Consciousness Live! with Keith Frankish (S2 E1)

0:00 okay we are live joining me today is an extra special guest dr. Keith Frankish Keith for those who don't know you can you say a little bit about who you are and what you do yes Who am I that's a question I've been asking myself for a long time all I'm trained as a philosopher mind I worked for the Open University in the UK for a long time and recently as I we relocated to Tikrit and so I'm living in in Greece

0:34 and Crete at the moment I work mainly on issues concerning the conscious mind on the one hand conscious the nature of conscious conscious reasoning and on the other hand unconscious experience and I advocated a position which I call illusionism which is a form of eliminative is 'm about phenomenal consciousness I think the notion of

1:06 phenomenal consciousness is one that is probably confused and certainly unhelpful and I don't think the phenomenal consciousness in the in the traditional philosophical sense exists so that's something we will talk about that's probably what what I'm best known for the moment I I guess I but I'm interested in lots of things I'm I'm trying to sort of broaden out my my interest as I get a little bit older rather than narrowing them down which yes okay obviously I want to talk about

1:40 the illusionism stuff and and I find that very interesting but just before getting to that you before you were sort of working explicitly on illusionism you were doing the the dual processing kind of stuff right you did wrote the book super minded mind the super mind so I'm just wondering if you could say a little bit about if you think that earlier work led you to where you are with respect to consciousness or how they relate or do you think they're separate projects or I think they're separate projects the bed I always had an interest in

2:16 consciousness and from '''l consciousness and that so that was always a kind of secondary stream to my interest in I became particularly interesting actors working on it after writing a textbook for the Open University unconsciousness which forced me to really get into the into the literature and get my head around at all it's a really good way of getting into it into a new field – I tried a textbook so after that I started work doing more research on phenomenal consciousness the other spans been thinking about the nature of belief and reasoning that came

2:48 out of thinking about folk psychology when I was in graduate school long time ago in habits and things or the big issues was the future folk psychology a lot of people thought the folk psychology ordinary belief desire psychology was kind of doomed and so I I I spent a lot of time thinking about this and reading the sort of literature that was around in the early nineties and I came to the conclusion that really when we talk about belief and just thinking and these kind of things they're really two rather

3:22 different sorts of phenomena they're two different kinds of belief and two kinds of things we mean by reasoning that which went it wasn't just that there was non-conscious believe consciously where it was the same thing but almost consciously it wasn't it was that there were two quite different kinds of state and when we speak of conscious because speaking of really a very different sort of attitude from non conscious believe the same with conscious reasoning it's a conscious reasoning isn't just reasoning that's a non conscious reasoning with the lights on it's a different animal altogether and so I do try to develop this into a into the sort of picture

3:56 that I had in mind and super mind and then I realized that a lot of psychologists were doing pretty much the same kind of thing and developing the dual process and dual system theories of raising and so I started to get interested in those and collaborated a little bit with Jonathan Evans who's one of the leading one of the developers of your process they're a cognitive psychologist and we did a conference together on this and so I kind of then began to merge that kind this sort of picture that derive from thinking about folk psychology with

4:29 the picture that was emerging from cognitive psychology and treatment and social psychology – and I still continue to to develop that and I've keep writing papers about the nature of belief and kind of where you might call pathologists abilify delusion lists of things and I do want to kind of pull all that together into another book at some point sort of updating and of mind and super mind of what are we thinking of it all so that's that's but that's sort of from being the dominant line that's kind of moved into being the secondary track

5:02 and consciousness nominal consciousness can make as it does tends to so do you so is it the case that you are not and a limit of is about belief but you are about phenomenal consciousness yeah okay yeah well my my attitude to to believe I mean as I say I think there are two different who different kinds of believe radically different kinds of belief one of them I had to do one of them it's

5:34 pretty much is is a very weak sort of realism the sort of then it has its kind of interpretivism if you like but I mean it's still in the form of realism it's not outright eliminative is a rather poor judgment and my attitude to phenomenal consciousness is eliminatory is well of course judgment the Chechens are actually not eliminative is about phenomenal consciousness they're they're reductionists about it so yes I'm the kind of sort of mirror image of space and that's interesting so

6:09 why so why is it what is it about beliefs that that that you think licenses their reality is it's not first-person and stuff it's got to be the third-person stuff their usefulness or something or what why yeah absolutely I think the notion does a lot of work for us I think the notion of me my focus is on the the second kind of leaf when I call super believable loosely you might call consciously my attic due to the other sort the protocol basic belief he's very

6:42 much the same as Dan it's I just see it as a essentially patterns in behavior that are observable both from certain stance and point of view of the intentional stance I think it's incredibly useful sort of I suppose you might call it be a sort of behavioral metric I think that's a phrase that then it has use that phrase it's incredibly useful as for consciously was supervising that and what we're doing there we're talking about a certain kind of activity a certain kind of commitment

7:15 that we make to a pattern of actual pattern of defending a proposition using it as apparently taking as a premise and reasoning have not been content with conflicts we've detected between it and other things we're committed to and so on and so I think that's you know that's something that's pretty much obviously verbal at the level of you know in you know social interaction which almost a bit of know if they say yes I mean I think I think to some extent the paper I

7:55 believe that we have there is describing a kind of interaction we have with ourselves and with other people it's it's the I don't I don't see it as a theoretical posit in that sense you see it's an actors as an observation of certain kinds of activity that we engage in so I don't think they're as much pressure to eliminate that okay right but so but you would eliminate belief as object of introspection mental state we

8:32 encounter when we wonder what we're doing and introspect and say oh like this I think these activities that I'm talking about include covert mental activities negative intent and the intentional generation of mental imagery in the form of in a speech but I don't think we have any privilege any what we have a and you get privileged access to that it's easier for us to to tell what we're imaging than it would be for and you know scientist to tell but still I don't

9:04 think of any infallible access to the to the nature of the processes involved yeah and Sorrento it's actually happening about its significance yes so I guess this is gonna be something we're going to talk about eventually but so I noticed that you're already talking about having infallible access where I was just wondering if we have any kind of access so whether it's you know forget pray at the qualities that it has the properties is there anything that counts as like accessing the beliefs that we have you know I was reading creator Peter Carruthers a paper

9:36 recently where he argues that you know there is no there are no conscious beliefs but as I was reading the paper I mean my reaction to it was but yeah there are he's describing happen when we have these these higher-order states that attribute to ourselves beliefs that's what a conscious belief is there may be no first-order states that are accurately described that way but it just seems to me that that's what we mean when we say introspectively we have access to these things not that it's infallible or something like that that maybe tacked on later when we're

10:09 theorizing but it's just that you know we encountered these things when we try to interpret our own behavior I mean so Jill but you don't think that what we said look we said engage in in self interpretation and Peter thinks that and you know we can articulate these these these self interpretations nautical ate them to ourselves and people that's uncontroversial the accuracy of those self interpretations is another matter so let's not as much talk about the how out of at least but higher-order reports reports of what we we produce this

10:43 stream of of self commentary do I help people and that's real that the commentaries real now I think it's accuracies he's open to say again it it's the accuracy of that commentary is is not it's not given to us I mean I'm ray what is the accuracy that's not given I heard rancor yeah so I may report myself was believing something um now depending on what exactly you think the report is doing if you think it's a

11:15 report of some persisting state that is disposed to have a certain influence on my behavior and to guide it in certain ways then I could be wrong about that maybe I think that I have some kind of persisting state that deposes me to to treat all people equally regardless of gender or race whatever and I could be wrong about that I don't alternatively you could be seeing the report and this is more in line with what I talked about as the super belief as I kind of commitment to doing that so when I say I believe it all people are you know what I'm doing is making a kind of commitment

11:49 to standing by that proposition now that seems a bit more unchallengeable because it's kind of forward-looking okay so it's not dependent on my having correctly detected something some pre-existing state it's by making a sort of promise to you and to myself that I will stamp toilet and so that's now of course I might not live up to that but that's another quite a different way of being wrong from a failure of introspection it's a Haley role of I said when Pro inspection and predicting how I will whether I will stick to the commitment so I don't in either case see

12:25 anything here that's that that guarantees the the truth of what I say why you know why is that relevant to whether you had the conscious experience I mean it seems like you're building in something which would be that an assumption which would be that if there were a conscious experience around it would be the thing which was accurately described by this higher-order report as you know hi I'm sorry I was I was thinking that my beliefs about blue parts of beliefs rather than experiences

12:57 well okay so about the beret I haven't talked we haven't switched officially yet but I'm yeah I think I think it's the same point well well transfer but so the question is that I was wondering about was why do we have to have the accuracy condition in order to count as having the just believes given that the depth so it's building in an assumption about what a conscious belief would be namely that it requires that there be some kind

13:30 of belief which is consciousness and that seems to me to be somewhat question begging oh I know I really should consciously find out I don't think we should do that I think that's a mistake as I say I think what we're doing is making a kind of it's a sort of it's a an avowal of a belief is a kind of performative it's something more like a promise to yourself and to other people that this is kind of this is where this is nailing your epistemic colours to the mast and saying this is where you're going to this is the policy you're going

14:03 to follow yeah so and I like that but maybe so I don't mean to cut you off and I'll let you finish a second but I just occurred to me that maybe the word belief is what's causing some some unclarity and what I'm trying to say at least so what if I switch to the word thoughts or are there conscious thoughts on your view well again we need to distinguish all with would you call that so if I say to you I believe that everyone's people are equal I might reporting a thought there now

14:40 I'm reporting your think your you mean conscious episodes well what if you said to me I think all people are equal well again I'm not just reporting a belief there but if I am like if I am I intending to report some kind of conscious episode that I introspective now this is Sara Lee why should I be I mean it's like what if I said yeah I think all people are equal I'm not reporting that well just a few microseconds ago I have so those comes

15:13 I'm conscious episode with that content that seems to be an implausible interpretation of what I'm doing well why would that be the interest so that's what part of what my question is is suppose I say I think all people are equal it seems to me that what I've done is to report a thought of mine that conscious but that doesn't seem to commit me to there being some first order thought which now his conscience not seems to be an assumption so that's an assumption a lot of people make but I agree with you on that but I'm not I

15:49 don't feel that it's a report I mean look what might happen I say to you I think all people are equal now what I'm doing there as I understand it is making a sort of statement either of a kind of policy that I regard myself as committed to all that I am now committing myself to it's a kind of an announcement of where I stand if the actual fault kind of runs through my head in in a in a speech later let us say I think that's doing a similar thing it's kinda by the reminding myself or committing myself afresh to some thing that I that I stand on I don't seem having a descriptive function except insofar as it's

16:24 describing one of these commitments that I have reminding myself I mean if I if I'm one example a lady I'm driving to work and I suddenly remember that I mean it's an example there it's cable also uses that I can't take the normal route or that I have some appointment or something something different from my normal routine and so I need to take a different route and I'm just driving on an autopilot taking the usual route and then this thought occurs to me now what it seems to me there is I'm just kind of recalling a kind of commitment recalling sort of a plan or a strategy or an

17:01 intention of some sort that I meet the date that I'm currently committed to you know if I don't we call it I won't act on it precisely because it works as a sort of my behavior is a reaction to that occurrence right so that particular event so that reminding myself of some commitment that I've made so it's not the sort of the activation of some first-order state that would have kind of done its work anyway wouldn't it needs to do it by this kind of conscious self stimulation if it isn't just like

17:36 someone else we might just like having a passenger sitting next to me who reminds me this is remember the road is closed remember you've got to go and do something exactly like that I am literally reminding myself and that has the same effect that a report from another person would have so it's not that this state was there originally there that the belief that the road was closed author who was there the first order just like all the other states that are guiding my current behavior and somehow it just sort of the light just came on at that moment no that's it's a totally different and this is this is then what

18:12 I was getting at with the idea that there were two very different kinds of things we refer to when we talk about beliefs because we might also describe my routine behavior in terms of beliefs or things you might say that I as I'm driving along unconsciously all that you're not attending very closely to what's happening I have beliefs and thoughts about the other road users about where I want to go and all this kind of stuff about the correct we look about how the controls of the car work and so on that that sort of level of description of discourse is doing a wholly different sort of thing I think ya know I I agree with all that

18:46 and to be honest but my my question is so what I was trying to get at was that in that account that he just gave there seems to be something which clearly maps on to the folk psychological notion of conscious belief and that's the part where you the light goes on and you suddenly have the thought and that's what we mean by having a conscious thought it doesn't mean there's some first-order state that was there and suddenly gets spotlighted or something it means in the stream of consciousness suddenly the thought shows up and that's

19:19 what you just described and that's what is well I mean one way of thinking of the stream of consciousness is that it's like a bunch of first-order states that are kind of doing their normal work quietly under the under the radar and then they get picked out by the spotlight of consciousness and that's the stream of consciousness now that's not at all how I think of the stream of consciousness I think this view of consciousness is is a stream of imagery I think it's all imagistic I think it's all sensory based being with others about that

19:51 and Jesse Prince and I think what we call the stream of consciousness is to a large extent not wholly as in a speech so it is really functionally no different from private speech from just talking out loud to yourself yeah there's no question here of a light going on or anything it's just a certain sort of activity that happens to be kind of short-circuited that doesn't that doesn't it doesn't involve the overt vocalization I mean so it does sound to

20:24 me like you are in a limited about belief then well about every kind of belief well it was a belief like in what you're describing I mean so the behavior is you know they said you know beliefs are just reacting in the face ways your dispositions acts in various ways unconscious beliefs are just your dispositions conscious beliefs are the things you know you avoid the table and so forth and so on there's an element of that and your basic belief account I would say and then at the super size believe there's just this kind of more of that but for a

21:00 different purpose so disputed so I don't really see where the limit of ISM it's a pleasure well I'm not category and limit well I I don't know I think philosophers of rather quite a lot into the fake vocabulary I mean limit of is about self constant conceptions of belief I don't think we have beliefs in the sense of instance that Jerry Fodor what we had believed oh I it's an open question about how what there's sort of some personal basis for all this stuff is though it could be discrete things and that the basic mind that could be

21:34 supported by a kind of level of some personal information processing that is very discrete and chant to just err just in the way the folk psychology says it it I don't think folk psychologists committed to that of all that that needs to be true in order for everything was committed to the kind of propositional modularity down there at bay there's a personal level I'm used to phrase from Aransas digital and Quran now so I'm I mean limited about some conceptions of belief but then everybody's in a material about the conceptions about that they don't agree with what I and the way I'm not in lemon Hurst is that I think the folk psychology is doing

22:06 something very useful and then it's picking out real States maybe who've not in discreet internal information processing states there's no miss the old state of the person to whom they're describing which and that does real explanatory and predictive work it's really useful and it's doing as you say they and the the basic and the the super levels of description doing different things but they're in the same broad category and yeah I think it's you

22:43 know that's there's the contrast we might think about with how I think about phenomenal consciousness I think the notion there is just an obstacle making progress so it's I I think that there's there isn't a way of construing the concept I mean that there are ways of construing it where you could be you could still be realist about it but I think there's there's so tenuous that it's not doing anything useful I think we've got other concepts that will do all the work we need to do and the reason I want to eliminate it is I think it just brings in a bunch of intuitions

23:16 that distort our thinking and so that's why I'm quite as soon as you say that you do now so we are switching now but it's it's kind of to do with the the issue of the limitation in saying I didn't I'd exist this phenomenal consciousness it looks like I'm making I mean let's face never as Galen Strawson sitting although they there was Ilyas claim in the human thought now one thing to do there is to say well of course I'm existence of consciousness you know that's what I say when people say that

23:50 about you yeah and in a sense that's right but it sounds and and of course that's immediately sounds like equivocation and that you're on the back foot and there is a sense in which I'm not and we can try and sort this out but the thing and we need to take a certain amount of this on the chin and I do try to take it on the chin because I am denying something that I think is if not the everyday common-sense conception of consciousness it is something that is very easily extrapolated from that you don't have to

24:24 push people too far to get them into this conception of consciousness so it's not I don't think it's the everyday won't be something not too far from it and we're all familiar with a bit of work you need to do to get your students from the place where they start into the place where they now see the hard problem and it's that to work now and I think that's very natural and it's and once you've done that step it becomes very easy to think that that was that's the natural view of it just that everyone starts with their home good but anyway and now that conception so which can seem the obvious one certainly to

24:58 people who are in the debate that I am I am eliminate Avista back about that concept I think it's a talking about trying to find the neural coverlets of that I think is is a is a fool's errand I think where it's just going to distort our thinking distort our research just leaders into into puzzles that can never be solved and it's completely unfruitful so I'm prepared to take a set amount of this on the chin right in order to emphasize that there's some rethinking

25:31 needs doing and I I suppose in the way that some people are willing to be a limitless about free will I mean I'm I mean you could perfectly well be a kind of realist about free will while accepting determinism ran yeah that's interesting that you brought that cuz I was gonna I was gonna actually ask about that comparison because you know there are people like like Dennett right and it's a rigorous about free will but he's a list but he's apparently in a limited based about

26:05 consciousness but why it's oh look I mean when I you know I read the debate between Dan and Caruso which I don't know if you saw that debate but yeah so Caruso is probably more on your side about the limited ISM right for free will at least and and then it is not but yet they agree on like a lot of details the difference is really just how they want to describe what's going on there so it's something similar going on here do you I think I think I think so I think I mean I take it down think so there's a

26:39 there's a perfectly good notion of a free will which doesn't involve any commitment of things like their you know agent causation right contract causal processes and he fact he thinks that is pretty much the everyday one right and all the work we need the concept to do can be done by a my this by a concept that's perfectly compatible with you

27:14 determinism for example now I think probably Gregg is addressing people who have very strong intuitions about the metaphysical nature of freewill right and who do you believe in agent causation I do believe there's an incompatibility and so he's he's denying that that kind of freewill exists and then will deny to but it's they're kind of addressing different audiences and different concerns right okay they're the people who wanted to do so if you wanted to do this kind of work well then there's nothing that will do that kind of work if you wanted to do these other

27:46 kind of work well yes of course there's a concept that will do that kind of work and I think it depends who your opponents are which now so I could I mean though I could I'd be happy with certain ways of talking about consciousness that are pretty realist but not for the people that I'm arguing against not for the people who I take you there distorting not intentionally distorting people who are taking us down the wrong path right so when you're arguing with Strawson and David Chalmers don't you want to you want to toe the limit of ism but if you're arguing with

28:20 someone else you're happy to say okay well as long as you're not inputting any magic in here I could be a realist i yes although I think what happens if you're not putting magic in ease or the only question if you don't have the magic in is where to pin the labor phenomenal consciousness on which bit of the of the the processing story that you tell and I think that is a kind of profoundly uninteresting question really so I guess you could be miss you could pin the label or wherever

28:55 you want but whatever we don't we we can know everything we need to know about what's happening without leaving you I don't see the concept is unless the unless the concept is doing magic I don't think so yeah this is I think where some of the things that probably our most fundamental in dividing us are going to come up because there's a lot we agree on obviously but I think here around here maybe not so one of my complaints and and so you know I want to hear how you would possibly respond to a

29:31 complaint like this what you've heard from you before so so one of my complaints is that that physicalists give up too easy and sort of what I hear you doing is that so when when we're arguing because you know the physicalism is not something that I I'm pretty committed to it you know I my deepest sympathies are with some kind of identity theory but that's where my my heart really is and that can be convinced out of it and I know there's some issues but I think that there's good reasons to accept it and that's my

30:04 probably my strongest commitment my whole professional career is that no one has shown the identity theory is wrong in yeah okay so that doesn't mean it's right obviously but so I have physicalist leanings I would say but given that it seems that a lot of other people who also physicalist want to say look you know we're interested in explaining could the mind and consciousness but not that stuff that you're talking about you know that's that stuff that you just mentioned this the stuff that we know about from the first person the stuff that seemingly

30:36 sits not well with what we know about the physical world and so forth the sort that's not what we're talking about and that seems already to me to to admit defeat to say look we can't do it so let's do something else instead as a physical is my goal would be to see an account of the thing that they're talking about so arguing with those with the strawsons of the world and taking what they think about consciousness and saying that's physical and here's how it could be physical what

31:08 you're talking about but that's not a project that you that you seem like you're interested in or that you think can even be completed is that is that a fair way of characterizing it's not an unfair way um well you know Dennis notion of a hetero phenomenology which is you know everything you're inclined to say about your experience the whole report the whole they know the detailed account of how things seem to you the discriminations you can make the

31:44 sort of everything that the phenomenologist do right in terms of an explicit report all of that needs explaining why they're inclined to say all these sorts of things okay what then it is then reluctant to do is to say and that report is an accurate representation of some subjective reality which is only accessible by the person making the report now I think if

32:23 you say that then you will straightaway commit yourself to something that is completely unverifiable because all you have is that at heart all you have other things that yeah but commit can be observed and measured answer there's no way that a subjective reality can be investigated by that's a fact now you mind swinging it directly investigate well you can assume correlations but then you can't in that

32:56 you can't check those correlations there's no way that you can check you know I know that lovely example that Dan has where you have you decide you're going to even really get to grips with subjectivity and so you you connect up to people with with with with them but brain interfaces and so you have a helmet on and I have a helped on it we connect them up like this and I say oh my god you know Richards subjective world is totally inverted relative to mine all the colors are hey your inverted

33:29 relative me buddy and then the engineer come who's who's setting these up comes along and says oh hang on a second and he could have unclips the the connector between the two inverts it 180 degrees and plugs it back in and now suddenly we go ah it's it's fine now though this problem of you how you calibrate how you can how you would calibrate an experienced comparator I you know you just reflect on that a little bit and you just see that there is absolutely no

34:01 way you could calibrate it there's no way it all depends on assumptions about how the correlations between the observable stuff on the unobservable stuff how they go and there's absolutely no way of checking this you can't be just a little bit essentially subjective so once you once you buy into this then okay you may be not buying into non-physical because certainly buying into non x nanak split bility okay yeah it's just yes there could be this kind

34:35 of real world of real subjective world there that corresponds exactly to the detailed hetero phenomenology but it really is the kind of beetle in the box that is just doing their work is invisible to science anywhere first-person science it just doesn't hold up um yeah i guess i guess there i would want to press you a little bit on some of those claims so so I mean hetero phenomenology is fine too for what it is but there's also homo phenomena husband

35:08 so what why why so as a philosopher you must have taught intro to philosophy a thousand times at least what do you do with the process of Cartesian Dao so do you just think de cartes office rocker when he says he gets to the point where he can coherently envision what's happening right now is a dream and so that you can sort of do the who Silurian bracketing of the physical world and

35:42 consider what's going on right now just as an experience and when you're in that kind of Cartesian doubt mode isn't it kind of obvious that there is consciousness and should not be a starting point because in all of this discussion so far that hasn't come up not even not even as like something we should be suspicious of and take with a grain of salt but it's just you know start from the third person do hetero phenomenology and then see what's there but why isn't the starting points something like the cartesian doubt or something like you know you don't yeah

36:16 you have to get some intuitions going but why isn't that a way of shining the spotlight and what we're trying to explain as opposed to the thing you're talking about well I'm not sure Descartes it's completely your friend here I mean after all he it's it's conscious it's particularly a conscious into conscious cognition that is the the thing by him II know he's you know he's it's well known you know that the sensory experience provides a certain kind of a problem for Descartes you know because it just seem to be heavily dependent on the body know what really you know what what he really needs to

36:48 align is conscious for pure intellect and I think that's what really so it's not clear that you know while you're really going to do any work for him in that debate anyway a cognitive phenomenon but yes I understand what you're saying and there is a there is a whole history of people debating about what happens to their non material soul in heaven on day cards of you do just do math or can you taste chocolate or not so yeah there is a problem I'm not sure that but let's look what okay what can we not no I'm okay I'm looking at the this guy now

37:28 something's happening I'm something is going off something is occurring I which I can just sort of gesture at this is happening this is going on yeah well that's that's that's that's pretty undoubtable i the the demonstrative I guess he's latching on to something there but that's AA virtually content loss it's like saying you know I am here or you know the time is now okay but those can be verified well what we don't know what this is latching onto

38:02 that's the point but that way that science would come in right so that's kind of there – I'm not there's nothing there's nothing in that that creates any kind of of hard rock there's nothing there but no I wasn't talking about a hard problem I'm just talking about a star a star data a datum well that there is something that's happening that when we'd want to find out what's what it is something like this it's it's generating it but this I don't see that that now I've already

38:35 bought into anything that that involves the the acceptance of phenomenal consciousness I mean I thought what does seem to be happening well let's just say what does thing or well it seems that I'm kind of that I'm some kind of being human being who is in contact with a woof and in some kind of contact with the world out there which seems to be painted over with all kinds of qualitative properties that seem to be colors this guy in the walls opposite and so on and they all seem to be out there quite firmly and there are sounds

39:09 and smells and things and there are certain themes that seem to be my physical body now that's what that's what they the starting point I seem to be living in what maybe Chalmers would call either you know a world where all of this qualitative stuff is out there for me oh that's my kind of base point right now the trouble is that science comes along and says well it's sort of illusory though whose qualitative things aren't really out there in the way that they they seem to be after wolves or other people it looks different to aliens to animals that would all look different what's really out there is

39:42 just it's just electromagnetic radiation bouncing off of surfaces have different kinds of textures and stuff well okay so you might buy my first cutting point now how what do I do now Brett you know so these qualitative things that you're telling me that they're losing me mr. scientist what do i do well there I don't know they still seem very real they must be well maybe they must be in here then instead of being out now we start to get phenomenal consciousness now we start to get a hard problem but

40:15 that's already a move in response to a scientific correction of how things initially seemed right so now so I start here with common sense science corrects me I then make a kind of theoretical move and then I come along and say that the other people make the theoretical move but the stuffs in him then I come along and say well I don't think about theoretical moves to grow on and my opponents say oh but that's where we started then have we started over there with these things being out in the world so I don't think I know it may be that that theoretical move to project these

40:49 things sort of inward is a good one but it's not the starting point was a starting point is there that kind of the doubt well that that's what I was trying to get at was that so I agree with I lied the history of everything you just said I agree with a hundred percent so what pushes us back into the mind so to speak is what Chalmers called eating from the tree of illusion or science or whatever in his evening paper and so that's what you were kind of describing

41:22 I think then there's also you know dreaming considerations about dreaming and phantom limb pain that Descartes talks about so he it's not really right it's a lot of moves in response to science but also common sense I would say for dreaming at least but but the that the end of all that that is that you can start looking around at the things that are out there and think yeah well I could be in a dream right now this could be a dream and if this were dreamed and yeah these are products of the conscious experience that I'm having so let's try to figure out how brains do that and that's an explanation of

41:56 consciousness so yet you you could work yourself back a couple of steps and maybe you don't like those moves but you doesn't seem like you would be in the mood for eliminating anything you'd be in the mood for trying to figure out what thing it is that you've sort of latched on to and how it relates to the physical underpinnings of the brain or body which is a good project for science now I agree with you that there's the subjectivity part which is going to throw some kind of water on our parade here but I wonder so when

42:32 you're doing philosophy philosophers love certainty scientists don't care about estimates so it's not it doesn't seem to me like science really cares that you know there's this unbridgeable subjectivity gap what they care about is building models that predict and are explanatory and you can do that without certainty so you know without saying I know for certain that you're conscious I can be reasonably confident because you have similar brain structures that I do that's perform similar functions and that's good enough for science so that's

43:05 good enough for a project of trying to explain the thing that we did in the Cartesian room so we're on that path towards kind of what I would consider the waste the weight consciousness and and from the first person and third person kind of meet in the middle here would you think is that the problem look I I just I have difficulty getting a grip on what the facts of this first

43:39 person world is supposed to be other than the facts of hell I think all I have as it were is Petelin for not all I have about myself is what I'm inclined to tell myself now what does it like for me now right well until I asked that question I'm not really sure but now I've asked it I can start noticing things I can start noticing the little lights here on the camera in front of me that can start noticing which I was looking at rather than you and now I can look at you and the screen of that will grow and I can start telling myself a story about what I'm experiencing okay and I may be inclined to say things like you know I

44:11 have this really rich and detailed phenomenal world here oh these world of experience here but then if you start to question me about it with more and say okay so what's at the periphery I said well actually I'm not quite so sure and it turns out to be more degraded than I thought it was and you know it you know I can start to trying to explore this right I knew it'd just be pushing towards weak illusionism right not just I'm just not sure that there's that it's sure and look at these reports I'm kind

44:46 of they're coming from somewhere okay they're coming you know I'm tapping into processors you know representational processors of those kinds that it the leading would produce these reports but they're tapping into a kind of subjective world that is exactly as I described it that seems to me that's where the kind of fictional element is what I'm kind of being is kind of constructing a kind of notional subjective world as I report it to myself and to you right and so but I hate to keep interrupting you but at this point I think is the point that

45:19 I've been trying to to press on since the beginning of our discussion with the cognitive stuff – so the a lot of what seems to be driving your pessimism here is that these things got to be accurate that there's got to be something which actually matches at the level of mental reality that's the way I'm describing it in order for realism to be true and that seems to me to be too much I mean even Chalmers is is an illusionist of some sort of a weak variety because he thinks

45:52 that the representations of phenomenal redness don't track anything out there because we don't live in Eden so that no that's a kind of Elysian ism that's that so but not the strong kind because there's a phenomenal property there look all of this you know hasn't as intentional objects you know all this stuff you know as the content of my representation my world is the world of my representations okay so yeah all this is as real as the content of the stories I create yeah this is the world I this is where I create for myself through as

46:26 it were Hepler phenomenology through what I tell myself and others yeah and it's real for me in that sense that it's part of my story and that's why I'm more attentive about it because if I say looking I'm I do I don't notice something of a particular moment then that's it there's nothing more to it than that there isn't any independent fact that can be checked against it's just part of the story I tell at that moment ask me a fraction of a second late I might have given you a different response the thing that then it makes all the time you're kind of constructing this on the fly all the time and quite content of my

47:00 representations is perfectly it's as real as you think interventional objects are and it's there for me in virtue of being in my representations now if that's then this is the Richard that I'm worried totally about this okay this is the richer than I that I I'm totally with and if this is this is how you see it then I'm on the same page with you if the phenomenality is the in the content of a higher order representations in the representation of mental qualities eight this is the thing

47:35 I do not understand about about is what mental qualities are I never understood this I don't really know what Rosenthal means but I don't know any but so if what we mean by that is representations of non instantiated properties for nominal properties that kind of populate your subjective world and that exists is the virtue of the thing but as being the content of your cousin of your know how to representation then I'm with you and you're an illusionist and we're all happy if you mean the vit we have these higher-order representations and they

48:14 have a scent content which is representational mental qualities which are not quite phenomenal properties themselves but somehow by having that representation of a mental polity which isn't itself a phenomenal property the state itself then acquires a phenomenal property and thereby I acquire it then we don't agree and that's the richer that that I don't agree with that if you think but the mental positive represented isn't the phenomenon read those phenomena reminisce is a kind of property of the whole of the higher order representation they seem to me that's when I see the ambivalence in your

48:46 position and the one hand you seem to be so the first one is is a kind of it's a type a materialist it's a illusionist it's lovely the second one is more like a type the materialist if there's an explanatory gap between how and maybe you need to go down to the it's the biological realization to get the actual identity and yes you can be a you can you can posit a an identity here but it's in it's a an inexplicable one it's

49:20 just correlation and that's the bad Richard reading your writing I sometimes you know I see good I still don't see the good which I think yeah I'm absolutely emboldened I love this and I love that what you're doing with the emotion story and I think this is great this is wonderful this is using all the resources of this essentially losing this picture to do great stuff that really is it you know advancing understanding this and then there's the other one I think now it's just slipping back it race oh yeah yeah and that's that's a good day you've been mean

49:52 that's what I was hopefully to address and now the piece I was allegedly gonna write yeah yeah I it was bad timing unfortunately but yeah I'm gonna write that piece someday because I I think the the point you're raising is a good one and you know duh cards on the table I am kind of ambivalent as between type B and type A physicalism and and it's most of the days I mean in my own writing I say I'm

50:24 a Type C physically although really that's one or the other in the long run probably probably type a in the long run or who knows but so so I think there is a tension there in at least the way I think of things because I think not sure which of those is the best strategy I think we think they're both workable actually but but but but up so taking the one that you like the good Richard let's try to make that less good because I don't I don't think that hey oh that one is as good as you

50:58 so it just kind of relates to the to the Rosenthal point that you made in passing which is what are the mental qualities and also relates to a point I was getting our way back at the beginning of this discussion about how we want to start doing this so so the story that you told about hey where are the qualitative properties are not out there let's put him in the mind that's you know the gal the Galileo story Rosenthal is called that the relocation story shoemaker called it something else I

51:31 forget what his term for it was but lots of people have pointed this move out right that this is a kind of no even even Austin Clark you know yes it's wonderful paper on this and where this the history of the qualia being kicked inside it's it's a convoluted history so so that's a well taken point however I would say that part of what's going on there is is where the problem arises because in the kicking it in what we kicked in was the qualities as consciously experienced so when you look at the table the table is red and green

52:05 and then you say well but out there there's only electromagnetic radiation so the red and green must be a property of my mind somehow and then the red and the green as consciously experienced get thought of as somehow properties of the mind but that leads to all sorts of mysteries like how that's something like that some you know just the way I experience it it's just a simple thing but if instead you split those and you think that what gets put into the mind is a mental quality a way of representing the physical property but in a non conceptual way so that's what a

52:41 mental quality would be in the most general sense it's a way of representing a physical quantity of a physical property without conceptual resources in some sort of analog way Rosenthal says homomorphism or quality space theory I don't know it's um whatever your preferred theories it's kind of an analogue representation something mirroring the relations or capturing the relations between this family of properties in the mind but that doesn't necessarily need to be conscious that could be these basic sorts of qualities as to do steal your so those things don't present any

53:15 problem to science they okay so what in here is allowing me to sort of be responsive to the physical property of red there's something that's letting me do it let's call that the mental quality of red so there's no assumption about it being conscious about it being mysterious it's just a functional property of the mind of the brain now then when you consciously experience it that when the thing that was giving you the problem before shows up the story goes well there's got to be some sort of awareness of that mental quality and the way you have the awareness is by having a

53:48 higher-order state that represents you as being in that qualitative state so the experience of the quality comes in from you being aware of what's going on down there the quality itself is just a representation of some physical property yeah so nowhere in that story is anything mysterious or fishy going on we've got the conscious experience as a result of the higher-order awareness the conscious experience says I am having a red quality basically you are in fact having that quality because you're

54:21 representing the physical property so there's no illusion where's where is the illusion here that's not an illusionist accounts because you're describing what's going on at the first-order level I think I think I think it should be illusionist in a sense I think that the mental quality the mental quality here then is just a sort of functional probably of the brain right so this is what I would what I've use it's a quasi phenomena just use that term crazy I fan all probably because I probably can occur without any sense of it having any feel looking it's perfectly object if it's we

54:58 can maori can know everything about it no problem okay right so this is a it generates none of the problems of so I'm quite happy with mental growth let's call alcoholic quasi phenomenal because you know obviously now yes and then we introspect that and we represent it to ourselves the illusion comes in us just in that we miss represented not as a functional non phenomena property but precise as a simple intrinsic ineffable qualitative phenomenal property it comes

55:31 in the misrepresentation my idea is that phenomenal it is a essentially illusionism can be seen I think is a version of the phenomenal concept strategy with the rider that these phenomenal concepts are kind of rich they're not just really thin demonstrative they do have a they have a theoretical element they're building this a notion of intrinsic allottee of the mounted simplicity non physicality probably not just that they're not physical concept they're building something like non physicality possibly and we apply that D'Amato so it's a it's a kind of a there's a social attached to the demonstrative

56:04 it's this kind of for this kind of M State this kind of phenomenal state ok so we're we're misrepresenting the target crazy phenomenal state as phenomenal that's where the illusion comes in and I think that's but that's weak illusionism I mean so I want to I want to keep this list a little weak and strong it may look it's not weak illusionism because the phenomenal aspect is a loosening the the thing that's being represented is crazy phenomenal it's not doesn't generate any of the problems of phenomenal consciousness right now if you if you're

56:37 happy to say that those things these in a functional states the main are phenomenal properties even though they can occur unconsciously they generate none of the problems they can be they're totally accessible to third person okay you have the word if you want I think quasi phenomenal is better precisely because it distinguishes the make that distinction but but so this is again I don't want to keep harping on the same point but this is kind of the point that I've been trying to to get across is that you in our discussion here it seems like you keep wanting to say that the phenomenal properties have

57:11 to be at the first-order level they've got to be the quasi phenomenal property the mental quality of read whatever you want to call it that thing's got to have it and what I'm suggesting is that that's kind of a mistake which generates all of the puzzles that's the problem right there is that's a theoretical importation on on your part not part of the ordinary conception of phenomenal consciousness phenomenal consciousness as I take it is just the idea that there's something that is like to be me

57:43 it's a property that I have and then the specific properties that I have are the the way in which it is the redness here the balloon is there the pain over here the feeling of hunger the thought here to thought there so those those things populate what it's like for me but but the basic explain and I'm the thing we're trying to get at here is that there is something that is like for me and it's a it's a separate and further question whether that's got to be somehow a property of these quasi phenomenal state or a property of the

58:16 individual or a property of the higher order state or what but that's what we're trying or that's what I took us to be explained not the properties or the first-order States I'm not convinced that that sort of talk really does pick out a clear explanation but I'm not sure that it picks out a unique one or a very well-defined in one eye yes I know we do this week we we gesture in this way but I mean I mean look again it's it's this retreat inwards look no look how are you

58:51 III believe that they are say that the books I wanted arrived why do I believe the books I ordered because there's the placement is at the door why do I believe the placement is at the door because the doorbells meaning why do I believe the doorbell is ringing because I hear the doorbell why do I believe I hear the doorbell right I just do sometimes I hear a door III judgment when there isn't a doorbell me okay so it must have actually been because I had

59:24 some sort of in distance hey doorbell a sensation which is normally connected with doorbells me now here's I think where you make where the mistake is we because we can be our judgments about the sensible properties of the world can be there only as we think because we can be fallible about the way the world is we kind of think we must be infallible about where the inner world is okay but we're just reaching the limits of our you know of access of our access to what to the processes involved you know really

59:57 complicated causal chains you know and we can trace some of them and in input and accrued way at certain point they stop and that's when we start gesturing at what it's like and well yes there's something going off there yes the scent is something occurring but that it should we're right to conceptualize it in these in this term of torque of feels and ineffable things that are somehow non-functional can could in principle come apart from the functional processes and that we know immediately in some sort of way that doesn't require any kind of representation of cognitive

1:00:29 access and that's all of theoretical importation right with gesturing at this kind of realm of this sort of the interface between our sounds on the world oK we've just done gesturing this and of course there's going to be it gotta have to be an interface you know I know the Congress system can complete transplants of X and if he did I think then we wouldn't see any problems but until we gesture at that and then we start building little theoretical constructions around them now as to what level the phenomenal consciousness comes

1:01:02 in that that it precisely seems to me one of the bad questions is it a property of first of all states it's a probably high dose but that's why it's not helpful to have the concept because where you're kind of if you have a naturalistic picture well then it's just a kind of you know you can pin it in different places depending on how you sort of you know pull the theoretical levers but nothing really matters because you have the full picture without it of what's happening now if you have if you're a realist in the sense that yes the merely is this fuzzy sort of glowy radioactive stuff in there

1:01:34 no no no we're about it that's a real question I mean otherwise it's just mode I mean and here's one thing that puzzled say I'm it allows them that one thing that puzzles me about your view is you sometimes want to talk about the I mean one thing you rightly criticized blog for is how there could be kind of immediate awareness of phenomenal properties of first-order level without there being representing but then sometimes you talk about the higher-order representations being phenomenally conscious without themselves being Max and

1:02:06 so I haven't you've got just the same problem that block has now if you want to say that the phenomenon properties are the content of those higher of the states then great yeah absolutely no problem but if you want to say those high other states in virtual their contents become phenomenally conscious then how do we become aware of that phenomenal consciousness well what I don't really say is that those states are for now the phenomenal consciousness they don't become anything they just that's what they are oh yeah how many where what's her access to it

1:02:38 do they just glow intrinsically um well I don't know what glowing means in this context about consciousness means in this context that explain what is like for us but without our being aware of them in any way that's right well this doesn't seem to me I know what is the subject but is aware of them if it's if it the way I would I mean I don't want to make this too much about my own views but I'm happy to talk about it no I'm fine this is fine hey who do the

1:03:16 interviewing you're out here no this is great this is where I guess what I would say is that the the content of the right kind of state has roughly something we'd express in English says like I am seeing read whether it's written that way in the brain obviously different question but it says something that you would express as I am seeing read and the I am part attributes to you the content of see having a psychological state of

1:03:48 seeing red but the red is out there the seeing is a mental thing so it's already kind of kind of giving you the sense that there's a you that's seeing it and then you're attributing that state to yourself so they awareness that I think is crucial for phenomenal consciousness is the higher-order state itself and it's the Reppert is there it's a caucus playing cognitively in the way that we normally explain that stuff and what I think that block the reason why I think block has the problem that I don't have is because block wants to say that

1:04:21 whatever kind of awareness there is with that in that is crucially involved with phenomenal consciousness what she does say that's a datum can be explained in some non cognitive way he's an inflationary like the way we smile our own smiles or in some other mysterious way so the objection is just that if you want awareness to be part of the property then it should be something that we understand and and I think that that stuff I'm talking about is something we understand but the step block is talking about is it the

1:04:55 explanatory the explanatory power of your can't lies holding the content of the diode representations yeah the part of the content is that I am seeing exactly exactly in fact does the work and then the the the the quality that's attributed to the first world estate or the personal to state that captures the phenomenal aspect yes it's all in the content no that is the phenomenal aspect if another aspect is that I am seeing red that's the phenomenal aspect oh okay yeah that I am sorry but that's all impact within the content you don't then

1:05:29 need to say and then that higher or that higher order representation then is phenomenally conscious you're honest what I think the good richard says that that higher order representation explains everything we want to say about phenomenal consciousness all the hetero phenomenology all the reports are explained in vote to the content of that higher order today we don't need to say and then it really is phenomenally conscious as well because they have the problem of well so how is this phenomenal how it gets that content and then bingo that's phenomenally conscious

1:06:02 everything we need to explain about phenomena conscious for nominal consciousness is explained in terms of the content of that state without saying that the state itself is for novelty comes because then we just reintroduce the problem we've kind of as we explained it wave really nicely and then sort of beverages because I think you've got I think the reason I'm pressing is because I think I mean I'm because I could be wrong but I think the good nature they've got a really excellent story I've had some people contact and say they want to like take what I

1:06:35 say and use it for losing his own land I said yeah that's that's that's a good way to read your paper with them Oh Michael do do is it yeah lovely I'd loved it I really did um but it's that last step you don't you just just and then this whole representation is fenomena continent that explains phenomenal consciousness so explains all that needs to be explained about consciousness all the intermissions never right so I mean part it so there are two different things I would say

1:07:07 here and this is part of my split personality between type A and type B so in one mode of thinking I would say look these identities are arrived at scientifically by the kind of work that the identity gets us lets us do and so here I'm being very influenced by the view that block has about how scientific identities are established why do we think water is h2o well because by making that identity we can explain a bunch of stuff like why water freezes at a certain temperature which if we didn't

1:07:42 make that identity we wouldn't be able to explain that so the identity is not discovered its postulated because of explanatory usefulness so in that mode of thinking I would say yeah okay so here we have this very useful representation it's the thing which explains everything that we wanted to have explained so that's what that's what it is that's all there is to it and and we picked out a certain thing sort of intuitively we've looked we've seen what does that and so if you identify the conscious experience of pain with

1:08:17 this representation you can explain things that you can't explain otherwise so I don't think you you get the full explanation without my eye I think I see I see better now you know Dave Chalmers recent David Chalmers recent paper on the meta problem yes okay so essentially I think what you're saying is you've got a really excellent solution to the mental problem okay which is the horatii yeah that solution is also the solution to the harem although if you're type B

1:08:51 physicalist there isn't an explanation to the hard problem there okay the target of that the the the the the target the the set of states that you propose of it as their explanation you give to the meta problem picks out the the state that is that is phenomenal consciousness okay so you identify the phenomenal consciousness with the state that solves the metal than that problem

1:09:26 so solving that problem is the way to home in on what consciousness is whatever solves the meta program now the thing is as I see all that further step it is doing there is just vindicating the intuition the realist intuition that's the only thing that it's actually doing is not adding any further explanatory or predictive power because the solution of the meta problem does all about it explains all the reactions all the judgments all the dispositions things everything that is detectable

1:10:01 from a scientific perspective all that further step does is say and that's what phenomenal conscious formal country is real and that's what it is so it's all that it does it lets us explain in certain kinds of behavior which I don't think would be fully explained without it I'm full of that because I think the solution to my problem would would do that and then of course you've got the problem of how how that works how these well I mean if the view that I like is

1:10:34 right then phenomenal consciousness ultimately it's just another kind of representation in the brain and representations of cause and effect powers and so it would be a kind of empirical question what causes an effect power this kind of representation all of that in virtue of its being the the representational state the functional state or the neuronal state it doesn't it the fact that it's formally conscious isn't it changing its causal powers it's just that's a sort of right and saying that water is h2o doesn't change h2o is causal powers but it lets you explain things about water that you can't explain without that link

1:11:06 yes but this would let us explain things about conscious being that you can't explain without it sorry there isn't an explanatory gap in the case of water I mean the entity that is an intelligible one it's there's this well know if you're type B physicalist there's always an explanatory gap here it's not related it's something that's you have to so if you're type B physicalists which some days I am and for the next five minutes I guess I will be then you don't explain or make intelligible identities you

1:11:41 postulate them because of the benefits of doing so and that's it that gives you some explanatory power so making this identity allows you to explain why conscious pain has the does what it does why why why I go to the medicine cabinet and take a aspirin if I consciously have a migraine but I don't do so if I unconsciously have a migraine though those are differences kinds of identities help us understand that's why I don't need you on this on Tybee accounts but I have all the all the explanations I have a perfectly good

1:12:14 explanation of that the illusionist has pretty much exactly the same explanation I mean in terms of the the states of the functional states and processes and thought the illusionist can make exactly that same range of discriminations to be conscious and unconscious give exactly the same range of explanations they just just don't have the rider and these states that I'm mentioning are identical with phenomenal consciousness I mean that would be a bit weird if you did that with water that's in case of water there isn't that there is a it's very easy to see what well ative easy to see why the two things are the same you

1:12:48 haven't introduced you don't need to be a type b physicalist about water that's that's the point so yeah you do actually if you talk to chemists because actually understanding these identities is very hard you know there was this this there's this really excellent book that more people need to read about water and h2o which i'm blinking on right now but anyway there is a hard problem of water it's just no one wants to talk so you know we like the hand wave and say oh yeah ya mean molecular energy if it slows down the lattice structure

1:13:21 shows up and now we understand well actually I would dispute the details of that we don't understand in the way that we think that we do but so I so I would I would argue for the for a kind of hard problem of water and I think block makes a good case for that in his his paper you know there could be ghost water or how do we rule that out so first fine okay so but even if you don't like that kind of stuff so if I switch to the type a side of me then what I would say is look you know we start off with some kind of conceptual analysis of what

1:13:53 consciousness is folk psychology tells us that if there's a state that you are not aware of being in then that's not a conscious state so an implication of that is that being conscious requires being aware in some sense where in the brain is the awareness it's the higher-order one deduction that's the consciousness so that's a different way of thinking about how you get the identity but I would equally defend that as well so either way you get you get the conclusion I would say that the best result is to identify phenomenal consciousness with a

1:14:26 certain sort of state of the brain i if yeah okay I mean if you happy if you want to use the word phenomenal consciousness or whatever is visiting people about these kinds of things then these kind of episodes as opposed to other sorts of episodes then you know I'm trying to do that I mean that's what everyone's that's why I I know but you should be fine to do that because that's what everyone is doing what no it isn't because what might be distinctive about

1:15:00 those episodes is that they involve the illusory representation of phenomenality and not everyone's happy with that well yeah well who isn't happy with that people who deny illusionism struck but what you just said was weak illusionism no I said that what that there are certain sorts of episodes okay which we describes you know conscious experiences okay what phenomena countries what's distinctive about those episodes okay as opposed to episodes of perceptual

1:15:34 awareness that are not interesting that way well I say that they involve the illusory self a script the illusion perspective representation a phenomenal properties they don't involve actual phenomenal properties now if that's compatible with realism then I'm a realist and everybody's happy but I certainly deny that phenomenal properties understood as a sort of non-functional qualitative properties that can be that conceptually possibly metaphysically distinct from the

1:16:11 physical functional ones no I deny they exist I think most distinct about those episodes is that they involve the representation of those properties on that we can't go beyond our representations right this is really what's hard about this discussion because everything you just said I of course agree with but in trickery completely different it's making progress here because there's nothing that you said that I could object you accept I represent my myself as having my mental states introspectively

1:16:46 represent was having fun all the properties then that's and I can't get outside those representations and check to see if there really are phenomena properties there right and then aminal properties are which is what I've been arguing there mainly the intentional objects know they're in the state which has those intentional authors well I'm not sure I see this is what see this is I think what's been going on in our discussion this whole time is that is it seeming to me that there's an assumption in in the way you set the problem up which assumes a first-order theory must

1:17:19 be right so the assumption is that if there was if there were phenomenal properties they would have to be at the first-order level and they would have to be this kind of special property that's weird and we'd have to have some direct access to it and if all of those things were true then realism would be true and what I'm thing is like every part of that as a as part of the package of realism so I don't think that to be a realist about consciousness you have to be committed to their being phenomenal properties at the first-order level you're committed

1:17:54 to their being something that it's like for you and then the way that it's like for you is going to be involved attributing properties to you of a certain kind but it's not it's not at that level obvious whether it's first or second or third or a hundred level it's just that there's something like that it's like for me there are some states that explain it where are those states when we wanted to do the work i i i think it's if you want if normal consciousness is whatever explains our

1:18:27 disposition to say that it's like something for me then yeah i'm okay with that right now i know but see how you snuck in the disposition phenomenal consciousness is whatever explains that there is something that is like is something that's like me if we're going to start if there are you know properties here what it is we go from it's like something to there is a what it is lightness you know a property now if there is a problem if there is some kind of property there then i'm committed to this that if it's if it is anything at all for me then i need to be representing it in some way yes so if

1:19:02 these higher honor says that even if that's like very weak and though it doesn't matter whether the representation is the ready call or non veridical because i'm just lived within my representations and I've no way of checking them in this case but they're introspect right so um if the idea is that it's that the phenomenal property is just represented by the higher order representation and yeah I'm with you totally if the idea is that the phenomenal property is possessed by the higher order representation and I'm not because then I want to harm aware of it

1:19:35 be aware of it the same way wherever anything by having a further higher so then but then I would need to have that if the if the phenomenal properties are property of the higher order representation then I need another representation to be aware of that to be phenomena conscious so there the high order representation itself isn't doing it yeah you see I see what you're saying but what I would I would want to qualify that the representation is the phenomenal property doesn't press it it is there's a difference go doesn't

1:20:11 possess water it is water I'm not aware of water unless I have some representation of it so if the high order representation is the phenomenal property then I need to have some further representation of it okay I like it why can't you have phenomenal properties but you're not aware of having because if I'm not aware of something if I don't represent it it's nothing for me it's not like anything it is if a what you're representing is that you have a certain state that's what it is for there to be something I have baby let's think that I'm representing myself as having is something like something

1:20:44 for me but the representing state itself and its properties are not like anything for me unless they represent a phenomenal conscience it's part of the content of the state then that's like something if it's a problem of the representing state then it's not unless that is itself represented I mean I think I think we're just going around kind of the same the horn here because I would deny that the state being represented is the one that's phenomenally conscious that's that's kind of what I think is the whole

1:21:15 problem you know I'm working on a paper with Jake Berger about this kind of issue it's not something that we call well anyway I don't want to get to it but anyway we think that a lot of people make this to some make this kind of assumption that there's got to be some actually existing first-order state that has some kind of property that's what if anything phenomenal consciousness would be and that's seeming to me already loading in way more than you need in fact you know it's it's putting on more cargo than the boat can carry and so

1:21:48 you're gonna sink the physicalist ship if you do that but but that's not the only way that's a really 10 – this way of setting up a debate I I would say what sinks the ship is the idea that there's any state that has a phenomenal property yeah what that's add to see I don't know what you need to float the idea that phenomenal properties are merely it's a million tensional objects because intentional objects are nice and cheap it depends on what you think I don't think that so depen depends on what you think about that so you know if you're someone and things that non existent

1:22:20 objects can have properties then I don't understand what you're saying really there's a chance they're cheap in the sense that we need them for all sorts of other purposes as well they don't generate a unique consciousness so they do dream generate the unique problem of intentionality which is you know absolutely but yes absolutely but I yeah I think probably and I'm just going to end up well I'll share this paper with you because I think this is something I

1:22:53 think the crux of this issue is really important but I noticed we're running out of time here and I wanted to ask you that I don't want to do so broadly change the table topic but let me abruptly change I wanted to ask you about some of your arguments against other theories so you've you've said you know Pan psychism is hopeless and and I want to just kind of ask you about that so I'm not a pan psychist obviously but I'm not against it I think of the the views that are out there it's

1:23:27 generating the kind of excitement that it is because it's it's it's threatened to allow physic physicalist who have what they've always wanted which is some kind of causal interaction for consciousness while at the same time allowing duelists whatever they wanted which was to say that it these things just simply aren't physical properties as we currently understand that so that's why I think where the excitement of the view originates and why I would be interested in exploring it but what so what do you think that why is it not going to help us solve the problem of

1:24:00 consciousness and so many types of sympathy with Ben Sikes and I think if you're a realist you take the realist intuition seriously then it's it's it's a it's a fairly fairly natural place to end up because you're not you did you don't end up with these you know no more logical danglers as that's smart Smarties isn't it you don't have these kind of sort of and it had hoc identities between between other very

1:24:34 complex physical states and simple phenomenal states you know you put it right there in at the Foundation's and it's a kind of neat picture I mean you're having these incredibly intractable problem of how these things combine to form complex consciousnesses and also you have the horrible problem of what a subject is on this I mean what exactly is a subject I mean as far as I much prefer on the subject it's the kind of thing that that

1:25:08 we are you know in virtue of all sorts of abilities that we have the way that we conceptualize ourselves and so on the idea that that that an atom or an electron or pork or whatever might be a subject I can't make sense of that I think and I think that's actually the big problem for realism generally is not so much the properties it's the subject that is aware of them that so I mean what it does is it's a way of vindicating the realist intuition at a minimal disruption to the physical system yeah so you have all your nice physical laws doing all the physical

1:25:41 stuff and all those explanations go through but you managed to pack in fundamental consciousness at a very in a very innocuous location and the beauty of this innocuous location is that it also kind of seems to be doing a bit of the physical of the cause and work although it's not making any distinctive physical contribution everything would carry on just the same in virtue of the structure and dynamics without so it's kind of a really clever idea that you can you have we have this realist intuition about ourselves and you know we need to find a place with conscious in the physical one finding it just in brains yes you know it's a bit kind of

1:26:15 arbitrary that that certain pattern of hiring or whatever should you know the country but maybe it's right down there in the in it so it's fundamental I mean it doesn't really make any difference so it's it's it's a really elegant sort of solution if you want to vindicate that intuition and in a way I'm inclined to say well since it doesn't have any you know it's the know no actual interaction there's no changes to the it doesn't have any effects on what scientists should be doing scientists could just sort of endorse it as a way of quelling their intuition with the real work and or the only thing to be

1:26:52 done in that project is just to sort of articulate the position at a in as elegant way as you can in an entirely philosophical level there's no scientific work to be done it's got no application for the science of consciousness and I see so if you really want your intuition and you really want to sort of what's the word insulated from any practical problems will it go with it but I think it's I think it's just a complete fifth-wheel I know it's it's it's doing nothing except

1:27:26 vindicating an intuition and an intuition of course which is very very peculiar to us and to our situation and which is a feature of human psychology possibly of all suitably advanced reflective kinds of intelligences but I think which is a very interesting feature of our psychology that we have this intuition that the zombie hunter Stanek calls it this is intuition that there is this this ineffable in a world that's a fascinating feature of human psychology and which generates the the

1:27:58 mental problem from explaining their intuition and that's really really interesting now if you insist on saying and that intuition has to be you know it's it's true always showed a midden I need to underwrite that metaphysically [Laughter] prepare psychism it is the it is the it is the mirror image religion isn't because I think what both are reacting to is a sense that particularly the phenomenal concept strategies you know

1:28:33 that the prospects for physicalist realism are not as good as they seem to be at least that's that's what's driving the people who do hate these creatures and that the phenomenal concept strategies is to is not God has not got the resources to do this once that breaks down then you know it really becomes you've got a kind of choice and you can say okay these things are know how these things are everywhere and the idea that they're just in in in in in certain brains or parts of brains it seems hard to so I think they're a reaction to a they're both different

1:29:07 reactions to a similar trend the the recognition the problems for or for traditional physical it's not ridiculous realism yeah yeah yeah that's interesting so so do you so it sounds like you're saying that basically if you have a certain set of intuitions that you can't escape mm-hmm and you don't want to do violence to our beautiful physical science then you could cost free accept pen psychism but it's not

1:29:41 that interesting because all the real work is gonna be done by the things which are not the pants I guess stuff I I see it a bit a bit I suppose it's a bit like both reaction to to certain religions you know if it gets you through the night fine I'm but you know it's really because at least you won't do any harm right you might do some actual harm the thing is what's lovely about pants a

1:30:16 Kizza misery it solves these were they the problem in Europe of the colour lots of consciousness beautifully where are the colours of consciousness everywhere yeah they're not neural but there still would be a question about neural correlates I think even if your parents I kids yeah but that's a combination you know that's that's just it completely attractive but when do these things you know which which which particular collection of these micro consciousnesses is my consciousness does even hopped on my glasses part which is my hair part of it this mind is my amygdala part of it is my easy just my cerebral my sensory core I think it's

1:30:52 interesting too because you know I talked to Philip goth recently he's I kissed and he basically said that if you know he was ever convinced that ten psychism was false he had become an illusion and it sounds like you're saying that if pan psychism is the mirror of Lutheranism and so i see that you guys that's part of what I was saying earlier was that it seems like you have a similar kind of set of assumptions as that your opponent in this case it's just that you you do the modus tollens and they do the modus ponens and those

1:31:25 it's the whole set of assumptions which I'm worried about well you guys share so that that would I think that would I think that's interesting but but let's not get distracted back to that what I want to ask was and it's a bit unfair for me to say that and then I'll let you respond so go ahead do you have something you want to say about what I I said we don't want to get back in so do you disagree with the pan psychist

1:31:58 or Russell Ian monist in their claim with their claim about what physical science tells us so their claim is that physical science physics especially tells us only about the behavioral profiles of electrons but doesn't tell us what electrons really are so do you agree with that or that first step they make or not my they do my sense is that when I talk to our physicists about this they they just kind of bewildered by this insistence on there being some kind of intrinsic properties I think they they they say if I try and explain this they say well you're thinking about

1:32:32 these things as if they were like sort of like a football can ask what color it isn't and what it's made of but it's not like that at all you need to do when you do the physics you're just not talking in terms of kind of objects with properties with intrinsic properties and relational properties you've just way gone beyond that go into another sort of level of description all together and so about bunny needs feeds for the you need to talk to a physicist about whether that's whether that's a but my sense is that it's projecting a kind of sort of acid distinction between the trinsic and

1:33:06 relation processes kind of feature of our manifest images that world and just projecting it down there on the kind of image the physicist developed which is very militant picture is is a dodgy way to go on I've not found many physics physicists ago yeah we've been we know we've really been wondering about those intrinsic properties all this time and we've done that's been really bothering well what about this famous I mean I agree with what you're saying but in defense of these I don't want a sub tweet any hints I kiss can you sub tweet

1:33:40 someone in a video I don't know anyway to kind of try to be fair to the people who aren't here to defend themselves what what do you so some people point to like the famous quote from Stephen Hawking's you know what expire into the equations and so some people have interpreted things like that as like asking what are the intrinsic properties here do you not think that's the right way of interpreting that or I I mean okay it's I really don't know I'm not a physic I need to be I think unless you're actually really really deep into

1:34:12 this into this into the the conceptual world of fundamental physics I don't think my intuitions are words kind of nothing but even that we do need something to really fire to them I think it's it's it seems to me a little hubristic to think that it's kind of my my the stuff that's in my mind that does it what could be breathing fire into the universe this stuff that's in my head I mean it's like I

1:34:46 I mean just imagine if this is example I imagine we've got this alien species that that have you know that have never developed phenomenal conscience whatever but they do really good physics and so they they've got an amazing visit but they've always been puzzled about this you know this you know this put a better thing and eventually they find us and they say here it is these guys have got the insight into the universe into the fundament spoke to the universe that we were lacking oh what happened looks like the call was dropped see if I

1:35:37 can get them back here or maybe that was the end I back ah maybe you're back something happened did you say it's when you win a half with my aliens who do physics and if another consciousness they and we have the secret that they

1:36:09 were missing it because that's you know that's that's just but if you really if you really if you're anything that's worrying then how about illusion is plan psychism we're phenomenal properties aren't real they're merely intentional objects of our introspective representations they're not they're not actual properties were out of our minds brains but these illusion eight properties that we misrepresent ourselves as having are the actual fundamental properties only the micro

1:36:45 particles are conscious if you really want that it may be our our interest be aware zombies but the particles aren't if you really want to have it so far as it's a demand for intrinsic properties absolutely intrinsic properties that's compatible with illusionism yeah I mean so just try to connect back up before we drop the call of second um you were

1:37:18 saying that physicists don't really seem to care about the intrinsic versus relational distinction and I think that's obviously true because they don't care about metaphysics they care about finance so so isn't there still a distinction here that they should worry about like telling me electrons mass resist acceleration and like repel other electrons or whatever there still does seem to be a question about what the electron really is that physicists don't seem to care about what they want to they care about describing

1:37:52 the interactions and predicting the interactions between this and that and what can we see over there if we put this that way at a very you know that's what they care about but isn't there still a perfectly good question that you can that maybe they don't care about but that's still perfectly good which is that is is there an intrinsic nature seems like sorry go ahead listen there's certainly a question which it's seems in the common sense one to ask but I'm worried but that seems like like a common sense one because it's a question that we can ask about

1:38:24 the ordinary you know everyday sized objects that we have around us I say so because certain colors and the shape and so on but and it's what's it actually made of yes that make that's so let down project that down back back into the fundamental role of fundamental physics and I don't know whether it's still a good question right no that's excellent point yeah I mean playing to think that what's a good question of the questions that are forced upon you by doing fundamental physics in that question is no but occur to you when you're trying to view fundamental physics through the lens of our kind of everyday in the first image of the world yeah and that's why I said

1:38:58 so I mean I suppose I'm a pragmatist it's only way we know what we need these concepts for what is it doing for us I yeah I don't have no sense I mean letís actually curious I think because one thing that some fans I guess and consciousness realists tend to say is that they tend to accuse physicalist of having a sort of two sort of old-fashioned view of the fundamental physics you know like billiard balls knocking into it you but then they say

1:39:32 but anyway these billiard balls they must be made of something right oh you were the guys who said it was all weird you know weird now maybe exactly yeah no I it's late to watch it this far I'm kidding I'll clip it out later and people will see it but but I agree with you I mean IIIi I do think that there's

1:40:07 maybe a hangover of classical Newtonian physics and a lot of people's thinking that's a different topic but it is interesting you know hundred years of quantum mechanics and still hasn't penetrated quite to the level of even relativity theory which i think is a little more widely common sensical ii but we talk to haven't undergraduate and they're still like well they're ready to fight you over it so it's still still not seeped into the common mind said they've heard of relativity theory they don't they don't know really what it anyway so III I'm sympathetic to the things that you were you were just

1:40:43 saying I mean you know because pants like isn't for me I agree that really what you're what you're trying to do is vindicate an intuition and it does seem sort of a lot of work to vindicate an intuition and that's what I've always thought is interesting about non-physical views non-physical ism in general is that all of the evidence for it depends on these kind of intuition pumps are conceivability there's no empirical evidence that the speaker for her for non-physical ism and

1:41:17 you know I've talked maybe some people like Adam pout says yeah well they evidences that all physical failure theories fail so it's not that there's so and maybe there's some other stuff to talk about here but a surprising amount of it is like you know we couldn't possibly be wrong about this and and that is a weird place thing you're not given the history of what we've found out that we suck at all of this stuff mostly and that's a general limit of its argument right that you know why would this be the one place where we got everything right why I mean it's it seems to be that you know the the

1:41:52 positions are I have really just a at least that the possibility of the positions that were that I have the fact that we should be open to these positions it's just a consequences of treating as neck listicle II we're part of the natural world and we don't have any we don't know anything with certainty about ourselves oh but people do president I said we don't have any infallible knowledge about ourselves right and how much it seems that we do including about our own minds there yeah what we know is what

1:42:25 we're inclined to say and report and tell ourselves and but you know beyond that what's producing it I mean yes we have this sense that there's that there's this absolute fundamental reality that can't be down to the way but I mean kind of think that the only thing that can't be doubted way something you're very very thin and indexical like this is happening where is it's well this doesn't black Tom to anything specific yeah you know just kind of bring this back full circle I would also say that the sorta 'ls which are attached to this yes so

1:42:57 there's gonna be I mean part of my worry here is that that we will employ different sorta 'ls and that's going to affect the way you theorize so that I've never as far as I know ever employed any kind of sorta like non-physical that I've never that seems very weird to me to to introspect and say oh there's a non-physical thing it's well I would so if you think that that's part of like what the way we're describing to ourselves what we're finding

1:43:29 then that's worrying to me because I don't find that and that that may be part of the problem here is that the way we conceptualize the things that we find bias us in certain ways and that's that's a worry that I don't think enough people have paid attention to like the most there must be a lot of implicit there must be implicit souls just to get me intuition just to get the intuition pumps working it seems that yeah but they're all about epistemic property is not about metaphysical properties well yes supposedly yeah but but I would

1:44:05 want to defend that I mean I would defend that claim so let's yeah let's suppose it or attack it I mean we all know that it takes it really does you know this is the whole sort of how does this all get going it goes it gets going with a bunch of thought experiments about a bunch of information about about the negative perception on the back you know what science tells us about things about the nature of color and and then a bunch of thought experiment inverted spectra and now after image as well as we all have to do this when we teach philosophy find

1:44:41 101 we truck people through this the banana maybe they've been another look we tried it with it we make this distinction between worldly colors and mental colors and we do this have that role and we are you know we're just priming the pump up for all these intuitions and then now we start pumping the handle and yes they get these into issues and then we need these bonds of course this is kind of why I'm I mean then it in his comment in the illusionist and partly because paving the illusion the illusion should be the obvious default theory I mean kind of think that list so cause we all we

1:45:13 certainly need to solve the matter problem everyone agrees on that and I think you know horror theory is is a pretty good candidate for solving it let's do that let's develop that list you know and I'm obviously these what we have at the most at the moment are just what's the bare bones of there is less flesh these outlets get them integrated with the neuroscience let's get really desert and then yeah where does that leave us do we still feel this great sort of explanatory hole right or I can see that where you are so Beca cynical you know

1:45:46 let the moment you know good fiction Babbage nor whichever whichever one is moved I both sort of in a similar every state position but maybe you know in 20 30 years time maybe the realist one that that's still going to be saying no look I'm still not satisfied there's still big problems here but let's do the work on the one that we can actually you know that shelf is a you know constructive program right but so that's the meta problem you're saying let's do the work on there absolutely well I call it the illusion problem because I don't think there is a

1:46:18 first no there is a first order problem right there's just in but by calling it the most in a davis and as a service because he said in a department that everyone can address everyone connect knowledge i mean yeah i mean except for the real taipei people don't think there is well there isn't a matter problem there's an illusion bomb the problem of explaining the head first Naaman ology that's essentially what the the meta problem is it's only a metric problem if you think there's you know that's the i don't agree with the term but the problem is

1:46:51 the problem of explaining their reports and reactions and the judgments is done so let's work on that and then see where we get I mean time we could all be sort of if you really have these doubts you know you can you can you can going to you know in privacy you can be a plant scientist and and yeah but it's all yeah I mean does I want to ask you about that but I've been noticing some as we've been talking these the chat comments over here oh great so I wonder if you

1:47:23 just listen I have a question here from Shane Wagoner uh-huh they say the dish read your diet crying diet qualia and they'd be curious to know whether you are still worried about the possibility of a theory which rely upon physicals so is there so if there is no Theory neutral dialogue on your view is there I didn't touch the end of the question well I think there's a theory neutral are you still worried about the possibility for theory neutral dialogue with aunty physicalists yes yes I think that's the problem I think that

1:47:56 I think that everyone agrees now that the notion of quality or in the classic sense is a theoretically load of notion and so the standard you know and then it pretty much you know yep put an arrow at the heart of that yeah it's understand and move is then we say okay let's strip away the theoretical commitments but we still there's still hope you know the one who tube is like mister the stuff that you if you you know quote from Louie Armstrong or whatever it is they're still right there of course but we'll strip away the intrinsic Nestle the ineffability who you know not this

1:48:29 monster yeah IIIi don't know what's left I don't think anything's left I think what what you end up explaining sin is the headphone phenomenologically reports the judgments and so on and then you say okay I've identified something that can explain all of those which is just explaining what I call zero quality oh the and that explains that also explains phenomenality itself that's the same it's the same thing is I second step now once you're stripped away all that other stuff I don't think I don't

1:49:00 give any coherent notion except you're just a student at whatever it is that explains the hetero phenomenology so how can you engage in a debate with auntie physicalist and doesn't say there's no way for nowhere for you to stand that's the way that exactly the way that then it has been doing over the years we've people sometimes by saying that you know he doesn't actually sort of present kind of like bullet pointed at arguments yes he's not he's trying to get you to look at it a different way he's try and say look at it it's it's a matter of changing your perspective on this and seeing the the the the

1:49:37 theoretical advantages of just starting from a different point so there's no what so there's no rational persuasion here then there's got to be some other it's it's it's holistic it's look if you look at it from this point of view then a lot of things that were previously looked intractable and puzzling and led you down all sorts of strange and you know tortuous alleys that both those things just no longer seem to be a problem and we get a lot of fruitful insights into a lot of other stuff and it meshes nicely with the science and so on so it's not an argument from first principles but you know it's it's an argument from you know reorganize your web of belief in this way and things so

1:50:14 yeah so I wonder if there is kind of to echo some things from Descartes in the beginning of our discussion so some people interpret de cartes undoubtable ax T as me as a psychological inability to imagine the thing in question so I wonder if there's some of the kind of similar problem here because I could I don't see how people can reimagine their web of belief so that they exclude the thing which is most obvious to them which is that there's conscious experience so there's no way I don't

1:50:46 think you can really believe that you're a zombie I need to that's possible I think there are ways of every conceptualize I mean look we conceptualizing what it is that you're picking out um that when you're seeing let's how can I mean this is this is the task is to build a sort of two level there's a to to strategy was to dismantle this bad image and what they want is to build up from some personal level story of what is going on that sort of fuels in the kind of the gap that has been left by dismantling that image so you don't feel that

1:51:19 anything so you need to reconcile level you can still you know keep on you know living within that illusion as it were that's that's you know that's kind of you're sort of certainly having that and it's happy to say that colors and thing as properties of the external world are real their properties of your manifest image I think just uncertainty and their character is due to the way they kind of the sort of affordances they offer I mean color seems kind of arbitrary to us but presumably it has all sorts of evolved of purposes you know that it's it's it's highlighting as this

1:51:51 differences out there that make a difference for us that are the same and it's this experience these differences that we you know we think of the distinctiveness of each color so you live in a world which is as it weren't populated by things that are kind of pulling you in different directions that are affording you all kinds of different reaction which you know pain is them obvious kind of you know it's it's something it's not something that you're just kind of passively aware of it's something that polls you it's a it's a it's a mass spec grabs your attention and pulls you in a certain way okay it's a part of the world not a part of your mind it's a part of the world as your

1:52:26 mind presents it to you in the manifest image and that's where you're living in this manifest image in a world of things that you that you which afford you all kinds of stuff now it's reconceptualizing these notion of pure qualitative stuff in in terms of affordances I think that starts to get you somewhere so instead of thinking of the pure feel abstract we think of what it's doing to you it's an interaction between you and the world the world is grabbing you I'm pulling you around and that's how that's the field it's not the passive share inside your head

1:52:58 that's how I want to think I mean putting us out into the world right so this I mean it sounds like it the real so is the one that's always been on Dennis radar which is the Cartesian theater yes but you don't have to be an illusionist to get rid of the Cartesian well now there this is kind of another thing that we could talk about for another hour so but I do think I insofar as I things that you're not aware of are nothing for you so if there are qualia you have to be aware of them so there

1:53:30 has to be some sort of you know these functional location where this awareness happens yeah if they're just there in my head without any sort of observation of them then I don't see how they make there anything for me any more than me then they like the carbon atoms that have in my head have anything for me so yes so my point was that I would try to sort of build up this alternative picture of these things as as very active features of my of my of my my

1:54:08 manifest image right it's a in a kind of constructed world which is a world in which is a sort of a representation of the external world as meaningful for me and it's this meaningfulness yeah these what kind of gesturing that when we talk about the field this is what I would call the good keys it's all I I don't see the distinction at that point because it's rejecting the notion of phenomenality that has some properties

1:54:46 in respectable properties of brain States but that are actually that's that's what I'm rejecting is this it's see I think oh I don't think illusionism should sound like naive realist can't believe in phenomenal consciousness but they do so I'd have to think about that one I'd have to think about them or I'm denying the conception of consciousness that generate that generates all the the sort of stuff that zombies good like zombies would have exactly the same all this engagement that I was talking

1:55:19 about with the affordances in the world they would have all of that and we'd know that they would have yeah and that might be a good place for us to sort of wrap up because I'm noticing it's almost 7:00 and I do have to go I don't know what time your time but I have to go teach a class sector it's too hot yeah I know well I'm not gonna be using this video in my class because we're actually reading your paper illusionism in in my consciousness class this semester so it's coming up after the spring break actually so I think this video will be useful because a lot of

1:55:51 people what I find is that they first of all don't understand the view and they think that's where a lot of the knee-jerk reactions come in silly and say those sorts of things they they're reacting to the way Dennett presents it in a very airy breezy way but the way you presented is but is more I mean I prefer your presentation to Dennis to be honest because it's more focused on arguments and less on reorienting the picture in a narrative way so maybe they're both different they serve our purposes I don't know but I like yours better and I actually think you've done a great service to the field by by

1:56:24 taking up this and arguing for it seriously so I even though I don't agree with you I think it's important that there are people like you who are doing what you're doing so and taking it on the chin too and being upfront about it will be a weasel and you know that's that's that's commendable I think that's important yeah absolutely and again I really love what what what good Richard is doing ok it's a lovefest so but but bring it back to a less lovefest the

1:56:56 area I was going to talk about zombies because I I agree with you that zombies wouldn't lack anything that we have but that's because I think they're impossible and they can't they can't even be conceived coherently and the reason that I mean I know this is an area where you know we agree and you you came up with your auntie zombies before I thought of Sean B's and then I found out afterwards and it was sort of disappointing I mean oh it's one of those moments rise like there really is nothing new under the side everything's been thought of Jesus but ok but it's still a good argument right

1:57:30 even if you were smarter by the way first it's still an important argument that needs to be talked about I'm doing but I don't but what confused me all these years since then is whether we're really talking about the same thing though anti song bees and Shaam bees or do they pick out the same hypothetical creatures and I think not I don't I don't think they do so I wonder first of all just for those four for people who don't know when an anti zombie is can you just walk us through what your accounts of that is I mean assuming you have time to do this it's like yeah it's

1:58:05 it's it's go back a bit and that was a differently that I mean obviously the anti-zombie item can be can be used to support time be materialism if I know it looks like it's it's a function and I'm not a materialist and I'm inclined now to say that depending on what concept of consciousness we use I think that that that anti zombies arc conceivable and so that the argument becomes there becomes the modus tollens I guess well auntie zombies are not depending on what you mean by consciousness depend on what

1:58:41 sort of concept of consciousness music see this is why I think we disagree this is what I was trying to get a char means are the things that have that thing you don't want what anti-zombie is supposed to be well I think maybe I we do have the same thing you might well an ant Essam be simply supposed to be a physical and Adam for Adam physical duplicate living in a world that is a physical duplicate of ours simplest simpliciter but which are conscious so there's the simplicity part rule out

1:59:15 things like blockers and all those other weird things that I've talked about long time since I thought about this but they I I think I think I think I want to say sir that yes that that it's it's it's a yes yes I think so IIIi need to go back and think about it but I think that's the idea they they are conscious in virtue of their physical Constitution yeah okay understand that which so there's no there's no Incans that there's no inconsistency and imagine a creature that is conscious of

1:59:49 virtue of its physical Constitution that was the claim and then I think you you get everything that and I think that's what a sharp Assam P is like without all the qualifications are they depending on what concept of consciousness I think that's what's going to distinguish them ya know I and I if we're just using consciousness in the in the in the everyday sense of you know whatever it is that's good that's that's that's happening when I look at the sky out there then yeah I mean I think that's

2:00:25 absolutely right if we're using it in this but I do think is a theoretically loaded sense than what it is like the sense inside then and then I don't because there's that there's so I only make I wouldn't be I would still have explanatory worries he I mean I it's more the explanatory world is that bother me rather than me and the possibility the sort of type II the coherence of a type II physical type II physically like I wouldn't be happy just stopping at tightly physicalism even if that was metaphysically okay III physicalist yes okay yeah because I I

2:01:00 mean this is what I've always thought you know when people went when it came out that you know there was already your paper was first people asked me like Chalmers actually asked me he was like why are you still using the word zombie why don't you just use the word anti-zombie it's already established and i thought that was a good point you know you don't want to make up new words for things that already exist and just because you you can but but it seemed to me that there was really an a reason to distinguish the two so as you say a zombie is is my version of a physical duplicate of you living in a physical

2:01:34 world so that's conscious in virtue of its physical nature except for that the kind of consciousness that it has is the kind that Chalmer says is israel so that's what a zombie is according to me it's that you take the thing that that Tomer the strossen says that thing is physical at the charity world and that's not what you mean by an anti zone but that was what that was what I meant when I read the paper that's in the context of Frankish 2005 or whenever that paper was that's what I meant and the idea was to that this was a mirror of a zombie argument and it

2:02:10 meant that considerations of conceivability and that's what the final line is of the Papists and it shows the considerations of conceivability little relevance to settling the metaphysics of this that was that was what the paper was trying to do and i guess i mean i read back the first draft a long time ago when i guess i was a pin my colors really to the type they must but I get I guess what I was I was pretty much in that tradition I was I was a what I call a conservative really so yes that's the think you should wrote that paper was but if you ask now do I and and I argued I in the paper that anti zombies were

2:02:46 conceivable now I wouldn't I would say no no not in that sense but and do zombies in a weaker sense ah yeah so I would want to use the term zombie for the stronger sense and I think that they are conceivable so I wonder why you have changed your mind on that largely I think it's mainly explanatory worries I'm just not happy with with having some sort of metaphysics where you know everything's physical but conceivability doesn't hang on what makes you happy it

2:03:19 hangs on what entails a contradiction so what our contradiction is entailed by the claim I I just I just I just want to see I just want there to be no explanatory gap I want this and and it seems that in the end considerations of conceivability or what close explanatory gap so if it's not conceivable that there could be that stuff without that stuff and that that's what closes the gap so that's how conceivability comes in isn't it it's it's it's you don't have a satisfying explanation until you can you could under some the mechanism becomes intelligible to you right so I

2:03:52 mean and this is a difference in the way you ran the argument and the way I ran it so you wanted to run the argument which suggests that consume ability doesn't have much to do with possibility whereas I wanted to run the argument as showing that well zombies aren't even kin so it's not even the possibility claimed that I care about cuz I actually in some of my moods would accept that conceivability possibility leak in my type B moods I'm in my other moods I'm like yeah that's the only things work so I feel the way you could use the argument yes if you only work if you do it away

2:04:27 what works if you do it your way because conceiving of is is not really conscious then you're just conceiving up the zombie world and play to the upon his hands no I'm going to the term anti-zombie was coined by someone who was using consciousness in your sense okay so I'm happy to leave auntie the concept the anti-zombie in that realist world okay so and what I saw I was I was using the concept there of consciousness the realist concept that you have but mission it doesn't work anymore well the

2:05:02 arguments work is no better where the premises are true um exactly it's the argument that's perfectly perfectly valid and that's the whole point that there's that there's a parallel argument and then the question is which which I mean there's two ways of responding to the parallelism one is to say that you know that the link between conceivability and possibility doesn't work so call me the first premises are both of them conceivability you know the zombies are conceived – Thomas because they're both true and you deal with the

2:05:35 the the contradiction between the conclusions by denying the second comparison between concealability possibility the other is to say whenever the link between conceivability possibility is sound and one of the first premises must be rejected now when I wrote the paper I thought that the I then did accept the conceivability called the CP thesis conceivably possibility and I was inclined to say that this showed that either that zombies weren't conceivable or that no sorry so I was a notice that I was

2:06:08 ambivalent about the CP thesis and now that has been claimed for the collusion I know that zombies aren't because he were all that the CP thesis is false right and I said I either way cuz the zombie on into itself isn't going to establish and the physicalist in that statement yep so whether you reject the same please onto it because I was relying on the conceivability of physicalism as a as the prince now I'm more inclined now to hold on to the CP theses partly because I I just I just want it for explanatory I I am purposes and denied the conceivability of of auntie's on this

2:06:44 but then that but then you so by doing that you have admitted the consumer ability of zombies so if you accept the CP thesis one of them has to be so yes I'm just saying that I I accept the conceivability zombies in an ending with that sense of consciousness that we were using man in that realist sense of consciousness yes I absolutely accept that the concealer I think we are zombies in that sense I don't really

2:07:17 conceivable I think the actual so you think so I mean the issues here are so difficult we've all been gone so long I mean it's about to be another three-hour conversation sorry we're gonna have to schedule around three of the Hiskey I think but it's so easy it seems to me that you so here's here's the way I would interpret what you just said and tell me if I'm being unfair so what I heard you just say was that yes the arguments from two dimensional the two dimensional argument from

2:07:50 Chalmers does falsify a kind of physicalism namely the kind would you call consciousness realism yeah that's what you just said it's pretty close to it at least yeah okay yeah I'm inclined to say that if if we're realists in that sense then then then we can't be physicalist yes see as I'm trying to say yeah I guess and now I'm so that was yeah no the whole point of sharm B's for me or anti zombies I still want to resist calling the minute these zombies

2:08:23 because I don't think you really have that I don't think Andy's on I think that these armies are zombies actually it's what I think but I think Shawn bees are not zombies is a conceivable creature I mean never I don't see any reason that it's not conceivable and except for being unhappy that doesn't move me I want I want an entail contradiction a physical creature that's conscious in the way that Chalmers thinks conscious work is the way I think it is it's a conceivable thing there's no contradiction there

2:08:57 zombies I there's no contradiction there one of them has to be contradictory if you accept the CP thesis well look positive negative conceivability and I said anti my negative yeah I know I'm I'm inclined to think well I mean I don't know I mean I'm inclined if you this is going into another area altogether to think that there are in coherences in the concept of phenomenal consciousness oh the salt then it keeps

2:09:33 keeps keeps keeps driving at so it's certainly not can see that's it not that's even if they're if they're actually in coherence in coherence it's in the inconsistencies in the very way that that situation is described and I'd certainly don't think it's positively conceivable and that is supposed to be the the best kind of conceivability for these kind of arguments is is there's also austerity or hey careful indistinct Homer says there's a zombie argument

2:10:08 relies only on negative consume ability positive I know that he's harder but even there I think you can do it I mean that's what the higher-order theory and that's what blocks theory I mean block is positively in conceiving of how consciousness can be physical he's not stupid he's conceiving of something there's no obvious contradiction there what if blocks theory was right now if the world is out that way boom done this was exactly how I thought when I was writing the and his always were meant to be zombies in you know chompy's and that there in that sense they and I thought

2:10:41 that I couldn't did I know it was just and this this is the physical you blew me and inverter its physical Constitution it has this whole rich phenomenal whatever it is you know that was the idea yeah and so I I mean if auntie zombies were merely and dissolve is in the illusionist so sense then there'd be bother interesting creatures and so I was meaning to do the kind of work that that you I think we both wanted it to do pretty much the same work I'm just now

2:11:14 feel that that work is less worth doing partly because I have all these explanatory worries and I think okay no I mean if it all turns on the different notions of conceivable okay and let's say the conceivable and so let's say that they know their metaphysical possible so be physicalism is an option yeah okay I'm okay I don't there's still at least an attractive option because I have you guys so you can also have the

2:11:48 type a version of it because I think that's also conceivable now I I don't think that positively because it's Eva ball and as I said I had probably then if I want to do argue about that no probably then start getting into questions about about the coherence of the notion and start doing this sort of you know things like you know the way that debt that then it uses things like change blindness and the wonderful mr. Clapp grass you remember from sweet

2:12:21 dreams and I'd start doing these things which kind of trying to pick apart the the coherence of the colony know what's happening mr. Clapp grass you know how he still reliably detects or classifies all the colors if they all kind of and he still say that's yellow but it's kind of doesn't feel like yellow anymore feels like you know like blue one and everything's it emotionally inverted as it were associated li inverted but still kind of in a sense looks the same way I know that pain we're paying them no

2:12:54 longer bothers you and this kind of stuff and what this is you know this trying to pick it apart in that way well there's no in coherency in any of that stuff there's just a class with a pretty theoretic intuitions but that incoherency that's well I don't know I think our concept of the phenomenal is that these sort of things shouldn't happen because it were you know that you know with the coffee days these things should there should be distinct alternatives here and there are just I mean then it's a verification this and we can't we can't test for the differences but if you have a theory like you know take a meal and not to turn us in the higher order theories

2:13:28 time but if you have a theory like a higher order Theory there's a perfectly good account for the difference between chase and Sanborn it has to do with what first-order states they're what higher states are there what it's like to be them then it would quite agree that there's a distinction you could make that yeah it's not a distinction between you know the facts of phenomenal consciousness because those facts just don't show up at that level of description they only show up when you make some kind of April story or identification between those states that you discriminated and phenomenon conscious or you could say okay I've made this distinction here in at the

2:14:02 functional level over up the patient level yeah it's really clear on this this is once now in that's that's fine and they say well where is the nominal contract well you and you've got to make some sort of part so so the type-a part says do the conceptual analysis first conceptual analysis says consciousness requires some kind of higher-order awareness so look for that now that's the folk psychology thing I mean that's that's the kind of type a project right you get all the latitude and then you Rams if I am and you look for the things

2:14:35 that do that well yes but in surprise you can do that I think you're now you're now slipping out of the notion of consciousness into a much more like one that I have as whatever it is that underlies these reports and judgments in the hippo phenomenology because you count your conceptual analysis on the what it is like this because that's the ineffable thing that only you know Louie Armstrong you know you've just gotta know it it's just down and you can't analyze that and because you're gesturing at a kind of sort of feature of the interface between yourself of the world which is not articulable behind

2:15:09 you at all now what you're doing i think is a conceptual analysis of whatever it is that provides my judgments that's what I call the diet zero shuffle so you say I'm going to give you an explanation of qualia diet probably not though really rich stuff but still the substantive thing but what you actually give is it is not new but physicalist realist generally is an explanation of our dispositions to make reports about this stuff and I think that higher-order flip for horror theory does a good job of that that's the yeah I would say you

2:15:44 don't have a good word for it but at the waltz in the other direction so you start off by saying I'm not going to explain consciousness and then do but I'd say no no that's not consciousness you that's something else then I'm not going to call it consciousness but clearly what you just explained I think there is here I think that what's interesting I'll be really interested to know what people listening to this I think because I think there is a position here that we're both pretty happy with and it's like sort of these babies there is a Venn diagram there's an intersection here right where we're

2:16:17 both happy and we kind of keep we're sort of wandering around our own circles each of us and occasionally we get in that area where we're in sex and then we sort of wander off a bit into the other part of the circle and it's it's it's really interesting if we're really good to try to somehow you know sharpen this up and see if we can articulate very very clearly what we agree on very very clearly I mean we've been trying to do it here but this is just you know informal inform very informal but if it could really sharpen up what we agree on

2:16:52 and then see what's left I think it's time for a workshop on on these kind of ideas yeah it would be good to do that I think because I think you know you've got a good key thing about gazing up integration exactly no and I think these these these are the important questions like getting clear on this you know it wouldn't make a lot of other stuff more tractable right this is that yeah okay I I hate to cut this off because I have

2:17:27 about a thousand other things I want to ask you about but I do have to kind of start bring things up so I wonder if there's anything which hasn't come up but you would like to have got my oh yeah I mean I could you know energy reserves permitting I could keep going all all day but I think we I think we've rushed out some of the some of the the big differences and and similarities so now I'm okay I mean what about you is

2:18:00 anything that you know I mean yeah there's a lot but I don't have that time but I think we'll have to us another round of this I think in general your work is excellent I admire what you're doing I take a lot of I mean I read a lot of your stuff and I think that it's it's it's the best kind of philosophy in the sense that it's clear it's passionate you're defending something you're challenging things so I think you're doing wonderful work and I really appreciate your willingness to share and to come on and to engage with people who

2:18:35 disagree with you in a very constructive way and that's not something that philosophers are known for but they should be and I think you're setting an example for how we could come to be known for that ok reciprocated ah yes thank you all right well so stay on for the line for just a second I'll say bye offline but thanks again for joining me Keith and I'll talk to you soon oh thank you