From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 19 2000 - 21:43:26 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Dan Fabulich wrote:
> >
> > For the purposes of discussion with you, I'm an epiphenomenalist. To
> > the extent that we have conscious experiences at all, our experiences
> > do not cause anything to happen in the world at all.
>
> Ummm... what is it that you're writing about, then? I'm curious, since
> your fingers are hitting the keyboard and all...
I only adopted that view for the purposes of discussion. In fact, as
you may recall, I'm a complete anti-realist about "experiences"
generally. I believe that we can and should reinterpret claims about
consciousness and qualia as claims about non-mental entities, because
the mental entities aren't "really" there, much like "the creeps."
I had a different point to make in that post, however, so I adopted
epiphenomenalism as a useful starting point. My point was that no
scientific theory can be given about how we have consciousness.
Granted, if one is anti-realist about consciousness, this falls out in
one step: it's hard to have a good explanation for the existence of
stuff that's not really there. (But darned if Steve won't try!) But
the point is that even if I'm an epiphenomenalist, I have the same
problem. I'm not sure, but John Clark may be an epiphenomenalist (as
described above) as well; I know he has said in the past that no
theory of consciousness can be defended scientifically.
As for you, Eliezer, I know you think that experiences affect the
physical world (so we can, in principle, discover this
scientifically). But I doubt that you're right about that. If you're
not, then I think one has to fall back on epiphenomenalism or mental
anti-realism.
Steve believes that non-physical things can't interact with physical
things. If I argue successfully that he ought to be an
epiphenomenalist if he is to believe in experiences at all, then I can
show that he's got to give up MVT as a theory of consciousness (though
not as a theory of conscious-like behavior).
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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