Consciousness Live! with François Kammerer

0:00 All right, we are live. At least I believe we are. Um, someone in the chat will tell us. So, uh, joining me today is an extra special guest. I'm very excited for today's discussion. Uh, with me today is Francois Camerar. Uh, I probably am not saying that right, but, uh, Francois, can you take a minute to tell anyone who might not know who you are, a little bit about what you do and and, uh, who you are and how to properly pronounce your name perhaps?

0:35 you're welcome to say whatever sounds best to you as long as it's recognizable. So my name is Frana Camra. So I'm a philosopher of mind. Uh I've been working now for a few years on topics of related to consciousness introspection metaphysics of consciousness epistemology of consciousness etc. and I'm currently working at the French CNS. I'm based in Strasbour. Um, so city in East Front at the German border more or less. And uh I've uh I've already been on the show. So I want to

1:09 thank you for inviting me once, but also thank you for inviting me twice overall. I think it was five or six years ago that I already was on this on this uh podcast. So thanks again. I suppose it makes me sort of extra extra special guest like maybe there'll be some sort of category for people who have been there twice. Uh uh yeah. So I've been working on consciousness for a couple of years now and I've recently published a book titled so house of mirrors the illusion of phenomenal consciousness. I brought it there. Of course you you see it like there's a mirror image of the

1:42 book but uh you can see what it looks like. One of the author copies.

2:16 put the PDF on field papers and on my website. So, it's fairly easy to find. Um, but of course though some of you might prefer printed copies and then maybe they would buy it, but I strongly encourage you to to get the PDF first of all.

2:49 contract uh then you have an option to make it open access and then you need to have some money being paid like usually by your research institute. So in my specific case it happened to be the case that I had a part of money that I needed to use very very fast and I had no good way to use it except this one. So I thought okay that's that's a good combination of uh circumstances. So yeah that's the way at least at Oxford. There are other policies at other publishers. So I cannot I cannot sort of speak more about that because I don't really know but that's how it happened in my specific case.

3:20 access is such a a good thing because it really removes a barrier for people to just go to the book.

3:53 before coming back to France as a as a CNS researcher.

4:25 discovered the heart problem of consciousness and I thought it was just so exciting and also so deep and I remember like reading like Jolivine and Dave Chalmer's writing and become convinced like yeah yeah they have a point Right? That is something that sort of resists explanation. All these sort of dualist like at least antihysicalist argument are really really good. And uh so basically that was sort of motivating me to do a PhD on these questions. And basically what happened that so I started as a sort of antecedent naive materialist if you want that materialism must be true because that's what science

4:57 says and must be right in some sense. There are no souls. Then I read like sort of yeah Chalmer Le and I thought okay something is off something is missing. While reading Chalmer especially like I think as a chapter on the conscious mind on uh the paradox of phenomenal judgment I also became convinced well uh the sort of antifhysical antifhysicalist arguments are pretty good but the positive solution of challenge just does not work. It just does not work. This like you cannot save knowledge of consciousness if you have this sort of antifys picture. is really really hard.

6:02 appears a bit in these books that I just published.

6:36 some sort of very empty cognitively void way of relating to our experiences. But if really we were thinking of fundamental experiences in this way, then we would not have this sort of very compelling intuition that they cannot be physical. I think physicalism would actually be maybe not a priority but at least fairly intuitive or intuitively acceptable. So basically I realized no this cannot work and then I started sort of pivoting towards some sort of version of eliminativism. So my PhD defended that already but it was more like the last part of me PhD

7:09 and uh and then the cool thing that so I defend my PG in 2016 and that's when sort of the illusionist movement started having its renewal thanks to Kiss Frankish beautiful 2016 article illusionism is a theory of consciousness right

7:43 slightly different from old style eliminativism.

8:17 that's one way to put it.

8:53 previous uh champions of this sort of view. So, I I would say it's it's got to be read by anyone who's serious about this. So, it's really it's really cool to hear your story and how how you came to it. And and also I'll say just while we're on this, one of the things that's very cool about your book is that you do kind of detail this evolution of um illusionism or views like a limitivism starting from, you know, the Dennit kind of origin point to where we are now. And that was really useful for me because I remember just as a as a student, you know, in the '9s um hearing Dennett and

9:26 Sorl argue and they were like larger than life and it was before the internet obviously. So these guys were like, you know, arguing the New York Times and um and I just remember this and being very confused by it. I remember Surl saying what do I got to do? Pinch you and like publish a paper on in the journal of philosophy. So it was very confusing at the time and since that time partially do I would say especially to this book appearing but also the people like Keith uh a lot of work has gone into trying to clarify and now we know I guess I'd say thanks to you that there are different versions of this approach. So can you tell us a little bit about how you see

9:58 the origin of this uh in your way of

10:31 claim. Phenomenal consciousness seems to exist. And so the way I see the history uh you start having some versions of the eliminative claims of people thinking that uh phenomenal consciousness or quailia or sort of raw [snorts] feelings or whatever like the vocabulary has been a bit uh moving at times but like mid 20th century you start seeing the sort of claims appear. So I give a couple of names that people who have said that right. I think the earliest one may be a guy called Alf Ross but he's a bit forgotten except there's this one article that he wrote about that about

11:04 how of the inexistence of um like I don't know exactly which term he used I don't remember suddenly but in 1940 or 1941 but then the famous people are like foyer and hy sort of developed versions of eliminative materialism where you sort of eliminate eliminate sort of phenomenal terms or sort of conscious terms from yourtology and so this sort of took off and I think one of The um most standard robust version of that was sort of Denet's eliminativism in the late 70s and sort of 80s um up to his book like consciousness explained in

11:38 1991 which gave some sort of standard version of this. But at some point in the book I say maybe it would be a good idea to call these views like theoretical eliminativism

12:12 these sort of things. Those are fairly elaborate theoretical characterization. And second, and relatedly, they were usually saying or implicitly assuming that the appearance of phenomenal consciousness was maybe not some sort of common sense appearance in the sense it does not appear to exist to anyone who think about it, but it only appears to exist when you start doing philosophy and more specifically bad philosophy. So basically they were often seeing like especially like det is a typical case right anal trying to analyze the

12:44 appearance of quia as resulting from bad philosophizing. So something that we can fix if we do better philosophy and if you if we avoid carefully certain fellacious reasoning right

13:19 captured by sort of cartisian arguments and this sort of way of thinking

13:55 Perboom on the philosophy part and then later a bit later Kiss Frankish and these people started saying more and more things like yeah fundamental consciousness does not exist but seems to exist but this seeming is much more robust pre theoretical maybe that what was uh said so far and maybe it has its sources its source sorry in introspection ction not in facious reasoning. So the reason why basically it seems to us that we're fundamentally conscious is not because we are doing a lot of bad philosophy but because

14:27 introspection presents it to us that way.

15:00 length. It still seems to you perceptually that they don't that that one is longer than the other. Mhm.

15:33 introspective, right?

16:06 consciousness that doesn't have an eminent modern philosopher to point back to pretty much and say like you know we're yeah

16:39 propositional attitudes coming from people like the churchlands. And what I didn't see in the book was any situation of your view visav consciousness to those kinds of views that were more about you know the common sense folk psychology propositional attitudes thinking and the sort of things that you lean on a lot psychological appearances etc that those things could be subject to a limitivist things and so I was wondering if you had thought about that in in relation to the kind of view that you're developing. I know we haven't really got to it yet, but I but since

17:11 we're talking about the history stuff, I was wondering if Yeah. if if you had thought about that.

17:45 doing something different the thing that you're talking about. So I'm wondering but maybe that's I'm not a Rory scholar you know I studied with Rosenthal and David is a was a student of roti so I heard about a lot of you know from that route so that's kind of my knowledge of it maybe it's not complete but I'm just wondering if you had thought about this in relation to the propositional attitudes and in this relation to the difference between roority and dennet in their way approaching a limit.

18:20 style myself a history of philosophy. So I'm not sure I can give you much more than what I already told you. My impression is that for the sort of purpose that I have in mind, I'm not uh again sort of lumping rotty and the net together in the sense that I see both Rotty in the 60s7s and um the net in the 80s are as giving overall a rather theoretical version of eliminativism where we deny the existence of like raw feelings or

18:53 qualia or phenomenal states. uh but we see this state as sort of highly theoretical posits that sort of philosophers have um supposed as um as existing because they were basically taken by wrong philosophical schemas or like committing fallacies. Uh I think one difference might be that rotty at least in my memory of like his book philosophy and the mirror of nature there was more of this idea of of trying to dig into the history in detail like the history of philosophy what happened

19:27 in the 17th century when we start developing a certain image of the mind and having a certain distinction between mind and matter and so maybe more again insistence on the history of philosophy intellectual history while I think Dennett was more interested in sort of unraveling fallacies is

20:01 seems to for me to that I remember Rotty of the 60s being really sort of what bugged him about Qua basically was his encourageibility

20:33 think I can tell you much more than that.

21:06 intentional stance stuff maybe. But but I'm not really sure uh if if this is really relevant. That's why I was I'm not sure if I should wait until later to bring this up or just bring this up and as the historical point about

21:40 the idea that we represent it in certain ways like there are there are no phenomenal experiences but there are illusions thereof and illusions at least primaki must be representational states. So the way I formulate my view and sort of um build it is by appealing to things like representations. Now uh why do I do that? Why am I not attracted to also representational eliminativism like eminentivism about representational content and maybe um whether or not it applies specifically

22:12 to propositional attitude or maybe to all representational content. So I think I would give a sort of a a a twostep answer. The first is that I I think um I think I'm not the only one to think that but that the sort of hard problem of consciousness is just much much harder than the problems of let's say naturalizing intentionality. M

22:46 the case but I do find the sort of propositions that people have made to naturalize intentionality much more promising and just much more plausible than the the proposals that have been made to naturalize or explain consciousness itself. So, so to speak, I I have less issues with intentionality and representational content because I do find it way less mysterious in some sense. I do have uh a better grasp of how eventually we'll integrate it uh within the rest of our knowledge. While

23:20 for fundamental experiences, they just do seem very mysterious to me. And even after having considered all these ambitious uh sort of intended explanations within a naturalistic framework, the other thing that I might add though is that I don't feel extremely committed to sort of strong forms of realism about representational content.

23:52 content but I think that uh how to put things I feel like if someone came up and sort of gave me very very good reasons to sort of prefer a more instrumentalist conception of of like representations I think I might I might go with it and I feel like I could still save a lot of what is being said in the book while admitting that all of that is just sort of instrumental talk from the intentional stance. Um

24:26 different ways one can see how this is going. So I think your approach is is interesting. Um, okay. So, we should probably get along to the actual approach because what and one of the things that's actually coming up in the people are having a little chat in the discussion over here is the how widespread the intuitions about the hard problem really are. And I know you talk a lot about that in the book and you actually over and over really double down on the idea that phenomenal concepts are epistemic access to phenomenal consciousness seems

24:58 substantive and that these are not philosophers tricks. That's kind of the criticism you have of the Dennis style limitivism. And then even further the the second wave of illusionism, you say even those views don't really do justice to like the substantive uh presentation that we allegedly have or at least that's how I'm reading what you're saying. And so that there's really a lot of work is being done by you by your claim that that are

25:31 substantive and that this is not a philosopher's mistake and that these are widespread or at least that they would be if you pushed people the right way or something like that. So is am I capturing kind of the crux of this the right way or and how would you respond all these XFI guys going around saying yeah nuhuh uh so forth?

26:04 consciousness that sort of as intersection with the illusionism debate but it's not exactly the same right that some sort of degree of independence which is about how widespread uh across individuals across cultures are so-called sort of problem intuitions or mystery intuitions like intuitions that phenomenal consciousness is mysterious for example that it creates a heart problem, that it has a specific epistemological status, that it is hard to reduce to anything physical, that it

26:38 is hard to sort of detect in the third person, etc. So, I call them mystery intuitions. Um, Chalmer's Dave Chalmer in his 198 problem of consciousness, he calls them like problem intuitions.

27:11 dialectic of the debate. Um I I myself started off like again as an individual philosopher so to speak having these mystery intuitions very strongly. It really seemed to me for example that yeah uh phenomenal consciousness is introspectively obvious in a very unique way

27:44 have a certain phenomenal experience let's say phenomenal pain you cannot have it without it being introspectively presented to you in certain way like you cannot have a phenomenal pain without being some sort of awareness without having some sort of awareness of it and vice versa. If you are sort of introspectively presented with phenomenal pain, if sort of from the point of view of introspection, everything happens as if you were having phenomenal pain, then you have phenomenal pain. Like things cannot be introspectively exactly in this way without you having it. So that's a pretty it's pretty unique feature,

28:17 right? And similarly, I also had the very strong intuitions that penal consciousness was really hard to explain in scientific terms and maybe sort of very hard to reduce to anything physical. Maybe there was something almost impossible to understand, impossible to grasp uh in sort of statements according to which such and such phenomenal experiences are nothing over and above certain physical processes. So I started off with this like strong intuitions

28:51 of mind I wanted. I it still felt to me that this was true, right? I still had very strong intuitions like this. So at least this intuition was like sort of uh robust uh at least within myself so to speak

29:26 the book or at least at this stage assume that they are fairly widespread is a sort of historical case. When you look at sort of the history of thought, you see really a very wide diversity of people endorsing at least some parts of um these intuitions about phenomenal consciousness. You rarely see the whole package together in a given philosophers. I think it is to be expected because every even even very widespread and robust intuitions are always sort of labored and explicited in different ways but you see bits and

29:59 pieces of these intuitions very often. So I try to make a case for example I think I mentioned text that I rarely mentioned. Uh for example even in the ancient world you have like the skeptics uh like sex saying yeah uh we have no knowledge of of the world but when it comes to sort of know our own affections our own experiences well about those we cannot really sort of debate right about the knowledge of our own affection. These are not the they are not the topic of like the skeptical worry. uh and Augustine had the same idea and similarly for sort of anti-physicalist

30:33 intuitions I think you see them appear in their modern form maybe only with the cart but I think there are very good reasons why and one of the main reason why is that first I think the antifys intuition only start making sense when you have a concept of the physical that is inherently non-qualitative and I think this is a concept of the physical that we developed with the scientific revolution around the 17th century with Galileo and Deat So I think it's no surprise that's also when we start having the sort of modern way of um uh of um sort of spreading out antifys

31:06 intuitions. And the other reason why is that when you look at the history of philosophy, one thing that is pretty striking is that people start putting forward these antifys intuitions in a lot of different context, but they only do it whenever they are faced with materialism as a serious contender. And I think the reason is that in other context they just take it for granted that uh their like fundamental experiences and mind more generally are just not physical things and it's only when they are faced with like serious metalist contenders

31:39 with these with sort of reports of these antifhysist intuitions.

32:12 intrusions or more generally mystery intrusions are widely shared. And what I mean by that is that I I don't want to say that it's universally shared but I think probably like most humans when they sort of reflect enough and when they have the appropriate other background concepts then I think they tend to have some sort of tendency

32:45 Deart is that one of these sort of other background concept that is needed to have the specifically the anti-hysicalist intuition is appearing which is a concept of the physical that is non-qualitative a concept of the physical world. The physical world is not populated with souls or with sort of uh intrinsic secondary qualities but is something basically that can be exhausted by mathematical descriptions.

33:17 operating in in an aristotalian um perspective to have exactly the sort of uh dualist intuitions we have. So it's not surprised that so to speak they were not expressing the same sort of cartasian intuitions as we do.

33:49 enough.

34:23 these atoms that sort of have uh no feelings no thought when put together suddenly have some right it did seem mysterious to some people

34:58 coming from XFI because at the end of the day, if I'm right and these sort of mystery intrusions are widely shared, [clears throat] we should expect sort of empirical research done nowadays, whether within culture or across cultures, to sort of uncover cover them.

35:32 there are a lot to be said about specific studies but I like the sort of the long story short is just I don't think there have been yet a study that really tests what I would call sort of mystery intuitions. I think they often test some sort of mystery opinions

36:05 shared, right? There is this one X5 study from I think his name is Gregory at Alal and they sort of show that I think 80 85% of the people sort of report the actually the belief like they say that yeah Mary uh learned something when she gets out of the black and white rule which of course is not exactly enough to show that they have judicious intuitions because there are alternative explanations but it does sort of way in this direction. So basically what I want to say about X5 is that I don't think currently there is a very strong case to be made either for or against the view

36:40 that um mystery intrusions are widely shared. [clears throat] So my case not does not rely so much on X5 but I also don't think that the opposite case relying on X5 is very very strong at the moment. It could very well change if sort of more studies are made studies that take into account all these objections that I and others have raised.

37:13 intuitions then doesn't that at least push you back towards a denit more of towards that direction? Yeah, I must say I would be really surprised if that were the that was the case um [clears throat] both because of uh the sort of robustness of these intrusions and its widespread sort of historical characters. I would be really surprised. But of course like there would have there would have to be some sort of degree of evidence where I would be convinced [clears throat] and I think yeah that would probably

37:46 force me to to revise some aspects of it and maybe I would I would be led to come a bit closer to sort of theoretical eliminativism where uh yeah if someone can show me that uh people don't actually represent phenomenal consciousness they represent something much more neutral. They really don't have any representation of phenomenal states and it's just philosophers because of their training and their sort of reflection that do it.

39:26 who sort of have this mode of new wave illusionism where they see the illusion of phenomenal consciousness as something more robust more cognitively impenetrable a bit more like a perceptual illusion and I think that goes within the right direction But what is it that does not fully satisfy me with this view? Why don't I just, you know, take one of the views of the shelf and become a a believer of one of them? One thing that has bugged me a bit from the beginning is that it seemed to me that they were not addressing something that seemed very important to me, which

39:59 is we sort of have an intuition that illusionism really seems false and almost impossible to accept, almost impossible to really represent to ourselves. And in a way that we never have that with other entities of which we might think or hypothesize that it could be luxury. Right? I think at some point in the book I gives this example. Uh if someone in a philosophy seminar tells you, hey, you could be fooled by

40:31 an evil genius right now. Um maybe you don't have a hand and there is no room and you're just a disembodied mind being fed with wrong representation. or maybe like a brain innovat being fed with misleading sensory input. Of course, you don't believe any of that,

41:03 than that because you don't even have your perception of your hand like your phenomenal experience of your hand does not exist and not in the way you introspect it. It's something entirely different.

41:36 we were reading Daycart and our professor was like this guy named Jim Ciphers. He was a great Daycart scholar. Anyway, it doesn't matter maybe. Anyway, he's a good professor. Um, and he was uh asking us Daycart's radical doubt. Is there anything you could possibly like doubt that he didn't doubt? And I was like, uh, have you read Dennit? Like I just got out of that seminar and this guy's doubting whether he's conscious or not. So it it does seem to me like a a level of doubt that people haven't it's much more radical than Daycart's version.

42:45 Chalmas published his paper on the Mita problem. So you know it's it's it's a slightly it's related but different. Uh so yeah but so basically my my issue was something like this. Uh a good illusionist theory of consciousness should first explain why it seems to us that we are phenomenally conscious although we're not that the so-called illusion problem that the name that Keith Frankish gave to this problem. But then I added there is a sort of subp part of this illusion problem which is a good theory of a good illusionist theory of consciousness

43:19 should also explain why it's so hard for us to believe or even represent to ourselves uh that illusionism is true why we have this sort of deep almost incapacity of sort of grasping the view and so that really was what was occupying me in these years and then I came up with sort of various approaches to that and basically my sort of main idea and which in this book I called metacartigianism but the main inspiration between metacartisionism is this. I think that

43:52 the way we represent phenomenal consciousness is essentially an evidential way like we represent it as some process endowed with very specific evidential properties like a very specific epistemic profile. That's really essentially how we think of it. That's sort of uh the lens through which we grasp fundamental consciousness. What it is to think about fundamental states. And if you dig into it a bit, I think we really essentially represent fundamental states as states with which we have some

44:24 sort of uniquely intimate epistemic contact.

44:58 epistemic terms as having this very specific epistemic profile and if thinking of phenomenal consciousness is really a part of our what I would call what I call our naive evidential cognition the sort of our basic cognitive apparatus that we deploy uh naively so to speak to make sense of things like appearance illusions um what what's real and what's given

45:32 between the idea of phenomenal consciousness appearing to exist and yet not existing.

46:06 etc.

47:09 stuff, no phenomenal experiences and even maybe the sort of cognitive processes that even someone like you would admit can exist without phenomenal conscious but you can

47:42 states. So that the part that we cannot really wrap our mind around, not a world without phenomenal experiences. That's easy. A world that is ours where it seems to us that there are phenomenal experiences, but there aren't. Mhm.

48:15 basic tools to think of appearances and basically I understand illusions are sort of felicious appearances. Mhm.

48:48 properly and we are left sort of facing what really seems like an absurdity.

49:21 intuitive way of representing appearances and this intuitive way sort of always sort of implicitly sooner or later appeals to phenomenal experiences. And we also have to suspend that. We both have to basically distrust phenomenal introspection and our naive evidential cognition. And we have to understand that basically we have illusions of phenomenal states that these illusions are not phenomenal themselves. That they are not appearances in the intuitive sense of appearances that they are appearances in

49:55 some sort of other

50:27 how I see this theory. So in the book so I give a version of these views that I sort of sketched for you and I call it metacartigianism. Uh Dave Chas actually was very kind to suggest this name and I think it's a great name. I was struggling

51:02 of are wrong about the metaphysics. I think what they say about the mind is deeply wrong

52:10 the beginning of this conversation, you described yourself at as like an a young pluckucky type B physicalist who enters the world and then reads Chalmer's and is like uhoh. Um, so one question that is kind of obvious is like why aren't you a non-physicalist? Uh, shouldn't you be a pansychist and be hanging out with the gooffs of the world? Um, which maybe you do anyway, but shouldn't you be like why why did you not follow the conclusion of the argument to its logical way they wanted to go as opposed to the way you took it? I guess is given

52:44 that you have these intuitions so strongly like you know all the things you set yourself up for is like yeah but I'm bum you should be a pan psychist but why not?

53:17 it's uh congruent with what our best sciences seem to say. So it's not a sort of decisive reason but it does sort of wave a weight in my mind in the first place. But the deeper reason is that as I told you when I was sort of um reading Chalmer's conscious mind and seeing what he was saying about what he calls the paradox of phenomenal judgment. I was just having a hard time seeing how this could work. So basically this paradox of phenomenal judgment and maybe I can say a word about it because it's also very

53:49 important for some of the arguments that are present in the book. So basically the idea is this um on some versions of antifysicalism which are also those that I found the most plausible in the first place um let's say it's roughly those who accept the causal closure of the physical on those versions uh there are some sort of physical processes that are very tight that need to be tightly linked with phenomenal experiences and that are basically our phenomenal judgments. Yeah.

54:26 beliefs about our phenomenal experiences that's what makes us able to say things like oh I had a headache 1 minute ago or oh I'm feeling a delicious taste when I'm drinking this wine or stuff like that right

54:58 without any reference to the non-physical because uh what is it that makes me say oh I'm having a wonderful phenomenal experience of green right now it has to be some sort of a neural activity in my motor cortex and which is itself downstream of some uh earlier neural activity in sort of zones. responsible for language and cognition whatever. So you should be able to sort of give a full explanation that does not mention any phenomenal terms right can be put purely in physical terms does not

55:31 mention any phenomenal terms and even uh I think that you can conjoined with a negation of anything phenomenal right you can take this whole story of what makes you come to say talk about your wonderful greenish experience and you can conjoin this description with and by the way there are no phenomenal experiences going on there

56:05 come we we can't explain all this without mentioning the stuff that it's supposed to be about or even while denying the stuff that it's supposed to be about? And uh so I think that's a very deep problem for at least some versions of antifysicalism namely those who accept something like causal closure of the physical and that's one the problem that Charmas called the paradox of phenomenal judgments. I think it's the best chapter of his book the conscious mind. I've I've said it repeatedly. I think it's really brilliant and I think any solution just fails. And when I realized that, I said, "Okay, I think that I'm left either with

56:38 versions of antifysism that are much weirder than I wanted because basically I think you need to be some sort of interactionist, which because then to account uh to solve these paradox, you basically need to say that no, you cannot explain your phenomenal judgments without fundamental experiences. You need them. So fundamental terms that sort of required for the explanation in sort of essential way that cannot be done otherwise and probably you need to understand a very weird version of interactionism which I knew I didn't want to do because that

57:11 seemed really believing in the fairy to me.

57:44 not convinced by let's say some version of type a physicalism like those that believe that you can sort of analyze fundamental concepts as functional or behavioral concept like no that's just not true.

58:16 consciousness is purely physical. We think about it in two ways. One is through physical concept that say some sort of uh functional description of the brain and that allows us to refer to phenomenal experiences. But we also think about them from the inside so to speak with phenomenal concepts. And these fundamental concepts sort of are such that they don't make it straightforward that consciousness is in fact physical maybe because they have no associated descriptive content or no associated cognitive content. So

58:48 basically we just think about it like oh this stuff and because we just think about it as oh this stuff with no other extra content we can easily wonder but is this stuff physical or not right there is nothing in our concept

59:22 I'm applying to it then this label should leave open any metaphysical view on the nature of its reference and we should just not have robust persistent antifist intuition and I think we do

59:58 because phenomenal concepts sort of activate a an an instance or a copy of the phenomenal experience they refer to. Uh we have this impression that there is something more to the experience whenever we think about it with a phenomenal concept. Namely because it feels a certain way. Like the thinking about the experience in the first person feels a certain way while thinking about the experience from the third person does not feel like anything in particular. And that gives us this sort of false impression that uh there is something extra in phenomenal

1:00:33 experiences whenever we think about them with fundamental concept. So yeah, I have a lot of I've written a couple of papers on that. I basically thinks it does not work and um my to summarize in one word while I think these other theories also do not work and to sort of give you an overview of my position basically I think what all these views have in common is that they make our antifysicalist intuition something that is like a fallacy something that normally with enough change in beliefs and new information and sort of enough

1:01:06 philosophical reflection we just should be able to overcome and then uh the sort of possible identity or phenomenal experiences with this and this physical process should just be straightforward. Nothing to worry about. It's just

1:01:41 taking they can't do justice in your view to like how substantive the grasp of phenomenal concepts is. um and that it it leaves out what you think is this important aspects of it.

1:02:15 the appearance of the phenomenal is. And the same thing can be said about for me about type B physicalist. I think they just don't do justice to how deep and cognitively impenetrable our mystery intuitions are. Again, I think that in my mind and have some arguments for that, but the basic idea is that in my mind, it's not just a matter of thinking harder about the issue, right? I don't think that the reason why we intuitively resist um to admit that fundamental states are just physical state. I don't think it's

1:02:48 just because we we reasoned badly and we need to think a little bit more about that. I think it's deeper than that. And yeah, I think that's really some of I think it's among my starting points, right? I was really really convinced of these things.

1:03:20 illusion and and could have an easy time to believe that it was true.

1:03:53 contradictory or ruled out by your mystery intuition and how robust they are?

1:04:26 of very deep intuition that we have. This mind will have the same sort of difficulty intuitively accepting um that uh these states are purely illusurary.

1:04:59 had the kind of illusion that those guys think is uh the explanation and then it could come sort of think it way out of it and be like, "Oh, it's just a perceptual weird meta introspective illusion."

1:05:33 of primitive property. Yeah. I think these minds should be sort of have an easier time uh become illusionist much easier than us. Yeah. [clears throat]

1:06:04 possible here friends why I'm trying

1:06:37 is going to be like ours, right?

1:07:43 illusion but it's not our illusion of phenomenal consciousness I don't think they would act exactly like us now how different their lives would be I think that's a good question but I'm not sure I can speculate too much on that because but I do suspect there would be some differences even before they do philosophy because they would not have the same tools to think about for example they would not think about appearance and reality the way we do because on my hypothesis the way we do it is precisely by sort of thinking about experiences

1:08:17 cognition because it's fairly useful to be able to think about appearance reality right what appears to you Okay. All right. Now, let me try one more thing here before I get to my uh real deep question, which is I want to ask about the day that you transitioned. [laughter]

1:08:50 it and you're like there's just no way out of this phenomenal judgment stuff and it's just like there's no the only thing is to become an illusionist. And so now I and it's kind of like almost in the thought experiment you present in the book where that you you know what's her name gets zombified I forget is it Ann or for what whoever in the ethics chapter where you're talking about the zombification. So I kind of imagine that's the process you like went through in a way where you uh at least conceptualize yourself in a completely radically different way than you had previously. And so I I mean as a kind of joke like I wonder you know I guess the

1:09:25 caricature of it would be like on that day did the world go gray and disappear or like what exactly happened when you suddenly became convinced that the world that that like when you look into the world there's nothing that you're looking at really in the way you think it's there and so to me it seems like a real radical change must have happened but you're but anyway so yeah can you like where am I going wrong and I'm doing the

1:09:58 tricky to say oh well maybe there is some sort of false presupposition going on in your way you picture things but I think I'm going to to pull out this move. So I would say well by definition nothing deep changed in s of which deep mental properties I was instantiating. So what changed is more like I I had a certain picture of what my mind was which I think was very intuitive again was in even extremely intuitive and then at some point I started considering more and more the the view

1:10:31 that well maybe this extremely intuitive picture is just wrong and what seems to me to be so obvious to me so undetable because that's what happens when I'm at the most intimate with myself maybe here there is some sort deep illusion going on. Um [clears throat] again I think my view um does not have the implication that if you accept it it starts being intuitive. I don't think it does. So I in some sense I never felt that it was fully intuitive. I think the view predict that it should not be intuitive. It's more

1:11:04 something like wow it could be that in fact this things that is so intuitive that I judge it must be true in fact is not true. And when I start seeing things that way, although it does remain deeply counterintuitive, I also think that a lot of other things start making a lot of sense. I can make sense for example of the fact that yeah, there is in a way in which we cannot solve the hard problem. We cannot bridge the explanatory gap. There is a way in which fundamental consciousness is the most mysterious thing ever. But it also does not create any problem for cognitive science or our scientific picture of the

1:11:37 world because it's just that this entity does not exist as we represent it right there is no fundamental experience in the strong sense and then suddenly I feel like at least for me a lot of philosophical problems and also quasi scientific problems starting started being if not solved at least sort of um a lot of progress could be made right things suddenly started to make sense

1:12:09 that I have fundamental experiences and it still seems to me that I do, but now I'm sort of seriously considering and at some point sort of believing that yeah, there is an illusion going on there, just a very deep one that cannot be fully um weeded out and that I would have to live my life with. Uh, which is fine, right? I also have lots of other illusions. Uh, [laughter] about

1:12:41 what has to be revised and what doesn't and

1:13:45 that was extremely important ethically for them that made up that sort of constituted their value but also gave some sort of meaning to their lives. And this person learns that or starts to believe suddenly that God does not exist and I don't have an immortal soul. I'm just some sort of basically a biological machine. I think a lot of people undergoing this change of view will first feel despair and 19th century literature is full of exploration of these feelings of despair and I think there are great novels right uh I I I make some hints towards the story in the chapter and

1:14:50 tells you well it's not there so you think oh but then there is value nowhere and then you start thinking again with a fresh look and you realize no there is value there it's not it's just not residing where I thought it was residing And of course there is still a lot of philosophy to be done to see where it's residing. And I'm not saying that it's easy. I think it's really actually interesting and difficult,

1:15:23 epis epistemic stuff because there may be a spare despair is more pressing in a sense for you because there is no like as good an alter like I think the moral of the of that chapter of the book is like there are there are some good alternatives that don't really rely on phenomenal consciousness in the way they talk that you're thinking of it that do a pretty good job of accounting for most of what we think is important and worthwhile and so forth. But you can't do something like that really for the epistemology because there isn't a really good thing to take its place

1:15:58 [clears throat] are other candidates but they're not as good. You lose something.

1:16:32 consciousness seems to exist and why the illusion is so strong and then I move to sort of chapters that sort of map the implications of illusionism in various domains. There is one of what implications for the science of consciousness like cognitive science of consciousness one for ethics what which which implications for like well-being moral status and one for epistemology like which implications for the notion of epistemic justification and it's true that I say at some point that because the way we think of phenomenal consciousness is really in my mind

1:17:04 essentially in epistemic terms and that it does play a role in our intuitive evidential cognition out of our intuitive way of sort of basically thinking about evidence and justification.

1:17:36 we start with a constraint that we have to be uh yeah, the revisions are will necessarily be a bit more constrained there than in the ethics chapter.

1:18:10 introspectively infallibly presented." I feel like maybe we've been more used to that because of some epistemological theories in the 20th century sort of leading us to admit that.

1:19:15 end. If you want to put some in there, uh, go ahead. So, I'll go get some to refill, too, I guess. Yeah, I'm I'm back. So, available to

1:19:53 hear the devastating objection. You're faster than me.

1:20:25 forward to hearing the the main uh I don't know if that the main objection, but

1:20:59 possible view. So, you know,

1:21:33 that it's just possible. Um that is con that it's conceivable that there is a physical creature that has phenomenal consciousness seems conceivable to me. Uh in fact I could go if I were writing this book I would quote all the people from the history of the universe who were physicists and saying that it seems obvious to them that some kind of physical thing has got to be the explanation etc. So I think you could equally pick a kind of history of people saying that and we would have our famous people democratist hobbs etc and you know um a bunch of others as well don't you know but my point though is that uh

1:22:09 the kind of shambi argument as I see it it says it's conceivable that there's a physical creature that has phenomenal consciousness so that's a possibility for the way our world could have been. So if that's if that's actually and it seems like you and what's puzzling is like you kind of grant that although you hedge because in the book you say it's describable which I'm thinking you're going to say no it's not really conceivable or something like that but uh it seems to me that it is conceivable and like this is what physicists are spending so much time conceiving is a world and developing theories of a world

1:22:42 in which phenomenal consciousness would be physical. So it seems to me that is possible for a way our world could have been. And if that's the case, then there's got to be some way that a world could be where phenomenal consciousness is real and the appearances are accurate. And so it just seems like if that's the case, it's got to be this world. Like what other world could it be? The Shambi world proves that the zombie world can't uh be metaphysically possible. So, it seems to me like if people like you

1:23:17 start from the other side and you give the the the duelist everything they want, you okay,

1:23:51 there could be strong necessities. So, it just seems to me if you start from that position that like it's possible. So, there's got to be some way our world is like that. So, let's find it. Then then it's like you're giving up already. The illusionist is what I'm saying. They're giving up already saying we can't possibly explain that that thing that could possibly exist. So we've got to settle for this other thing that I guess like you know uh we'll just have to be like it's the thing that exists.

1:24:58 the book. I think I first wanted to write more and then at some point I had to make cuts. So I don't have more on shies or on anti-zombies as as Keith Frankish called them.

1:25:31 and are fundamentally conscious. Right? That the idea,

1:26:04 any contradiction in this description. Uh so I'm not claiming that. So at least in one way of interpreting negative conceivability they are negatively conceivable. Mhm.

1:26:39 contradiction I agree that they are conceivable. Now I also think that there is no parity between zombies and shambies because I do believe that there is still something uh unsettling in the concept of a shi that is not similarly unsettling in the concept of zombie and one way of putting it is that maybe in terms of positive conceivability. I don't think that I can cause positively conceive of a shi. I think when I try to sort of form a positive uh conception of a shambi I just failed to do it. Basically what you're asking

1:27:12 me to do when you do that is more or less the same as when I try to conceive that uh this brain state is exactly the same thing as this phenomenal experience and as many other people I do find that hard to grasp. I do think that is something that escapes my understanding there and it's not because I didn't try. So basically my take on shombies would be um if you mean that they are they don't lead to a formal contradiction I grant that to you but I still think that there is some sort of incoherence in the concept of the shambi that is not an

1:27:45 explicit incoherence at the formal level but some sort of implicit incoherence and that's connected to basically the fact that I believe that our phenomenal concepts grasp phenomenal experiences with some sort of implicit content that precisely make make this entity problematic, make these entities uh having a being a primitive with a unique epistemic profile, etc. So, yeah, my answer would be um I have a hard time

1:28:18 thinking that the zombie worlds are possible. The reason why I have a hard time thinking that the zombie worlds are possible is because when I try to think of them, there is something that's off although there is no formal contradiction. Um and I think that there is something incoherent in the context of of a shambi. Um yeah so that's a sort of literal answer like if I had to literally answer this consideration now I think there are two other things that I want to comment on what you just said. One first is your sort of reproach that you said well uh Frana and people like you like maybe Keith your mistake is

1:28:52 that you're just starting by giving the dualist what they want. you're already giving them this sort of apirary argument and then of course you're in trouble when you try to still be a physicist so you end up throwing away the baby with a bath water and that's a bit bad strategy like um yeah so my answer would be something like this I don't think I'm giving the dualist anything metaphysically when I sort of grant them that our phenomenal concepts or concepts of the phenomenal are indeed pretty much like what they describe I do think that Our concept of the phenomenal

1:29:27 are a bit like Deart and Chalmer and living described in the sense that I do think that they grasp phenomenal states implicitly as having very specific features that it's not clear how they could be physical at least it's it's very hard to make that intelligible right I think this conceptual fact uh is something that I can grant without granting anything to the dualist metaphysically a little bit like I can grant that the concept of a dragon makes it scaly and makes it able to breathe fire and I'm not granting anything about the metaphysics of are there dragons in

1:30:00 the world right this is a different question so the my my view is that yeah what I'm granting to the dualistic is just that what they are doing good uh sort of thought experiments and I think they do I think the thought experiments are good in the sense that they are u m they are good um uh applications of the concept they do apply fundamental concept the way we apply them intuitively that does hit our way of um

1:30:34 the kind of answer that that you gave obviously um because uh if you allow that there can't be ruled out a priori

1:31:07 the incoherence is, the answer is I personally can't understand how the two things are the same. But my response to that is like why do I care what you can understand about whether two things are the same or not? If they are the same, they are the same. And I can conceive of them being the same. So where is the contradiction or the a priori principle that says more than just you? Because I'm going to be more den than you are here. I'm going to say try harder.

1:31:39 say try harder because it really isn't that hard to just like pick out your favorite physicalist philosopher and conceive of the world they're talking about really being that way. Uh, so it doesn't seem like there's any resistance

1:32:42 fundamental concepts. But anyway, let's let's go back to

1:33:16 is so you have everyone kind of agrees that yeah there's some

1:33:49 form sort of positive coherent conception of of Shambies that there is nothing that you find sort of unintelligible there or nothing that sort of defies your understanding there. It's the second one.

1:34:23 grasp things grasp their reference and nevertheless are not easily cashed out in terms of formal implications and formal contradictions. I think one example that I use at some point in the book to make sense of the idea of implicit conceptual content is an example that actually frequently employed in this sort of context is sort of the justified true belief example. Mhm.

1:34:57 it's not knowledge the question is can you conceive of it being knowledge right you take a geta case is it conceivable that it is knowledge and then I would say well in terms of formal contradiction of course it's conceivable there is no contradiction in you make the geta description and it's knowledge no one will be ever able to sort of deduce a contradiction there. Um but now of course um I think the orthodox opinion uh on this would be yeah but still it can't be knowledge right if it's not knowledge here it's not knowledge in any possible world where

1:35:30 there is knowledge u because what knowledge is if there is an essence of knowledge it's certainly something that is necessary so if get your cases let's say we keep the background facts fixed of course and get fix if getier cases are not knowledge that it's necessary that they are not knowledge and there is something implicitly incoher in the statement that they are knowledge. So my view would be it's a bit the same with the shombies. There is nothing sort of formally incoherent but there is something still implicitly incoherent when you and that's why you will find I think some people many people I think

1:36:03 will find that there is something sort of that always remains off in the concept of the shambi. So I will obviously not convince you because you think that there is nothing um problematic there. But at least what I can sort of tell you to sort of

1:36:37 think with enough efforts and enough change of mind, we should manage to make the idea of consciousness being a purely ordinary physical process again unproat. And I think at least for me and for many people, it it is in some sense always problematic.

1:37:12 all x and all y if x equals y then f ofx

1:37:44 care.

1:38:17 I think it failed on the positive side, but I think the negative verdict was one that is I think part of the orthodoxy. I I think I agree that the the the goal of finding sort of explicit formulation of um conditions for knowledge like sufficient condition necessary insufficient that failed. But I think that the negative verdict I would say is fairly orthodox. So I think I was just taking this example. You could take any other example of something that seems like a concept.

1:39:22 kind of resisting the analysis of a getator situation that you're providing.

1:39:54 like not that. But it's the question is whether conceptual analysis is important or relevant to the question.

1:40:27 conceptual premises about how colors work

1:41:00 contradictory right

1:41:34 If you master the concept, if you master the concept, then it becomes incoherent. I agree with you, but it becomes contradictory.

1:42:40 as soon as you understand all the words. But you can't do that consciousness and

1:43:14 the color case.

1:43:49 because

1:44:21 don't feel any pain." Like, it took a long time for me to conceptually figure out why someone could think that was easy to do. So, that's part of the datim, too. If you're going to start just with the data that's out there, there are people like me. I exist and I can't be discounted. So, I talked to people like me and we have the opposite intuition. We And so, just saying there's the intuition of something weird about zombies. Yeah, great. There's the intuition there's something weird about shambies. Yeah, great. So, if there is a dis a kind of uh um distribution of

1:44:56 intuitions amongst various persons about which things are weird and which things are like seemingly strange, but no one can produce a a contradiction. then you have to arrive at the agnostic conclusion that probably something is going on we don't understand not let's throw everything out and start over. So it just seems to me that you're you're biasing the evidence by saying zombies and chmers. Yeah, there are those people but there also are shambies and the

1:45:30 non-chalmers and all of the physicalists in the universe from Democrus back to today. They have all pictured the world being the way it seems and the norms deduce a contradiction from that. They've only said, "Gee, it seems weird."

1:46:04 resistance of the zombie world um we act like after years of doing this like it's normal to talk this way but it isn't. So I I just feel like that is what's discounted and when you're pushing back and saying oh you know everyone agrees with me that there's something weird here I that's the part where you need a lot of philosophy to get to the point where you think something weird is going on.

1:47:09 different points of disagreement. One is some so to speak a sort of technical disagreement like how do we feel about zombies versus zombies? And I don't think I'm going to convince you of that because obviously you've thought a lot you've thought a lot about it for many years. So all I can say would be more addressed again to the watching audience and then

1:47:42 uh of sort of people like Daniel Dennett or David Papino or like um in some other context like Christopher Hill or David Lewis of people who basically thought that mystery intuitions were wrong that thought very deeply that yeah phenomenal consciousness is physical and is not introspectively obvious but still admitted but nevertheless they cannot entirely shed the intuition that it isn't there is something that just seems weird to them about that right I think David Papino is one that is particularly relevant in that context so that's what I would say to an outside audience I

1:48:16 know it's not going to convince you but now let's move on a tiny bit let's just set aside for one second this shies versus zombies um what you said so what you said is um the amount of evidence that would it would take me to sort of convince me that fundamental consciousness is just so huge that basically I'm ready to just accept any view before I I come to this

1:48:49 my my question would be something like this um if really phenomenal consciousness is some sort of very ordinary uh cognitive process like nothing magic, nothing special, nothing interesting. Maybe it's just as in your view uh the having of certain sort of meta representation period. If that's all it is, then what does it mean to say that it's the most certain thing? It's really the the the part of your theory that you would never renounce and you're you're ready to sort of admit of extremely

1:49:21 exotic uh theories before you renounce that it is real. Uh what what do you mean by that? What do you mean by it being so certain? And I think my dilemma would be that when you say no no sort of the existence of phenomenal consciousness is some sort of non-negotiable starting point. Do you mean phenomenal consciousness is purely in a purely verbal sense? It's just the word I've decided I use the word and this sort of premise in my system that we have this stuff. I use [snorts] it to refer to whatever we have or do you mean it in some sort of more substantive

1:49:55 sense that corresponds to what I would call a phenomenal concept and basically my attentive would be if that's the first so basically it's some sort of variable starting point I decide to use a word to refer to whatever stuff we have and maybe play some sort of basic causal role that we all agree is instantiated then I would say but with then we can still agree because that's not how I use phenomenal consciousness I don't use it to and whatever stuff we really have and plays this causal role. And if that's what we are, then maybe you could agree actually with me and you would be what I call a verbal w like a

1:50:28 verbal weak eligianism.

1:51:01 that you're willing to enterain very real hypothesis before you consider that it could fail to exist and and then the sort of suggestion would be But isn't it a bit weird that we have this sort of extra super duper certainty with respect to something that is independently of this supposed to be extremely ordinary? Do you see a bit where I'm going?

1:51:33 going to push me off that cliff because it it really seems like the the way that you want to set up the debate is um overly theoretical. And this is why when I a long time ago on the podcast I had Keith and uh Philip on and we were supposed to talk about illusionism and we spent like two hours just talking about starting points whether Deart or like the external world. Um and and the reason why we spent those hours talking about that is because I think and I and I think this is really the crux of the issue is like where do you start from? What is the

1:52:05 data? And I know you talk a lot about data you're you know how do we go exhaustive discussion of it um exhausting shut up. Um but uh the the the kind of difference between your viewpoint and my viewpoint is that I think that there are certain things that you have to start with and then give a theory of them and that you think that those things are already theoretical in a sense in a way um and then we the question is like which theory do we adopt about this theoretical question

1:52:38 whereas that seems it's it seems to me like no we start off with just the fact that like I'm here. That that's indisputable. I am here. There is a me. There is a here. There is a now. There is a point of view. And this is something that doesn't show up a lot in the book maybe is the Nagel. And I always thought the Nagel was like the more no offense to Dave, but the more serious dualist. uh this more serious argument for dualism was the subjectivity business that there is a point of view on the world that's subjective and science proceeds by trying to make everything objective. So

1:53:13 if you fully objectify some everything you leave out subjectivity you leave out the point of view on the world in which phenomenal properties live in which phenomenal consciousness is manifest etc. But it's that subjective point of the view that that's the undeniable starting point because the world wouldn't be here. There wouldn't be a world for me without that. And it doesn't seem even after you go through all this stuff and you're like, "Oh, but it could just

1:53:44 be like, you know, their psychological appearances and you represent those as giving some epistemic justification." And it's like, yeah, but that it's all in black and white. Where's the technicolor? Like where's the starting point of the subjective? Here's the picture. It's like this. And you have to give that up and be like but but you but you don't give it up because you're like in the same world I am and you're eating the same apples I eat and you're painting with the same paint I paint with. Uh you're you know damaging your leg in the same way I damaged my I just broke my ankle so I don't think you did

1:54:16 that. But you you know you're a physical creature just like me. So uh when you that's why I asked like the day you became an illusionist did the lights go out did you become a zombie and you're like no I just thought about my mind in a different way. So that's the kind of the point that I'm trying to that that's it's like it's a theoretical question

1:54:52 just seems to me like it that the question is do you start with like whatever is there it's got to be accounted for come hell or high water and if it means I'm in a simulation the panchism is true quantum dualism materialism like all those who those are and downstream ancillary questions to the first and foremost fact which is that I am here now. [clears throat]

1:55:25 too far.

1:56:02 it's like it's data because that's what I find I have to I have to start with what I find but in this process I think it's perfectly okay to sometimes come to realize that maybe the data we we had or what we took to be data is in fact need in fact to be rejected. Right? I think at some point in the book I give this example. It's perfectly okay to be a a detective and to start by treating testimony as correct and then you realize that one of the witnesses has been blackmailed by the mafia and then you stop treating the testimony as correct. So in the process of inquiry

1:56:36 you can and sometimes you should end up rejecting some of the stuff that you started uh as data. Now the question is uh should we have a range of data that is such that it is absolutely non-negotiable such that there is never a case where we can come to sort of reject it or at least reinterpret it in a sufficiently fundamental way. I take it that what you're saying you're saying well there is a certain range of data it's called fundamental data and that

1:57:08 stuff no that's here to stay all the rest I can sort of negotiate and reject and sort of revise but that stuff no

1:57:42 stuff to say about that right it is part of our intuitive evidential cognition that there is some sort of this bedrock of data of really how things appear to us in this sort of immediate acquaintance-like manner that's why we have can never reject it epistemologically speaking so I've sort of have a meta theory about why you think that way and why also I'm tempted to think that way I'm not saying it's just you right I really I feel the attraction. It's just I think that once this picture is put out there, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. And once this picture is out there, I really

1:58:14 don't see why given what I otherwise believe about the world that right I'm a I'm a physical creature we evolve through natural selection and my cognitive apparatus is a result of this process and of course it's going to be inaccurate and caricatururing and sort of mistaken a lot of ways and why should I consider that in all these sort of representation that natural selection has given me in the first place there is a sort of subset that not only like never fades and gives me the real as it is. No, I think I can very well admit that the way my mind sort of grasps

1:58:46 itself is also in some sense sort of um can be to some extent um a misrepresentation. So yeah, I think we have sort of very different pictures of how we we we we see the potential revision of data. So I agree with that. I don't really have in some an argument except that I can sort of try to put the pictures there, present them and try to see why why I should adopt this picture and why not the other. And basically my sort of the only argument I have it's not really an argument it's more like I'm painting you a bit like a foundationalist like someone who sort of

1:59:18 wants this bedrock of data that they are not ever going to question and I'm just suggesting that I think it is not contradictory but it is a bit at odds with being a naturalist because if you're a naturalist again you think that all of cognition is a result of this highly fallible uh result of natural selection and why could it be that a subset of it just gives us you know this sort of certain substantive knowledge of our own mind that would just be weird

1:59:53 you represent yourself as seeing red then by fact that you're representing yourself that way you have the experience of seeing red so it's a self-verifying thing in a certain way and that's how it works but that's a theoretical account of something that you so so that that's kind The strategy is that you start with the thing and then try to give an account of it.

2:00:27 you really start with that in a can you really start with this sort of is it legitimate to have as a non-negotiable ever starting point that we have substantive deep knowledge of the features of our own minds

2:01:01 case that some of them are just sort of mistaken or wrong and for me we are in the same situation we start with what appears to us and among what appears to us I agree are sort of introspective appearance what um the fact that it seems to us that we have this fundamental states but then we do a lot of inquiries and then at the end of the day 21st century like well something does not add up and then that's how we come to envision this possibility that Maybe this thing is sort of an illusion in some sense.

2:01:33 weak verbal stuff is is not exactly right in the way you put it in the book is and and I've been talking to Eric too. He's apparently trying to develop this verbal idea in a different in a different way, which I think is okay that um and and now I'm starting to see I think why cuz it's hard for me at first to really get my mind around how this could be verbal because it's like this the most fundamentally important thing in the universe. Um in my opinion um not the most because I don't endorse uh sentientism. I think there are other things besides consciousness that have value, but I do

2:02:07 think it's one of the primary ones and gives you a distinctive sort of value. So, I'm on board with all that kind of stuff that you reject. But anyway, um the uh I forgot what I was going to say. [laughter]

2:02:40 that it's like from my point of view and maybe it could be I could be wrong about it or it could be like vague or I can not have a fully certain grasp on it but it seems like there's a way I am in the world generally speaking uh from my point of view um and it's almost like when you read your book you're trying to describe that you're describing here's what it's like to be human. Well, we're we have these appearances and they're not like we think that they are. And so, and and then when you became an illusionist, nothing changed. Like the world was still there. The sunset was

2:03:13 still out there in that way, the light, the green. But well, then what it's like for you was the same all along. And what you're describing is just a theoretical outlook on how you should characterize that because the stuff that's important there is still there. Um, and that's how I'm now thinking of how I mean maybe I'm misrepresenting what Eric is saying, but the sense in which it's verbal is that we are agreeing that there's got to be some sense that there's a mind and the mind's encountering the world. And the question is just how do you describe that? Um

2:03:47 what and and then but what I'm saying is that there's something that goes beyond that which is that there is a a real subjectivity which you encounter which to deny it is like to deny the very thing that led you to like ask the question. Um and and to take my super blindside example like the super blind sight agent has a pure void like the gy the patient when you say what's it like to see behind your head I mean start to see in your blind sight he says what's it like to see behind your head and of

2:04:20 course there's nothing it's like to see behind your head it's just blank. So super blind sight would have to be like that, but yet you would be like picking things up and drinking and be very surprising to you in some sense. And that's just manifestally not how the world is. And and and then you want to argue, but look, whenever you're trying to access consciousness, you're always applying these concepts and there's something in between in between you and it.

2:04:54 having the state is knowing what it's like and that guarantees already before I do any phenomenal concepts BS that I'm a conscious it just like and I sort of already implicitly know it before I do that stuff. So you can't get in between it.

2:05:28 I develop in this book is to understand why what you describe is so attractive and more than attractive. why it seems to really be almost unavoidable as a way to think about consciousness and about the mind. Right? So in some sense uh when you say all of that of course I disagree at the metaphysical level but there is a level at which it's not that I agree but I want to cheer on you and say yeah yeah it's exactly what I say like it is true that we think of phenomenal consciousness as a sort of bedrock of data with which we are acquainted and that's why it makes so

2:06:02 little sense to come to deny it intuitively at least now how to make sense of nevertheless how to make sense of my view uh I think one way Maybe to slightly ease the intuition is to as somebody use the word manifestly and so go back to what's been called like sincella as a manifest image of the world.

2:06:36 think that um we agree that when then we start doing a lot of theory and we start believing that well the the the world that is presented to me by perception or naive physics or intuitions is actually different from what it seems to be. Like there are maybe no and I think you agree on that, right? There are no primitive ethnic colors out there. what they are is very different and although we represent we represent these ethnic colors and it really seems like they don't know like the there's sort of I think it's fairly possible that it seems

2:07:08 like time is absolute and that two things can really happen at the same time sort of absolute sense but no it's not the case at least that's what our best science tells us and I don't know for you but for me it's extremely hard to wrap my mind around that in some sense I still live in the manifest world I cannot live in this in this world right on a day-to-day basis I live in a world full of primitive colors and absolute simultaneity. Although I do believe that in some sense the external world is not such I think the the describe what it's like to be you.

2:07:41 the question but just in some sense for me it's just a a further step in this direction. I apply the same sort of perspective on my own sort of internal world. what happens inside in my sort of intimate consciousness. It does seem that it's populate with populated with these experiences with sort of very unique what it's like properties attached to them that feel a certain way blah blah blah and I agree that it's incredibly intuitive in some sense it's even more intuitive and harder to doubt that anything else for the sort of reason that my metacartian view tries to explain but I still think that the same

2:08:15 step can be made about them. Now of course I wake up uh and the things that I will find so to speak will still be the same. I will live in the manifest image. That does not prevent me from at the same time believing that this manifest image is wrong.

2:09:21 intuitive way is part of the manifest world and as the other part of some as many other parts of the manifest world I have to admit that they do not really exist at least not in a deep sense although I cannot escape

2:09:54 sunset that was there, the redness of the apple, the greenness of the leaves, those things are there. Um and then you say, well, okay, so you're not a naive a naive realist, are you?

2:10:28 willing to admit that let's say the redness of external red does not exist. Right? There is no primitive red inhering in the surface. So you've made a step. You've accepted that the scene that's one thing that really seemed ex so ordinary and obvious was not there. And what your your reaction to it is again I think it's a extremely well motivated and not absurd at all reaction is like since Decart and Galilo maybe harder for Galileo but certainly Deart like the redness of red

2:11:01 is not out there. It's in my experience there lives the quality and then maybe I make a mistake or something. Well, that's not my reaction. My reaction is to try to

2:11:33 nevertheless extremely hard on a daily basis to not live within them in the sense of taking them to be true. Right? We still what I mean by living in the manifest image is simply that we still ordinarily implicitly assume the manifest image to be true when we go around and have our ordinary life.

2:12:06 know, everyone's right about Chomemers and Daycart and all those guys are right. That's the way it seems. The colors seem out there. Um, you have to do a lot of theorizing to beat people into the I mean, my undergraduate students never accept the idea that even in any class I've ever taught uh that redness is not a property of the external objects. They just like a lot of them flat out refuse to accept it and think we're silly for saying so. And then you're like, "Oh, but science agrees with these dead philosophers." And they're like, "Yeah, who cares about science?" So, I don't know. Um the the idea that redness is real is very strong and some people can be convinced that

2:12:40 redness doesn't exist as we thought that it does namely as a property of external objects and then those people sometimes relocated in the mind. That's the kind of Galileo move you're

2:13:14 you know a product of this illusion in a sense and and it doesn't make sense. So the world can't be appear to you the way it appears to me. Unless it does. And so either like illusionism is a false and and it does appear to you the same way it does to me or else illusionism is true and like there all of this is in a super blind sight world and yet I just falsely believe that I'm not in a super blind sight world and I don't see what the other option is and you but you keep saying there is one. So that's what I'm confused about. I think so my view would

2:13:46 be um things appear to us in the same way. You are I mean in some sense we are both wrong intuitions about what this appearance consists in. Um these intuitions about what this appearance consists in are extremely deep and extremely hard so to speak probably are hard to extrapate. So I still have this intuition. The difference is that all in all I end up believing that these intuitions are wrong and you end up endorsing them.

2:14:19 there and that the apple is red. But you can't. You're not allowed to because it's just that

2:14:52 blindsight world. And and we don't live there.

2:15:25 anyway. But of course for me there is a lot of difference between blind side states whatever wherever whether they have them or not and my ordinary conscious states it's just that so I think for me there is a distinction right some of the stuff uh so consciousness in some ordinary sense exists right I can forise information that I can access I can do things with it I just don't think it is endowed with these phenomenal properties that I still admit are really intuitively uh very strongly sort of presented to me in introspection. So I I don't see why I

2:16:00 should admit that whatever happens to me is like blind sight. It's not. There are tons of differences between blind sight and what happens to me and what happens to you.

2:16:31 was super while the super duper blind side by definition does not otherwise it would just be

2:17:07 amounts to like the way things appear. Um, in the sense that you can't It would be like It would be like if I could reach behind me and and grab something like, "Where's my umbrella? Oh, here it is." And then I would be like, "Whoa." Uh, but I was just looking this way and I had no visual experience as far as I could tell about what's behind me and I just re and I was able to do that like consistently like manipulate things behind my body but with no visual experience. That would be a very bizarre

2:17:40 experience and that just exclusively is not the kind of experience I have.

2:18:14 like they literally have no appearance in the phenomenal sense.

2:18:46 saying if if what I'm saying is even possible, then I win because the goal would then to become to figure out how it's possible um and to try to explain it and give an account of it. So I think that if it even is possible in any sense that consciousness is physical, we should devote our time to ex figuring it out and not getting rid of it. And so you have to be committed to the very strong claim that not only does it like seem incoherent or strange, but there literally is a contradiction, a formal contradiction, which if we knew

2:19:20 everything, we would be able to a priority deduce

2:19:56 of and above physical processes is not formally contradictory but I think there is a deep incoherence there but more I think I disagree at some sort of more I I don't think that the crux is exactly there I think the way I see things is really more like the illusionist This argument is really like an inference to the best explanation which is again I start with lots of things that seem plausible to me and I agree that primmaak like strong impression that there are fundamental experiences out there and it's just overall the fact that there is

2:20:30 overall the old picture just makes much more sense once I start admitting that oh wait this sort of introspective representation that seems so non-negotiable they could actually be a mischaracterization and what would happen if that was the case and what sort of mis mischaracterization would it be and if so what should be my intuitions and couldn't I live in this world and I just think that when I start thinking about it that way a bit in the third person if you want things start making a lot of sense and then the question becomes once I have this picture in the third person that makes a lot of sense

2:21:02 I also know that when I try to repatriate it in the first person it will always feel weird but it could still be true because that's exactly what the creator that I described in the third person would feel and then at some point I just have to admit that yeah maybe I'm just in sort of Plato's cave or Decart's cave and I cannot really exit but I can know that I'm there and that's a bit my perspective. So I would not say for me all depends on fundamental consciousness being impossibly physical for me it's all sort of matter of inference to the best explanation. there is this sort of

2:21:36 implicit incoherence in making it physical but also uh all the sort of very specific epistemic features that it seems to have and do not fit otherwise sort of what I would call an what is required by naturalistic approach to the mind and to knowledge and that makes it so that yeah in the third person this illusionist um frameworks just starts making a lot of sense and then there is this sort of leap of faith that makes it well could be me actually it does feel like it can't be me but it could be me and when I start thinking that way again I feel like just things overall start

2:22:09 making holistically more sense uh that would be my sort of overall way of of uh framing it and my sort of suspic it's a sort of you're not sensitive to this sort of suggestion but my suggestion would be well if you really want to give to a substantive knowledge of the phenomenal such a unique epistemological status make it a non nonnegotiable starting point. Um I do think that doing so is a bit at odds with a naturalistic approach to the mind because I'm not

2:22:42 sure we should have any non-negotiable starting point especially if they supposed to concern some sort of substantive knowledge of the nature of anything. I think we should be actually very careful with that. Uh that would be like my the sort of worries that I would have uh for someone with your position.

2:23:15 which we didn't uh get to and the answer can be no but if there was something you were like waiting to pounce on or bring up uh you now would be a good chance otherwise you can say no but it's up to you. um like right now I felt like we of course we had a focused discussion we did not discuss by all means um a lot of the content in the book but that's also normal because we just spoke for two hours or

2:23:50 anticipating and so yeah thanks again for having me for having this conversation I can see that I did convince you but uh I hope at least it made you see things in a richer manner that would be already for me uh the best that

2:24:24 to talk about this stuff um many more uh on many more occasions. So, so thank you for that and for being such a good sport. Uh I felt like I was going to say something else, but let's just call it there. And um thank you for your time. I'll just say bye off the air. So hang around for one second. Other than that, thank you.