional difference. A functional difference without a physical difference. Isn't this how some philosophers have characterized the similarity of p-zombies and ordinary humans? I thought that was the whole point of their exercise.

I think it's a frivolous notion.

Quoting Wayfarer

Whereas bread that was molecularly slightly different, and therefore had different, or no, nutritional value, is a very different kind of idea. But then the point is lost.

The point would be lost if there were a difference in type-identity of molecular structure. But that's not what I've said about bread and p-bread.

I did leave the possibility open in the case of Yellow-Eyed and Brown-Eyed Cabbage Farmer, but that's another example. The two examples have this in common: In the case of the eyes, I imagine the difference without worrying how it's possible; in the case of the breads, I imagine the difference without worrying how it's possible. That's just how easy it is to "imagine and conceive" in the loose, ordinary sense of these terms. You leave a blank where an imaginary explanation might go.

Quoting Wayfarer

For that matter, I can imagine a being with a radically different type of inner life - an alien intelligence perhaps - but not one with no inner life, because then, how would they simulate an answer to the question, 'how do you feel about X'?

Perhaps your standards of imagining are stricter than mine. I just imagine it, like a child, without worrying about the details and implications.

How would the zombie answer questions like "how do you feel..."? To say it has no grounds for answer, is to imply that the only bases in us for such answers are somehow metaphysical, drawn from "pure subjectivity", external to the physical organism and its physically instantiated cognitive system. I see no reason to suppose that is the case in us. For instance, I'm pretty sure you can poke enough holes in a brain to the point where it will lose the capacity to answer such questions, one way or another.

However, if there is something like a phenomenal character to conscious experience, and I'm inclined to say there is, then it seems a zombie, if it's an honest zombie, when asked to report on the phenomenal character of its experience, would report, perhaps after a period of confusion and disillusionment, that it doesn't seem to have any.

How would such a thing be possible? It's the job of the make-believe mad scientists who get paid to cook up such fictions, to fill in those blanks.

The zombie is not sentient. It's "phenomenally blind". Nothing appears to it. It's not appeared to. It's a syntax engine.

Quoting Wayfarer

There's a favourite quote of mine from Descartes which makes this point brilliantly (not least because he made it in the 1630's)

The passage strikes me as rather primitive. Descartes seems to be imagining a machine made of pulleys and cables and levers and buttons and gears, running on mechanical principles. He seems not to anticipate the growth in computational complexity kicked off in the past century.

I expect that, given enough time and resources to develop, artificial intelligence will meet and exceed human capacities of speech, creativity, and performance. None of that is sentience.

Quoting Wayfarer

That's why I posted in that long quote from Feser. Basically, he is arguing that expressions like 'the laws of motion' or the rules of Euclidean geometry are concepts, as distinct from imaginings, in part because they are determinate - they stipulate precise outcomes. They're not reducible to imaginings, either - you can't imagine the outcome of a calculation, you need to actually perform the calculation, i.e. exercise reason. Although that is somewhat tangential to the main point.

It seems to me that conceptions and linguistic utterances can be "indeterminate" and imprecise in one way or another. We can use our conceptual capacities to refine our ideas and expressions -- whether we use words, or pictures, or gestures, or any other tokens for the purpose. I'm not sure there is a standard of clarity, definiteness, precision required before we count something as a "concept". There are formal rules of math and logic, there are norms of syntax, and so on. And there's such a thing as sorting things out, or getting your point across, well enough to suit your present purpose.

Perhaps this is tangential. It might be brought home, if someone would clear up for us what sort of "conceiving" is at issue when we attempt to conceive p-zombies, and what relevance such exercises might have for our understanding of consciousness or anything else.

Quoting Wayfarer

Oh yes I most certainly do, but there is some entertainment to be had in saying why. But I am still at a loss why so much ink is spilled over the question.

It seems we're on the same page here, too.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I expect that, given enough time and resources to develop, artificial intelligence will meet and exceed human capacities of speech, creativity, and performance. None of that is sentience.

Creativity and sentience may be the same thing or mutually necessary. One difference between a p-zombie and a human is that the p-zombie would not be able to create knowledge - i.e it would be stuck in its programming, just as animals are.

What I'm suggesting is that p-zombies cannot possess a GENERAL intelligence, because they cannot create knowledge of themselves.

Quoting Michael

Wayfarer: In any case, if the responder has no inner life, then the response 'I feel good about it', is actually a falsehood, obviously, because they don't feel anything.

I don't understand the relevance of this.

It's relevant, because the whole notion of 'p zombie' is a thing that looks like a human but has no inner life - therefore doesn't feel . If you say to such a thing 'how do you feel?' then the answer can't be based on a real state, as there is no such state. So what is the response based on? On what basis does it answer?

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

What I said was the bread and the p-bread are "molecule-for-molecule the same". I don't mean it's the very same molecules, but rather exactly the same type of molecules, in exactly the same numbers and arrangements.

'The same' means 'the same type'.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

The passage strikes me as rather primitive. Descartes seems to be imagining a machine made of pulleys and cables and levers and buttons and gears, running on mechanical principles

Not at all. Notice the last passage:

Thus one would discover that they [machines, p-zombies] did not act on the basis of knowledge, but merely as a result of the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action.

Granted, 'disposition of their organs' is a rather archaic way of putting it, but the principle stands. It's similar to a point made by [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz's_gap]Leibniz (which is not co-incidental).

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I'm not sure there is a standard of clarity, definiteness, precision required before we count something as a "concept". There are formal rules of math and logic, there are norms of syntax, and so on

Non-rational creatures can't form concepts, they're essential to the operations of reason.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

When Hanover asked if a distinction had been made between physical and non-physical, the question is crucial to Chalmer's argument.

Well, it's crucial to both Chalmers' and the physicalist's argument. You could argue that if neither defines the term "physical" then both arguments are vacuous. If the physicalist has defined the term "physical" then take that to be Chalmers' definition.

The problem is that the things we are asked to conceive (p-zombies) are only possible if you assume the conclusion - i.e., that consciousness is not physical.

...

Look at the argument:

If we can conceive of a p-zombie then consciousness isn't physical
We can conceive of a p-zombie
Therefore, consciousness isn't physical
— Michael

Now ask yourself : Can the p-zombie be conceived of if you do not already accept that consciousness is different from the physical?

How is it different to any other syllogism? Consider:

If Socrates is a man then Socrates is mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal

Does the second premise assume the conclusion? If not then how does this syllogism differ from the p-zombie syllogism?

And this goes to my much maligned comparison of coherence and conceivability. If you do not define your terms (consciousness, p-zombie, et. al.) - which is what it means to be coherent - then I fail to see how you can meaningfully think about them (conceive of them).

A p-zombie is defined as something biologically and behaviourally identical to us but which isn't conscious.

Asking to define consciousness seems like a problematic question. Imagine if we were pre-historic people considering the nature of stars. Do we have to define "star"? Given that we don't know what stars are, what kind of definition can we give? At best "those lights in the sky", if that counts as a definition. So really when it comes to consciousness it's just a case of each of us individually understanding what we personally are referring to by the term and assuming that others are referring to the same sort of thing.

Quoting Hanover

"Physically identical but not conscious" is in fact a contradiction unless you define it in a way that it's not.

"Contradiction" was probably the wrong word on my part, given that this isn't just a semantic issue. We can't simply define consciousness a certain way and expect to have addressed the problem of consciousness.

To a physicalist all the world is physical. For two things to be identical, they must be physically identical. So, if you asked a physicalist if a conscious person and his doppelganger p-zombie were identical, he'd say of course they aren't; they can't be. The distinction between the two means the distinction must be physical because that's all there is.

I don't think people are that straightforward. We might believe that consciousness is a physical thing but then when asked to consider the p-zombie, Mary's room, or inverted spectrum hypotheses find ourselves agreeing that it's possible, and so change our minds about consciousness being a physical thing.

To the point of what I can conceptualize, I cannot conceptualize of two identical entities (a regular person and his corresponding p-zombie) having no physical differences if I assume physicalism. It simply makes no sense to assume physicalism and then to assume non-physicalism at the same time.

I don't think people just assume physicalism. Rather it's a conclusion from one reasoning or another (else why do they believe it in the first place?). And it isn't nonsensical to suggest that the p-zombie argument is more convincing than whatever arguments conclude in favour of physicalism.

Quoting Wayfarer

It's relevant, because the whole notion of 'p zombie' is a thing that looks like a human but has no inner life - therefore doesn't feel . If you say to such a thing 'how do you feel?' then the answer can't be based on a real state, as there is no such state. So what is the response based on? On what basis does it answer?

I don't know what you mean by a response being based on something. If we accept that speech is physical behaviour and that all physical behaviour is caused by prior physical behaviour then the question-answer scenario is simply a matter of physical stimulation and reaction, in accordance to the natural laws of cause and effect.

Quoting Michael

If we accept that speech is physical behaviour and that all physical behaviour is caused by prior physical behaviour then the question-answer scenario is simply a matter of physical stimulation and reaction.

But speech ISN'T physical behaviour. It conveys meaning and intention, neither of which are physical. So again, ask a zombie a question, and how can it respond? Without any inner life, reason, or anything else that is constitutive of a human being, what could it say?

Quoting Wayfarer

But speech ISN'T physical behaviour. It conveys meaning and intention, neither of which are physical. So again, ask a zombie a question, and how can it respond? Without any inner life, reason, or anything else that is constitutive of a human being, what could it say?

By speech I just mean the measurable vocalisations; i.e. mechanical waves of pressure and displacement caused by air exiting the mouth and manipulated by the larynx, mouth, and tongue. Is an inner life required for this physical event to occur?

Quoting Michael

Well, it's crucial to both Chalmers' and the physicalist's argument.

The physicalist's argument is not up for consideration. We are only trying to establish whether Chalmers' argument is valid. (This reminds me of how Trump supporters respond to his critics - when his numerous flaws are pointed out, the next sentence out of their mouths contains the name "Hillary Clinton". Its deflection.) But back to the important point ...

Quoting Michael

How is it different to any other syllogism?

Because Chalmers conditional is of the form "A implies A". The p-zombie is only conceivable if you already accept that consciousness is not physical. Otherwise, two "physically identical worlds (with) different properties of consciousness" would be a contradiction. So, in this case, the second premise does assume the conclusion.

Reply to Michael But here you're up against the distinction between sound and meaning. A zombie could produce many kinds of apparently-vocal noises, it could recite the Gettysburg Address - but how does it answer a question? What does it say? It won't do to say 'look, it's making noises, it must be able to speak.' A speech act requires cognitive faculties, in addition to the physical organs; which is why a person whose larynx has been removed because of surgery, can still express themselves through writing, which a chimp (for instance) cannot.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

Because Chalmers conditional is of the form "A implies A". The p-zombie is only conceivable if you already accept that consciousness is not physical. Otherwise, two "physically identical worlds (with) different properties of consciousness" would be a contradiction. So, in this case, the second premise does assume the conclusion.

Both arguments are in the form:

If A then B
A
Therefore B.

So I fail to see how the p-zombie syllogism differs from the Socrates syllogism.

The physicalist's argument is not up for consideration.

But their definition of "physical" is up for consideration, given that Chalmers' argument is a response to their claim that consciousness is physical. Chalmers is (I assume) using whatever definition the physicalist is using.

Quoting Wayfarer

But here you're up against the distinction between sound and meaning. A zombie could produce many kinds of apparently-vocal noises, it could recite the Gettysburg Address - but how does it answer a question? What does it say? It won't do to say 'look, it's making noises, it must be able to speak.'

I really don't understand your question. You accept that a p-zombie could recite the Gettysburg Address. Then you should accept that a p-zombie could recite the phrase "I feel good about X". All that is required is that the appropriate sounds are produced in response to the appropriate stimulation.

A speech act requires cognitive faculties, in addition to the physical organs; which is why a person whose larynx has been removed because of surgery, can still express themselves through writing, which a chimp (for instance) cannot.

If by "cognitive faculties" you mean "brain activity", sure. The lungs, mouth, and tongue are indeed causally influenced by signals sent from the central nervous system.

Quoting Michael

You accept that a p-zombie could recite the Gettysburg Address. Then you should accept that a p-zombie could recite the phrase "I feel good about X". All that is required is that the appropriate sounds are produced in response to the appropriate stimulation.

But if you probe the zombie - why do you feel good about it? What do you like about it? What kinds of things do you like? - how long would it take to ascertain that you're speaking to a zombie? I think it wouldn't take long. How could it react spontaneously to a series of questions which it had no programming for? That is the point made by Descartes: ' For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action.'

Speech is more than stimulus and response - it relies on the ability to make inferences and connections, to interpret meaning. And those faculties are constitutive of 'the inner life' - there is no evidence they exist anywhere else (except for simulated in computers, which are instruments of human thought.)

So, yes, I can imagine a thing that looks like a human, and speaks, but I can't imagine where it would derive 'the ability to speak' when it is supposed that the very thing which underwrites that ability is not present in it.

Quoting Michael

Both arguments are in the form:

If A then B
A
Therefore B.

You are simply wrong. P-zombies are not conceivable unless consciousness is believed to be non-physical. Believing that consciousness is non-physical means you already believe physicalism to be false.

Quoting Wayfarer

But if you probe the zombie - why do you feel good about it? What do you like about it? What kinds of things do you like? - how long would it take to ascertain that you're speaking to a zombie? I think it wouldn't take long. How could it react spontaneously to a series of questions which it had no programming for? That is the point made by Descartes: ' For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action.'

Speech is more than stimulus and response - it relies on the ability to make inferences and connections, to interpret meaning. And those faculties are constitutive of 'the inner life' - there is no evidence they exist anywhere else (except for simulated in computers, which are instruments of human thought.)

So, yes, I can imagine a thing that looks like a human, and speaks, but I can't imagine where it would derive 'the ability to speak' when it is supposed that the very thing which underwrites that ability is not present in it.

Are you saying that human biology and the natural laws of physics are insufficient to explain human behaviour? If so then you're taking the p-zombie hypothesis out of context. It's specifically directed at those who claim that human biology and the natural laws of physics are sufficient to explain human behaviour.

Quoting Real Gone Cat

You are simply wrong. P-zombies are not conceivable unless consciousness is believed to be non-physical. Believing that consciousness is non-physical means you already believe physicalism to be false.

How am I wrong? It's a straightforward modus ponens.

If Socrates is a man then Socrates is mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal

If we can conceive of p-zombies then consciousness isn't physical
We can conceive of p-zombies
Therefore, consciousness isn't physical

Reply to Michael

To conceive of a being which is physically identical to a human, but which is different as regards consciousness, it is necessary to believe that consciousness is not part of its physical make-up. Why do you not see that the presumption that physicalism is false is required for this to be possible?

You have to start from a presumption that consciousness is not physical to imagine a being physically identical to a human but which is not conscious. Consciousness has to already be regarded as "something else" or it would be part of the "physically identical" stipulation.

EDIT : To use the phrase "physically identical" is to imply that a physical world exists. But then to assume that consciousness is not part of the physical, is to be a dualist. So dualism must be assumed for p-zombies to be conceived of. And dualism is the case only if physicalism is false. This makes the conclusion a premise, and destroys the argument.

Quoting Michael

It's specifically directed at those who claim that human biology and the natural laws of physics are sufficient to explain human behaviour.

Right, well I suppose you have to speak to people on their level. X-)

Quoting Michael

How am I wrong? It's a straightforward modus ponens.

It's not the form that has a problem, but the content.

It would be like saying:

If your user name on thephilosophyforum.com is Michael, then everything you say is inane.
Your user name on thephilosophyforum.com is Michael.
Therefore, everything you say is inane.

"How is that wrong? It's a straightforward modus ponens!"

Obviously, an argument isn't sound just because it's valid.

Actually, what I should have went with was this:

If your user name on thephilosophyforum.com isn't Terrapin Station, then you're going to PayPal Terrapin Station your life savings.
Your user name on thephilosophyforum.com isn't Terrapin Station.
Therefore, you're going to PayPal Terrapin Station your life savings.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Obviously, an argument isn't sound just because it's valid.

I'm not saying that it's sound. I'm saying that it doesn't beg the question, contrary to Real Gone Cat's claim.

Quoting Michael

I'm not saying that it's sound. I'm saying that it doesn't beg the question

He's not saying that stated as a modus ponens it begs the question.

He's saying that it begs the question as an argument for consciousness being non-physical because the only way that it's conceivable in the first place is if you already believe that consciousness isn't physical.

Quoting Terrapin Station

He's saying that it begs the question as an argument for consciousness being non-physical because the only way that it's conceivable in the first place is if you already believe that consciousness isn't physical.

Then the same is true of the Socrates syllogism. Does it beg the question as an argument for Socrates being mortal because the only way that he's a man is if he's mortal?

It just doesn't work that way. Modus ponens arguments don't beg the question, whether it's the p-zombie syllogism or the Socrates syllogism.

However, if you reject one of the premises because you assume that the argument's conclusion is false then you've begged the question. For example, if you claim that Socrates is immortal and so not a man, and therefore reject the premise that Socrates is a man, then the fallacy is with you, not with the argument that tries to argue that he's mortal.

He's not saying that stated as a modus ponens it begs the question.

You've confused me here. You accept that it doesn't beg the question but then go on to say that it begs the question.

Quoting Michael

Then the same is true of the Socrates syllogism. Does it beg the question as an argument for Socrates being mortal because the only way that he's a man is if he's mortal?

It would be the same if the only way that he's a man in the first place is if you already believe that he's mortal.

Quoting Michael

Modus ponens arguments don't beg the question,

Jesus Christ. I JUST SAID that it's NOT the argument stated in the form of a modus ponens that's begging the question. No one is arguing that.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Jesus Christ. I JUST SAID that it's NOT the argument stated in the form of a modus ponens that's begging the question. No one is arguing that.

Then what are you saying? Because this modus ponens is the p-zombie argument. If modus ponens doesn't beg the question then the p-zombie argument doesn't beg the question. And if the p-zombie argument doesn't beg the question then Real Gone Cat's claim that it does is false.

Quoting Michael

Then what are you saying?

I answered this already:

Quoting Terrapin Station

it begs the question as an argument for consciousness being non-physical because the only way that it's conceivable in the first place is if you already believe that consciousness isn't physical.

The issue has to do with how it's conceivable that consciousness isn't physical.

Reply to Terrapin Station

It's really straightforward. If A then B. A. Therefore, B. Such arguments do not beg the question. The p-zombie argument is stated in this way. Therefore, the p-zombie argument doesn't beg the question.

The fact that you accept that it doesn't beg the question but then go on to say that it begs the question doesn't make any sense.

Quoting Michael

If A then B. A. Therefore, B. Such arguments do not beg the question.

Do you understand that no one is saying that the modus ponens begs the question?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Do you understand that no one is saying that the modus ponens begs the question?

The p-zombie argument uses modus ponens. If modus ponens doesn't beg the question the the p-zombie argument doesn't beg the question. Therefore, the p-zombie argument doesn't beg the question.

There's another modus ponens for you.

So, again, what you're saying doesn't make any sense. How can you accept that modus ponens doesn't beg the question, accept that the p-zombie argument uses modus ponens, but then claim that the p-zombie argument begs the question? You're just contradicting yourself.

Reply to Michael

You didn't answer if you understand that no one is saying that the modus ponens begs the question.

Aren't you interested in understanding what we're saying?

Quoting Terrapin Station

You didn't answer if you understand that no one is saying that the modus ponens begs the question.

Aren't you interested in understanding what we're saying?

I don't understand what you're saying, hence why I said "what you're saying doesn't make any sense". You claim to not be saying that modus ponens begs the question but then also claim that the p-zombie argument – an argument that uses modus ponens – begs the question. As far as I can see, you're just contradicting yourself.

Reply to Michael '

Haha, okay.

Do A and B in the argument have any content? Or are they just A and B?

Quoting Terrapin Station

Do A and B in the argument have any content? Or are they just A and B?

A is "if Socrates is a man then Socrates is mortal" or "if p-zombies are conceivable then consciousness isn't physical" and B is "Socrates is a man" or "P-zombies are conceivable".

Reply to Michael

Sure. And is that just a random list of words, or is there any semantic content?

Quoting Michael

If we can conceive of p-zombies then consciousness isn't physical
We can conceive of p-zombies
Therefore, consciousness isn't physical

The second premise is not supported. To go down the same line of thought others have done in the thread (and at the risk of restating what has already been said), the premise is true if and only if physicalism is false.

P-zombies are potentially conceivable; in a sense, I do not see anything strikingly incoherent about the idea, but this may only be because we, as humans, do not understand the brain and the other physical forces that underlie consciousness. In other words, we may not be epistemologically justified in saying, "p-zombies are inconceivable," as this would require us to flat out illustrate physicalism, but we are not epistemologically justified to declare that, "p-zombies are concievable."

Saying, "p-zombies are convievable," is equal to saying "p-zombies are logically possible." Saying, "p-zombies are logically possible," is equivelant to saying, "it is logically possible to have two worlds, W1 and W2, that are exactly the same physically, but W1 has conscious beings and W2 has p-zombies." The last statement is true if and only if physicalism is false, for if physicalism were true, then it would not be logically possible to have W1 and W2. In this sense, the argument begs the question. There is nothing wrong with the form of the argument as stated (it's modus ponus), but to hold the second premise as true, we would have to assume the conclusion, and thus, we would be begging the question.

Quoting Chany

The second premise is not supported. To go down the same line of thought others have done in the thread (and at the risk of restating what has already been said), the premise is true if and only if physicalism is false.

And compare with:

If Socrates is a man then Socrates is mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal

The second premise is true only if Socrates is mortal.

There is nothing wrong with the form of the argument as stated (it's modus ponus), but to hold the second premise as true, we would have to assume the conclusion, and thus, we would be begging the question.

As I've said before, this reasoning undermines any syllogism, as shown above.

The p-zombie argument is conceivable in a semantic way only.
We can conceivably define consciousness such that strictly physical humans do not possess it.
The p-zombie argument does not explain anything though, it is not conceivable in the sense that it is an alternative explanation for conscious phenomena.

So, the counter-argument seems to amount to "but I believe that Socrates is immortal, and so not a man, and therefore your premise that Socrates is a man begs the question". But, of course, that's not how question-begging works, given that the Socrates syllogism is known to not beg the question. Rather, to deny the second premise because you reject the conclusion is to beg the question.

So to say "p-zombies aren't conceivable because consciousness is physical" is to beg the question. You can't deny an argument's conclusion to attack one of its premises. You have to consider the argument without assuming the conclusion to be true, i.e. you can't assume that physicalism is the case.

Reply to Michael
This is strictly semantic though...
If we can conceive of p-zombies then consciousness isn't physical
We can conceive of p-zombies
Therefore, consciousness isn't physical

The problem with accepting this argument is that it could mean that we are all p-zombies because we are all physical.

if we are strictly physical then we are not conscious (by definition)
we appear to be strictly physical
therefor we may be p-zombies (by definition)

Reply to Michael

If you were interested in understanding, you wouldn't have simply dumped out of our conversation.

You're not interested in understanding. You're interested in arguing and being right.

Reply to Terrapin Station But Michael is right, and you have failed to get your point across.

I take your point to be that one would only affirm that p-zombies are conceivable if one believes that physicalism is false. I'm sympathetic to this, but you have not properly argued for it.

Michael is defending the classic p-zombie argument, which is not question-begging without further analysis to reveal hidden premises, because the conceivability of p-zombies does not obviously, or on the face of it necessarily, rest on a denial of physicalism.

But it's true that the notion of conceivability in Chalmers' argument is a bit troublesome. It positively invites the charge of begging the question, because it is so easy to confuse "We can conceive x", with "I believe there could be an x", where the latter obviously rests on one's philosophical commitments.

But the relevant notion of conceivability is something more like logical possibility. So, roughly, you may find it difficult to conceive of flying pigs if you are deeply familiar with evolutionary history, and yet the thought is not a contradictory one, and thus flying pigs are conceivable in the relevant sense.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you're not obviously right.

Quoting jamalrob

Michael is defending the classic p-zombie argument, which is not question-begging without further analysis to reveal hidden premises

Okay, and you realize that no one is arguing that the modus ponens is question-begging, right?

Quoting jamalrob

But it's true that the notion of conceivability in Chalmers' argument is a bit troublesome. It positively invites the charge of begging the question, because it is so easy to confuse "We can conceive x", with "I believe there could be an x", where the latter obviously rests on one's philosophical commitments.

Why do you think, by the way, that we'd use the phrase "conceivable" if we don't intend to connote something about the mental act of conceptualization, and we're only saying that something is logically possible? Why wouldn't we just use the phrase "logically possible" if that's what we're saying?

Also, if we're only saying that something is logically possible, what would you say that it's logically possible with respect to? In other words, a set of logical statements? A set of ontological facts? What?

Reply to jamalrob

Ooh, I think the flying pigs are going to help.

Sure it's possible to conceive of flying pigs, but what if I describe the world of flying pigs as being physically identical to this one, and then ask you to conceive of flying pigs in that world. Then flight must be non-physical! And in that case, you cannot use the conceivability of flying pigs to prove that it is possible for a physical world to give rise to flying pigs.*

This is the problem with Chalmers request that we conceive of a world physically identical but different in regards to consciousness - it establishes as a premise that consciousness cannot be physical. So you are correct that the problem lies with Chalmers' notion of conceivability - he is putting conditions on conceivability that destroy his argument.

*Note : If pigs in the other world have wings, or if pigs there are lighter than air, then they are not strictly pigs, but something else. So you can't get around it that way.

Reply to Real Gone Cat Too confusing. Physically identical flying pigs are uncontroversially inconceivable. It is a contradiction, since by flying we just mean, and have always meant, something physical. This is not the case with consciousness and the mind.

Back where we started.

Quoting tom

Creativity and sentience may be the same thing or mutually necessary. One difference between a p-zombie and a human is that the p-zombie would not be able to create knowledge - i.e it would be stuck in its programming, just as animals are.

Don't the AI geeks still talk about neural networks, and programs programming themselves ad infinitum, and all that jazz? I don't see any reason to doubt that it's already underway with plenty of room for growth.

It seems to me that humans are like other animals, we're stuck in our programming too. It's just that our programming is more flexible, more variable, more adaptive, more creative, amenable to far greater complexity.

Quoting tom

What I'm suggesting is that p-zombies cannot possess a GENERAL intelligence, because they cannot create knowledge of themselves

What do you mean by "creating knowledge"?

Reply to jamalrob

(This has the danger of going in circles like the discussion with Michael.)

But why is consciousness different from flying? Flying is obviously physical, but consciousness is not?

Sure, consciousness might feel non-physical to you, but that seems like folk wisdom, not a considered argument. You seem to be assuming it as premise. Can you further explain?

Obviously machines, or A.I.s aren't physically identical to people... I didn't realize that it was a physically identical world.

I don't think that it's controversial that we have a private qualitative experience that others don't have access to. That we can't even imagine what it would be like for a bat. At the same time, we do imagine that it is similar to other people, because they are physically similar, and behaviorally similar to ourselves, whereas bats differ in ways that suggest differing qualitative experience.

Even the behaviorists that assure you that all intentions can be read in behavior, and micro-expressions are impossible to conceal and all that -- even those that write the books on it cannot actually demonstrate an ability to discern whether or not someone is lying with a success rate higher than chance in controlled trials.

I don't think that I wholly infer from behavior or physicality that others are conscious, or sentient alone. I imagine that I have same nugget of a priori disposition for this, so that as long as a piece of it doesn't come from experience, then it doesn't come entirely from my observations of the behaviors, and physicalities of others. So I think that it is both conceivable, and this indeed does imply in itself, that the puzzle isn't wholly completed with behavior and physical structure. Even if we could reduce this missing piece to physicality, it still wouldn't change that that inference isn't how I'm aware of it.

Reply to Real Gone Cat I'm not saying it's not physical, although I do believe this to be a category error. I'm saying that unlike flying it's not uncontroversial to say that it is physical. There is room for the p-zombie argument precisely because we don't know how to account for consciousness.

Generally, I think that when we talk about the mind or about consciousness we are referring to the same thing people referred to back when it didn't occur to anyone to equate it with brain states. Physicalism purports to account for something that we already talked about.

Quoting Wayfarer

'The same' means 'the same type'.

In this case, yes. Type-identity, not token-identity; isn't that how it's said?

Or we might say, a one-to-one correspondence of molecules and relations of molecules, "the same exact type" of molecular structure.... Or whatever idiom the make-believe mad scientists use to cook up doppelgangers nowadays.

Quoting Wayfarer

Not at all. Notice the last passage:

Descartes:Thus one would discover that they [machines, p-zombies] did not act on the basis of knowledge, but merely as a result of the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action.

Even here. Leave aside for a moment the question of whether it counts as genuine (as opposed to simulated) "knowledge" and "reason" -- I suppose that's still at issue between Searle and the eliminitave materialists and the other players in this market segment. The question is whether the thing could resemble us enough to deceive us into mistaking it for one of us over indefinitely long periods of interaction. Not, would it be genuine knowledge and genuine reason, but merely, could it be a convincing simulation of knowledge and reason? It seems likely we're getting there; I see no reason to expect it's out of the question; and it seems an empirical question.

As to the archaic flavor of Descartes's account: What do we make of "these organs need a specific disposition for every particular action"? For me it calls to mind all those gears and levers, each single action prepared mechanically as a passive response to a particular input, without any room for adaptation or generalization, without any active gathering of information from the environment, without any coherent organization of rules and functions and behaviors.... It seems too simple. Even our floor-cleaning robots seem more intelligent than Descartes's sideshow automaton.

And then "reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations": Do we suppose "reason" to be a single, indivisible instrument? Surely we should remain open, at least, to the possibility that our power of reason depends on and consists in the shifting "dispositions" of so many moving parts in us.

So on both sides of that coin, his picture seems out of fashion. Descartes seems perhaps to miss the full potential of computational technology, to exaggerate the "unity" and "universality" of reason, and to speak as if "reason" were a ghost in the machine. Though it's a small passage out of context.

Quoting Wayfarer

Non-rational creatures can't form concepts, they're essential to the operations of reason.

I'm inclined to agree that something like conceptual capacities are essential to rationality, to the emergence of rational creatures. However, I leave open the possibility that there are various sorts of rational creature. For instance, a rational sentient animal, a rational sentient robot, or a rational nonsentient robot.

Life, sentience, and rationality are logically distinct terms. The way I prefer set my terms, there's no language without rationality, but there is rationality without language.

I say nothing appears to a nonsentient simulated intelligence. So it doesn't perceive like we do, it doesn't introspect like we do, it doesn't know like we do, it's not rational like we are. But it seems to behave rationally, like we do, and not only in the manner of an old-fashioned machine, according to a fixed set of rules, but even as we do, learning new tricks as we proceed, creating new rules, cultivating a style or even something like a personality.

That's my sense of the direction we're already headed. It seems in keeping with what the mad scientists have in mind when they speak of zombies.

Quoting jamalrob

Physically identical flying pigs are uncontroversially inconceivable. It is a contradiction, since by flying we just mean, and have always meant, something physical. This is not the case with consciousness and the mind.

Hold on a second--you're conflating logical possibility and consensus/conventional definitions? You've got to be kidding me.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Leave aside for a moment the question of whether it counts as genuine (as opposed to simulated) "knowledge" and "reason"

How can you leave that aside? If knowledge is not genuine, then it's not knowledge.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

It seems likely we're getting there; I see no reason to expect it's out of the question; and it seems an empirical question.

Well, I think that is a classical case of what Karl Popper described as one of the 'promissory notes of materialism'. That's not to deny that effective AI and machine learning already exists - I have actually have been reading up on Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and it's very interesting from a practical point of view. But I think in this context, it's 'intelligence' that has to be put in scare quotes, not 'knowledge' or 'reason'; it's not really knowledge until there's a knower involved. Otherwise it is still just binary code.

I quite agree that Descartes was spectacularly wrong about many things, but I still think his depiction of the universal nature of reason is on the mark. I think it's a big mistake, and one made every day, to feel as though reason is 'something that can be explained'; reason is always the source of explanation, not the object of it. As Thomas Nagel says, somewhere, reason often seems to be imposed on us, it is something we have to yield to, oftentimes through painful learning. Whereas, I think us moderns take it for granted that reason 'has evolved' and that, therefore, we have an in-principle grasp of what it is - namely an adaption, something which helps us to survive. But that is precisely what has been criticized as the 'instrumentalisation of reason'* which is endemic in materialist accounts of the nature of the mind.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I leave open the possibility that there are various sorts of rational creature. For instance, a rational sentient animal, a rational sentient robot, or a rational nonsentient robot.

Another effect of that, is that we think because we understand it, that it is something that can be replicated by us in other systems. Hence the debate!

As far as I can see h. sapiens is the only rational sentient animal. I don't think robots are rational, but are subject to reason; higher intelligences, if there are any, are superior to it. And all of that is in keeping with classical Western philosophy and metaphysics.

-------------

* "The concordance between the mind of man and the nature of things that [Bacon] had in mind is patriarchal: the human mind, which overcomes superstition, is to hold sway over a disenchanted nature. Knowledge, which is power, knows no obstacles: neither in the enslavement of men nor in compliance with the world’s rulers... Technology is the essence of this knowledge. It does not work by concepts and images, by the fortunate insight, but refers to method, the exploitation of others’ work, and capital... What men want to learn from nature is how to use it in order wholly to dominate it and other men. That is the only aim." - Adorno and Horkheimer

Reply to jamalrob
Many people criticize the argument because it is an equal logical possibility that we are p-zombies.

The problem is it is just as conceivable that we are p-zombies as it is that consciousness is not physical.
It is easy to reject this argument as incoherent for this reason, because very obviously we are not p-zombies.
Very obviously humans are physical and very obviously we are conscious, what is not made obvious by the argument is why it would be necessary to define consciousness in such a way that consciousness must be excluded from the physical,

We could conceivably define humans in the same way and offer that because humans are physical that this is mutually exclusive of consciousness.

But of course it is not true of humans so in what way is the lack of consciousness of a p-zombie something which is coherent?

Quoting m-theory

Very obviously humans are physical and very obviously we are conscious, what is not made obvious by the argument is why it would be necessary to define consciousness in such a way that consciousness must be excluded from the physical

What do you mean by us defining consciousness a certain way? We no more define consciousness than we define a dog. Rather we encounter a dog and then examine it to determine its nature. So too with consciousness.

Reply to Michael
That is my point.
P-zombies lack consciousness from definition only, there is no analytical reason that they are not conscious.
We cannot, from our encounters, be sure that we are not ourselves p-zombies or that others may be p-zombies.
It is just as conceivable that we are p-zombies as it is that consciousness is not physical.

But very obviously we are not p-zombies, so a p-zombie, as described by the argument, is incoherent in that it does not actually distinguish humans with consciousness from p-zombies.

Quoting Wayfarer

How can you leave that aside? If knowledge is not genuine, then it's not knowledge.

Surely we can leave it aside for just a moment, as I did, to consider a question like "could it be a convincing simulation of knowledge"?

So far as I can see, only that much is required to get these thought experiments running. I say it could be a convincing simulation; but it doesn't count as full-blooded knowledge if there's no sentience.

Quoting Wayfarer

But I think in this context, it's 'intelligence' that has to be put in scare quotes, not 'knowledge' or 'reason'; it's not really knowledge until there's a knower involved. Otherwise it is still just binary code.

I don't mind putting all three terms in scare quotes, or doing away with the quotes and adapting usage to accommodate different kinds of intelligence, knowledge, and rationality. The knowledge of honeybees, the knowledge of homo sapiens, the knowledge of syntax engines.

There would be a referent corresponding to the grammatical subject for "know"-talk in relevant cases: Does the robot butler know the way to the store? Has the robot butler learned to recognize each of the guests' voices yet? And so on. It's meaningful talk, we know how to check for the answer, and there would be good reason to extend usage this way under such circumstances.

Quoting Wayfarer

I quite agree that Descartes was spectacularly wrong about many things, but I still think his depiction of the universal nature of reason is on the mark. I think it's a big mistake, and one made every day, to feel as though reason is 'something that can be explained'; reason is always the source of explanation, not the object of it.

Reason is not a simple instrument. It can be stretched and folded, and turned to face itself. Why should we suppose that rationality cannot "explain" rationality; that language cannot be used to speak about language; that thinking cannot be about thinking; and so on? This is a familiar pattern for us; you and I tend to diverge at such points.

Everything that appears to us may be described. Everything that remains available to us may be investigated. To describe is not to describe completely and perfectly. To investigate is not to arrive at complete and perfect understanding.

Reason is not the only thing in the world of which we have a partial view.

Quoting Wayfarer

As Thomas Nagel says, somewhere, reason often seems to be imposed on us, it is something we have to yield to, oftentimes through painful learning.

Reason is imposed on us as a natural fact.

If a mind tends to recognize the same things as the same on different occasions, and to recognize different things as of a same kind, then its experience is organized in accordance with basic principles of number, arithmetic, and logic -- whether or not it can count and give proofs. To have a mind like ours, or like a dog's, is to be a sentient rational animal. Conceptual capacities and rationality emerge in the animal world together.

Quoting Wayfarer

Whereas, I think us moderns take it for granted that reason 'has evolved' and that, therefore, we have an in-principle grasp of what it is - namely an adaption, something which helps us to survive. But that is precisely what has been criticized as the 'instrumentalisation of reason'* which is endemic in materialist accounts of the nature of the mind.

A moment ago I criticized you and Descartes for treating reason like a simple instrument.

What's meant by "instrumentalization of reason"? Such a postmodern ring.

I'm not sure that a thing's "having evolved" or "not having evolved" has anything to do with how easy or hard it is for human beings to understand. A stone has not evolved, but we have ways of getting to know the stone, as it stands in the present, and with respect to potential or prospective uses to which it may be put, and even with respect to its history.

Reason has a history, in each of us, in communities and civilizations, in animal lineages. That history can be investigated, just like the history of the stone, or of mathematics, or of wheat cultivars can be investigated. To recognize the historical character of a thing is not to "instrumentalize" it. Nor is it to neglect the structure and limits of the thing as they appear to us in the present and across time.

Quoting Wayfarer

Another effect of that, is that we think because we understand it, that it is something that can be replicated by us in other systems. Hence the debate!

Of course we understand it one way or another, to some extent or other. Can we understand it well enough to simulate it?

I'm not sure how well we need to understand it in order to simulate it. What we need to understand are adequate techniques of production. Some of the most promising developments in AI involve systems that develop their own programming by a process of trial and error in coordination with feedback from human trainers.

Quoting Wayfarer

As far as I can see h. sapiens is the only rational sentient animal. I don't think robots are rational, but are subject to reason; higher intelligences, if there are any, are superior to it. And all of that is in keeping with classical Western philosophy and metaphysics.

There's plenty of bathwater in that tradition. I'm not sure being in keeping with it warrants a strong recommendation for any view. Hume's Enquiry has a short section on the reason of animals. Even Aristotle skirts around the issue.

I call dogs and chimps, for instance, rational and sentient. I'm not sure yet if we differ in our views on dogs and chimps, or merely in our use of words like "rational" and "sentient".

A dog forms rational expectations on the basis of past experience: Hearing a familiar sound that has been frequently followed by a desirable result, a dog adopts an attitude of expectation, even while the states of affairs reported by that sound remain otherwise hidden from view. The dog moves through attitudes resembling hope, wonder, doubt, and positive anticipation with respect to the prospect that sometimes, though not always, follows the sound. It seems absurd to deny the dog knows what it expects while it's expecting, knows what outcome it has in mind. The dog has learned a sequential correlation between two sorts of event, the sound and the desirable outcome; it adopts attitudes of expectation upon recognizing the first event in the sequence; it has an idea what it expects while it's expecting; the character and intensity of the attitude of expectation vary over time in proportion with historical trends in the correlation of the two events, sound and desirable outcome; the dog's behaviors are correlated with the attitudes it undergoes, and thereby with trends in the correlation of sound and outcome.

All this counts as a form of "rationality" in my language.

Reply to Cabbage Farmer

Sure, we can reason about reason, " turn it back to face itself"; which presumably a dog or chimp cannot. We can investigate and hypothesize about histories of reason, in animal and human lineages, just as we can with histories of digestion, if that is what we find thrilling.

But we have no clue as to its origin and its mysterious ability to make the world intelligible, just as we have no way of rationally working out what the absolute origin of the world, or its capacity to be made intelligible by reason, is. This is where reason ends and faith based on intuition begins.

Of course no one is constrained to step beyond merely empirical inquiries if the latter are found to be satisfactory. That's certainly a matter for the individual, and individual taste.

Quoting John

But we have no clue as to its origin and its mysterious ability to make the world intelligible, just as we have no way of rationally working out what the absolute origin of the world, or its capacity to be made intelligible by reason, is. This is where reason ends and faith based on intuition begins.

But we do have a big clue as to where reason comes from: the property of the laws of physics that permits universal computers to abstract and simulate any finite physical system.

The difference between a p-zombie and a human would be the software running on the brain.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Does the robot butler know the way to the store? Has the robot butler learned to recognize each of the guests' voices yet? And so on. It's meaningful talk, we know how to check for the answer, and there would be good reason to extend usage this way under such circumstances.

The robot butler 'knows' how to do a lot of things, but it can't improvise, or adapt, or do anything outside being a robot butler. I agree it's meaningful to talk of such things, but I think the problem with simulated and artificial intelligence is that it conflates intelligence and computation - it says basically that intelligence is a variety of computation, which is why the AI advocates truly believe that there is no ontological distinction between the two; that rational thought, and the operations of computer systems, are essentially the same.

Of course, there is vast literature on this question - there's a thread on another forum on Can Computers Think which has been active since 2007. So, not going to solve it here. All I can say is that my view is that humans unconsciously project their intelligence onto these devices, which are wholly dependent on a human intelligence to maintain, build, program and interpret. They're instruments of human intelligence; but I think the idea that they are actually beings themselves remains in the domain of science fiction. (Not for nothing was Asimov's great series on these ideas was called 'I, ROBOT'. That short title speaks volumes.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Why should we suppose that rationality cannot "explain" rationality; that language cannot be used to speak about language; that thinking cannot be about thinking; and so on? This is a familiar pattern for us; you and I tend to diverge at such points.

The divergence is because I want to resist what I see as the reductionism that is inherent in a lot of modern philosophising; and I know this rubs a lot of people up the wrong way. My approach is generally platonistic, which tends to be top-down; the Platonic conception of mind is that mind is prior to and the source of the phenomenal domain, whereas naturalism presumes that mind is an evolved consequence of a natural process.

This divergence, then, is one manifestation of the 'culture war' between scientific naturalism and it's opponents. I'm not going to apologise for the conflict this often causes, but I will acknowledge it.

In any case, one reason that we can't explain reason is because of the recursive nature of such an undertaking. To explain anything, we must employ reason, but if reason is what we're trying to explain, then such attempts must invariably be circular. You can't 'put reason aside', and then analyse it from some point outside of it; every attempt to analyse it, must call on the very thing it wishes to analyse *.

The basic operations of reason - if/then, greater than, same as, etc - are in my view 'metaphysically primitive', i.e. they can't be explained or reduced to anything more simple. They are intrinsic to reason and therefore to science (a point that is broadly Kantian). I think there are evolutionary accounts of how h. sapiens developed the capacity to reason - but notice the expression 'capacity to reason'. I think the furniture of reason, these primitive terms without which reasoning is not possible, are not themselves something that evolves - what evolves is the capacity to grasp them. Once intelligence reaches the point of being able to grasp them, then it passes a threshold, namely, that of rationality, which makes modes of being and understanding available to it, which are not available to its forbears. So in that sense, those elements of rational thought are not something that can be explained, even though they can be used to explain many other things. (That, by the way, is why I believe that 'science doesn't explain science', i.e., science doesn't really account for the nature of number or natural law, but it can use its ability to discern these things to explain all manner of other things. Wittgenstein touches on this when he says 'the whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are explanations of natural phenomena.' TLP 6.371)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

A dog forms rational expectations on the basis of past experience: Hearing a familiar sound that has been frequently followed by a desirable result, a dog adopts an attitude of expectation, even while the states of affairs reported by that sound remain otherwise hidden from view. The dog moves through attitudes resembling hope, wonder, doubt, and positive anticipation with respect to the prospect that sometimes, though not always, follows the sound. It seems absurd to deny the dog knows what it expects while it's expecting, knows what outcome it has in mind.

I think dogs, elephants, birds, primates, cetaceans, are certainly sentient beings, but that all of what you're describing can be understood in terms of learned behaviour, response to stimulus, memory, and so on. Actually animals are capable of a great many things science doesn't understand at all, like fish and birds that travel around the world to return to their place of birth. They're sentient beings, so we have that it common with them. But those attributes don't qualify as abstract rationality.

-------------
* This point is the subject of one of the essay's in Thomas Nagel's The Last Word.

Reply to tom

Do you have an argument for that? In any case, even if it were accepted, it does not constitute a final explanation, but remains just another unverifiable conceptual model to be taken on faith. Any model require further explanation unless it is concluded 'This is just the way things are'. It's easy enough to see that there can be no final explanation, which means that reason and the world are intractable mysteries.

Quoting John

Do you have an argument for that? In any case, even if it were accepted, it does not constitute a final explanation, but remains just another unverifiable conceptual model to be taken on faith. Any model require further explanation unless it is concluded 'This is just the way things are'. It's easy enough to see that there can be no final explanation, which means that reason and the world are intractable mysteries.

It has been proved that under the laws of physics (minus gravity) that a universal computer can simulate any finite physical system to arbitrary accuracy by finite means.

What this means is that Reality is amenable to reason, and that all problems are soluble. This property of the laws of physics is also what permits life.

It seems reasonable to assume for the time being, that the human brain is computationally universal, and we know from the theory of computation that all universal computers are equivalent.

P-zombies and humans are thus distinguished by different software.

Reply to tom

That's one interpretation of the purported facts anyway.

Everything conscious can be observed as conscious. Every P-zombie can be observed as conscious. So, what do you think?

Here's an argument:
Everything that can be observed as conscious is conscious. Every P-zombie can be observed as conscious. Therefore, every P-zombie is conscious.

Reply to quine has a p zombie ever been observed?

A P-zombie might be observed in a possible world...

I mean, by definition, P-zombies are non-conscious beings that are observed as conscious. The concept of P-zombies is itself contradictory. That's what I wanted to say.

Reply to quine that, I agree with although I'm not sure how you got there :-)

Quoting quine

Everything that can be observed as conscious is conscious. Every P-zombie can be observed as conscious. Therefore, every P-zombie is conscious.

Given that a p-zombie is defined as something that appears to be conscious (although, what does it mean to appear to be conscious?) but isn't conscious, your conclusion is a contradiction. This is a reductio ad absurdum against one of your premises. Either p-zombies can't be observed as conscious or not everything that can be observed as conscious is conscious.

Of course, if being conscious is defined as behaving a certain way then p-zombies would be contradictory. However, given that the very issue under discussion is the nature of consciousness, you can't premise your argument by defining it to be a certain thing. That's question-begging.

Quoting Wayfarer

has a p zombie ever been observed?

Animals are p-zombies.

Quoting Michael

Given that a p-zombie is defined as something that appears to be conscious (although, what does it mean to appear to be conscious?) but isn't conscious, your conclusion is a contradiction.

His argument is a simple modus ponens. If A, then B. A. Therefore B. You're saying that is a contradiction?

Quoting Terrapin Station

His argument is a simple modus ponens. If A, then B. A. Therefore B. You're saying that is a contradiction?

I'm saying that the conclusion is a contradiction, given that a p-zombie is defined as not being conscious. Therefore one of his premises must be false.

Quoting Michael

I'm saying that the conclusion is a contradiction,

The conclusion is B, because If A, then B, and A. It's a simple modus ponens. So you're saying that the conclusion of a modus ponens is a contradiction.

Quoting Terrapin Station

The conclusion is B, because If A, then B, and A. It's a simple modus ponens. So you're saying that the conclusion of a modus ponens is a contradiction.

Yes. His conclusion is "every human-appearing non-conscious thing is conscious".

Reply to Michael

Semantic content doesn't matter for that, does it? I asked you that earlier and you just ignored it.

Quoting Terrapin Station

Semantic content doesn't matter for that, does it? I asked you that earlier and you just ignored it.

Doesn't matter for what? I don't understand your question. It is a simple fact that "every human-appearing non-conscious thing is conscious" is a contradiction. Therefore, if it follows from two (or more) premises then one (or more) of the premises must be false. That's how a proof by contradiction works.

Quoting Michael

Doesn't matter for what?

For assessing the argument. (Or in other words, the whole focus of the discussion we've been having)

Quoting John

Sure, we can reason about reason, " turn it back to face itself"; which presumably a dog or chimp cannot.

I see by virtue of the light that strikes my eye. So does the dog.

I have a capacity to take that light as an object in its own right, to investigate it, to devote my life to the study of light, if I so choose. My powers outstrip the dog's in this respect, even with respect to the light and sight we have in common, or with respect to any object we encounter in the world.

John:We can investigate and hypothesize about histories of reason, in animal and human lineages, just as we can with histories of digestion, if that is what we find thrilling.

If we find it thrilling, or for any other reason.

Let's note in passing that hypothesis is only one factor of investigation; and that without some corresponding investigation, hypothesis is just a sort of talk.

John:But we have no clue as to its origin and its mysterious ability to make the world intelligible, just as we have no way of rationally working out what the absolute origin of the world, or its capacity to be made intelligible by reason, is.

You say "no clue?"

What is the origin of the power of sight or hearing, the power of motility or digestion, the power of speech or rationality? Any of us can pluck the eyes from his own head, if he has no clue what "origin" the power of sight has in him. And where did these eyes come from? With the rest of this body, traced back to an act of conception, say the old-fashioned kind. And where did those parents come from...

We've got plenty of clues about the empirical origins of animals and animal powers. Do you have some special reason to imagine that rationality, alone among those powers, flies down from the heavens full-grown to dwell in hearts and minds?

What special mystery do you find in the way that rationality "makes the world intelligible"? One might face the whole of existence with a sense of awe; and any piece of it with the same awe. I see no more mystery in the fact of rationality than in the fact of sentience, or in the fact of life, or in the fact of existence. And look, here we are. That mystery is no obstacle to understanding.

John:This is where reason ends and faith based on intuition begins.

What do you mean by "intuition"? I'm not accustomed to treating "reason" and "intuition" as if they were mutually exclusive. Nor "faith" and "reason", for that matter.

I do acknowledge a thing we might call faith without reason. For instance, "we have no reason" to believe any of the infinite horde of imaginary possibilities the mind can add to the balance of appearances. I'm not sure anyone actually has that sort of faith; for in the end, it seems there's something like a feeling that drives one to favor some such fancies and to reject the others, instead of maintaining tranquil repose in the balance of appearances; and for the one thus driven, the feeling may be said to count as reason for his faith. Once the faith gets going, it becomes a habit in its own right.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with our conversation about rationality, sentience, animal life, and philosophical zombies. Of course we can have faith in anything we imagine, based on nothing but whim or feeling, if we've run out of other reasons for faith. Another option is to suspend judgment in such cases.

Shall we suspend judgment here, or begin trading fancies?

John:Of course no one is constrained to step beyond merely empirical inquiries if the latter are found to be satisfactory. That's certainly a matter for the individual, and individual taste.

No one is constrained to heap imaginary possibilities upon the balance of appearances, and thus distort his own sense of natural fact.

The formation of taste is a mystery.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Let's note in passing that hypothesis is only one factor of investigation; and that without some corresponding investigation, hypothesis is just a sort of talk.

Without investigation there would be no hypothesis to begin with. That seems obvious, so I'm not seeing your point here.Quoting Cabbage Farmer

What special mystery do you find in the way that rationality "makes the world intelligible"? ... I see no more mystery in the fact of rationality than in the fact of sentience, or in the fact of life, or in the fact of existence. And look, here we are. That mystery is no obstacle to understanding.

That's right, and I did already note that the world is co-mysterious with reason. I also agree that the mystery of being is no barrier to empirical understanding. What we don't know is why things can be understood or what the significance of that is. Of course, it's also true that if things could not be understood then there would be no sentience, and no life to speak of. My point was just that empirical investigations don't even begin to approach such questions.For me these are the interesting questions; the ones that cannot be answered by empirical inquiries; the latter are best left to science, it's better at them than philosophy is.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

What do you mean by "intuition"? I'm not accustomed to treating "reason" and "intuition" as if they were mutually exclusive. Nor "faith" and "reason", for that matter.

I do acknowledge a thing we might call faith without reason.

No, reason and faith are not mutually exclusive. We always have reasons for believing. But we do believe things for reasons which are not merely based on empirical evidence or logic. Such beliefs can range from thoughtless inherited superstitions to the most sophisticated intellectual intuitions based on profound inner understanding. There can be no empirical evidence or purely logical justifications to support such inner intuitive understanding; that is where faith in the proper sense comes in, must come in if we are to trust in our inner understanding. That kind of understanding (akin to mysticism) tends to engender the deepest kind of certainty by its very nature. I think this is what constitutes real intelligence in the most important sense, which is essentially non-normative, and I don't think its conceivable that AI or p-zombies will ever get there, to refer back to the OP.

Quoting tom

Animals are p-zombies.

Nonsense.

Antonio Damasio thinks that every single living thing is intentional. Every single living thing moves towards nutrition and growth, and away from harm and danger in a dynamic and adaptive way, at a much greater rate than can be attributed to chance. Even if this can be entirely reduced to physical biology or whatever, emotion, motive, intention are fundamental and univocal in all living things.

Quoting Wayfarer

Nonsense

I totally disagree; I think it is rubbish.

Reply to John Here's a d-zombie: ;-)

Quoting John

I totally disgaree; I think it is rubbish.

Animals don't possess qualia. You can prove they do?

Reply to Wayfarer
If we can conceive of p-ducks then duckness isn't physical
We can conceive of p-ducks
Therefore, duckness isn't physical

Reply to m-theorySorry, made rude remark, since deleted. What I will say is, I really fail to grasp that point, therefore will refrain from further comment on this particular issue, thanks for the feedback.

Reply to tom

Can you prove they don't...or...can you prove you do?

Reply to Wayfarer

:D Well, dance with Daffy Dack, or crack a d-zombie-ack, that's a d-regulation mindfrack!

Quoting John

Can you prove they don't...or...can you prove you do?

Creatures that possess qualia have radically different behaviours to those that do not. Perhaps a better phrasing is that in order to explain animal behaviour it is unnecessary to ascribe to them subjectivity. For humans, it is impossible to explain their behaviour without it.

Animals do not create knowledge. If they did, they could create knowledge of "what-it-is-like" to feel pain. If they could do that, then what is to stop them creating knowledge of any kind?

Quoting tom

Creatures that possess qualia have radically different behaviours to those that do not.

Is that because qualia is uniquely causally efficacious? Or is qualia a necessary product of the types of physical states that are required to cause such behaviour?

Furthermore, how do you justify the above? You must possess some means to determine that all things that behave in such a way have qualia. And obviously you can't use this behaviour as the measure as that would be circular.

Perhaps a better phrasing is that in order to explain animal behaviour it is unnecessary to ascribe to them subjectivity. For humans, it is impossible to explain their behaviour without it.

This suggests the former; that qualia is uniquely causally efficacious. Is this because qualia is a physical thing, or is qualia non-physical but nonetheless able to causally influence the physical world (and uniquely so)?

Quoting Wayfarer

The robot butler 'knows' how to do a lot of things, but it can't improvise, or adapt, or do anything outside being a robot butler.

This isn't so in the imaginary case of philosophical zombies, and I see no reason to expect that "improvising", or playing various roles, or developing novel roles, is out of the question for AI in real life. Aren't there already AI music programs that "improvise" music to some extent? Any reason to expect a hard limit in progress along these lines?

On the other hand: Can a human being “do anything outside” being a human being? It seems every creature is limited in its own way.

Quoting Wayfarer

I agree it's meaningful to talk of such things, but I think the problem with simulated and artificial intelligence is that it conflates intelligence and computation - it says basically that intelligence is a variety of computation

How do you distinguish such terms from each other: rationality, intelligence, knowledge, sentience, mind? Are they all the same thing to you? Does each one of them imply all the others in your language?

I'm content to say an artificial heart is one sort of heart, an artificial intelligence is one sort of intelligence, an artificial knower is one sort of knower. Are we disagreeing about the facts, or are we disagreeing about the reasonableness of expectations about pending facts, or are we disagreeing merely about the appropriate use of words to describe facts and expectations about which we are more or less in agreement?

There's a difference between saying "intelligence is a variety of computation" and saying "some varieties of computation are varieties of intelligence". The fact that some speakers wrongly conflate intelligence and computation does not entail there is no meaningful correlation between the two terms: just as the possibility of wrongly conflating hearts and artificial hearts does not entail there is no meaningful correlation between the two terms.

To say an artificial man is one sort of man, is not to say the two sorts of man have everything in common. There’s no need to speak this way, and there’s no need not to. It’s merely a matter of how one draws up his terms. What’s asserted and denied in each case depends in part on the bias in the definition. Agreement and disagreement follow from that -- too soon, if we rush to agree or disagree without first understanding an interlocutor’s usages.

Quoting Wayfarer

which is why the AI advocates truly believe that there is no ontological distinction between the two; that rational thought, and the operations of computer systems, are essentially the same.

What is “ontological distinction” supposed to mean here? Is there an “ontological distinction” between my left hand and my right hand? Arguably they are two different “entities”. I say that there’s no single “privileged ontology”, that an ontology is just a way of organizing the world into things we agree to call “entities” and “existents” for the sake of conversation or for some special purpose. A valid ontology is not a solution of all the world’s mysteries, it’s just a useful way of speaking.

Anything that exists is "the same" as anything else that exists in some respect or other. I'm inclined to agree that many speakers have an exaggerated sense of the similarity of minds and information processors. In my view, one of the most important differences is the difference in sentience; the zombie discourses bring this out in their own way.

After all it's the absence of sentience, of subjectivity, of a subject, of experience -- that makes the artificial knowing of the syntax engine a mere simulation of knowing, instead of an artificially produced variety of the genuine article. If not for this crucial difference, I might be inclined to call such artificial knowing a sort of genuine knowing. On what grounds, in that case, would I reasonably withhold the label?

Quoting Wayfarer

They're instruments of human intelligence; but I think the idea that they are actually beings themselves remains in the domain of science fiction.

I'm not sure what you mean by "beings" here; is this Heideggerian usage? I’m content to say that anything said to “exist” -- oceans, clouds, raindrops, water molecules -- is rightly called an existent, an entity, a “being”, an object, a thing of one sort or another.

So far as I'm concerned the syntax engines are not sentient beings. Or rather: It seems to me an empirical question, whether genuine sentience can be produced by mere AI design, and I see no reason to expect that it can be. A doubt along the lines marked out by Searle in his Chinese Room.

Quoting Wayfarer

The divergence is because I want to resist what I see as the reductionism that is inherent in a lot of modern philosophising; and I know this rubs a lot of people up the wrong way. My approach is generally platonistic, which tends to be top-down; the Platonic conception of mind is that mind is prior to and the source of the phenomenal domain, whereas naturalism presumes that mind is an evolved consequence of a natural process.

I'm not sure this explains the "divergence" I had in mind. I mean we diverge with respect to certain maxims you characteristically assert, as when you say things like "reason is always the source of explanation, not the object of it", as if being "the source" rules out being "the object", as if human powers cannot be aimed at themselves, as if there's no such thing as reflexivity, or as if all reflexivity involves unfathomable and incomprehensible paradox. We've cycled through variations on this theme before.

I'm not sure how your platonism is at issue in that divergence. In any case, I like to resist reductionism too, and I might call your platonism a sort of reductionism -- reducing phenomena in a direction opposed to that favored by the materialist.

I guess most materialists nowadays would claim that what we call mind emerges in nature. I'm inclined to agree with that particular claim. But I call myself a skeptical naturalist, and I aim to be about as skeptical about materialist metaphysics as I am about idealist metaphysics. Your platonism sounds a lot like idealism so far, heralding "mind the source", and perhaps "reducing" all things to mind. But I'm not yet clear on your meaning:

If "mind is prior to and the source of the phenomenal domain", in what sense is “mind the source”? How are "mind" and "the phenomenal domain" related to the whole of existence? Does anything exist, according to you, besides minds and the phenomenal domain? Is there only one mind or many; only one phenomenal domain or many? What is contained in the "phenomenal domain" to which mind is prior and of which mind is the source?

What is the basis -- the rational basis, not the pedigree in the literature -- for these views of yours on mind and the phenomenal domain? How do we know, why should we suppose, that "mind is the source"? I say we have good reason to suppose that minds are sources of experience, and hence of phenomena -- no appearances without mind, without sentience -- but I have a hunch you mean something grander: not merely that minds are logically prior to appearances, and that each mind is a "source" of appearances, but also that mind and its "phenomenal domain" exist somehow independently of a physical world, or that mind is logically and chronologically prior to matter, or some such story.

As a skeptical naturalist, I don't count myself a materialist or an idealist, and I do my best to steer clear of metaphysics, which seems to me an exercise in arbitrary fantasy. I call my skeptical naturalism a sort of phenomenology. I characterize empirical science as an extension of ordinary empirical knowledge, and think of empirical knowledge as rooted in phenomenological foundations, in the perspectives of rational sentient agents.

I suppose most materialists nowadays, apart from their metaphysical diversions, tend to reflect on the world as it appears to us in keeping with principles of methodological naturalism. And I suppose this is why my views may seem to resemble the views of a materialist in certain respects, from the point of view of an idealist who posits another sort of world beyond the reach of Ockham's razor. For a knack with that blade, and the custom of methodological naturalism, seem about the same to me as a habit of respect for the balance of appearances. A habit exemplified in times past by Sextus, Gassendi, and the full-grown Hume.

Quoting Wayfarer

This divergence, then, is one manifestation of the 'culture war' between scientific naturalism and it's opponents. I'm not going to apologise for the conflict this often causes, but I will acknowledge it.

I'd be the last to want an apology for a divergence in views. What would be the point of philosophical discourse if we all agreed with each other at every turn?

I'm not sure we understand the "opponents" in the culture war the same way -- but then, defining the culture war is part of the culture war. I hope we're not at war here, but only engaged in sincere philosophical conversation in a spirit of goodwill, aiming together at truth. Plenty of room to diverge without going to war. With respect to that ongoing conflict, however, I’ll declare I’m on the side of the pacifists, and the people, and humanity, and the truth, and plain speaking.

Quoting Wayfarer

In any case, one reason that we can't explain reason is because of the recursive nature of such an undertaking. To explain anything, we must employ reason, but if reason is what we're trying to explain, then such attempts must invariably be circular. You can't 'put reason aside', and then analyse it from some point outside of it; every attempt to analyse it, must call on the very thing it wishes to analyse *.

Here exactly is the sort of divergence I had in mind! You’ve jogged my memory: “recursion” is the word you tend to use in this connection, where I expect “reflexivity”.

...as if "recursion" were impossible. Here I am, a part of the world, and a part of the world wants to understand another part of the world. Is this a paradox for you? Can a stream splash itself? Do I use reason to add and subtract; and can I use reason to "explain" my addition and subtraction? Perhaps not without increasing the risk of error, if I try to explain it while I perform the calculation; but easily enough before or after.

We've gone round this sort of circle perhaps a dozen times or more. We can consider ten thousand more cases, it will remain a fallacy from my point of view. Or perhaps you can explain your thinking in the general pattern? Thus far I see no logic in it, only misleading poetry.

If you want to assume that "reason" is the name of a ghost in an eternal platonic world, then I agree, we can't explain it or any of its neighbors. But I'd require quite an account in support of that assumption.

Quoting Wayfarer

The basic operations of reason - if/then, greater than, same as, etc - are in my view 'metaphysically primitive', i.e. they can't be explained or reduced to anything more simple. They are intrinsic to reason and therefore to science (a point that is broadly Kantian

What is "metaphysically primitive" supposed to mean?

I call this rather primitive: the capacities to differentiate individual things, to recognize one thing as the same thing on different occasions, to recognize different things as of the same kind, and to act accordingly; and the principles (the logical, conceptual, or organizational relations) these capacities seem to exemplify and require, including principles of similarity and difference, whole and part, genus and species. These principles and capacities seem close to the root of minds like ours and conceptual capacities like ours. And it seems that once experience is organized in keeping with these basic principles and capacities, it’s organized in accordance with, at least, i) basic principles we associate with inferential logic (conjunction, disjunction, quantification, negation, implication) and ii) basic quantitative principles (more and less, many and few, again and another, amounts of the same), and perhaps already -- granting ordinary assumptions about animal life -- basic principles we associate with iii) causal and iv) modal relations.

Accordingly, by my way of reckoning, some of the terms you’ve singled out seem less primitive than others; and all of these principles can be accounted for as emerging along with the relevant conceptual capacities in living sentient beings, in organisms whose sensorimotor capacities are organized according to biological purposes in a more or less regular environment.


Quoting Wayfarer

I think there are evolutionary accounts of how h. sapiens developed the capacity to reason - but notice the expression 'capacity to reason'. I think the furniture of reason, these primitive terms without which reasoning is not possible, are not themselves something that evolves - what evolves is the capacity to grasp them.

Let’s emphasize that here we seem agreed: “the capacity to grasp them” evolves. Do we also agree that here “evolves” may be said to mean in the first place, emerges in nature, in the course of natural history, in the course of a biological lineage; and in the second place, emerges anew as each individual organism in the relevant line comes into its own?

Of course a capacity to reason is not the same thing as reason in general, just as a capacity to speak is not the same as language in general, and a capacity to walk is not the same as walking in general. But that fine distinction gives us no clue as to what sort of thing the more general term might be. What is the “furniture” of language or of walking? Where does it come from, and where shall we find it?

Many of us have eyes affording a capacity of sight. All things we call eyes in the relevant sense, have at bottom “the same furniture”, despite variations from one beast to the next. I say we have an empirical concept of “eye” and of “sight”, informed by our experience of eyes and sight. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean, what it may add or subtract from that general concept of ours, to say there’s an eternal form of “eye” and an eternal form of “sight”. To me these sound like mere abstractions, intellectual traces of our empirical concepts in the jelly of imaginary possibility. The Platonist, like the Pythagorean in awe of his own power of abstraction, reifies those traces to create a mythical world he calls divine, eternal, and most real, populated by the shadows cast by ideas.

Even granting that the investigation of that shadow world is a meaningful enterprise -- I don’t see how one might warrant the conclusion that the abstract shadow of our empirical concept of “eye” or “walking” or “rationality” or “mind” is somehow the source of the corresponding empirical concept, or the source of the corresponding things in the world that have given rise to those empirical concepts, or the source of the corresponding natural-historical processes that, we say, have given rise to those things in the world, eyes, and walks, and rational animals.

As if some such abstraction were the real ground of every corresponding real instance -- or rather, as if the coming-to-be of every real instance were somehow caused or produced or determined by an infinite host of applicable abstract concepts.

On the other hand: The story we tell from our present point of view in history, in keeping with the custom of methodological naturalism and resisting all temptation to metaphysical abuse of the rational imagination, has no trouble accounting in broad strokes for what appears to be a most general trend in rationality. For it seems the most generic features of rationality -- the features each of us has gestured at in his own way -- are most generic because they tend to emerge when perceiving agents with biological purposes emerge in the world. If the world were radically different, or if we were not perceiving agents, or if we had no biological purposes -- I suppose no such rationality would emerge. But since the world is what it is, it gives rise to biological organisms in some places; and since biological organisms are what they are, life gives rise to sentient animals in some places; and since sentient animals are what they are, their perception-and-action tends to be organized in keeping with the most generic features of rationality. And these are the features that seem to follow from the fact of perceptual identification and differentiation in sentient animal agents with biological purposes.

I suppose that account is an example of what Plato, according to some translators, calls a “likely story” or a “just-so story” in the Timaios.

Quoting Wayfarer

Once intelligence reaches the point of being able to grasp them, then it passes a threshold, namely, that of rationality, which makes modes of being and understanding available to it, which are not available to its forbears.

I’m still uneasy in my grasp of your use of the terms “intelligence”, “being”, “mode of being”, and “understanding”, among others. It seems clear we have a way to go just to line up our terms; and likely that once we’ve made more progress in that effort of understanding each other’s speech, we’ll continue to agree that we have different stories to tell.

I’ll agree there are various degrees of complexity and adaptability of “intelligence” and “rationality” in animals; and a particular “form” of mind is among the biological “traits” inherited by offspring.

I suppose there’s a “threshold” beyond which sensory receptivity to light counts as “sight”; perhaps another beyond which purposive sensorimotor organization becomes “sentience”; another beyond which animal communication becomes “language”; and so on. Now that you mention it, it seems I’m less sure about where to locate the “threshold of rationality”: For I might expect that the “rationality” of the sentient animal has its origins in a prior “rationality” of the nonsentient organism, consisting in the alignment of biological structure and function with features of the environment regularly correlated with biological purposes. That’s not to say that the two sorts of “rationality” are exactly the same in every respect, only that there’s enough in common to warrant the usage.

Quoting Wayfarer

So in that sense, those elements of rational thought are not something that can be explained, even though they can be used to explain many other things.

I believe I’ve made it clear enough, how I’m not sure I follow your reasoning in this regard.

Now it sounds as if perhaps you’re saying: The “elements of reason” have not evolved; and the capacity to reason is not the same thing as the elements of reason; and once organisms have evolved to be intelligent enough to grasp the elements of reason, and thus count as “rational”, those organisms have a capacity that was not available to their predecessors; and therefore the elements of reason cannot be explained….

Strikes me as the very picture of a non sequitur, so I suppose you mean something else.

In any case, I reject the claim that “the elements of reason do not emerge in nature”, along lines I’ve sketched above.

Quoting Wayfarer

(That, by the way, is why I believe that 'science doesn't explain science', i.e., science doesn't really account for the nature of number or natural law, but it can use its ability to discern these things to explain all manner of other things.

I agree that “science doesn’t explain science”. Philosophy accounts for the empirical sciences, which remain mere branches of philosophical activity despite general confusion on this point in our time. Only philosophy integrates the various empirical sciences, and the other arts, into a whole discourse that informs as it’s informed by the whole life of individuals and communities.

There’s a difference between science and scientism, and a corresponding difference between being antiscience and being antiscientistic.

Quoting Wayfarer

Wittgenstein touches on this when he says 'the whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are explanations of natural phenomena.' TLP 6.371)

What does Wittgenstein mean in the Tractatus by “the whole modern conception of the world”?

I agree that “laws of nature” are not explanations. I might call them generalized observations or generalized descriptions. We develop these general rules by observing many particular cases, and abstracting some trend or feature they appear to have in common. Such a “law” is a rigorous generalization of a set of rigorous observations that’s useful in constructing or explaining particular cases, and that’s open to correction in light of subsequent observations or superior generalizations.

We use these general rules to explain particular events, for instance in the manner of a forensic scientist, or in answering a question like “Why is it raining?” The same rules play a role in providing more general accounts, for instance in answering more general questions like “Why does it rain?” or “How does rain happen?”

The aptness of the accounts expressed according to the general rules tends to increase along with the range of observations informing the rule, and with the rigor and exactness of observation and generalization. I’m not sure what other sort of equally useful “explanation” of phenomena might be available to us, though it’s clear we’re free to posit any imaginary story we please alongside or in place of such empirically grounded explanations.


Quoting Wayfarer

I think dogs, elephants, birds, primates, cetaceans, are certainly sentient beings, but that all of what you're describing can be understood in terms of learned behaviour, response to stimulus, memory, and so on.

I emphasize this question: Does the dog have a rational expectation?

Quoting Wayfarer

Actually animals are capable of a great many things science doesn't understand at all, like fish and birds that travel around the world to return to their place of birth. They're sentient beings, so we have that it common with them. But those attributes don't qualify as abstract rationality.

I’m not sure I follow your claim about sentience and traveling fish. But I’m pleased to note we’re agreed that human beings are not the only sentient animals on Earth. I’m also content to say that each sentient animal “has a mind”; do our usages accord in this further respect? Or do you say there’s an important difference between “being sentient” and “having a mind”?

I thought we were speaking about rationality in general. Do you mean to suggest you’ve only been speaking about one sort of rationality this whole time, namely, “abstract rationality”?

What sort of rationality is abstract rationality, in your language? Is it this sort of rationality you say belongs to human beings alone among the animals? Do you also say there are other sorts of rationality enjoyed by both human and nonhuman animals? Perhaps you also recognize a thing called “concrete rationality”? How do you suppose the species, abstract rationality, is related to its genus? And which sort of rationality -- rationality in general, or abstract rationality, or concrete rationality, or some yet unmentioned variety -- is the rationality that “does not evolve”, that “cannot be explained”, and that dwells perhaps eternal among platonic shadows as a “source”?

A lot to respond to there! At this moment I'm commuting with an iPad so can only respond to just a few points but will come back again.

When I refer to the culture war of course I don't imply that I am at war wiith you, or anyone for that matter. It is a reference to what is see as the conflict between scientific materialism and traditional philosophy (to select two examples from a range of possibilities.) Steven Pinker's essay Why Science is not the Enemy of the Humanities, 2013, is an example of the kind of approach I'm arguing against. That often puts me in the company of philisophers of religion or at any rate critics of materialism (not all of whom are philosophers of religion.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

What is “ontological distinction” supposed to mean here? Is there an “ontological distinction” between my left hand and my right hand?

The distinction between hands is 'chirality'. 'Ontology' refers to 'the study of the meaning of being' - as distinct from the study of phenomena. I say that 'beings' are ontologically distinct from 'objects', which is why it is incorrect to designate objects as beings, or beings as objects. Beings generally are subjects of experience, which objects are not.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Here I am, a part of the world, and a part of the world wants to understand another part of the world. Is this a paradox for you?

At issue is the relation of objects and subjects. Humans are the subjects of experience, in a phenomenal domain, comprising objects, forces, other beings, and so on. And you're right about me confusing recursiveness and reflexivity - I mean the latter. My bad.

The principle I'm referring to is from the Upanisads, where there is a verse that says 'the hand can grasp another, but not itself. The eye can see another, but not itself. You cannot see the seer or know the knower.' I think a form of this principle is also found in Kant, in the idea of 'transcendental apperception'. I have always regarded it as a first principle.

The point is, the mind organises sensations, perceptions and so on, according to judgements, reason and the like (spelling it out formally takes a lot of text). Because this is the activity of the 'unknown knower' it is determinative of what we consider to be reality, which we instinctively believe to be external or 'other' to the mind.

There is a sense in which that is true, but another sense in which the very notion of 'external' is also in the mind! This is clearly spelt out in Schopenhauer's idea of 'vorstellung' which is why he himself said his philosophy was similar to that of the Upanisads.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

What is “ontological distinction” supposed to mean here?

As above.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I’m content to say that anything said to “exist” -- oceans, clouds, raindrops, water molecules -- is rightly called an existent, an entity, a “being”, an object, a thing of one sort or another.

Notice you have to enclose 'being' in quotes in this sentence.

// to be continued.

//that is because 'beings' are subjects of experience. In very simple beings, this is only present in rudimentary form, whereas in human beings, the nature of being itself can be reflected on. But inanimate objects are not beings, because they're not subjects of experience (although pan-psychism seems to argue that everything is a subject of experience, but I myself don't adhere to that view.)

Quoting John

Without investigation there would be no hypothesis to begin with. That seems obvious, so I'm not seeing your point here.

One might hypothesize on the basis of casual observation or on the basis of what's called common sense. I'm not sure that's the same thing as hypothesizing on the basis of "investigation" -- which I might characterize as a more thorough and diligent following of traces. It also matters how the hypothesis may be expected to play along with subsequent observations and investigations.

Quoting John

That's right, and I did already note that the world is co-mysterious with reason.

One thing you haven't yet made clear to me: How is "reason" special in this regard, among all other things in the world? Is there anything in the world that is not "co-mysterious" with the world? Is reason the only thing in the world that is "co-mysterious" in this way?

What about love? What about time and space? What about matter and energy? What about imagination, possibility, life, freedom, perception, language, beauty, taste... what about anything else?

Quoting John

I also agree that the mystery of being is no barrier to empirical understanding. What we don't know is why things can be understood or what the significance of that is.

Do we know "why" anything is the way that it is, in the sense you mean here? It seems to me this horizon of mystery extends through all our understanding, "within and without" each phenomenon we seem to understand.

We can investigate phenomena, we can reason about the results of investigation and about the course of investigation. It's not only rivers and storm clouds we can get to know better, but also our own minds and the minds of others, including the powers and practices involved in perceiving, thinking, understanding, and speaking.

So far as I can see, the process of thus extending empirical knowledge never yields a "complete" account of anything. But that doesn't mean we don't understand any thing, and it doesn't mean there's no aura of mystery hanging in and around all things, even as we seem to understand them.

So I'm not sure why you single out "understanding" or "reason" as especially mysterious. In what sense, according to you, do we so perfectly and completely understand all other things, that there's no mystery left in them by the time we get done understanding?

Quoting John

Of course, it's also true that if things could not be understood then there would be no sentience, and no life to speak of.

I'm not sure I follow you here.

In what sense do sentience and life depend on "things being understood"?

Quoting John

My point was just that empirical investigations don't even begin to approach such questions. For me these are the interesting questions; the ones that cannot be answered by empirical inquiries; the latter are best left to science, it's better at them than philosophy is.

I agree, there's a big difference between philosophical activity and empirical science. Though I don't think they're unrelated enterprises: I'm partial to the old, unfashionable view that the empirical sciences are among philosophy's branches.

I don't agree that empirical understanding doesn't "approach" the questions we've raised here in this thread. I think it clearly does approach them, though it never gives a "final answer" in this or any other matter. There's always room for further investigation, and there's always more to be said.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I don't agree that empirical understanding doesn't "approach" the questions we've raised here in this thread. I think it clearly does approach them, though it never gives a "final answer" in this or any other matter. There's always room for further investigation, and there's always more to be said.

One question I overlooked: A question like, "Why does the world exist"?

I think it's reasonable to expect this sort of question may be unapproachable for empirical understanding. In that case, empirical science has no comment on the matter.

One sort of philosophical approach however, is in keeping with the expectation that there is no answer at all to such questions, in other words, there is no reason that the world exists. The existence of the world is not the sort of thing for which there are "reasons" or "causes". It doesn't make sense to ask for the reason the world exists.

Another sort of philosophical approach would align with another expectation, that if there is a reason for existence, it's not the sort of thing we can ever have reason to suppose we've gotten wind of. If it even makes sense to ask for the reason for existence, it's not a reason we can ever grasp.


Either one of those varieties of response to the question leaves about as much mystery in the world as one could hope for. The whole thing is fundamentally mysterious to us, from here to eternity.

I'm inclined to think that's roughly how things stand. Ordinarily, to deny this is to launch a conversation about the epistemic value of phenomena like gut feelings, psychic visions, and revelations; and about the difference between philosophy and fantasy.

When all that's said and done: In theory there's always room for unwarranted faith, for faith "without reason" or rational justification, or even faith contrary to reason.

I suspect this is why the concept of faith has played such a special role in the Western tradition, a role that many who speak of faith nowadays may not adequately appreciate. For to believe purely on the basis of faith -- instead of on the basis of a bunch of more or less reasonable premises and arguments, or even in the face of quite reasonable premises and arguments to the contrary -- well that's a deep-rooted, powerful faith that deserves the name "pure faith".

Though as I've said, in practice it seems there's always something like a feeling, at least, to serve as a warrant for belief.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

One might hypothesize on the basis of casual observation or on the basis of what's called common sense.

Certainly that's true, but I would call these forms of investigation. Even animals investigate, how much more so do humans?

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

One thing you haven't yet made clear to me: How is "reason" special in this regard, among all other things in the world? Is there anything in the world that is not "co-mysterious" with the world? Is reason the only thing in the world that is "co-mysterious" in this way?

What about love? What about time and space? What about matter and energy? What about imagination, possibility, life, freedom, perception, language, beauty, taste... what about anything else?

I had thought we were specifically discussing the relation between reason and the world; the fact, the mystery, that the world is intelligible to reason, so it really wasn't that I was singling out reason from among "all the other things".

And now the question is raised in regard to the "other things" you list here: are they of the world, or of reason, or are they of 'something else'? I would say that some of the things you list would perhaps be best thought of as being of the world, and others would be best thought of as being of 'something else' and I would say that "something else" is best thought of as spirit; what would you say?

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

In what sense do sentience and life depend on "things being understood"?

It is only insofar as things are "understood" (and I mean this in the broadest possible sense as equivalent to being perceived) that anything at all appears. So without this understanding, which is perception, there is obviously no sentience, and without sentience there is no life, or non-life or anything else that arises. I mean, we might want to say that non-life, or even non-sentient life could 'be there' without sentience, but I don't believe we have any idea at all of what that 'being there' could consist in absent its appearance to perception and thought. We cannot coherently say that it could consist in anything, because any idea of constitution is a function of our own sentience and understanding.

Quoting Wayfarer

A lot to respond to there! At this moment I'm commuting with an iPad so can only respond to just a few points but will come back again.

I’m afraid my response is about as long this time around. A symptom of how much ground we'd have to cover to clear up our terms, sort out our agreements and disagreements, and begin to converse on the basis of such mutual understanding.

Quoting Wayfarer

When I refer to the culture war of course I don't imply that I am at war wiith you, or anyone for that matter. It is a reference to what is see as the conflict between scientific materialism and traditional philosophy (to select two examples from a range of possibilities.)

I'm glad to hear that you and I, at least, are at peace.

I'm not sure I would locate "traditional philosophy" in the culture war the way you have just now. It seems to me the discipline, and scholars and experts who are said to study and practice it, are enlisted on both sides, perhaps on every front of the conflict. Two experts in the political philosophy of Locke or Plato, for instance, might have conflicting views about these subjects and about politics in general. Philosophers are on both sides of the "culture war", much as climatologists are on both sides of the dispute about global warming; though there is far less consensus in philosophy than in climatology.

I've heard some people characterize the culture war in terms of an opposition between "naturalism" and "supernaturalism". I'm sympathetic to the spirit of that characterization, though I'm not sure I agree with the ordinary definition of these terms. For one thing, I'd want to either erase any implications about metaphysics from the distinction, or assign all metaphysical dogmas (including materialism) to the "supernatural" side. Or I might paraphrase the distinction in terms of a conflict between methodological naturalism and magical thinking, or something along these lines.

Quoting Wayfarer

Steven Pinker's essay Why Science is not the Enemy of the Humanities, 2013, is an example of the kind of approach I'm arguing against. That often puts me in the company of philisophers of religion or at any rate critics of materialism (not all of whom are philosophers of religion.)

It seems you and I are both critics of materialism, though for different reasons.

Is this the essay?

At a glance, it seems Pinker characterizes scientific activity as providing tools, methods, and results of investigation that can and should be used to inform discourse in what's called the humanities; promotes two ideals, that "the world is intelligible", and that "the acquisition of knowledge is hard"; and proposes a rehabilitation of the term "scientism" that aligns use of the term with the general character of scientific practice and worldview, instead of with practical and theoretical abuses of science.

Do you get something else from it, and what do you find objectionable in it?

Quoting Wayfarer

The distinction between hands is 'chirality'.

That sounds perhaps tautological.

Do you mean to suggest that, if any non-ontological concept of a relation may be applied to two objects then there is no need for recourse to "ontology" in characterizing the difference between the two objects?

Quoting Wayfarer

'Ontology' refers to 'the study of the meaning of being' - as distinct from the study of phenomena.

I often prefer to translate the suffix "-logy" in terms of "discourse", "language", "account", "narrative", "story"... "logos".

Why do you say "meaning of being" instead of just "being"? The name "ontology" suggests a logos of being or beings. In what sense is it, instead, a logos of the meaning of beings?

Is this true in other cases as well? Is phenomenology the logos of phenomena, or the logos of the meaning of phenomena? Is biology the logos of life and the living, or the logos of the meaning of life and the living? And so on.

What's the difference between a "logos of being or beings" and a "logos of the meaning of being or beings"?

What is the relation between phenomena and beings? What is the relation between appearing and being?

Quoting Wayfarer

I say that 'beings' are ontologically distinct from 'objects', which is why it is incorrect to designate objects as beings, or beings as objects.

You have yet to say what an "ontological distinction" is supposed to be.

Do you mean, in this case, to say that if a thing is an object, or is rightly called an object, then that thing is not a being, or is not rightly called a being?

In what sense is an "ontological distinction" anything other than a definition of mutually exclusive terms? I might say that anything rightly called a lamppost is not rightly called chocolate pudding: Is this another example of an ontological distinction? What's called a left hand is not called a right hand, despite the fact that they are two hands, and roughly symmetrical, resembling and related to each other in many ways.

Quoting Wayfarer

Beings generally are subjects of experience, which objects are not.

Is this what you mean by "ontological distinction"? That there are two sorts of thing that exist, corresponding to two sorts of ways of existing, namely, existing as subject of experience, and existing as object of experience; and that a thing that exists in one of these two ways never exists in the other way; and that anything said to exist must be said to exist in one of these two ways?

Are there any other "ontological distinctions" in your language, or is this the only one? Perhaps I've read too much between the lines: Is there a third class, neither subject nor object; and perhaps a fourth, both subject and object? Or perhaps there are further "ontological distinctions" within each class, distinguishing different sorts of subject on the one hand, and different sorts of object on the other along “ontological” lines?

Are the rules of these distinctions axioms of your preferred "ontology", held to be self-evident by its advocates; or are these claims supported in some more explicit way?

How do the terms "being" and "existence" fit into this story about a distinction between subjects and objects? Do you say, both subjects and objects "exist", but only subjects "are"? Is "being" just a synonym for "subject"? So that if we ask about the being-in-general of objects, you will reply, they are not, but only exist; whereas subjects both are and exist?

Quoting Wayfarer

At issue is the relation of objects and subjects.

While I'm still not clear on the meaning of your ontology, I'll register this agreement, that it's meaningful in general to speak about relations of "subjects" and "objects" of experience.

I see no reason to suppose that subjects cannot also be objects, as for instance, when a subject of experience takes itself as its own object, in what is sometimes called reflexive experience, reflexive consciousness, or introspective awareness. Or when one subject of experience sees that another subject of experience "is angry", "smells bread", "seems malnourished", "is about six foot three".

I see no reason to suppose that the things that enter as objects of experience into relations with subjects of experience exist only by virtue of being in such relations, and have no existence independent of such relations; though of course this is one conceivable possibility among others.

Likewise, though it's conceivable, I see no reason to suppose that the things that enter as subjects of experience into relations with objects of experience exist only by virtue of being in such relations, and have no existence independent of such relations. For instance, the same dog that sees me fetching the leash on one occasion, may on another occasion die in its sleep, and thus be, to all appearances, without any experience whatsoever, and no longer a subject, and no longer related to objects as a subject; but that thing may nevertheless be reasonably called "the same thing" that was till now a living dog and a subject of experience.

Quoting Wayfarer

Humans are the subjects of experience, in a phenomenal domain, comprising objects, forces, other beings, and so on.

I'm still not clear on the way the term "phenomenal domain" fits into the setting. Is it merely a logical term, for the logical domain of "objects of experience", or does it have some specific phenomenological significance, like the "perceptual field" in Merleau-Ponty's discourse? What does it add to, or remove from, the concept of "experience"?

Are all subjects of experience human beings? Are some nonhuman animals both subjects and beings? Are some non-animal things both subjects and beings? Is there a difference between a "subject", a "being", and a "mind"?

Do you mean to suggest that when "forces" and "other beings" are encountered in the experience (or phenomenal domain) of a subject, they are not rightly called "objects"? Is this another "ontological distinction"? Are there, in addition to subjects and objects, also “forces” and "other beings" which are neither subjects nor objects?

It's beginning to sound as though you mean to say that all beings are subjects and never objects, but some beings are encountered in the experience (or phenomenal domain) of other beings, along with objects and forces; that objects and forces are never beings or subjects; and that accordingly, although subjects are never objects, they do figure somehow in the experience of other subjects as "other beings".

Quoting Wayfarer

And you're right about me confusing recursiveness and reflexivity - I mean the latter. My bad.

I'm glad we've cleared up our use of these two terms, at least. Though it's long been clear that this is the sort of pattern you have in mind in this connection, no matter what words we've used. Some riddle of reflexivity, which after all is said by many to be a factor in logical paradoxes like the Liar and in enduring puzzles of self-reference, self-awareness, and self-knowledge in our tradition.

But I've never understood why you bring the riddle to bear in the way you do.

Quoting Wayfarer

The principle I'm referring to is from the Upanisads, where there is a verse that says 'the hand can grasp another, but not itself. The eye can see another, but not itself. You cannot see the seer or know the knower.' I think a form of this principle is also found in Kant, in the idea of 'transcendental apperception'. I have always regarded it as a first principle.

You do seem to make much of it, but I'm not sure I grasp the principles by which you apply the rule to particular cases.

I'd test our grasp of the rule itself, which in this form is rather poetically expressed and in need of unpacking to inform interpretation and to guide application to particular cases and contexts. For a feeling of awe at a riddle of reflexivity is not the same thing as a principle by which to clearly distinguish reasonable and unreasonable judgments about reflexivity in a given context.

A hand cannot grasp itself completely, but neither can it grasp a mountain, a sunbeam, a shout, or an hour completely. A hand does more than grasp: A hand can close upon itself, a hand can touch itself, feel itself, wet and dry itself, cut and salve itself, intertwine its fingers, and even clap without a partner....

Of course we can give the same treatment to similar poetic reflections on eyes, seers, and knowers. This is another turn of the wheel, another variation on the theme, another detour through the same path we travel every time you apply this "first principle" of yours in our conversations.

It happens so often, we might as well stick with it here, focus on this recurring thread and see where it leads us.

Quoting Wayfarer

The point is, the mind organises sensations, perceptions and so on, according to judgements, reason and the like (spelling it out formally takes a lot of text).

I'll agree that experience is always already organized. I’ll agree that a "manifold of sensation" is always already organized in perception. I'll agree that the organization of experience tends to be "rational", and is the basis of the rationality of sentient animals; and that human judgments and reasoning in one sense can but need not, and in another sense must, follow the tracks of experience.

I don't accept the implication that the organization of experience is in general the product of "judgments of the mind" or of "reasoning". But part of what's at issue here is our definition of terms like "judgment" and "reasoning".

Quoting Wayfarer

Because this is the activity of the 'unknown knower'

In what sense is the "organization of experience" the activity of "the unknown knower"? What do you mean by this phrase?

Do you mean to imply that each “mind" is an “unknown knower"? But here it seems we have already said a great deal about minds, as if we could know something or other about them. In what sense is the mind "unknown"? And to whom is the mind unknown? And who is it that is unacquainted with his own mind?

Quoting Wayfarer

it is determinative of what we consider to be reality,

Many things may be said to "determine" my judgment about whether it's snowing outside, including my mind, my eyes, my eyeglasses, my position relative to the window, the windowpane, the light outside, the light inside, and the weather.

If I close my eyes, I don't lose my mind, but I do lose the basis on which I sometimes use my mind to make judgments about the weather.

Accordingly, to all appearances, it seems that what "we consider to be reality" is determined by our minds as well as by other things.

Quoting Wayfarer

which we instinctively believe to be external or 'other' to the mind.

Do you mean that i) each subject has an instinct to believe it has a mind, and ii) the mind of each subject determines (independently of anything else?) what that subject "considers to be reality"; and iii) each subject has an instinct to believe that the reality determined and imputed by its mind is "external to" the mind it has an instinct to believe it has?

Above I’ve indicated that, as pertains to the unpacking of (ii), I see good reason to say “the mind determines our view of reality”, but no good reason to say “the mind, alone, determines our view of reality”.

Moreover, I see no reason to accept (i). For it seems to me that talk of "minds" is a sophisticated product of human culture, and I'm not sure what it might mean to say "each sentient animal has an instinct to believe it has a mind", as opposed to, for instance, "each sentient animal is at least minimally self-aware."

But if there is no such instinct as the instinct indicated in (i), then I'm not sure how to make sense of the claim in (iii), that each sentient animal has an instinct to believe that what it considers to be reality is "external" to its mind. For by my way of reckoning, the sentient animal, including the sentient human, may have no idea corresponding to our idea of "mind", and therefore it's not clear how to interpret the claim about an instinct in (iii). On the other hand, the sort of self-awareness I call reasonable to attribute to at least many sentient animals, would entail that each sentient animal has some understanding we might express in terms of a distinction between its own body and the rest of the world, and the latter may be called “outside” its body, while its body is called “inside” and “part of” the world.

In any case, I'm inclined to think that traditional talk about the world as "external" to the mind is confused, problematic, arbitrary, and far from instinctive or natural to creatures like us. On what grounds do you assign such instincts to all sentient beings?

Quoting Wayfarer

There is a sense in which that is true, but another sense in which the very notion of 'external' is also in the mind! This is clearly spelt out in Schopenhauer's idea of 'vorstellung' which is why he himself said his philosophy was similar to that of the Upanisads.

I recall the Germans in those days were increasingly influenced by their engagement with Eastern philosophy.

What's Schopenhauer's concept of "vorstellung", if it's relevant to our conversation?

In any case, I hope I've made clear the extent to which I agree that the relevant "notion of externality" is only "in the mind" of some thinkers, and otherwise a quite dubious notion.

Quoting Wayfarer

As above.

You have yet to make clear to me what you mean by "ontological distinction". Hopefully the line of questioning I've left above will help us closer to mutual understanding in this regard.

Quoting Wayfarer

Notice you have to enclose 'being' in quotes in this sentence.

What do you make of that typographical gesture?

As I recall, I put it in quotes because you seem to use the word quite differently than I do, and I wanted to signal the difference -- in particular, to emphasize that I was neither using the word in accordance with your usage, nor suggesting that you should refrain from using the word in your own way in our conversation.

Your use of the term is still opaque to me, along lines I've indicated, though it seems you apply “being”, “subject”, and “mind” to the same things, which for some reason you refuse to call “objects” even when they manifest in the experience of subjects.

Whereas for me "being" is practically synonymous with "entity", "thing", and the other terms I listed in that passage. I often defer to conventional usage in selecting from among synonyms, for instance in speaking of "sentient beings" and "human beings" instead of "sentient entities" and "human entities". But I don't mean to suggest anything special by that usage. The work of distinction in such phrases is performed by the terms "sentient" and "human", not by the term "being", which I'm content to apply to anything that's rightly said to exist.

Quoting Wayfarer

that is because 'beings' are subjects of experience. In very simple beings, this is only present in rudimentary form, whereas in human beings, the nature of being itself can be reflected on. But inanimate objects are not beings, because they're not subjects of experience (although pan-psychism seems to argue that everything is a subject of experience, but I myself don't adhere to that view.)

I suppose I could aim to restrict my usage so that when I say "being" in my conversations with you, the term always refers to something that is a "subject of experience" or "sentient entity".

What about things that are animate but not sentient, as I suppose plants may be, or other living things without nervous systems?

What is it that's "only present in rudimentary form" in "very simple beings"? I might agree that sentience, self-awareness, intelligence, objectivity, imagination, freedom... are less developed in some animals than in others, and that it seems such terms admit of varying qualities and degrees.

I suppose human beings can reflect on "the nature of being", either before or after they've decided what they mean by the phrase, or as part of the task of definition. It seems human beings are much better at "reflection" and "abstraction" than any other animal species we know; and that this opens us to a special domain of peculiarly human knowledge and confusion. It may be we're the only ones to reflect on "the nature" of anything. It seems that you and I are more or less in agreement in this one respect, while drawing rather different implications.

In these regions of our conversation, I always recall this passage from Plato's Theaititos:

Socrates, in Plato's Theaetetus (McDowell trans.):But what about the power which makes clear to you that which is common to everything, including these things: that to which you apply the words 'is', 'is not', and the others we used in our questions about them just now? What is that power exercised by means of? What sort of instruments are you going to assign to all those things, by means of which the perceiving element in us perceives each of them?

Quoting Wayfarer

// to be continued.

I hope so.

I enjoy our exchanges and the pattern they weave over time. The similarities and differences in our vocabularies and in our views make for about as fruitful an exercise in philosophical conversation as I might hope for, not least because each of us seems eager to carry on in a spirit of goodwill, despite the difficulty of the task and the differences that turn up in the course of the exchange.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

When I refer to the culture war of course I don't imply that I am at war wiith you, or anyone for that matter. It is a reference to what is see as the conflict between scientific materialism and traditional philosophy (to select two examples from a range of possibilities.)
— Wayfarer

I'm not sure I would locate "traditional philosophy" in the culture war the way you have just now.

By 'culture wars' I'm referring to the perceived conflict, widespread since the Enlightenment, between science and religion, and the sense that science has undermined the traditional basis of spiritual values in Western cultulre. Pinker's essay on this topic sparked a long debate (in which he was supported by Dennett) with Leon Wieseltier, who had previously writen an incendiary review of one of Dennett's previous books in the New York Times. Suffice to say, I side with Wieseltier (and that review conveys what I think is the gist of the debate). So, to the extent that traditional (or pre-modern) philosophy was in some fundamental way linked to the Greek-Judeo-Christian theistic tradition (and granted that this link is multi-valent), then the rejection of theistic religions, and the attempt to ground human nature in a purely naturalistic account of the world, constitutes what I see as the fundamental divide underlying the 'culture wars' (or at any rate, that is the conflict that I am generally commenting on.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I often prefer to translate the suffix "-logy" in terms of "discourse", "language", "account", "narrative", "story"... "logos".

Why do you say "meaning of being" instead of just "being"? The name "ontology" suggests a logos of being or beings. In what sense is it, instead, a logos of the meaning of beings?

From your comments on the meaning of this term, it's clear that we understand it very differently. I have been criticized over my use of the word 'ontology' but I do base it on the dictionary definition, which says that the word 'ontology' is based on the first-person participle of the Greek word for 'to be' - the first person participle of which is 'I am':

The compound word ontology combines onto-, from the Greek ??, on (gen. ?????, ontos), i.e. "being; that which is", which is the present participle of the verb ????, eimí, i.e. "to be, I am", and -?????, -logia

So 'ontology' was originally intended as 'the study of the meaning of being', but even more specifically, the meaning of being in the first person. That distinguishes it from the characteristically 'third-person' view that is fundamental to naturalism.

(Heidegger differentiated the study of the meaning of being from the domain of the natural sciences. It's a fundamental distinction, because ontology is not concerned with 'what exists' - that is the role of the sciences - but the 'meaning of being' as a philosophical question and in the context of the human condition. It is precisely that understanding which he says has been generally forgotten or obscured by a fundamental error in Western metaphysics.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

for me "being" is practically synonymous with "entity", "thing", and the other terms I listed in that passage

You see, that is why I am saying that 'being' is fundamentally different to 'entity' or 'thing'. Entities or things are disclosed to, or appear to, or for, beings. Being is the primary ground or reality, being is what truly is. But being is never an object of perception, it is invisible to us, in a manner analogous to the blind spot caused by the optic nerve. So even though 'the meaning of being' seems obvious to us, in fact it's obscured or misapprehended by a kind of cultural 'blind spot' which we tend to look through, rather than at.

You know that you can actually detect your blind spot by holding a piece of paper with a dot on it at a certain distance from your eye, at which point the dot becomes invisible. Well, the human blindness to the 'real nature of being' is analogous to that, although it's a lot more far-reaching. That is the import of the argument from the 'unseen seer, the unknown knower'. That is pointing out that 'being' which is the ground of all existence, is not actually disclosed by analysis of phenomena. (This is an ancient idea in philosophy.)

And that is also why dogmatic materialists such as Dennett are obliged to deny that the first-person perspective has any particular significance, and to insist it is something can be completely accounted for by science (which he claims to do in books such as Consciousness Explained. Materialists are generally obliged to deny the existence of the unconscious on the same grounds.)

In contrast, Dennett's opponents insist that the 'first person perspective', the 'experience of being', is of a different order to what is disclosed in third-person terms (as per Chalmer's essay Facing Up to the Hard Problem). That is where the ontological distinction between 'things' and 'beings' shows up in the contemporary debate. (Dennett's response basically amounts to dismissal, which I am saying is another manifestation of the 'blind spot'. Have a look at the abstract, and Table of Contents entries, for William Byers, The Blind Spot.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I suppose human beings can reflect on "the nature of being", either before or after they've decided what they mean by the phrase, or as part of the task of definition. It seems human beings are much better at "reflection" and "abstraction" than any other animal species we know; and that this opens us to a special domain of peculiarly human knowledge and confusion. It may be we're the only ones to reflect on "the nature" of anything. It seems that you and I are more or less in agreement in this one respect, while drawing rather different implications.

That's an extremely well-chosen passage from Plato. Socrates is asking, what is it that 'sees reason'? What is it that discerns sameness and difference? You see, I think whenever you make a truth statement -that 'such and such is the case', or 'such and such is not the case', then you're straight away in a domain that is only visible to the rational intelligence, namely, the domain of reason. It is because the faculty of reason that humans can see and abstract likeness and unlikeness, or similarity, or equals - an ability that is intrinsic to the nature of rational intelligence. What is the origin of 'rationality' if not the ability to perceive 'ratio'? And it was the ability to perceive 'ratio' and 'logos' that was at the origin of the Greek conception of rationality (and indeed science).

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I enjoy our exchanges and the pattern they weave over time.

Thank you, that is very kind. I know I've gotten into deep waters here, and I've made many contentious statements. That's my problem, I tackle these issues from too general a level instead of picking one or two aspects of a problem and working on them, and I tend to go in 'guns blazing'. But regardless, I hope I have made the point about the distinct meaning of 'ontology' and the distinction of beings and objects a bit more clear.

Reply to dukkha

The defining difference between a physical-world zombie (the 'Normal Zombie') as opposed to a mere mental image of a zombie - the 'P-Zombie') is...

(ready?)

A real-world zombie can physically annihilate you.

I use this phrase when people wonder if 'reality' is 'really out there', where I respond with, "Reality is that which will annihilate you, whether you believe it is out there or not."

Quoting Wayfarer

By 'culture wars' I'm referring to the perceived conflict, widespread since the Enlightenment, between science and religion, and the sense that science has undermined the traditional basis of spiritual values in Western cultulre.

That's a more enduring tension than the war I had in mind.

A lot depends on how we unpack the term "traditional basis". If the basis was religious doctrine and practice, need religious doctrine and practice be theistic? If the basis was a conception of deity, what was the basis of that conception of deity? The more flexibly we conceive the traditional basis, the longer we will say it persists.

Religion and spiritual life may seem to conflict with science if one clings to traditional doctrines rigidly conceived. I don't see any necessary problem here. Say there's tension between competing forms of "explanation": Religion traditionally did, but need not, involve a sort of explanation that conflicts with scientific explanation.

The way remains open to reform spiritual life to suit a scientific age. Perhaps this task was taken more seriously by mainstream philosophers and theologians in the West around a century ago than it is today. We might say Kant and his contemporaries thought of themselves as engaged in that same task.

Quoting Wayfarer

Pinker's essay on this topic sparked a long debate (in which he was supported by Dennett) with Leon Wieseltier, who had previously writen an incendiary review of one of Dennett's previous books in the New York Times. Suffice to say, I side with Wieseltier (and that review conveys what I think is the gist of the debate).

I haven't read the relevant bits of Dennett and can't quite make out what Wieseltier is taking issue with. I see nothing objectionable in the thought that our capacity "to have creeds" is a fact open to biological investigation. On the other hand, I don't know that it's this capacity that enables us to "transcend our genetic imperatives". I'm not sure what it means to speak of human action, or animal action in general, as guided by "genetic" (as opposed to "biological") imperatives.

Quoting Wayfarer

So, to the extent that traditional (or pre-modern) philosophy was in some fundamental way linked to the Greek-Judeo-Christian theistic tradition (and granted that this link is multi-valent), then the rejection of theistic religions, and the attempt to ground human nature in a purely naturalistic account of the world, constitutes what I see as the fundamental divide underlying the 'culture wars' (or at any rate, that is the conflict that I am generally commenting on.)

My impression is that theism was already controversial in Hellenic culture before the Christian era, thanks in part to the open-ended philosophical activity that flourished in the Hellenic world. I'd say the traditional link between philosophy and theism in the Hellenic and Western traditions does not exclude atheism as a philosophical alternative. To deny this is practically to beg the question of theism in philosophical conversation: As if one cannot conceivably philosophize -- or philosophize "in the Western manner" -- while being an atheist or agnostic.

Quoting Wayfarer

From your comments on the meaning of this term, it's clear that we understand it very differently. I have been criticized over my use of the word 'ontology' but I do base it on the dictionary definition, which says that the word 'ontology' is based on the first-person participle of the Greek word for 'to be' - the first person participle of which is 'I am':

I am, you are, it is.

Doesn't the grammar support my sentience-neutral use of the term "being"? It's not only sentient beings that be. Not in English, not in Greek.

For that matter: Wasn't it the utter generality of the concept of "being" that fascinated the ancients?

Quoting Wayfarer

So 'ontology' was originally intended as 'the study of the meaning of being', but even more specifically, the meaning of being in the first person. That distinguishes it from the characteristically 'third-person' view that is fundamental to naturalism.

I believe Greek verbs are typically given in the first-person singular, and that's the only reason the first-person appears in that definition.

In any case, I'm not sure the etymology of the word "ontology" is enough to inform us what sort of logos ontology was originally intended to be. And I'm not sure that "what a thing was originally intended for" is an enduring standard of what a thing is or can be used for. Moreover, it seems the logos of being and beings -- accounts of existence, talk of what exists and what does not exist -- go back much farther in history than use of the word "ontology".

Where does the word come from? Etymonline traces use of the word back to the 1600s. According to this article by Jose Mora, it was popularized by the rationalist Wolff.

If many of the first self-styled "ontologists" were pre-Kantian rationalists, what's left of ontology when it's removed from the context of pre-Kantian rationalism? Who decides?

How did Wolff and his predecessors conceive of ontology? Did they intend it as a study of being, like the word says, or rather of "the meaning of being", as the word doesn't say? Wasn't this distinction introduced long after them? Aren't there other ways of speaking about being and beings, existence and entities, ontology and ontologies?

Quoting Wayfarer

(Heidegger differentiated the study of the meaning of being from the domain of the natural sciences. It's a fundamental distinction, because ontology is not concerned with 'what exists' - that is the role of the sciences - but the 'meaning of being' as a philosophical question and in the context of the human condition. It is precisely that understanding which he says has been generally forgotten or obscured by a fundamental error in Western metaphysics.)

Heidegger's interpretations are controversial and I suspect rather creative.

What is "meaning"? Isn't meaning a product of culture that changes over time? Is there some component of meaning that is immutable? What component is that?

What is the "meaning of being"? How is it different from, and how is it related to, the "being of being"? Is it anything other than the meaning of whatever exists? Is there only one single meaning for all existence, or are there a great variety of meanings? One meaning per existing thing? Meaning for whom, and according to whom….

If science, according to you and Heidegger, is distinguished by its concern with what exists, then what is the study of the meaning of being concerned with? Is it concerned with what does not exist? Or is it concerned in a special, unscientific way with what exists -- not concerned to say what does or doesn't exist, but only to say what existence "means" or what the things that exist "mean"?

What does it mean to say that existence or being or beings "mean" something? What does existence "mean", and what is the standard or method by which we assess the "meaning of being"? How do we adjudicate disagreements about "meanings" and about the "meaning of being"?

Quoting Wayfarer

You see, that is why I am saying that 'being' is fundamentally different to 'entity' or 'thing'. Entities or things are disclosed to, or appear to, or for, beings.

It's a fair distinction you use the term "being" to express, but I don't feel the same need to restrict my use of the term this way, as yet another indicator of sentience. One reason I'm not inclined to speak that way is that the verb "to be" is primarily associated with all our talk about existence. So unless one plans to overhaul this basic feature of the English language, there's arguably inconsistency in the attempt to restrict the language of "being" by applying it exclusively to sentient creatures.

Everyone makes his own usage. It's one thing to define your own terms in an extraordinary way, and another to object to statements other speakers make when they use the same vocabulary in the ordinary way, as if those speakers mean what they do not.

To adopt extraordinary usage in speaking is to assign oneself a special burden in communication.

Quoting Wayfarer

Being is the primary ground or reality, being is what truly is.

I thought you said it was the concern of science to speak about "what exists", while ontology is concerned with "meaning".

Is there a distinction between "what exists" and "what is"?

Is there a difference between "being" and "truly being"?

What does "primary ground" or "primary reality" mean?

It sounds as though you've shifted from speaking about "beings", qua sentient things, to "Being", qua ultimate ground of reality. How do you account for this shift?

What is the difference between beings and Being? How are they related to each other? How are all the "things" and "entities" that appear to beings related to beings and to Being? Do these things also appear to Being, or only to beings? Is Being sentient, like a being? Do beings appear to Being?

Are beings also entities? Is Being an entity? Does anything that is not an entity appear to beings or to Being, or is it only entities that appear? Do beings appear to each other? Do they appear to each other only as entities? Does Being appear to beings, and only as an entity?

On what grounds does one answer such questions? On what grounds does one adjudicate disputes in such matters?

Without some sense of how to proceed in answering such questions, it's not even clear what conversation we're having here, what theme we suppose we are addressing.

Quoting Wayfarer

But being is never an object of perception, it is invisible to us, in a manner analogous to the blind spot caused by the optic nerve.

To say something is never an object of perception is not necessarily the same as to say it never appears to us in any way. For instance, I'll say I do not "perceive" my own imagining and dreaming -- not if "perceive" entails sense-perception -- but I am often aware of my own imagining and dreaming, and I say it appears to me. Likewise, I might say that, though I do not perceive my own consciousness, I am aware of it, and it too appears to me.

There's a sense in which we don't "perceive" magnetic force in normal circumstances, but once we know there's such a thing, we can observe it through its cooperation in what we do perceive.

Quoting Wayfarer

So even though 'the meaning of being' seems obvious to us, in fact it's obscured or misapprehended by a kind of cultural 'blind spot' which we tend to look through, rather than at.

I don't think the "meaning of being" seems obvious at all. I'm still not sure the phrase makes sense at all, or what sense you think it has.

Arguably Heidegger's opaque concept-poetry does far more to obscure the meaning of being than any scientific habits could.

Why write poems about a blind spot when you can turn around to look? It seems to me the metaphor of "blind spot" would be ill-applied in cases in which there is in principle "no way to look". But I would deny that "consciousness" is such a case.

For each of us is aware of his own awareness.

Quoting Wayfarer

You know that you can actually detect your blind spot by holding a piece of paper with a dot on it at a certain distance from your eye, at which point the dot becomes invisible. Well, the human blindness to the 'real nature of being' is analogous to that, although it's a lot more far-reaching. That is the import of the argument from the 'unseen seer, the unknown knower'. That is pointing out that 'being' which is the ground of all existence, is not actually disclosed by analysis of phenomena. (This is an ancient idea in philosophy.)

The history of philosophy is full of bad ideas, ancient and modern. Pedigree establishes nothing.

You keep saying we're blind to being, to the real nature of being, to what really is, to the primary ground of reality…. But you've said very little about what it is you suppose you're speaking about when you speak this way.

Here: the unseen seer, the unknown knower. The fact of sentience. Isn't this the fact you reserve the word "being" to name? Consciousness, mind, awareness.

Who is blind to the fact of consciousness?

Is the phrase "meaning of being" supposed to be roughly equivalent with the phrase "meaning of sentience"? If not, how is it different?

Again, you flatly state that "Being" -- a concept you have vaguely associated with "beings" and hence with consciousness -- is the "ground of all existence". But it's not clear on what ground you make this claim, and it's not clear why or how you associate Being, the ground of existence, with beings, the sentient existents.

And it's not clear how you reconcile your talk about Being as ground of existence, and about "what truly is", with your previous remarks about the distinction between science and ontology -- that "what exists" is the concern of science, while "the meaning of being" is the concern of ontology. Do you depart from Heidegger in this respect, or does he likewise encroach on the lot he assigns to the scientist?

Quoting Wayfarer

And that is also why dogmatic materialists such as Dennett are obliged to deny that the first-person perspective has any particular significance, and to insist it is something can be completely accounted for by science (which he claims to do in books such as Consciousness Explained. Materialists are generally obliged to deny the existence of the unconscious on the same grounds.)

Is it materialists, or only some materialists, who are obliged to deny the significance of the first-person perspective and the existence of the unconscious? I can see that perhaps eliminative materialists like Dennett might be so obliged, but not every materialist is an eliminative materialist.

Moreover, Dennett's "heterophenomenology" in Consciousness Explained arguably takes for granted the significance of the first-person perspective. Even so, Dennett takes a rather hard line on consciousness, which is not representative of the full range of materialist and naturalist views on the subject. It's not like Dennett and Heidegger are the only two options, and it's not like we have to choose between eliminative materialism and theism.

I'm not sure what you or Dennett might mean by "completely accounting" for something. What makes an account "complete"?

I suppose a scientist aims to provide an account of what an observable thing is composed of, how it interacts with other observable things, how the parts work, how the whole works. A poet or a painter or a salesman gives another sort of account for another sort of reason.

Do we say the poet's account is "less complete" if it's uninformed by the scientist's account? Do we say the scientist's account is "less complete" if it's uninformed by the poet's account? I don't speak that way. These are two different sorts of account given for two different purposes.

What sort of account does the ontologist aim to provide, and in what sense is it "complete"? Does it add anything to the sort of account the scientist aims to provide, or does it add merely another sort of account alongside that of the scientist, without disrupting the scientist's account any more than the poet's discourse might disrupt the scientist's account?

For instance, scientists develop an account of visual perception by correlating information about light; about objects that emit or that reflect, absorb, or otherwise transform light; about sense-receptors, nervous systems, and perceptual processes in cognition.

Does the ontologist's story about Being, beings, and entities that appear to beings conflict with the scientist's story in any way? Does it add anything to the scientist's account? Or is it just another sort of story, told for an entirely different sort of purpose, that doesn't even come into contact with the discourse of the scientist?

Why should we suppose it's any different in the case of consciousness? To all appearances, there is a scientific account to pursue concerning animal consciousness on the basis of empirical investigation. Is there any reason to suppose that the ontologist's story about Being, beings, and entities that appear to beings will have anything more to do with this scientific story, than it has to do with the scientific story about perception?

Quoting Wayfarer

In contrast, Dennett's opponents insist that the 'first person perspective', the 'experience of being', is of a different order to what is disclosed in third-person terms (as per Chalmer's essay Facing Up to the Hard Problem). That is where the ontological distinction between 'things' and 'beings' shows up in the contemporary debate. (Dennett's response basically amounts to dismissal, which I am saying is another manifestation of the 'blind spot'. Have a look at the abstract, and Table of Contents entries, for William Byers, The Blind Spot.)

There's plenty of room for the first-person perspective in a materialist or naturalist discourse. The fact that some philosophers have neglected the first-person perspective, or have sought to diminish the role of introspection as a source of observational judgments, is not a strike against materialism, naturalism, or scientific method.

I'm not sure what contemporary philosophers of mind mean by the term "ontology"; I'm not sure what Heidegger or Wolff meant by the term; I'm not sure how all the uses of "ontology" in history are correlated; and I'm not sure how all those ontologies are correlated with ordinary talk about being and beings, existence and entities, what is and what is not.

I have a hunch that in contemporary academic discussions, talk about "ontology" is often talk about how to set up terms in a logician's notebook: Which phenomena shall we identify as the "objects", as opposed to the predicates that we apply to objects, in a language structured according to conventions of predicate logic. If this is what the professors have in mind, I'd encourage them to make it clear up front, to avoid so much confusion among their readers.

It seems natural scientists often speak in an analogous way about the "ontology" of computational models of things like ecosystems and solar systems. I suppose the logic of the computational models is structured in keeping with the conventions reflected in the logician's notebook.

So far as I can tell, questions about what to count as a logical object in such an "ontology" are not questions about what "exists" and what "doesn't exist", but only questions about the most efficient way to construct formal models about phenomena that do exist.

It's in this spirit that I take the line from Rorty: There is no privileged ontology.

Quoting Wayfarer

That's an extremely well-chosen passage from Plato.

It marks an important turn. A confused turn in a confused dialogue the purpose of which, it seems, is not to present finished doctrine but to stimulate thinking on a difficult subject.

I suggest it also marks an important turn in ancient thought and culture, involving creative responses to intellectual confusion brought on by attempts to reconcile thoughts about concepts with thoughts about perception.

Quoting Wayfarer

Socrates is asking, what is it that 'sees reason'? What is it that discerns sameness and difference? You see, I think whenever you make a truth statement -that 'such and such is the case', or 'such and such is not the case', then you're straight away in a domain that is only visible to the rational intelligence, namely, the domain of reason.

I'm not sure what this talk about "seeing" reason and "perceiving" logos is supposed to mean. If these are metaphors, they are metaphors I consider misleading and prefer to avoid. It seems there is a single, unified awareness in each of us, the same awareness in seeing as in hearing, the same awareness in perceiving as in imagining, thinking, remembering, intending. I suggest that our traditional discourse about consciousness has been greatly disfigured by unwarranted reliance on sense-perception, and especially visual perception, as the paradigm of consciousness.

Clearly anything that involves "making statements", that involves explicit assertions and denials, depends on language. But the capacity for language is not the same thing as the "rational intelligence" we have in common with other animals. I would distinguish animal rationality from the peculiar practice of giving and taking reasons. If we can understand the power of "reason" in terms of that practice of "reasoning", we might say it's a special form of the puzzling and problem-solving we have in common with nonhuman rational animals.

What is it that gives this form of rationality, called reasoning, its special character?

Quoting Wayfarer

It is because the faculty of reason that humans can see and abstract likeness and unlikeness, or similarity, or equals - an ability that is intrinsic to the nature of rational intelligence. What is the origin of 'rationality' if not the ability to perceive 'ratio'? And it was the ability to perceive 'ratio' and 'logos' that was at the origin of the Greek conception of rationality (and indeed science).

It seems that many nonhuman animals have the capacity to act on the basis of recognition of generic likeness and unlikeness. Recall the experiments by Shigeru Watanabe, demonstrating that pigeons can learn to distinguish paintings by Matisse from paintings by Picasso.

Isn't it obvious that animals perceive and act on the basis of generic concepts? That they react -- and learn to react, and react intelligently -- in similar ways to similar things, and in different ways to different things? Can't we train them to sort or select on the basis of generic similarities and differences? It seems to me that the capacity to grasp generic similarity and difference is about the worst possible place to start developing an account of how human cognition is different from nonhuman animal cognition, and among the best places to begin developing an account of how human cognition is similar to nonhuman animal cognition.

Accordingly, while I agree that the capacity to understand generic sameness and difference is crucial to "rational intelligence", I deny that this capacity belongs to humans alone among animals, and I deny that rational intelligence belongs to humans alone among animals.

One thing that seems to belong perhaps uniquely to us, among all animals extant on this planet, is the capacity to think about our thoughts, and thus, for instance, to think about the principles of likeness or unlikeness that apply in each case in which we recognize a similarity or dissimilarity. This capacity to think about thoughts, or to reason about reasons, seems to be essential to the practice of "giving and taking reasons", seems to be essential to reasoning and to "reason".

What is the source of this special capacity in us? My best guess is that it's not so much to do with a special power of introspection, but rather an especially refined power of conceptualization -- which allows us to pick out and to coordinate various features of our experience more flexibly and creatively than any other animal on Earth.

We are not alone among animals in being rational and conceptual creatures. But our subtle power of conceptualization opens the way to a practice of reasoning that cultivates the character of human rationality and freedom.

Quoting Wayfarer

Thank you, that is very kind. I know I've gotten into deep waters here, and I've made many contentious statements. That's my problem, I tackle these issues from too general a level instead of picking one or two aspects of a problem and working on them, and I tend to go in 'guns blazing'. But regardless, I hope I have made the point about the distinct meaning of 'ontology' and the distinction of beings and objects a bit more clear.

I'm happy to paddle through these deep waters with you. There's no fear of drowning, and the tide always carries us back to shore. Meanwhile, we move back and forth through many of the same currents over the years; the repetition is good exercise and makes a sort of progress.

Perhaps we've got a bit closer to understanding our thoughts about "ontology". I'm still far from sure I understand what you mean in this region of our discourse, and I've left a fresh trail of questions and remarks on the subject today.

So far as I can make sense of it, your distinction between "beings" and "objects" is just another way to express a distinction between "sentient things" and "nonsentient things". But I suspect you mean to suggest something more than this by speaking that way.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

We might say Kant and his contemporaries thought of themselves as engaged in that same task.

Indeed he was, and I am one who thinks that he succeeded to a large extent - more so than generally acknowledged, and certainly more so than usually understood.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

If science, according to you and Heidegger, is distinguished by its concern with what exists, then what is the study of the meaning of being concerned with?

Caveat: I am not at all expert in Heidegger, having read only abstracts, summaries and essays.

However I think in regards to this particular question I am on reasonably safe ground.

From SEP entry on Heidegger:

Consider some philosophical problems that will be familiar from introductory metaphysics classes: Does the table that I think I see before me exist? Does God exist? Does mind, conceived as an entity distinct from body, exist? These questions have the following form: does x (where x = some particular kind of thing) exist? Questions of this form presuppose that we already know what ‘to exist’ means. We typically don't even notice this presupposition. But Heidegger does, which is why he raises the more fundamental question: what does ‘to exist’ mean? This is one way of asking what Heidegger calls the question of the meaning of Being, and Being and Time is an investigation into that question. ...

According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being, and thus Being as such, has been forgotten by ‘the tradition’ (roughly, Western philosophy from Plato onwards). Heidegger means by this that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. In this way Being as such has been forgotten. So Heidegger sets himself the task of recovering the question of the meaning of Being. In this context he draws two distinctions between different kinds of inquiry. The first, which is just another way of expressing the ontological difference, is between the ontical and the ontological, where the former is concerned with facts about entities and the latter is concerned with the meaning of Being, with how entities are intelligible as entities. Using this technical language, we can put the point about the forgetting of Being as such by saying that the history of Western thought is characterized by an ‘onticization’ of Being (by the practice of treating Being as a being).

Let me ask you this: is any science concerned with the question of 'what it means to exist'? I would say that science qua natural philosophy, as distinct from metaphysics, doesn't ask that question; it starts with what exists, and 'what exists' can be defined in terms of something you can have an encounter with, something you can either see, or infer the existence of, on the basis of what you can see (where 'seeing' includes the use of instruments.)

(One notable exception to this - a case where scientists really did have to grapple with the question of 'what it means to exist' - was in the field of quantum physics in the 1920's and 30's and the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation'. I don't want to sidetrack the conversation into that intractable issue, other than to note it.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

So far as I can make sense of it, your distinction between "beings" and "objects" is just another way to express a distinction between "sentient things" and "nonsentient things"

According to materialism, only non-sentient things are real and sentient beings are supervenient on them. Whereas none of the traditional philosophies - theistic or Buddhistic - are materialist. So none of them accept that insentient things are fundamental.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

I would distinguish animal rationality from the peculiar practice of giving and taking reasons. If we can understand the power of "reason" in terms of that practice of "reasoning", we might say it's a special form of the puzzling and problem-solving we have in common with nonhuman rational animals.

And I would say that is one of the misconceptions that arises from naturalising the human and thereby seeing them as continuous with other species; whereas, I would say that at the moment early h. sapiens was able to speak, reason, and grasp abstract ideas, then they crossed a chasm which separates them from their simian forbears.

Furthermore much of the 'furniture of reason' - the law of the excluded middle, non-contradiction, and so on -aren't a product of that process of evolution. The mind evolves to the point where it can discover them; it develops the capacity for higher forms of consciousness. But that is the kind of thing that Alfred Russel Wallace said; Darwin would never accept that. So now the dogma is, that language, rational thought, and so on, are no different in essence to 'peacock tails' (and that, from the very man who charges money to belong to an Institute for Science and Reason.)

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Isn't it obvious that animals perceive and act on the basis of generic concepts? That they react -- and learn to react, and react intelligently -- in similar ways to similar things, and in different ways to different things?

No, they react to stimuli. Intelligent animals react intelligently - there is some ability at problem-solving and generalisation. But try and explain a prime, or multiplication.

Quoting Cabbage Farmer

Can't we train [animals] to sort or select on the basis of generic similarities and differences?

You should read about the touching story of Nim Chimpsky.

I think chimp studies come closest - but it's not that close.

Incidentally same day I wrote the above, a published philosopher, Roger Scruton, penned an OP on the theme of human exceptionalism in the NY Times.

I am fairly confident that the picture painted by the evolutionary psychologists is true. But I am also confident that it is not the whole truth, and that it leaves out of account precisely the most important thing, which is the human subject.

Reader comments are mainly against him, from what I can discern.