Materialists......

[Robin]

That is because the p-zombie literature belongs exclusively to cognitive science and philosophy of mind, and the free will question is mainstream philosophy. Hammegk is quite correct, though. P-zombies cannot possibly have libertarian free will.

That may or may not be the case - but it is utterly irrelevant to the argument made. Unless, as I say, you have seen a different version.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You must have seen a different version of the argument to the ones I have seen. Please point me to this new version.

I am not talking about the arguments about P-zombies. I am talking about the properties of the p-zombies those arguments describe and the implications for the debate about free will. You can actually work this out for yourself. You do not need me to give you a link.

 

[Robin]

They jury is still out on PEAR.

I am not sure what jury that might be. PEAR have had every opportunity to come up with something - they have not produced a testable hypothesis, or even a hypothesis at all as far as I can see.

They have stated that science will need to relax the requirement for replicability in their case.

They have not even produced borderline results - they have produced nothing but wind and dissembling.

The only difference between them and Dr Cliff is that Dr Cliff apparently has a sense of humour about it.

 

[hammegk]

A typically vague insinuating comment. The fact is if you think the p-zombie thought experiment has anything to do with free will then you have missed the point of it.

Perhaps you can show me up by linking a version of it that concerns free will in any way.

Remember our little discussion about "intent". What attributes do you accept as indicative of "consciousness"?

I have no link to suggest. Perhaps if you consider it on your own?

So either we are unable to talk about even our own inner sensations, because language is incapable of accessing "true" inner experience. Or we truly can talk about our experiences and the experiences of others because, for example, pain is actually nothing more than the public pain-behaviour we are talking about.

Or as another, much older, sage pointed out -- paraphrasing -- if it can be communicated it is not the thing-in-itself.

The problem is deciding what sort of entities do or do not have causal power, namely "minds" and how you define them.

The essence of the problem. The word "consciousness" is in itself a red-herring.

Idealists just claim that chairs are the sort of things which exist in minds.

Erm? An objective idealist observes 4-d spacetime considerations -- and is willing to accede to 11-d or more -- with regards to the epiphenomena Mind perceives as "matter".

 

[Robin]

Remember our little discussion about "intent". What attributes do you accept as indicative of "consciousness"?

Yes, I remember - I asked you for reasoning for your insistence that it could not be a property of a physical system. You declined to show your reasoning. What of it?

I have no link to suggest. Perhaps if you consider it on your own?

I have, thank you. The p-zombie argument is self contained and has nothing to do with free will.

I did not question that p-zombies could not have free will, I said it does not have anything to do with the argument.

So to say that a p-zombie could not have libertarian free will is as irrelevant to the argument as to say that it could not have a favourite colour.

 

[Robin]

I am not talking about the arguments about P-zombies. I am talking about the properties of the p-zombies those arguments describe and the implications for the debate about free will. You can actually work this out for yourself. You do not need me to give you a link.

Er.. Chriswl put a pretty good case that the concept of a p-zombie was incompatible with the concept of materialism.

Hammegk countered with a bizarre non-sequitur about free will which does not even figure in the argument chriswl was referring to.

And now you are defending the relevance of hammegk's comment by saying that there are some other unrelated arguments that might involve p-zombies and free will. Even if such argument exist, which I doubt - so what? We are not discussing these arguments. We are discussing the standard p-zombie argument.

 

[Robin]

Have a look at the stanford encyclopedia - no mention of free will in the page about Zombies there.

http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/zombies/


But let's face it, in any case the p-zombie argument has to be the number 1 daftest argument ever marshalled against materialism.

Have a look at this attempt to demonstrate conceivability for example (Chalmers paraphrased by the Stanford Encyclopedia):

Suppose a population of tiny people disable your brain and replicate its functions themselves, while keeping the rest of your body in working order (see Block 1980). Each homunculus performs the functions of an individual neuron: some receive signals from the afferent nerve endings in your head and transmit them to colleagues (using cell phones); others receive signals from colleagues and transmit them to your efferent nerves; most receive and send signals to colleagues exactly as your own neurons do. Now, would such a system be conscious?

Well, no. But the argument says a p-zombie is "physically identical".

Would I really be physically identical if an army of tiny people invaded my brain and disconnected it?

There is no question that a system could be physically different and successfully mimic the behaviour of a conscious person - a cleverly designed electronic android for example, but that proves precisely nothing.

Essentially the p-zombie argument assumes it's conclusion. They are showing that consciousness cannot be physical. So they posit something that is physically identical to a human but not conscious. But if consciousness was physical then the p-zombie would not be physically identical.


They are assuming that consciousness is not physical and then using that premise to prove that consciousness cannot be physical.

 

[hammegk]

Yes, it is a shame Chalmers never continued his argument to a rational conclusion.

Do you wish to join the Paul/Stimpy camp and insist a physical/material monism allows the possibility of the attributes of consciousness/intent including free will, which are the basics of idealism?

 

[nescafe]

It has no mind. It hasn't a "self", either but cognitive scientists have some fairly screwed up definition of "self", some of which could actually belong to a p-zombie.

s/self/mind/g, and my refutation still works (in any monist stance, that is. A dualist stance is compatible with a p-zombie, but that is a different matter).

 

[Robin]

Yes, it is a shame Chalmers never continued his argument to a rational conclusion.

The zombie argument does not have a rational conclusion, a single rational step or a rational premise. At least any version I have seen.

Do you know of any version that makes any sense whatsover?

Do you wish to join the Paul/Stimpy camp and insist a physical/material monism allows the possibility of the attributes of consciousness/intent including free will, which are the basics of idealism?

Nobody has ever given me any reason why not. I have "cos Geoff sez so" and "cos hammegk sez so". Sorry I don't consider those good reasons.

Your position appears to be that libertarian free will is an absolutely undefineable concept and yet you are 100% certain that it cannot occur under a physical/material monism. That would be about it wouldn't it?

With consciousness, I have to ask again what are the precise reasons that the concept of consciousness is 100% incompatible with the concept of physical/material?

Is there any reason anybody can give me why I shouldn't at least accept the possibility?

 

[articulett]

That is why I ignore YOU, articulett. You think you have something to teach me, but nothing whatsoever to learn. You are blissfully unaware that I believed pretty much exactly what you believe for the majority of my life. I have learned nothing from you because everything you "know" I "knew" by the time I was 12.

Oh my gosh...Interesting Ian said something exactly like that today at skeptics.com:--"Well you're all acting like 10 year olds. I couldn't be arsed with people at that age, and I assure you that I can't be arsed now either"

Note that he was at the skeptic stage of knowledge at 10! Synchronicity?!...or is he just more advanced than you? There's so many deep meanings I can plug in...

 

[articulett]

Then why don't I experience it instead of you?

~~ Paul

Indeed. And why can we stop a person's fear with medications that affect the brain--or by damaging the amygdala, a brains structure.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You said:

Why would the materialist want to define material to mean mental, too? Why would the idealist want to define mind to mean physical, too? In their cases, they want the single fundamental existent to include everything. In my case, I'm trying to define a word for those things that scientists can observe and understand.

Then why not use the term "phenomenal world"? Science can observe and understand the phenomenal world, but the word "phenomenal" does not imply any transcendental metaphysics.

"Phenomenal : Of or pertaining to phenomena, the qualitative aspects of consciousness as presented to us."

....which is what science investigates - That which is presented to us. That is "sci-observable", yes?


At least 99% of the time, it doesn't actually matter to scientists which ontological position (if any of them) is correct.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Can something come from nothing?

No.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

And yet you still think that PEAR is genuinely trying to be objective science.

Absolutely. If you think Derren Brown and PEAR have anything in common then please tell me what you think it is. PEAR is trying to be science, and doing quite well. Derren Brown is an entertainer who understands how to take advantage of flaws in human cognitive psychology.

Yes, it takes a good long look at the experimental procedures to see the misdirection of autoganzfeld and the misdirection of PEAR is hidden deeply in their papers.

I totally disagree. There is no misdirection in the PEAR papers. Please justify your accusation. The folks at PEAR are not deliberately trying to mislead anyone.

They are none of them any more science than Dr Cliff and anybody who gives them any credence cannot claim to be "fooled less easily".

Ah, I see.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But you should be giving materialists and idealists the same trouble that you are giving me. If one says that everything is material, you should be arguing that we know what material is and it doesn't include mental things.

But we do know what material is supposed to mean. It means things like atoms and photons. The trouble is that whilst the simplistic understanding of this is very easy, it breaks down once you start asking questions about whether the objects of everyday reality, the ones made of things like atoms, are in your mind or self-existing constituents of ultimate reality. The materialist wants the word "material" to mean both of them, but this just leaves the door wide open for people to come along and demonstrate that their position is logically incoherent. The reason it is logically incoherent is because it assumes direct realism is true, but cannot defend direct realism from the argument from hallucination (or any of the other arguments designed to falsify naive materialism, many of which you are familiar with.)

Similarly, if one says that everything is mind, you should argue that we know what mind is and that doesn't include chairs.

Why not? "Chairs are things which exist in minds". There is no problem here. There may be other problems, particularly if you try to defend idealism like lifegazer does. He is a very good example actually, and I attack him with great enthusiasm accordingly.

 

[chriswl]

Or as another, much older, sage pointed out -- paraphrasing -- if it can be communicated it is not the thing-in-itself.

And the intervening 2500 years of philosophy can be written off as a succession of "gramatical errors"....

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I am not sure what jury that might be. PEAR have had every opportunity to come up with something - they have not produced a testable hypothesis, or even a hypothesis at all as far as I can see.

They have stated that science will need to relax the requirement for replicability in their case.

I agree with them. If science is going to invesigate parapsychology it will have to change the rules of engagement in order to cope with the new territory. The phenomena being investigate by PEAR do not neccesarily behave like normal empirical phenomena. This is a different ballgame. The phenomena are not replicable in the normal way. They also manifest differently to different people depending on the differing belief systems of the people involved. Traditional science cannot cope with phenomena like this.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Erm? An objective idealist observes 4-d spacetime considerations -- and is willing to accede to 11-d or more -- with regards to the epiphenomena Mind perceives as "matter".

OK, just to keep Paul happy I am going to criticise an idealist.....

Saying that mind perceives matter as epiphenomenal suggests that matter is as causally impotent to the idealist as mind is to the materialist. While I agree with you that minds are causally efficacious, I cannot accept the claim that matter is not causally efficacious. For me, both are causally relevant, just in radically different ways. The only way for me to claim this and avoid dualism is to defend a form of neutral monism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So to say that a p-zombie could not have libertarian free will is as irrelevant to the argument as to say that it could not have a favourite colour.

It may well be irrelevant to the questions being asked by the people who invented p-zombies. This does not mean that they are also irrelevant when it comes to a discussion about libertarian free will.

P-zombies lack minds. But they also lack a meaningful definition of "self". Materialists just define minds as brain processes and therefore never get round to considering the relationship between mental content and the metaphysical subject ("I"). If you add a metaphysical subject to the materialists picture of a reality then "mind" appears automatically because it is the result of an interaction between the metaphysical subject and the physical brain. You do not need to add "mind" as a seperate, third thing. "Mind" on its own is not enough to account for LFW. But a metaphysical subject is. So the connection between a p-zombie and the free will debate is that p-zombies lack a critical component required to make LFW intelligable. And no, I have not seen anybody else defend such a position because I've never seen the question raised. Since arguments from authority don't hold much sway on this board anyway, this doesn't really matter.