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Debate 5: Whether zombies are possible

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Debate 5: Whether zombies are possible

Paul
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Joined: Mar 10, 2002

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Posted 08/29/04 - 03:37 AM:	#11
Note that I'll ignore AKG's talk of mailing redness and qualia and the like due to word count limitations. It's evident that his claim that qualia implies dualism is false, since other theories explain qualia much better (not hard, since as noted dualism doesn't actually explain anything, it merely waves a wand to delare that there must be an explanation somewhere). AKG makes an excellent point in the spots where he says we must not be slaves of intuition. Intuition can be an effective check to make you reevaluate it if the position you're holding contradicts with everything that seems obvious (hence the purpose of philosophical 'intuition pumps'), but it is not a law. Unfortunately he fails to heed his own advice, since he has again and again based his arguments on his intuition that there must be a magical solution out there somewhere for dualism since he happens to intuit that feels right to him. How his intuition makes it seem to him that the difference between the appearance of something and the thing in itself implies dualism, as he says at the end of his post, is certainly beyond me – particularly as that very distinction is what Kant used to demonstrate the impossibility of objective dualism in the CPR. Most likely he is confusing empirical dualism with objective dualism, which I suppose would be an intuitive thing to do, yet seriously incorrect. I suggest AKG cease relying on his intuition. AKG has now outright proposed that there are magical metaphysical laws which will make whatever he wants possible. I will agree with him that we don't have any known and tested laws of metaphysics -- that, obviously, is because it's utter nonsense to suggest that there could be such things. The kind of substance-metaphysics he imagines is impossible to logically defend for a simple reason: it denies all evidence of itself. AKG proposes that because we don't have a scientifically validated cookbook for witchcraft, it somehow follows that he need not provide any evidence for saying that his spells are possible. All of AKG's arguments could just as easily be applied to argue that it is possible that 1+1=5. I hereby propose a model in which there is a magical metaphysical law (which I need not explain the nature or functioning of, because it's metaphysics and metaphysics has become our code word for any kind of ad hoc magic which we don't wish to explain) which makes 1+1 equal 5. To the "sum of two instances of a number can't equal 5 times the number" counterargument, I say that in the 5th dimension we don't know how addition might work. Now, to all objections anyone may try to bring against my beautiful model I will declare that you cannot prove that my model is not possible because my model is a metaphysical law, and there are no set proofs of which metaphysical laws are valid or invalid-- meaning I can say my cherished law is a possibly valid metaphysical law. Hence, according to AKG's version of logic 1+1 may equal 5. Kids, I suggest you don't try this on your math test. (Now for the next trick he can just as easily demonstrate that colorless green ideas may possibly sleep furiously.) A point-by-point breakdown: It is a necessary consequence of the AKG's position on the invalidity of physical evidence that we would never have any reason at all to think anyone conscious [short of psychic powers, which he did not argue for]. We would be compelled to become either solipsists (dismissing the whole universe as imaginary) or eliminative materialists (dismissing consciousness and qualia as imaginary). Neither solipsists nor eliminative materialists, incidentally, can claim that some people have consciousness and others not – so they cannot believe in the possibility of zombies. AKG rejects the common sense ways we do every day evaluate people for consciousness, yet at the very same time he argues that we are usually correct in concluding that people are conscious or rocks are not conscious. He's being internally inconsistent. If he followed his arguments through rationally, he could not believe that anyone is conscious unless he claims to be using psychic powers to directly see people's consciousness without going through physical means. He has argued for the unacceptability of using our senses to determine if consciousness exists, yet has failed to counter to point that this forces him to say we can't use our senses to determine if anything at all exists. According to AKG's arguments we cannot conclude from physical examination of something that the thing is actually there -- we can only conclude that we have sensations, apparently, since the sensations are all that we are in direct possession of. Here he is compelled by another of his own arguments to be a solipsist, and solipsism makes zombies impossible. He bases his arguments on shaky attempts at interpreting science. Of course, the fact that scientific theories have rested on declaring that basically magical things happen is exactly what has in every case lead to the eventual downfall of the scientific theory proposing it. Science is always a work in progress... we settle for irrational placeholders for a period of time, but eventually we find the real explanation to replace it. He asserts later that the EPR paradox somehow supports Newton, which is rather an odd claim. EPR leads us directly to Bell's theorem. Bell gives us the options of non-locality, idealism or throwing out logic. All scientists choose one of the first two. Idealism directly contradicts to dualism and zombies. Non-locality indicates the interconnectedness of the physical world, not mysterious action at a distance... the speed of light is the limit for transmission of information, non-locality cannot transmit information, cannot be involved in actions, so clearly does not help AKG. It is absolutely impossible to provide a counterexample to the rule of brain patterns meaning consciousness, and AKG has not debated this. Surely we can see that there is no meaning to claiming that something is not true if there is no possibility of a theoretical counterexample. It's the same as saying that there's an invisible undetectable pink elephant standing on someone's head. Suggesting that zombies are possible is just as irrational as suggesting that the undetectable pink elephant is possible. AKG has failed to demonstrate how dualism, which is a necessary precondition for zombies, can be possible. He has not given us a rational model of how it can work. His model is only a model in the sense that "1+1=5, because 1 could act like 3 and 2 depending on what the weather is like in the 10th dimension" is a model. He has not solved the interaction problem, or even made a reasonable attempt to address it. My opponent admits that he can't tell you how anyone might go about creating a plan to throw a softball at the gross national product, yet he continues to baselessly assert that it is possible. AKG provides no argument against the fact that if dualism is not accepted zombies are impossible, and yet also gives no solid reason for accepting dualism. Dualism is a precondition for the possibility of zombies... without dualism being established, zombies are clearly not possible. From all of this I must conclude that to propose the possibility of zombies is irrational. In practice, what the dualist is trying to do is use zombies to prove dualism even though the possibility of zombies clearly requires that dualism be true in the first place... in other words, all the dualist is doing with the zombie matter is begging the question. Dualism tries to dredge up the problem of other minds in the disguise of zombies and pretend that it is unsolvable. It admits to having no evidence, it admits to having no solid theoretical grounding... and of all things, it dares to appeal to intuition as its sole backing even though it stands in contradiction to our intuitive sense we demonstrate every day, our common sense ability to realize that a person's brain has quite a lot to do with whether they're conscious. We ask a person if he believes there may be zombies, and he says yes. We ask him if he's seen any evidence, and he tells us it's absolutely impossible to ever see evidence for it because no physical investigation can determine such a thing... physical investigation has been declared an invalid method of inquiry. We decide then that he must have a really good theory behind it if he believes it despite the impossibility of evidence, so we ask him how it works. He states that he has no idea how it works, it's something far beyond his grasp. We can surely see that the person's belief is utterly irrational. Perhaps you can believe something you can't find any evidence for as long as you have a really good theoretical concept behind it, but if you don't have a theory either then your belief is clearly not justified. I thank AKG for the enjoyable debate.

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