But how can you assume that humans in general have qualia if all the talking about qualia tells you only that qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure? Maybe all talking about qualia derives from a single source? How would you know? For me, this seems to be a kind of a reductio ad absurdum for your entire line of argument.
Not sure I understand why is this a good reductio ad absurdum.
You know qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure. Sure, maybe the universe is a two-player game, and everyone else is played by a single party; or maybe we’re pranking ourselves, wrote scripts for everyone and erased our own memory or something. All of that is just far less likely than a normal universe.
The argument is that hearing others talk about qualia is extremely strong evidence for living in worlds where there’s qualia causing these talks; it makes more absurd worlds (like one with p-zombies who accidentally- like monkeys writing random letters- talk about something that describes your experience) unlikely, it doesn’t promote worlds that were strongly less likely than others
The key point that I am trying to make is that you seem to argue against our common sense understanding that animals are sentient because they are anatomically similar to us in many respects and also demonstrate behavior that we would expect sentient creatures to have. Rather you come up with your own elaborate requirements that you argue are necessary for a being able to say something about qualia in other beings but then at some point (maybe at the point where you feel comfortable with your conclusions) you stop following your own line of argument through to the end (i.e., qualia somewhere in the causal structure != other humans have qualia) and just revert back to “common sense”, which you have argued against just before as being insufficient in this case. So, your position seems somewhat selective and potentially self-serving with respect to supporting your own beliefs rather than intellectually superior to the common sense understanding.
But how can you assume that humans in general have qualia if all the talking about qualia tells you only that qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure? Maybe all talking about qualia derives from a single source? How would you know? For me, this seems to be a kind of a reductio ad absurdum for your entire line of argument.
Not sure I understand why is this a good reductio ad absurdum.
You know qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure. Sure, maybe the universe is a two-player game, and everyone else is played by a single party; or maybe we’re pranking ourselves, wrote scripts for everyone and erased our own memory or something. All of that is just far less likely than a normal universe.
The argument is that hearing others talk about qualia is extremely strong evidence for living in worlds where there’s qualia causing these talks; it makes more absurd worlds (like one with p-zombies who accidentally- like monkeys writing random letters- talk about something that describes your experience) unlikely, it doesn’t promote worlds that were strongly less likely than others
The key point that I am trying to make is that you seem to argue against our common sense understanding that animals are sentient because they are anatomically similar to us in many respects and also demonstrate behavior that we would expect sentient creatures to have. Rather you come up with your own elaborate requirements that you argue are necessary for a being able to say something about qualia in other beings but then at some point (maybe at the point where you feel comfortable with your conclusions) you stop following your own line of argument through to the end (i.e., qualia somewhere in the causal structure != other humans have qualia) and just revert back to “common sense”, which you have argued against just before as being insufficient in this case. So, your position seems somewhat selective and potentially self-serving with respect to supporting your own beliefs rather than intellectually superior to the common sense understanding.