Consciousness Live! with Brian Cutter

0:02 All right, we are live and sniffling right off the bat. Uh, okay. Um, sorry about that, but joining me today is a very special guest. Um, Brian, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do for those who might?

0:37 UT Austin. I worked with Michael Thai and Adam Poutz were my co-advisors. Uh after that spent a year at at NYU and then started here at Notre Dame in 2016. Um yeah, within philosophy of mind, which I understand is like the main main focus of of this this channel, uh I work on, you know, the metaphysics of consciousness, um and philosophy of perception mainly. Um but I'm kind of interested in, you know, all Yeah. mainly the kind of like big picture

1:10 fundamental metaphysical questions about the mind and its place in nature, that sort of thing.

1:41 son. Um, and so it was becoming scarce on the scene for a time, so to speak, but Okay. Very cool. So I I actually hadn't realized, not that it matters or anything, but you know, I I hadn't formally realized that you came through um New York. So that's very cool. Now, one of the things that I find very interesting about your work and you have a lot of uh sort of videos and you've done a lot of p public philosophy work, I would say, where you write the technical paper um and then you put the paper up and then you say, "Oh, here's the podcast discussion of that paper." And you have both of those sort of available on your website, which I

2:14 personally thought was a very cool format, which I hadn't seen. I I've seen other people sort of say, "Here's my talking about it and here's my paper, but I never saw anyone sort of say just outright here they both are as though they're both legitimate." And so I found that very nice actually um that you engage in this kind of public philosophy. Uh and I just wondered if that was something you intended on doing or did you just kind of fall into that or how did you do you think of yourself as a public philosopher? I actually have not really made any positive effort to do public philosophy though. Um, one thing I found so you know right around

2:47 the time maybe shortly after getting tenure I started doing more work in kind of philosophy of religion because that's that's an interest of mine. Um, and I found like when I would publish things in philosophy of religion, there's this whole like ecosystem of like philosophy of religion themed YouTube channels that would ask me on to to to do interviews. And in many cases these are people I I I didn't know but they had you know seen my work and just because and some you know some some of them are uh professional philosophers some of them

3:21 are just kind of people with real jobs who happen to be interested in philosophy and and have have YouTube channels and so um yeah I started getting these invit in invitations mostly about my my work in philosophy of religion. Um but yeah, I think you know after getting like some visibility in this kind of parallel universe of YouTube philosophy uh I started getting more invitations about some you know some of my philosophy of mind work and so um yeah that's that's just kind of how how it's gone and um yeah good.

3:55 Well, I'm I'm that's interesting to hear because I've had the same sort of experience. I mean, with my YouTube channel of finding out that there's this community of people that are very engaged and especially like in places like Discord in these places that I wouldn't usually typically hang out, but it turns out they've been playing video games this whole time and arguing about philosophy and then they sort of just, you know, jumped into the philosophy. So, it's very cool to find these online communities and Yeah. and get that see the hunger for philosophy because sometimes people portray philosophy as kind of this out of touch discipline that is an ivory tower but actually people are very interested in these

4:28 questions and very interested in the arguments and it's very nice to see people uh with expertise coming coming and saying look okay let's be serious about this and but do it in a public way so I very much uh enjoy that

5:00 which sometimes you find in passing maybe in a philosopher's work here or there. uh but but you've been doing it in a very explicit way and I'm thinking of you know certain recent papers of yours about psychophysical harmony but also just in other places where you say where you really take seriously like what do these things about the mind these philosophical views contribute to these other discussions. So what and you were saying that that was just you did that after you got tenure or were you always thinking along these lines of connecting these two areas or

5:34 school I've been very interested in philosophy of religion and kind of big big picture metaphysical questions and you know naturalism versus theism and things like this. Uh and I I've always seen these as interestingly connected to philosophy of mind. Um, and I I mean I think a lot of people do and there's there's a kind of natural attitude that a lot of people have where there's um you know if if if you if you want to go in for some kind of dualism about consciousness that's going to cohhere a

6:08 little more nicely with certain non-naturalistic views. I mean that that there's an interesting question here. Of course, there are people like David Schalmer's who argue for like naturalistic forms of dualism and say, "No, you can say that consciousness is irreducible to any physical processes, but still kind of linked to the physical by laws of nature and we don't need to embed that within like any kind of like bigger picture where there's like a supernatural creator or anything like that." And certainly those those views are logically consistent. I've I'm kind of increasingly of the opinion that uh

6:42 the combination of dualist like views about consciousness and metaphysical naturalism what you know while there's no incompatibility there they're not actually going to play very well together. Um and that's that's one of the themes of my work on psychophysical harmony. Um, but yeah, I I one of the reasons I'm interested in the metaphysics of mind is just because I think questions in the metaphysics of mind have bearing on these broader kind of worldview questions about like naturalism versus, you know, various alternatives.

7:50 want to ask you is about this link between your view about the mind and the view about theism and I'm wondering if it really is your view that you couldn't be a Christian physicalist uh or a Muslim physicist or just generally a theist physicalist. Um, now I heard you say that yes, more naturally dualism sort of fits with it and blah blah blah, but but I'm I'm wondering actually I didn't mean to say blah blah blah, but I etc. Obviously the professional term,

8:23 contradiction here? Or do you think that you could parody your psychophysical ar harmony argument from the physicalist point of view by saying well roughly speaking um consciousness is physical it can't be explained naturalistically so God must have done it or there must so is that kind of how is that argument not a similar type of argument and how do you feel about that kind of parody move I guess is what I wanted to ask you.

8:57 compatible with theism. I mean I mean maybe physicalism about the entirety of reality isn't compatible with theism at least if theism is defined as like an immaterial being with certain properties. But physicalism about human beings and you know their mental states could could well be true even if the whole physical world including human beings was created by an immaterial god. Um there there's no incompatibility there when it comes to

10:01 property dualist about consciousness. Um, now I I do think that when it comes to certain specific forms of theism, like Christian theism, uh, there's at least going to be difficulties that arise in trying to combine that with physicalism about the mind or about consciousness or about human persons. I mean, so two two big issues come to mind. Um, one is, you know, there are arguments out there that I find pretty plausible that, uh, physicalism is incompatible with like a really robust

10:36 kind of free will.

11:11 free like deep metaphysically robust free will and moral responsibility. Um and then the other the other connection would just be like making sense of the possibility of an afterlife. Um so you know Peter Vanderwogen who thinks who's like a physicalist about human persons will say okay the the afterlife it doesn't involve the existence the continued existence of a disembodied soul after death but he thinks that you know that was never the the Christian conception of the afterlife anyway. The Christian conception involved like a bodily resurrection. Um but okay fine

11:45 but there's still a question of like well how could God resurrect me? I I I see how God could resurrect like a lookalike. You know, he could take a bunch of atoms and form them in a Brianlike shape. Uh but would that really be me? Now you got to worry about like personal identity conditions. Maybe there's not the right kind of like causal continuity between, you know, me at death and this like reassembled version person who looks kind of like me. And you know, Peter Peter Veneran has weird things to say about how to solve this problem, but it's it's certainly a difficulty. Whereas, you

12:19 know, if you're some kind of like substance dualist and there's like an immaterial soul that's an essential part of you that continues to exist after bodily death, you know, there's there's maybe a more straightforward story for how you could continue to exist. Uh

12:51 stuff correctly. So yeah, because this is why I was asking I was curious about whether your view was that it ruled out of you like in wagons actually or vaning van in wwagons or because I was hearing you say that dualism was like more I guess you mean just more like common sensically the the thing that's often associated with these kinds of views not but I thought you were saying something stronger

13:26 metaphysical naturalism.

13:58 consciousness specific reasons to reject naturalism. I'm not totally sure about this. I mean this is going to interact a little bit with you know questions about cosmological finetuning. So, you know, given physicalism about consciousness, you, you know, presumably you need certain very specific physical configurations to come about in order to get conscious beings. And then, you know, you could argue that like the the basic physical laws and constants needed to be highly fine-tuned in in order to get the relevant configurations. And therefore, you know, may maybe the best

14:32 explanation for why there are

15:07 uh if you grant that this is like at least epistemically in the realm of things to consider then what do you make of the parody argument from there to the existence of uh of God from the kind of you know miraculous physical nature of because if I understand the psychophysical harmony it's kind of you know First, you have to assume um you know that the epistemic arguments against physicalism are are good, which I want to question, but we'll get to that later. But if you take that first step, then of course there is a natural

15:40 question about why they line up in the way they do. If it could really is, you know, metaphysically possible that they could be any which way and in fact, you know, Tomer says so in many places that uh there are worlds where they're slightly different, very different, partially overlapped, all anything that's not logically contradictory. So it is kind of a miracle that we're in the one um that uh where they line up. So that I I sort of think that if you take that view of the nature of consciousness, you end up with this question um and you rightly press that point. However, what I was wondering about is what you might think about a

16:13 kind of physicist version of that argument where there was like a a physicalist theist who was saying rather than assuming that notion of consciousness, you could assume the physicist notion of consciousness and then argue that this suggests that God must exist in order to account for why something impossible like that could be the case, seemingly impossible for people like me. Uh really impossible for people like you. So, um, and I was wondering if you think that's a good argument for the existence of God that someone who was a like

16:47 theist identity theorist or something might give and if not, why not?

17:18 naturalistically. It has to be something

17:53 truths that like wouldn't be subject to the divine will. I mean the the traditional view um

18:28 view within the Christian theological tradition is God couldn't have made 2 plus 2 equal five

19:01 don't really see how those would be subject to divine control. And therefore, I I I don't see how their their truth could be something that that could be explained by by God. Um,

19:37 worlds. I just think God can't realize any logical possible worlds because if if he could then they would be possible. Um

20:09 worlds under the stat I mean so saying they're not pos they would be possible worlds if they were possible seems like a non

20:43 metaphysically impossible for there to be a round square then it follows that I don't have the ability to bring about a round square. And the same goes for God. God doesn't have the ability to bring about a round square. So this wasn't so Decart held an opposing view. Decart thought that God had the ability to bring about logically impossible situations. That that's not the dominant view and that's that's not really the view that I'd be attracted to. But I mean there's there are a range of options here for theistic philosophers. I mean, I that sounds convenient though to me. But I guess this isn't my main point, so I don't want to pursue this

21:17 unless unless I do kind of want to because it's interesting to me. Uh, and I'm going to be talking to Grand Priest uh next week, which is why I'm thinking about logically impossible worlds, but because I happen to think we live in one. Um, and I am convinced that there might maybe be true contradictions and I do like alternative logics, but that's a different

21:48 contradictions then maybe God can be responsible for them and you know maybe one of those contradictions is like the identity of consciousness with with some physical property. Yes. Um, I I still even even if we kind of take on board that that background sensibility, I don't immediately see how to turn that into an argument for theism. May maybe it could. I mean the the key question would be what I mean I I kind of think of these in this in broadly basian terms like we have some datim and is the datim more likely conditional on

22:22 theism than conditional on atheism and if it is it's going to be some evidential support for theism and how much evidential support will just depend on the bay factor how much more likely it was conditional on theism than on atheism. Um, now take take one of these kind of paradoxical psychophysical identities. Uh, is is there any reason to think that that's more likely conditional on theism than on on atheism? Maybe you could make that case. Maybe you could argue that just from the the value of consciousness and the fact that a perfectly good being

22:55 would uh would be motivated to to realize good states of affairs like involving consciousness and so so so may maybe you could make that case. But yeah, you I guess you would probably need to have this kind of cartisian idea that God can bring about contradictions, which you know, I'm I'm not so on board with, but I I could see, you know, there are theists like uh JC Beal who are uh you know, on board with with the idea that like God can do these contradictory things. He could like there's contradictions like in the very like

23:59 the idea that you could generate a sentence that, you know, this God doesn't know that this sentence is true or something like that and it kind of prove that he has to it be uh this either knowing and not knowing at the same time. Anyway, so I do think there are interesting questions here. However, that wasn't really what I was intending to get us into. I just happened to proximity to Graham's work made me veer off there. The reason why I originally brought that up, if you don't mind my trying to steer it back to there, was because I would I was thinking that you were going to say something like that.

24:32 Um, and then I was hoping that you would see that someone who was friendly to the identity theory would think that that's the way your psychopysical harmony argument sounds to them. um that you are trying to pry apart something which can't be pried apart and then use God as an explanation for how they get stuck together. And the first the first premise there that they can be pried apart is already like you know uh assuming something about the nature of these things that's impossible.

25:05 um which is kind of the response that you were giving me about my my uh theistic identity theorist and it's kind of so I just wanted to see if you feel like that that kind of parody of like hey wait a minute you can't you can't do that um do you agree that that's there or not? I guess that's ultimately what I was pushing towards. So I so I I definitely agree that it's someone who starts out accepting the identity theory. It's natural for them to not be on board initially with the the psychophysical

25:38 harmony argument. And so I I mean I I I totally grant that the psychophysical harmony argument is most effective from a starting point that grants you know you know taking seriously the hard problem of consciousness and and associated kind of like dualist flavored views.

26:12 it sails much more smoothly. Right

26:46 well physics tells us the kind of abstract structure of reality the kind of causal and spatiotemporal and myological structure of reality but it doesn't tell us what material things are like intrinsically and they're kind of intrinsic qualitative categorical respects. So those those aspects are called like the quiddities and maybe you know maybe like you could have different quiddities realizing the same abstract structure described by physics. That's at least one one way of developing the resellian monus view and you know as Adam Poutz has argued and others like this still is going to give rise to a

27:21 kind of psychophysical luck where um you know you you could have swapped out the actual quiddities for different quiddities and then you would have got different forms of consciousness that maybe wouldn't have been harmoniously aligned with with the physical stuff in in the way that it is in the actual world. agreed

27:54 but

28:27 does that it lines up perfectly as it should and you don't get these weird questions about how they line up in this way.

29:34 realizers of the relevant role functional properties. So you know you say like pain is C fiber firing rather than pain is having some state or other that plays the pain role. Okay. Um, well, in that view, there still might be a kind of lucky correspondence between the actual realizers of of the pain role and and and and the role that it plays. Uh, because, you know, on this view, you could have had a a different experience play the pain role and that different experience might not have like normatively harmonized with with that

30:08 role to the same extent that the actual one does. So, so if you're a kind of like identity theorist who identifies uh phenomenal properties with realizer level properties, I think there's there's there's a way of pushing a similar argument. But even setting that aside, suppose you come to it just with the attitude that like look, I'm not sure what the right view and the metaphysics of mind is. I'm open to identity theory. I'm open to dualism. I'm open to whatever else. Um

30:43 the the argument is still going to go through if we just think of it in basian terms. And so you know the the datim is there's this nice harmonious correspondence between uh the experiences like our experiences and the the associated functional roles they play.

31:17 than it is conditional on atheism essay. So the first part of that is you know it's not too unlikely conditional on theism because of the the the the value associated with psychophysical harmony. The second part is it is very very unlikely conditional on atheism. Now, here's why I think taking seriously the like the identity theory doesn't doesn't really affect that low likelihood for the the probability of harmony conditional on uh conditional on atheism. So the the claim that

31:51 phenomenal properties are identical with physical properties is neutral as to which phenomenal properties are identical to which physical properties

32:26 epistemic gap uh it's going to be a priori if if we think that there's a possibility of psychophysical identities then it should be a priori possible that pain is c fiberfiring that pain is d fiberfiring that pain is you know any number of physical properties. Um, most of these identities would not result in the kind of harmony that we're talking about. Only a small number would. Uh, and so you can argue that it's it's unlikely that you would get harmonious psychophysical identities.

32:58 thing you said you shouldn't assume, which is that the thing is not essentially that way. I mean, if it pain is a physical state, then that's what it is. It can't be realized in some other way. That's pain. If I mean that's like so if water is H2O then water is H2O. It couldn't have been some other way. It's necessarily the case that water is H2O. There may be some other imaginable situations in a 2D semantic framework where you could say some other world has XYZ that's great but it's necessarily not our world

34:06 math, the identity theory goes up. Uh the theistic goes down. When you beian out the math, it goes the other way, which seems to me suggest there's a problem with that way of reasoning for this kind of argument.

34:39 we're looking at epistemic probabilities distributed over epistemic possibilities and you know epis

35:11 wouldn't. And so like all you know all this reason so we can do like basian arguments like what what should we expect if hesperis is identical to phosphorus versus not and so I mean that that just makes sense and so like all all the kind of basian apparatus and epistemic probabilities these are distributed across epistemic possibilities even though we agree at the end of the day you know

36:17 Yeah but it's not a priori that water is H2O. So you know

37:24 knew all the facts would know which one was actual and which one wasn't so is a priori knowable that water is H2O. It just isn't how we came to know it. We came to know it empirically because we had to learn empirically that the antecedent of that conditional was confirmed. But you can just frontload that information into a new conditional and that can be known priori.

38:29 wearing a blue shirt is not the kind of thing that could be known a priori.

39:38 acquired the facts which may not be a priori but may be empirical but nonetheless doesn't figure in the op priori reasoning. the way you acquired the concepts that you're using or the the way you acquired the stuff that goes into the conditional isn't what figures in the process by which you reason to the conclusion and therefore isn't part of the justification and it doesn't count as empirically based. Therefore, even if it was in fact discovered empirically. Yeah. I I I I

40:20 don't know if I have more on on this. I mean, I just think

40:52 mean, I think that's a I'm not sure why you think that since there's the the way the knowledge was acquired isn't part of the definition of what counts as a priority or not. It counts of what justifies it.

41:59 the argument is the basian argument like here here's here's a datim it's more conditional on hypothesis one than hypothesis 2. So it raises the probability of hypothesis one relative to hypothesis 2. And sounds like you're saying well the datim if if you think about it in a certain way the datim is a priori and it's like certain a priori so it can't be evidence for anything because it can't be more likely conditional on anything than anything else. Um, but I mean to the extent that you could just make the same moves about literally any empirical datim that's used for literally any basian argument for any

42:33 hypothesis, then feel like there's there's there's some kind of overgeneration going on here. Um,

43:06 epistemic possibility would be shut because you would be able to a priori deduce from everything you have the way things are and then you would know. Um, and so you're so it sounds like you're so that that's where that's what I was trying to get at that at the at the idea that these things could be our priority known at least at the limit of ideal reasoning. And so that the question of epistemic possibility isn't sort of what I'm invoking. I'm invoking metaphysical possibility um in the way I was talking before because I'm kind of

43:40 imagining an ideal reasoner who knew everything uh and there would be no open possibilities anymore. They all be like you everything's knowable from that point of view and maybe you would say well not everything. What about consciousness and so forth and everyone has their favorite exception to the everything can be known. I personally would say no consciousness as well. But that's I agree controversial. But I don't think that this other thing I'm saying is should be as super controversial. Um that an ideal reasoner wouldn't have any epistemic possibilities open except for things that they couldn't know about like maybe

44:14 consciousness but even there I'd go I don't know. Uh so yeah. Well, I yeah, I I would want to distinguish um being ideal qua reasoner versus being like an a totally ideal epistemic agent where an ideal reasoner is someone who can deduce all the opriori consequences of whatever they happen to know, but it's neutral as to what what they happen to know. So maybe you could have an ideal reasoner who doesn't know any or very much contingent information, but whatever they have,

44:48 they can deduce all the consequences of that. Um whereas like an ideal epistemic agent is kind of like they're they're omnisient with respect to the facts and ideal at kind of drawing out consequences. Um, so I guess if if we just focus on the ideal reasoner and we don't assume that they have uh complete factual information about the world, then I would think an ideal reasoner would have lots of epistemic possibilities open to them. Like they they they wouldn't know, you know, you could have someone who's an ideal reasoner who doesn't know how tall the

45:20 tallest giraffe is. Maybe if you told them all the information about where all the particles are, etc., they could figure that out. But maybe they don't have that information and then they would know that they're still an ideal reasoner in the sense that given any information they can deduce all the relevant consequences but you it's it's it's no knock against your reasoning ability that you happen not to have some factual information about the world.

45:53 the ideal scientist and they were separate and the ideal scientist went out and discovered all the facts and then they just gave those facts to the ideal reasoner just delivered it one day and the ideal reasoner just started reasoning based on those facts. then they would know certain things like that water is H2O and that the tallest giraffe is uh that one etc. And there would be no further open questions.

46:27 that point of view that we're we're not guessing about it. We're saying it is that that's the way it is and that you could know that from the ideal that if the ideal reason or with those facts could deduce that. So I wasn't saying just from reason itself you could know that water is H2O but it is a priori for that reasoner that reasoner a priori knows that water is H2O because they don't have any empirical justification the ideal scientist did all the empirical stuff the ideal reasoner is just going oh the duh duh so this is the way things are um and I don't see that

47:00 as like a knock against saying that what they did was all priori that's the point I was trying to make

48:38 to be some sensitivity to prior and maybe a difficulty in justifying which which priors are the rational ones. Um, but you know it's it it's not like anyone knows a better method that does result in like everyone converging on the same answers at the end of the day. like you know some some people argue about

49:14 when it's not explicitly basian to the extent that it's good it can at least be like rationally reconstructed in basian terms um

49:48 let's say um then uh it just seems suspicious uh that that you would put so much weight on an a structure an argument structure like this which only should be trusted in a well behaved domain. Um, so I I do think the the basic well versions of the psychophysical harmony argument could be formulated in like a nonbasian in non-basian terms just in terms of

50:21 inference to the best explanation. And you know,

51:29 you know the prologue to the Gospel of John or whatever. I mean I you know if that happened I I I would say you know this is some empirical evidence for God and I I if I wanted to be kind of mathematically rigorous about it maybe I would formulate it in basian terms that you know this this exact message in the stars is significantly more probable conditional on theism than conditional on atheism or whatever and you know you could make the same points about like ah this is going to depend on the prior and blah blah blah. Um but like yeah in in that case do do you think that that would be like evidence for or some

52:05 something that would be

53:11 which is that suppose you think that God commands you to do X and then you uh infer that it's God who commanded you to do X.

53:44 together should kind of make you immediately question that the thing that you're getting is from from the from an ultimately good source and you would be skeptical. blah blah blah. So that's slightly different than your you know the Gospel of John up there but but I certainly like you know I'm not a theist and you know as I've said and maybe um maybe I'm it depends on what you're talking about. So if it's theism I'm agnostic. If it's like any version of man-made religion then I'm atheist. I just I just don't take ser I can't take seriously the

54:17 actual claims that we find in man-made religions. But the claim of theism I do take very seriously just generally theism. Um but okay so and we could debate that. I'm open to talking about this. I don't mean that as a as just a snipe. I actually am interested in these issues and think there's interesting things to say about all this stuff. Um okay. So you know if the stars arrange themselves in that way then and I'm thinking to myself, well I don't know like I've never seen nothing like that before. It could be aliens. It could be Satan. It could be uh it could be God. It could be anything. So, I would certainly be like,

54:50 "What the hell is going on?" or "What what is that?" But it wouldn't convince me that like God existed right off the bat. I wouldn't immediately jump to that conclusion because it would be so improbable in my opinion that that was what was really going on. I would want to know something else. Especially given this epistemic problem and especially given that in religious text it says things like, you know, Satan is in control of the system of things. He's the one producing all of this stuff. is he he's going to trick you into thinking the good is bad and bad is good and all this stuff that's in you know because I was raised in a Christian household I

55:22 have read the Bible I do understand the the what's it I mean you could take many views on what's in there but I have read it many times I do understand what's in there to some extent so it does say like right to your face like you know if you saw something like that you should be skeptical so uh I would just say all that combined together would suggest that I would be skeptical but I would be like that's suggestive of something supernatural possibly And I would want to rule that out first before I took any. So yeah, I just think the empirical method is too well entrenched for me to jump to any conclusions to the contrary without investigating it. And no

55:55 personal experience or antidote would ever convince me otherwise except motivate me to investigate with further scrutiny what was going on there. And then if I ever did under those conditions came to believe that no natural explanation could account for the thing I was observing then I would be like wow welcome to the supernatural. Here we are. Um but uh I wouldn't jump immediately to God because then I would wonder which God is it Zeus is it Yahweh? Is it is it is it Allah? Is it Buddha? Is it Krishna? Is it um theism?

56:30 Is it theism? Is itnosticism? I mean, I just think it's way it's so just saying like what empirical thing would convince you is is too um too coarse a grain to to be looking at this stuff, I would say. But but but partially it's because I'm a very skeptically minded person just generally speaking, but not so skeptical that there would be nothing that could convince me. It just would take more than like one star.

57:06 largely agree. So you know in the in the paper the psychophysical harmony paper that I wrote wrote with Justin Crmit I mean what what we say is like look for simplicity we are going to just pretend that the options on the table are theism and naturalism

57:40 yes but of course those are not the only two options uh cuz you you know theism understood as like something like the omniod um there there's other possibilities other that aren't naturalistic there could be like limited designers there could be something like Thomas Nagel's te like teological laws whereby the universe like in intrinsically strives for the realization of valuable things like consciousness and rationality there could be um impersonal axiarchic views where there's like a basic principle ordering the universe towards the good

58:14 but that's like not a personal being it's just like a law or something. Um and so and and maybe simulation or you know whatever else. Um so I I 100% agree. I mean our official view is that this that psychophysical harmony is evidence against naturalism and for the disjunction of a range of views that include theism and Nagel's weird thing and axiarchism and limited designers of certain kinds etc etc and that and the

58:47 and the debate between those non-naturalistic views would have to be settled on other terms now I happen to think that you can make a case that um theism has a higher degree of intrinsic probability than those for kind of like reasons of simplicity and non-arbitiness and I mean I'm here I'm largely influenced by the work of uh Richard Swinburn and and others but that that's a whole separate debate and that's independent of and you know by the way the same the same goes for these like fine-tuning arguments I mean it's a

59:19 familiar point like okay maybe maybe fine-tuning is evidence for something designerish But that leaves open a range of possibilities and certainly more work needs to be done to get like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And I'm totally agree with that point.

59:52 better argument for the simulation hypothesis. So that's something that I I actually have argued for in other other places. But I I do think that in the way that you were just suggesting fine-tuning is better explained by the simulation hypothesis than theism. Um so I don't see why people get the jump immediately to theism is the best explanation. No simulation hypothesis is the best explanation for fine-tuning and for all these things. And I would even say for psychophysical harmony actually um it's a better explanation. So I do wonder I know you you talk about simulation theodysies but that's a

1:00:25 different idea that that's in my in my opinion that's a different um a different topic. Um what what what I'm interested in is the question of do you think that like the cosmological argument the teological argument the psychopys well that's a new one that you come up but but I think that one as well that these arguments not only are they compatible with the simulation but that there's like a beesian wise they support it better they they that should be the one that you take as the conclusion of those arguments

1:01:04 a lot of the like design traditional design arguments like fine-tuning or you know I I guess I would think of psychophysical harmony in this camp. Uh well f so for fine-tuning I think this is probably right. It's it's probably just as well predicted by the simulation hypothesis as it is by by theism. And so the the question there would have to be settled on on other grounds. Um not sure if that's right for standard versions of the cosmological argument. So these often have the

1:01:39 conclusion that there is like a necessary causally efficacious being.

1:02:15 that that that couldn't fail to exist. Um,

1:02:50 simulation hypothesis because that just pushes the problem back. So, so basically the one version of this is like, okay, you you've got a bunch of things with causal powers, but those causal powers are like harmoniously coordinated to allow for like interesting interactions among things. So, like, you know, maybe like you you you could have had like X's and Y's at the initial conditions, but like X's only have the power to move Z's and you know Y's only have the power to move Q's. And so there's just like these things don't have reciprocally

1:03:22 coordinated powers so that nothing happens with them. And so like the fact that like the the basic causal powers of things are harmoniously coordinated uh so as to allow for like interesting temporal evolution of the universe um is some something that's like we think is not not a necessary truth maybe calls for explanation. And here I think that the simulation hypothesis uh wouldn't work because it would just kind of push the problem back because you know take take the higher level universe that has the computer that runs the simulation that that that is our universe. Uh in order to have like a physical computer

1:03:55 you got to have like multiple interacting parts whose powers are harmoniously coordinated with one another. So so that would just kind of move the bump in

1:04:29 humility should suggest that that's you know if you take the simulation hypothesis that does that's that's not guaranteed. the nonsimulated world, whichever world it is, is outside the simulation, if there is one, because some people think the whole thing is a kind of self simulation. If that makes sense, I don't know. But some people think it does. So, who knows? There could be strange loops and weird things and closed timelight curves and all sorts of strange stuff. Who knows?

1:05:03 saying who designed the designer to you. It's like well no I'm assuming there's an undesigned thing. Um that that that resists this idea that everything is designed that somehow is the cause of it or something. So we don't know and that non simulated world wouldn't be God if it wasn't a mind that acted in certain ways. It would just be reality. So I don't think you have any reason to rule these things out on priori based on like what we know about this given simulation.

1:05:37 maybe that that didn't have like multiple interacting parts with coordinated causal powers. Um, but anyway, the like the the versions of the simulation hypothesis that that wouldn't just push the problem back would be like a narrow subset of the the different possible versions of the the simulation hypothesis. So, I'm going to say that's going to have a correspondingly lower prior. So, even if you can find some like very specific version of the simulation hypothesis that doesn't just push the problem back and maybe maybe it equally predicts the datam, but it's going to have a correspondingly lower

1:06:09 prior. And so anyway, that that that's the kind of move I would make.

1:06:41 like this out there but it's also maybe not all like this and I think that the space of that which is logically possible is well beyond the stuff like this um giving rise to computation uh you know so you know read some science fiction you'll see all sorts of interesting ideas and not just scratching the surface. Um, speaking of the three body problem, that guy has some very interesting ideas about hidden dimensions and I, you know, anyway, I don't want to bring all that stuff up. I'm just saying like the stuff that you could consider hasn't even begun to be scratched. Um, so it just seems to me that a lot of these assumptions are

1:07:17 are you're you're corelling the assumptions to push towards that which you want already, which is uh theism or that something is un better explained in a certain way. Whereas like for me, I just see like it going the other way. So I I don't really see Yeah. I I'm not sure how you're supposed to proceed forward. I guess what I'm saying is like these kinds of arguments. I wonder how convincing you're like they're supposed to be to someone because I don't know,

1:07:49 you might think there's two different jobs. One job which I'm on board 100% with is kind of mapping the conceptual space and saying if you start here you can move like this through the space and you can end up over there and it might be surprising and you might go I didn't know you could get over there I thought they were incompatible and that's kind of how I view a lot of your work and from my point of view it's very interesting from that point of view but on the other hand you might think like mapping where I should be in the space like how should I reason my way to the conclusion that I find probable and there I just don't I can't really see the

1:08:22 the the force of the kind of arguments that that we're talking about which would push me to believe something that I didn't already believe which therefore makes me suspicious of that kind of reasoning because if I it's only going to lead me to that which I already find plausible or accept then it sort of I don't really trust it to be honest I I want a a system that leads me to that which I find surprising and is not it contains already in the things that I believe that that's the value of science in my opinion. That's why science is so

1:08:55 valuable and important and surprising and interesting and I just don't see that here. I see rather that you could get to anywhere. You could literally get to anywhere if you set things in the right way. And then that makes me uneasy when I'm asking what should I believe instead of how should we map the space. So

1:09:27 care that you know that would be

1:10:00 possibilities to be in,

1:10:32 satisfying and kind of, you know, um like give us new gestalts on on questions. And I I think that's a that's a really cool thing to do, right? Uh, but you know, I I also think there's there's a place in philosophy for the like sticking your neck out and saying like, "Yeah, but here's the thing I think I I think is probably true. And here are my reasons for thinking that it's probably true." And of course, this is philosophy, so I expect at the end of the day that we'll that there's going to be dramatic disagreement. I don't I don't expect that my arguments for dualism or for theism or for free will

1:11:07 or anything are going to like convince all the people who are on the other side. But but I I think that that's not really the ambition. The ambition is like can you give kind of interestingly new reasonably forceful arguments for for certain views that maybe people hadn't factored in. So when it comes to whether it's free will or consciousness or God or personal identity or whatever, of course people have their like default their kind of like natural inclinations and default views. But but my my

1:11:40 background assumption is most people haven't thought through all the ins and outs of all the potential motivations and there some sometimes you just like do find an argument where it's like whoa actually I'd never thought of it from that angle before and when I think of it from that angle actually I see a plausible case here. I mean I I I I can report that I I I know of multiple people who have like come to accept theism on the basis of the psychophysical harmony arguments. So I know I which is more than I expected. I mean usually I I I give arguments and

1:12:14 and

1:12:46 physical reality. And actually that does call for explanation and oh I never quite thought of things from that angle but once you've got me thinking along this path I actually see like there's something kind of fishy about naturalism. Um so I you know it's it's obviously not doing the trick for you and I wouldn't expect it to do the the trick for for a lot of people but um you know it's that that's not the goal in philosophy. I agree. My ambitions are not to convince everyone to like my detailed views on every particular issue, but if I can like get people to like open up to possibilities that they weren't open up

1:13:18 towards or nudge a few people in that direction, then I I think that's cool.

1:13:50 is physical, consciousness is non-physical. You know, morality is objective, it's not, etc. like for

1:14:54 yin-yang. I don't think they're rationally justifiable from an objective point of view. So, I don't endorse them. But I lean all sorts of ways. I I want that. I lean this way. I seems to be reasonable over there. Yeah, I get pushed and pulled. I just can't say I believe any of that stuff. That's why I started off saying I'm not a physicist. I simply think that physicalism hasn't been refuted by a priori methods. So, I just I'm agnostic. I I think physicalism is a possibility. It hasn't been refuted. But yet I' I feel like in your work and a lot of people actually they feel like it's sort of obvious that it's been refuted. In fact, some people on

1:15:26 the internet screamed in my face like it's it's it's contradictory. It's incoherent. It's logically absurd. Why won't you realize it? And I'm just like, uh, no, it's it's not actually. It's a serious view. It's just you don't like it. So,

1:16:00 terminology out there. It is what and you do write that way in many of your papers suggesting to one that if you don't uh um endorse dualism, you aren't taking the hard problem seriously. sort of like you did at the beginning of this discussion. I think of myself as taking the hard problem very seriously but still thinking that physicalism survives and I'm not in a limitist. I don't like illusionism. I think that's cheating. I think consciousness is could be physical. probably is actually my my if I had to say if I said what I believe I said I would say it's

1:16:34 physical but I think no there's too many disagreements evidence argument and then I reason myself wealth to say well gee I kind of lean that way but I can't endorse it I just simply think you're wrong if you think it's not if it should be dismissed and I say the same thing about dualism pansyism you know out of all the isms I kind of like quantum dualism that's my favorite I'm least friendly towards um pansychism but I don't give I'm I'm equally open to those views in the sense that I don't think you can dismiss them. We don't know. So I just think

1:17:37 it's been dismissed. Um, I don't think that you should endorse it. I think you should remain agnostic about it. Um, and the same is true for free will. I want to believe in libertarian free will. It's hard to see how it could exist. Uh, I think it probably does. Um, so I'm agnostic about whether it is or isn't there. But yes, I think that there's nothing wrong about being agnostic. And I do just on a kind of and summing up note find that a lot of difference between theist theists generally and people like me who don't consider themselves theist is this living in the uncertainty being comfortable or not.

1:18:12 And I feel like sometimes you get the impression that theists want this kind of comforting certainty that things are this way. Um, and that it's uncomfortable to like not know and to be forced to say, "Yeah, we don't really know." Like, you know, I'm worried about crying crypenstein worries for meaning. Um, I'm worried these I take all of these things very seriously. Uh, because I engage in, you know, argument and arguments are serious in my opinion. So, I do seriously endorse this kind of agnosticism. Actually, it's not paralytic or cowardice. It doesn't mean

1:18:44 you can't engage in reasoning or that you're too afraid to endorse them. It just seems to me to be kind of the open recognition that a lot of this is kind of just my intuitive pre- theoretical judgments being influenced by the theories I come to accept later which then become pre theoretically seeming to me and you can't really break out of that circle uh too easily. So yeah, I I don't think that's a bad thing. So for me non-theistically I'm happy to say I don't know. It's very strange what's going on. Let's let's do the science. Let's do the philosophy. Let's map it out. But and I'm suspicious of the principle of sufficient reason. I don't

1:19:17 think we have good reason to accept it. But I feel like your side of things is really relying on that uh relying on the idea that somehow reality is intelligible to us that that we deserve to know it, that it is like it owes us to be understandable. And I I find all of that um not certain and not not stable to be honest.

1:20:25 is I mean are are you agnostic as to whether the earth is more than 6,000 years old for example

1:20:59 very very very confident that the earth is more than 6,000 years old on the basis of being

1:21:32 conclusion that you want as we were sort of suggesting before. What doesn't allow you to do that is the empirical method. And even though people try to use the empirical method to do that, it backfires in the long run and it doesn't succeed. And science is the only thing we've ever discovered where if you stupidly do it over and over again, you end up correcting your mistakes. Um and and philosophy isn't that way. when you do it over and over again, you build the mistakes in.

1:22:05 of knowing about the world for these reasons.

1:22:40 that the thing that seemed obvious isn't. So to me that seems to be extremely valuable that that recognition and it's rare to find people who face it openly and when you bring people to that edge and show them that they truly don't know they react violently sometimes um and it's uncomforting unsettling thus is the abyss which stares back on all the you know existentialism stuff but uh the yeah I think this is exactly the why it's valuable for in the personal

1:23:13 instance I would That's why philosophy is valuable to bring you and that's what Socrates said. This is why we're doing it, bro. We're doing it so you could get to the point where you recognize it's more complicated and I feel like we've lost sight of that sort of as a discipline, as a personal exercise. I think it's very important. However, in the professional aspect, I think the job of philosophy is this mapping thing we were talking about.

1:23:46 striving to know. Um, and that everything is more complicated than it seems. So that that seems to me to be okay to be in that position. And that's why I think yeah, theism is a possibility. Like I'm not

1:24:20 know you're wrong and the other side's saying wait yeah yeah it's okay to not know and so I sort of feel like yeah it's okay to not know we should champion that more often. Um, and I'm not the kind of agnostic like Russell, just so you know. Russell was like, I'm agnostic about Zeus and all these kind of insulting things in my opinion. I don't think I need to be agnostic about Zeus. Um, Mount Olympus doesn't exist. We we different story. So, yeah.

1:24:54 you know and you're way overconfident and this domain is much more complicated than you think it is and and in many domains agnosticism just absolutely is called for. I mean I think this is true in a lot of like political discussions that are just like vastly more complicated than

1:25:27 just like know or be reasonably confident of like you know not just the existence of God but like how many hierarchies of angels there you know like all this like specific stuff where it's like okay like this is like clearly there this is like a mysterious domain where you should be like a lot more open to like there there being tons of stuff beyond our ken. Um, so I I I agree with that. I I guess I'm I'm also of the attitude that like as in other areas, virtue is a mean between extremes here and it is possible to uh be uh

1:26:04 to to to be excessively like unopinionated. I mean, I I I think, you know, agnosticism about Zeus, for example, would would be an example where agnosticism about like like a strong agnosticism about whether the Earth is over 6,000 years old where where you claim not just that we can't rule it out with certainty, but just like we have no idea, right? Exactly.

1:26:36 agnosticism would be reasonable, but yeah, I think I think it's an important point that uh

1:27:09 you know, trust, trust me, I could be definitely misreading it. Uh, anyone who's ever looked at my blog knows I've struggled through the years trying to understand what he's saying in the system of modal logic and all that stuff. Anyway, but the way that I read it is the virtuous or what is it? The victorious u modal argument uh ontological argument is merely aimed at justifying his belief since he finds it conceivable that there's a perfect being then he planting a is justified in accepting this. But since I virtually find it inconceivable like I can't even

1:27:42 really picture it to be honest with you without contradictions. Um and if you allow contradictions in then I can then I can picture it fine. But that's the difference. You know you might wonder par consistency what doesn't follow from that. But anyway so um my my point though is that if you take that way of thinking about it then he's serly he's simply saying yeah I mo I can motivate I can reason my way to this. I can just evade my motivated reasoning by saying blah blah blah blah blah and I think to myself, yeah, I get to over there because I'm over and so it's just kind of agreeing with my point in a way that

1:28:15 uh he's saying I'm not irrational for doing this. I can give you a justification, but it's a cherry picked one. It's it's definitely gerrymandered like beyond recognition on both sides.

1:28:48 it is it delivers a conclusion where there's not really much gap between the being that you get and something that deserves to be called God.

1:29:21 working within theories and what seems intuitive to you depends on your implicit theory you have in the background and you might not notice it but uh you know I certainly had the experience of sitting in classes and being told what was and wasn't on Twin Earth and being like what that's not no like there's no that you're wrong and they were like you're telling me I just don't understand philosophy and I'm going wait a minute no I just don't agree with the way you're interpreting this situation but certainly in the my career as an undergraduate and I'd be like you know if we found like for example I remember in class saying that they were telling us about Putnham's

1:29:53 cats and if we found out that they're you know um they were Martian spies or whatever then cats are animals would be is empirically justifiable or whatever and we'd find out it's not you know analytic and I was like no nuhuh we'd find out that there these aren't cats like what are you talking about cats or animals is clearly analytic and they were just telling me I didn't understand a thought experiment and I was like no and I and now I feel in the fullness of time sort of that this is my diagnosis of those kinds of situations it just seems to me it's rampant everywhere that people are too quick to say you don't

1:30:26 understand or you're wrong when really it's just that you have a different intuition about some base case because of this implicit thing you're assuming in the background which is coloring the way you think of what's possible And what isn't?

1:31:00 the opinion that some some background assumptions and priors are just less reasonable than others. So the you know someone who can like reason through all the data and come out with flat earth conclusions where they explain away all the the seemingly contrary data in terms of like global conspiracies and stuff like this. Yeah.

1:31:34 But I guess I'd want to say there there's something objectively less reasonable about that those background assumptions or priors than the the ones that would lead you to the conclusion that the earth is round,

1:32:08 has thought through all the implications of their views. I'm not going to be able to talk them out of their flat earth view or their QAnon conspiracy or their view that like high up politicians are lizard people in human suits or whatever. Uh, but I still think I even though I can't talk them out of it, they're still being unreasonable in a way that I'm not being unreasonable when I think that, you know, they aren't lizard people or the earth is round.

1:32:41 where we're going to we're going to find a lot of disagreement is like you're going to say that's unreasonable like that physicalism maybe is going on the unreasonable side like more like flat earther and I'm going to say no um you know theism goes on that side. So I think you're going to get a lot of the same kind of

1:33:48 hand, and maybe this is more to to your sensibility, there there is something kind of uncomfortable about the thought that like I'm going to believe that P even though this other guy who's just as smart as me, just as intellectually honest, knows the arguments and evidence just as well as I do, comes to the conclusion that not P, I mean, this is this is kind of like the the tension within the peer disagreement literature.

1:34:22 issues here because I do feel like sometimes it's the discussion gets oversimplified to these like, okay, there's these two options. We're assuming these are the background conditions and it just seems way more complicated. So, I think we brought that out. But I and I know I got to let you go, but I do want to just say at the end sort of ambushing you with this last point here, which is that given all the things we've saying, I I mean, so it seems like you would agree with me that consciousness being physical is conceivable. I don't think it's conceivable in the

1:35:00 sense of being like ideally coherently conceivable, ideally positively conceivable.

1:35:34 with some physical brain structure. um at at at some like metal level, yeah, I guess I'll concede that like it's it's it's possible that I'm wrong and it is conceivable in principle even though I can't manage to do it and it seems but yeah, I mean so like I guess I'm inclined to say it's not it's not conceivable but but nonetheless I I think physicalism is in some sense an epistemic possibility. Like I think it would be un unreasonable for me to rule it out with absolute certainty partly

1:36:08 for these higher order reasons like

1:37:42 called shombies are both ideally conceivable because given these things we were saying before ideally one of these is going to be ruled out if you add in the facts whether it counts as a priori or not it's just going to be ruled out. Um you either will or will not be able to a priori deduce from the physical facts that there is consciousness or that this consciousness exists. So, you know, okay, great. Um, but I think that's conceivable. You think it's not conceivable, but if it is conceivable, then dualism

1:38:14 is wrong. And if it isn't conceivable, then physicalism is wrong.

1:38:47 conceivability claims are just as powerful, then I think the thing to say is, well, maybe maybe conceivability wasn't such a good guide to possibility after all. And then and then you would just try to settle the question of physicalism on other grounds. I mean, for what it's worth, I think

1:39:52 disagree there, but but the the other thing I'd say is Yeah. I mean, so I I I do think that the psychophysical identity claims are going to not be conceivable. Uh, and I mean, an analogy I would give is like like I I don't think it's conceivable that being that the property of being red is identical to the property of being round. Um, and and similarly, I think it's it's it's not conceivable that the property of feeling pain is identical to the property of having C fibers firing or whatever. Um,

1:40:24 question. Do you agree with that claim about that? That's that's question begging. That's like me saying it's impossible for red for maroon to exist without redness.

1:40:57 they could come apart. You have redness without roundness and roundness without redness.

1:41:32 and brain like that that whenever you have one, you have the other because it just is that way. And there's that's a a prior fact about reality which if you knew enough, you would know. Um so my view is that you know the only reason Mary doesn't know this stuff is because she doesn't have the right concepts. She she doesn't have the phenomenal concept of red. She's never seen red. So the only thing that's weird about the know the Mary's room is that she can't acquire the concepts which are required for her to operally know the stuff we're talking about. And no one would ever say, "Hey, could you know that water is H2O but not have the concept of water?"

1:42:05 I mean, that would be what? What are you talking about? Of course not. You need to have the concept. And then once you have the concept of water, you can ask the question, "Is water H2O?" So Mary doesn't have the right concept. She doesn't have the phenomenal concept. But I think even if you even if you modify the thought experiment to give her the concepts um

1:42:38 experiment. So I'm imagining she she looks at the the red patch. We don't label it but she just calls it like that's a type A experience. No, she would call it red

1:43:10 those are things that can be empirically studied from inside her room mapping out the the responses that people have, the brain states that they go into, the stimula that are presented and so forth and so on. So she would of course know that if the tomato would be red, it would be obvious if she had the concept. First you have to give her that concept. Then she'd be like, "Yeah, oh that's oh tomatoes grass done." Do do you think we can work out a priori whether a a robot that's functionally identical to me would have a reddish experience when it looks at tomatoes?

1:44:19 kind of views and I do think that maybe robots won't have experiences unless there's some very like generic biological property like electrical current or something which is the thing that's relevant but we don't really know. Um so I think that that's a possibility but uh yeah I mean I'm skeptical of machine consciousness for for reasons that I'm to the degree that I like identity theories but I'm open to machine consciousness to the degree I recognize that identity theories are not you know uh known to be

1:44:52 precautionary principles. So I think we should act as though until we know but we may not for a while.

1:45:27 arguments for dualism. I think there's an empirically based argument against dualism. I would like to hear your thoughts on that. Um so I but but I want to say that I've enjoyed this conversation and I think that people like you are so valuable because you're exploring these things wi with an open clear mind that people have dismissed. So like defending dualism for example, people are like that's ridiculous. No, it's not actually. You got you got to go through the actual details. It's hard. So I really admire that about your work that you go through the details and that you kind of sort it out. And so I've been pressing you on this or that

1:46:01 detail, but I don't want you to take away from this that I'm a critic of your work. I'm a fan of your work and your style of doing it, too. So I just wanted to make that clear.