Hi Eliezer. I actually do quite appreciate the reply because I think that if one writes a piece explaining why someone else is systematically in error, it’s important that the other person can reply. That said . . .
You are misunderstanding the point about causal closure. If there was some isomorphic physical law, that resulted in the same physical states of affairs as is resulted in by consciousness, the physical would be causally closed. I didn’t say that your description of what a zombie is was the misrepresentation. The point you misrepresented was when you said “It is furthermore claimed that if zombies are “possible” (a term over which battles are still being fought), then, purely from our knowledge of this “possibility”, we can deduce a priori that consciousness is extra-physical, in a sense to be described below; the standard term for this position is “epiphenomenalism”.”
No, the term is non-physicalism. This does not entail epiphenomenalism. If you say the standard term for believers in zombies is epiphenomenalists, then even if you have a convincing argument for why believers in zombies must be epiphenomenalists (which you don’t) then it is still totally misleading to say the standard term is something totally different from what it is. I think I have a convincing argument for why Objective List Theorists should accept hypersensitivity—the idea that slight changes in well-being supervene on arbitrarily small changes in welfare goods—but it would be misleading to say “the standard term for the belief in objective list theory is belief in hypersensitivity.”
The quote you give from the SEP page is “If zombies are to be counterexamples to physicalism, it is not enough for them to be behaviorally and functionally like normal human beings: plenty of physicalists accept that merely behavioral or functional duplicates of ourselves might lack qualia.” But here behavior and function are about the external outputs of the thing—you could have a behavioral and functional duplicate of me made with silicon. However, it wouldn’t be physically identical because it would be physically different—made of different stuff. That is the point that is being made.
If I am wrong why is it that Chalmers and the SEP page both deny that you have to be an epiphenomenalist to be a nonphysicalist?
You said “It is furthermore claimed that if zombies are “possible” (a term over which battles are still being fought), then, purely from our knowledge of this “possibility”, we can deduce a priori that consciousness is extra-physical, in a sense to be described below; the standard term for this position is “epiphenomenalism”.
(For those unfamiliar with zombies, I emphasize that this is not a strawman. See, for example, the SEP entry on Zombies. ”
However, the SEP entry, as I note in the article, explicitly says that you do not have to be an epiphenomenalist to be a zombie believer.
“True, the friends of zombies do not seem compelled to be epiphenomenalists or parallelists about the actual world. They may be interactionists, holding that our world is not physically closed, and that as a matter of actual fact nonphysical properties do have physical effects.”
As for the final points sockpuppets, if a moderator would like to look into whether there are sockpuppet accounts, be my guest. I’d be willing to bet at 9.5 to .5 odds that if a moderator looked into it, they would not find lots of newly created accounts
I’d also be happy to bet about whether, if we ask a philosopher of mind like Chalmers, Goff, or Chappell which of us is correct about the zombie argument, they would say me!
Finally, you suggest that saying bad things about people before addressing the object level is bad conduct. Why? You never give a reason for this. It seems to me that if a post is arguing that some public figure should not be deferred to as much as he is currently being deferred to, on account of his frequent errors, there is nothing wrong with describing that that is your aim at the outset.
‘Chalmers, Goff, or Chappell’ This is stacking the deck against Eliezer rather unfairly; none of these 3 are physicalists, even though physicalism is the plurality, and I think still slight majority position in the field: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4874
Re Chalmers agreeing with you, he would, he said as much in the LessWrong comments and I recently asked him in person and he confirmed it. In Yudkowsky’s defense it is a very typical move among illusionists to argue that Zombiests can’t really escape epiphenomenalism, not just some ignorant outsider’s move (I think I recall Keith Frankish and Francois Kammerer both making arguments like this). That said I remain frustrated that the post hasn’t been updated to clarify that Chalmers disagrees with this characterization of his position.
Eliezer quoted the SEP entry as support for his position and you, in your response, cut off the part of said quote which contained the support and only responded to the remaining part which did not contain the supporting point (eg the key words: causal closure). This seems bad-faith to me even though I think you’re right that Eliezer did not account for interactionist dualism (though I disagree that it is necessarily a critical error, I don’t think one should be expected to note every possibilty no matter how low prob in the course of an argumentation.)
He didn’t quote it—he linked to it. I didn’t quote the broader section because it was ambiguous and confusing. The reason not accounting for interactionist dualism matters is because it means that he misstates the zombie argument, and his version is utterly unpersuasive.
Hi Eliezer. I actually do quite appreciate the reply because I think that if one writes a piece explaining why someone else is systematically in error, it’s important that the other person can reply. That said . . .
You are misunderstanding the point about causal closure. If there was some isomorphic physical law, that resulted in the same physical states of affairs as is resulted in by consciousness, the physical would be causally closed. I didn’t say that your description of what a zombie is was the misrepresentation. The point you misrepresented was when you said “It is furthermore claimed that if zombies are “possible” (a term over which battles are still being fought), then, purely from our knowledge of this “possibility”, we can deduce a priori that consciousness is extra-physical, in a sense to be described below; the standard term for this position is “epiphenomenalism”.”
No, the term is non-physicalism. This does not entail epiphenomenalism. If you say the standard term for believers in zombies is epiphenomenalists, then even if you have a convincing argument for why believers in zombies must be epiphenomenalists (which you don’t) then it is still totally misleading to say the standard term is something totally different from what it is. I think I have a convincing argument for why Objective List Theorists should accept hypersensitivity—the idea that slight changes in well-being supervene on arbitrarily small changes in welfare goods—but it would be misleading to say “the standard term for the belief in objective list theory is belief in hypersensitivity.”
The quote you give from the SEP page is “If zombies are to be counterexamples to physicalism, it is not enough for them to be behaviorally and functionally like normal human beings: plenty of physicalists accept that merely behavioral or functional duplicates of ourselves might lack qualia.” But here behavior and function are about the external outputs of the thing—you could have a behavioral and functional duplicate of me made with silicon. However, it wouldn’t be physically identical because it would be physically different—made of different stuff. That is the point that is being made.
If I am wrong why is it that Chalmers and the SEP page both deny that you have to be an epiphenomenalist to be a nonphysicalist?
You said “It is furthermore claimed that if zombies are “possible” (a term over which battles are still being fought), then, purely from our knowledge of this “possibility”, we can deduce a priori that consciousness is extra-physical, in a sense to be described below; the standard term for this position is “epiphenomenalism”.
(For those unfamiliar with zombies, I emphasize that this is not a strawman. See, for example, the SEP entry on Zombies. ”
However, the SEP entry, as I note in the article, explicitly says that you do not have to be an epiphenomenalist to be a zombie believer.
“True, the friends of zombies do not seem compelled to be epiphenomenalists or parallelists about the actual world. They may be interactionists, holding that our world is not physically closed, and that as a matter of actual fact nonphysical properties do have physical effects.”
As for the final points sockpuppets, if a moderator would like to look into whether there are sockpuppet accounts, be my guest. I’d be willing to bet at 9.5 to .5 odds that if a moderator looked into it, they would not find lots of newly created accounts
I’d also be happy to bet about whether, if we ask a philosopher of mind like Chalmers, Goff, or Chappell which of us is correct about the zombie argument, they would say me!
Finally, you suggest that saying bad things about people before addressing the object level is bad conduct. Why? You never give a reason for this. It seems to me that if a post is arguing that some public figure should not be deferred to as much as he is currently being deferred to, on account of his frequent errors, there is nothing wrong with describing that that is your aim at the outset.
‘Chalmers, Goff, or Chappell’ This is stacking the deck against Eliezer rather unfairly; none of these 3 are physicalists, even though physicalism is the plurality, and I think still slight majority position in the field: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4874
We could ask a physicalist too—Frankish, Richard Brown, etc.
Re Chalmers agreeing with you, he would, he said as much in the LessWrong comments and I recently asked him in person and he confirmed it. In Yudkowsky’s defense it is a very typical move among illusionists to argue that Zombiests can’t really escape epiphenomenalism, not just some ignorant outsider’s move (I think I recall Keith Frankish and Francois Kammerer both making arguments like this). That said I remain frustrated that the post hasn’t been updated to clarify that Chalmers disagrees with this characterization of his position.
Yes, there are some arguments of questionable efficacy for the conclusion that zombieism entails epiphenomenalism. But notably:
Eliezer hasn’t given any such argument.
Eliezer said that deniers of zombieism are by definition zombieists. That’s just flatly false.
Eliezer quoted the SEP entry as support for his position and you, in your response, cut off the part of said quote which contained the support and only responded to the remaining part which did not contain the supporting point (eg the key words: causal closure). This seems bad-faith to me even though I think you’re right that Eliezer did not account for interactionist dualism (though I disagree that it is necessarily a critical error, I don’t think one should be expected to note every possibilty no matter how low prob in the course of an argumentation.)
He didn’t quote it—he linked to it. I didn’t quote the broader section because it was ambiguous and confusing. The reason not accounting for interactionist dualism matters is because it means that he misstates the zombie argument, and his version is utterly unpersuasive.