[Part 1] Philosopher reacts to "Keith Frankish: What is Descartes' Prison?"

[@andystewart9701]

Glad your back! Tevin Naidu’s channel is good! He is a doctor or psychiatrist that is interested in consciousness studies.

[@real_pattern]

good good good. very good. very very good. mmmm yes. yes, this is good. thank you very much. it's good.

[@timang3138]

Hi Richard, I'm curious about your shombie argument. What's its conclusion and how does the inference go?

[@onemorebrown]

For all the gory details you can see my 2010 paper 'Deprioritizing the A Priori Arguments against Physicalism" but the basic argument is very simple. I can conceive of a world where all there is as physics like our and a physical duplicate of me that is phenomenally conscious. From there you can either say that since it is conceivable it is therefore possible and thus dualism is false, or one could say that since both zombies and shombies are conceivable then there is no link between conceivability and possibility. I opt for the former since I am arguing against those who accept a priori reasoning. For me the upshot is that we don't which of the two are really ideally conceivable. Shombies seem so to me, zombies to others so what are we supposed to do? A priori reasoning seems to end in a stalemate and we likely need more empirical work (compare: water being H2O is knowable a priori (according to some) but even so it was discovered empirically by us. I tend to think the same thing about consciousness.

[@timang3138]

​@@onemorebrownI greatly appreciate the roadmap! I favour the dialectic one faces for zombies rather than shombies, given that shombies involve a concessionary and forced "that's-all" operator about identity. In Chalmers' constructing the world, the coherence heuristic asks whether a given hypothesis can be ruled out a priori. Insofar as the shombie hypothesis is that all the microphysical truths obtain, that's all, and some positive truths about consciousness obtain, its coherence is far from obvious. It doesn't satisfy the coherence heuristic, at least in my prima facie judgement. Maybe the zombie hypothesis doesn't either, in many other people's judgements. I think that the dialectical force of c(PT&Q) turns especially on heuristic (or otherwise intuitive) justification for c(shombies), where c represents ideal conceivability - I'm curious about what you think.

[@timang3138]

​@@onemorebrownBut when it comes to Chalmers' 2D argument, its first premise in effect is that microphysical truths are structurally/dynamically analyzable, phenomenal truths must be s/d analyzable if a priori entailed by s/d truths, and phenomenal truths aren't s/d analyzable. By definitional stipulation Chalmers goes on to make, this conjunctive premise in effect is that c(PT&~Q). This way, we can readily see that the zombie intuition is expendable for Chalmers' purposes. Even if you're right that heuristic justification for c(PT&~Q) can't be subsumed under antecedent support for c(PT&~Q), there’s at best highly dubious grounds for denying any of the 3 conjuncts. Correspondingly, there's strong reason to accept the physical/phenomenal gap that no such a priori entailment exists and forgo type-A/type-C materialism, regardless of how substantial the body of people who find c(shombies) or c(zombies) obvious is. What are your thoughts on whether s/d can explain why s/d is accompanied by something s/d unanalyzable? Whether the principle that s/d explain only s/d is conceivably false? Whether the principle's justification is an a priori matter?

[@timang3138]

@@onemorebrown But when it comes to Chalmers' 2D argument, its first premise in effect is that microphysical truths are structurally/dynamically analyzable, phenomenal truths must be s/d analyzable if a priori entailed by s/d truths, and phenomenal truths aren't s/d analyzable. By definitional stipulation Chalmers goes on to make, this conjunctive premise in effect is that c(PT&~Q). This way, we can readily see that the zombie intuition is expendable for Chalmers' purposes. Even if you're right that heuristic justification for c(PT&~Q) can't be subsumed under antecedent support for c(PT&~Q), there’s at best highly dubious grounds for denying any of the 3 conjuncts. Correspondingly, there's strong reason to accept the physical/phenomenal gap that no such a priori entailment exists and forgo type-A/type-C materialism, regardless of how substantial the body of people who find c(shombies) or c(zombies) obvious is. What are your thoughts on whether s/d can explain why s/d is accompanied by something s/d unanalyzable? Whether the principle that s/d explain only s/d is conceivably false? Whether the principle's justification is an a priori matter?

[@timang3138]

But when it comes to Chalmers' 2D argument, its first premise in effect is that microphysical truths are structurally/dynamically analyzable, phenomenal truths must be s/d analyzable if a priori entailed by s/d truths, and phenomenal truths aren't s/d analyzable. By definitional stipulation Chalmers goes on to make, this conjunctive premise in effect is that c(PT&~Q). This way, we can readily see that the zombie intuition is expendable for Chalmers' purposes. Even if you're right that heuristic justification for c(PT&~Q) can't be subsumed under antecedent support for c(PT&~Q), there’s at best highly dubious grounds for denying any of the 3 conjuncts. Correspondingly, there's strong reason to accept the physical/phenomenal gap that no such a priori entailment exists and forgo type-A/type-C materialism, regardless of how substantial the body of people who find c(shombies) or c(zombies) obvious is. What are your thoughts on whether s/d can explain why s/d is accompanied by something s/d unanalyzable? Whether the principle that s/d explain only s/d is conceivably false? Whether the principle's justification is an a priori matter?