When you say “the fact remains that the “Mary” and zombie world arguments do not end up describing anything beyond those correlates.” the non-physicalist will reply – Yes, Exactly!
How is it you know about consciousness at all? Only because you have it. And no description of anything physical will take us beyond the correlates. That "is" the hard problem.
As to imagining zombies, I do it by thinking of a sophisticated robot, which you understand all the inner workings or mechanisms because you built it, but nowhere in that robot is an inner feel. So when it reports it has experience and it’s favourite food is pizza, it’s only the language centre stringing symbols together according to it's programming.
It’s easier to think this robot is a zombie than starting with Mary who is too similar to us. The exercise isn’t to imagine "what it is like" to be a zombie, because the answer is - nothing.
It’s only to show there is no contradiction in supposing we could build a robot identical to biological Mary which wouldn’t have inner experience. It would only go through the mechanistic motions.
And as you say - “That still leaves open the question of which systems have such a perspective and why they do.” That’s true, because the particular answers to those questions depends on your theory of consciousness.
Regarding the non-physicalist replying "Yes, Exactly" -- in your opinion, how strong are the original "Mary" and zombie world thought experiments as arguments against physicalism? That's what I'm grappling with. It seems to me that, in order to argue against physicalism, they must describe something non-physical, but they don't actually do so.
Regarding the sophisticated robot -- I actually agree with you that it is possible for a robot to produce convincing reports without being conscious, although I think it depends on just how those reports are being produced. A robot would not be identical to biological Mary down to the smallest detail without being biological itself, but it could simulate Mary's brain more or less accurately. A good theory of consciousness might be able to identify when a simulation is "accurate enough" for consciousness to emerge.
Consciousness starts out as non-physical. It doesn’t have physical properties like mass, charge, dimension, but instead qualia and intentionality.
That’s the hard problem for the physicalist. Because they have to find some way to show it is physical, despite not having physical properties. If that can’t be done, then physicalism is false.
Personally, I think those arguments are decisive against physicalism. But I’m no expert and I also think it’s better to think of physicalism or naturalism as a commitment to a method of inquiry rather than a settled philosophical stance. So the fact it might be decisive won’t stop the naturalist efforts toward “solving” the problem.
It's easy to imagine no consciousness on Mars because there do not seem to be any living beings on Mars. I can likewise imagine Earth without consciousness if I imagine it without any animal life. What I have trouble imagining is a hypothetical world in which you and I both exist, with physical bodies identical to the ones we have in this world, and yet we are not conscious in the hypothetical world even though we are conscious in this world.
Your last line is intriguing. What does it mean for subjective experiences to have no causal mechanism?
Descartes' cogito is precisely where I start to find zombie world impossible to imagine. So you imagine a parallel universe physically identical to this one in every way except that it lacks qualia. And in that universe a zombie named Descartes says "cogito ergo sum" even though there is nothing that it is like to be him. Why did he say that? Well that universe operates according to the same physics as this one, so presumably everything that happens in it is a necessary consequence of the rules of physics. And that zombie has a physically identical brain with the same neurons with connections shaped by the same DNA and same life history as the real Descartes, and they fired in precisely the same way as the neurons in the brain of the real Decartes fired when he said "cogito ergo sum." So then presumably we can explain the zombie's utterance on physics alone in a manner like this; otherwise the zombie universe would not be possible. But the real world Decartes is physically identical to the zombie, so if we have an explanation for the zombie's utterance, we have an explanation for the real Decartes' utterance as well! And this is the implication zombie argument believers rarely acknowledge: that a possible zombie world not only means physics doesn't give rise to consciousness, it means consciousness doesn't give rise to anything, not even this conversation we are having. Zombies would have this same conversation, and we have all the same reasons for having it that they do. So what are we even talking about?
So no I cannot picture zombie world. If I can picture a world with Descartes uttering the words "cogito ergo sum" for reasons that must necessarily match the reasons the real Decartes said it, surely I am picturing a world with consciousness, even if it is not obvious how the physical rules of that universe give rise to it.
Yes, I like this way of looking at it in terms of the "cogito". What makes the argument tricky is that I do think there can be a system with convincingly similar behavior to a conscious being without being conscious itself. That explains some of the intuition of the zombie argument. But the problem for p-zombies (philosophical zombies) is the requirement to be physically identical, not just behaviorally similar. That's the part that I have trouble imagining.
The question isn't whether you believe in p-zombies, it's whether you believe a physical description of the world is sufficient to describe an unconscious universe that looks like ours but something additional is needed to explain consciousness. The zombie argument is supposed to prove that, but I find zombie Descartes absurd enough that I consider zombies a stronger argument for the opposite proposition -- nothing more than the physical is needed for consciousness.
Either a physical clone of Descartes would for physical reasons do what Descartes does, in which case the physics gives rise to consciousness even if it isn't obvious how, or physics alone would not result in Descartes saying "cogito ergo sum", in which case p-zombies are also impossible and whatever is missing from physics must have observable consequences from a third person scientific perspective not just a first person one -- the brain must sometimes do things that can't be explained by known physics. I am skeptical of the latter but the zombie argument is entirely irrelevant to that sort of theory of consciousness.
I am more optimistic about studying consciousness scientifically, although it is hard to get the terms right and the field is still in its early days.
Let's say I start out with just my subjective experience and no knowledge of the physical world. I'm okay with making that distinction. Here's where my thinking diverges from yours: As long as I have no knowledge of the physical world, then I cannot say whether or not my subjective experience is itself a physical phenomenon.
As you say, I know that something is having experiences; but I do not know the nature of that something beyond the content of those experiences. As I learn more about the physical world, by exploring it through my senses, I discover that I seem to have a physical body and that certain physical changes seem to produce different subjective experiences.
Through ever more sophisticated study, I may discover that every variation in subjective experience involves a corresponding variation in physical properties, and thereby come to the conclusion that my subjective experience is actually an emergent phenomenon within the physical world. The fact that I started my investigation with just my subjective experience does not contradict such a physicalist conclusion.
Great article, I enjoyed the slant on this one.
When you say “the fact remains that the “Mary” and zombie world arguments do not end up describing anything beyond those correlates.” the non-physicalist will reply – Yes, Exactly!
How is it you know about consciousness at all? Only because you have it. And no description of anything physical will take us beyond the correlates. That "is" the hard problem.
As to imagining zombies, I do it by thinking of a sophisticated robot, which you understand all the inner workings or mechanisms because you built it, but nowhere in that robot is an inner feel. So when it reports it has experience and it’s favourite food is pizza, it’s only the language centre stringing symbols together according to it's programming.
It’s easier to think this robot is a zombie than starting with Mary who is too similar to us. The exercise isn’t to imagine "what it is like" to be a zombie, because the answer is - nothing.
It’s only to show there is no contradiction in supposing we could build a robot identical to biological Mary which wouldn’t have inner experience. It would only go through the mechanistic motions.
And as you say - “That still leaves open the question of which systems have such a perspective and why they do.” That’s true, because the particular answers to those questions depends on your theory of consciousness.
Thank you!
Regarding the non-physicalist replying "Yes, Exactly" -- in your opinion, how strong are the original "Mary" and zombie world thought experiments as arguments against physicalism? That's what I'm grappling with. It seems to me that, in order to argue against physicalism, they must describe something non-physical, but they don't actually do so.
Regarding the sophisticated robot -- I actually agree with you that it is possible for a robot to produce convincing reports without being conscious, although I think it depends on just how those reports are being produced. A robot would not be identical to biological Mary down to the smallest detail without being biological itself, but it could simulate Mary's brain more or less accurately. A good theory of consciousness might be able to identify when a simulation is "accurate enough" for consciousness to emerge.
Consciousness starts out as non-physical. It doesn’t have physical properties like mass, charge, dimension, but instead qualia and intentionality.
That’s the hard problem for the physicalist. Because they have to find some way to show it is physical, despite not having physical properties. If that can’t be done, then physicalism is false.
Personally, I think those arguments are decisive against physicalism. But I’m no expert and I also think it’s better to think of physicalism or naturalism as a commitment to a method of inquiry rather than a settled philosophical stance. So the fact it might be decisive won’t stop the naturalist efforts toward “solving” the problem.
It's easy to imagine no consciousness on Mars because there do not seem to be any living beings on Mars. I can likewise imagine Earth without consciousness if I imagine it without any animal life. What I have trouble imagining is a hypothetical world in which you and I both exist, with physical bodies identical to the ones we have in this world, and yet we are not conscious in the hypothetical world even though we are conscious in this world.
Your last line is intriguing. What does it mean for subjective experiences to have no causal mechanism?
Descartes' cogito is precisely where I start to find zombie world impossible to imagine. So you imagine a parallel universe physically identical to this one in every way except that it lacks qualia. And in that universe a zombie named Descartes says "cogito ergo sum" even though there is nothing that it is like to be him. Why did he say that? Well that universe operates according to the same physics as this one, so presumably everything that happens in it is a necessary consequence of the rules of physics. And that zombie has a physically identical brain with the same neurons with connections shaped by the same DNA and same life history as the real Descartes, and they fired in precisely the same way as the neurons in the brain of the real Decartes fired when he said "cogito ergo sum." So then presumably we can explain the zombie's utterance on physics alone in a manner like this; otherwise the zombie universe would not be possible. But the real world Decartes is physically identical to the zombie, so if we have an explanation for the zombie's utterance, we have an explanation for the real Decartes' utterance as well! And this is the implication zombie argument believers rarely acknowledge: that a possible zombie world not only means physics doesn't give rise to consciousness, it means consciousness doesn't give rise to anything, not even this conversation we are having. Zombies would have this same conversation, and we have all the same reasons for having it that they do. So what are we even talking about?
So no I cannot picture zombie world. If I can picture a world with Descartes uttering the words "cogito ergo sum" for reasons that must necessarily match the reasons the real Decartes said it, surely I am picturing a world with consciousness, even if it is not obvious how the physical rules of that universe give rise to it.
Yes, I like this way of looking at it in terms of the "cogito". What makes the argument tricky is that I do think there can be a system with convincingly similar behavior to a conscious being without being conscious itself. That explains some of the intuition of the zombie argument. But the problem for p-zombies (philosophical zombies) is the requirement to be physically identical, not just behaviorally similar. That's the part that I have trouble imagining.
The question isn't whether you believe in p-zombies, it's whether you believe a physical description of the world is sufficient to describe an unconscious universe that looks like ours but something additional is needed to explain consciousness. The zombie argument is supposed to prove that, but I find zombie Descartes absurd enough that I consider zombies a stronger argument for the opposite proposition -- nothing more than the physical is needed for consciousness.
Either a physical clone of Descartes would for physical reasons do what Descartes does, in which case the physics gives rise to consciousness even if it isn't obvious how, or physics alone would not result in Descartes saying "cogito ergo sum", in which case p-zombies are also impossible and whatever is missing from physics must have observable consequences from a third person scientific perspective not just a first person one -- the brain must sometimes do things that can't be explained by known physics. I am skeptical of the latter but the zombie argument is entirely irrelevant to that sort of theory of consciousness.
I am more optimistic about studying consciousness scientifically, although it is hard to get the terms right and the field is still in its early days.
Let's say I start out with just my subjective experience and no knowledge of the physical world. I'm okay with making that distinction. Here's where my thinking diverges from yours: As long as I have no knowledge of the physical world, then I cannot say whether or not my subjective experience is itself a physical phenomenon.
As you say, I know that something is having experiences; but I do not know the nature of that something beyond the content of those experiences. As I learn more about the physical world, by exploring it through my senses, I discover that I seem to have a physical body and that certain physical changes seem to produce different subjective experiences.
Through ever more sophisticated study, I may discover that every variation in subjective experience involves a corresponding variation in physical properties, and thereby come to the conclusion that my subjective experience is actually an emergent phenomenon within the physical world. The fact that I started my investigation with just my subjective experience does not contradict such a physicalist conclusion.