Philip Goff and Keith Frankish talk about Shombies (and get it wrong!)

[@nivideus]

I think the shombie argument is effective for showing conceivability is an unreliable guide to metaphysical possibility, I have pointed to it a few times when p-zombies are brought up. A lot of people misunderstand it for some reason, or maybe I am the one who is misunderstood. A common critique is that the shombie argument uses conceivability to go right to metaphysical necessity while p-zombies shows a metaphysical possibility which undermines a metaphysical necessity, but I don't think this is the case. I think you're just showing a symmetrical inverse argument holds up with the same strength, which undermines Chalmers' use of conceivability as a guide to possibility in the first place. At 11:50 - I find this distinction confusing. What do you mean by "real"? Is it possible to expand on what you are thinking of in this aspect of your argument? I was under the impression that Keith thinks the appearance of phenomenal consciousness IS "real" in that the appearance is a real part of the physical structure and function of physical consciousness, but it is the ontological status of this appearance as a special, intrinsic property beyond the physical that is not real, which is what actually constitutes the illusion. I think this would line up with what you say here. Is this not the case? I know there are some forms of illusionism that do fully deny phenomenal consciousness, but I thought Keith's conception was different?

[@onemorebrown]

Right, that is my point! We don't go straight to metaphysical necessity. We show that there is a possible work that undermines their metaphysical necessity! By 'real' I mean that it is not just an appearance. Phenomenal consciousness I mostly how we think it is (it is not an illusion)

[@andystewart9701]

I really recommend to anyone watching and interested in the shombies argument to read Professor Brown’s paper Deprioritizing the A Priori Arguments Against Physicalism where this is discussed. I think you allude to this paper but didn’t give the name of it. I think it is a great paper and I find your case very convincing. Thanks for this response video!

[@onemorebrown]

Thanks, I appreciate the plug!

[@DigitalGnosis]

Philosophy KZbin BEEF

[@onemorebrown]

it's on sight! (ad by 'it' I mean 'the argument')

[@timang3138]

13:32 I think Goff responded w 'dual carving' (what is that?)

[@onemorebrown]

Dual Carving is Goff's name for the view that there may be two distinct concepts, each of which transparently reveals the essential nature of their referent, and which happen to pick out the same thing. So, in this case, there would be the concept of the physical state P, and the concept of the experiential state E. P would pick out the physical state by its essential nature and E would pick out the experiential state by its nature, and they would happen to be picking out the same thing. That they pick out the same thing would be something which could not be known a priori. You are right that he responded with this in our discussion, but my point was that there was no response in writing, in the literature. Informal discussions on YOuTube are not the same as a peer-reviewed article.

[@swagmasterdoritos]

Wouldn't the symmetry to the zombie argument (such as to put their conceivability's in conflict) need to be a kind of "conceivability of a lack of a conceptual gap between physical and phenomenal properties", or in other words, a "conceivability of the inconceivability of zombies"? But wouldn't this be incoherent for those who find zombies conceivable in the first place? Wouldn't the mere positive conceivability of x necessarily commit one to denying the notion of its own inconceivability, thereby shombies/ anti-zombies? It certainly seems that the conceivability of zombies is more readily apparent than their being inconceivable such as to, if nothing else, grant more weight to "zombies-over-anti-zombies-conceivability" compared to the alternative. If the only point is that conceivability isn't in-itself anywhere close to a sufficient guide to metaphysical possibility, then that's obviously fair. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted anything (or everything).

[@onemorebrown]

Seems to who? Not me!

[@roberto_j]

I wonder if you've ever talked to or written about phenomenalism or noumenalism (transcendental idealism a la Rae Langton), your María case strikes me as a nice intuition pump for those positions above any traditional dualism or physicalism

[@onemorebrown]

I haven't but ti should try to get Rae Langton to come on and talk with me about it!

[@MontyCantsin5]

Unrelated to the topic of the video, but I wondered if you would consider a discussion with Graham Priest. I know he's a logician and not a philosopher of mind, but his views on god-particularly as they have manifested themselves through eastern traditions-nothingness as the ground of reality, metaphysics, physicalism, etc. would be interesting to engage with as I'm sure you could push him further than most interviewers who have talked to him for YT videos.

[@onemorebrown]

That's a great idea, thanks!

[@clashmanthethird]

Goff did respond to the shombies argument though? It'd be nice if he developed the response and put it in print, but he did respond during your episode with him. He said that the zombie argument and shombie argument are symmetrical and both concievable, but only if you accept dual carving, and if you reject dual carving, zombies are conceivable and shombies aren't, and he argued we should reject dual carving. Is there anything that response misses, or do you just accept dual carving?

[@onemorebrown]

Yes my point was that he never replied in print and just goes o asserting that the conceivability argument is successful (in print). I don't accept dual carving, but I don't envy it either. I don't think it has the consequences that he thinks it does, but even if it did I don't see the problem with a rejection of a priori knowledge. I also don;t think we need dual carving in order to get the argument working. Goff acknowledges that there are all kinds of things we can't read off our transparent concepts of experience. For example we don't know if naive realism is true, or if they are composed of more fundamental micoexperiences, and so on. I think that is enough to get the idea that we grasp the experiential nature but not the fuller property, which may be physical.

[@TheEivindBerge]

So a shombie is a duplicate of you? Without being you? How do we know they are not identical?

[@uninspired3583]

Imo, i think the point is to show that a conciecability argument doesn't get us anywhere. It doesn't tell us about the way things actually are, only what we can conceive of. So he mirrors the philosophical zombie in the other direction.

[@PeteMandik]

right

[@aarongbhenry]

i haven't read your shombies paper yet (apologies). But from the sounds of it, you are making a type-b physicalist move like the one katalin balog makes in "in defense of the phenomenal concept strategy", where she suggests, among other things, that it's conceivable that a (minimal) physical duplicate of our world is a phenomenal duplicate. If so, then the second premise of the conceivability argument linking an epistemic gap to a metaphysical gap is conceivably false and -- given that this principle if true is true *a priori* -- it is false. hence, the conceivability argument fails at premise 2. does that sound right to you? i don't know if that's what frankish had in mind back when he wrote the anti-zombies paper, but with his turn to illusionism, he seems much more in the type-a camp.

[@onemorebrown]

I am very sympathetic to Balog's view! My strategy, though, is to grant the 2D framework to the opponent and to argue that one or the other of zombies must be inconceivable, but we can't know which (currently)

[@zelenisok]

So the shombies argument is just against non-physicalism that claims physicalism is impossible? I am a non-physicalist and don't claim that physicalism is impossible, so it doesn't apply to my view?

[@onemorebrown]

What reason do you have for accepting non-physicalism?

[@MontyCantsin5]

Why would you be a non-physicalist?

[@zelenisok]

@@onemorebrown I accept LFW, and I think it's a kinda simple argument from there to substance dualism; and also when I do a sort of system elimination approach to phil of mind, IMO substance dualism comes out on top as the strongest / least weak of the available views. Both of these reasons give me a conclusion that substance dualism is (the most) plausible view, not it's necessary, or that any of the other phil of mind positions are impossible..

[@onemorebrown]

@@zelenisok what is LFW?

[@onemorebrown]

Also, you agree that it is possible that consciousness is physical? So what, in your opinion, is the reason for thinking that it isn't actually physical?