Consciousness Live! with Keith Frankish and Philip Goff (S2 E7)

0:00 today are two very special guests Keith Frankish and Philip goth thanks both of you for joining me today and it's very nice to have you back I've enjoyed talking with you both previously one assumed that people sort of know who you might be but just in case could you guys say a little bit about who you are and what you do in case they weren't tuning in for the first time I guess you go first Oh whoever mind I don't you normally reader with the University of Sheffield though I live in

0:34 Crete in Greece and my wallet mine major research interest is in the nature of phenomenal consciousness major and existence of phenomenal consciousness on which I hold some views which I consider quite modest but other people consider it absolutely outrageous you didn't matter really very modest Wow okay yes no no no I know and I'm very much very cautious in my views my conscience no positing strange

1:07 mysterious stuff like that I mean so yes and your friend if you don't call this view illusionism for reasons that will become apparent then yes that's basically who I am so my name's Philip Gough I'm a philosopher at Durham University where I am right now I guess my specialist interest is in consciousness I'm interested in how consciousness fits into our overall theory of reality and I defend pan

1:44 psychism which i think is very modest view but some people think is absolutely outrageous and I guess place I mean we're making some details I guess I just defend this as I think there is such deep problems with the more traditional options of physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other and and it's sort of pun Saiga's my thing sounds a bit crazy but it avoids the deep difficulties with these other options so that's go for that but more generally I'm interested in reality in general lots of

2:18 different questions about reality value other things that are hard to fit into our picture our overall pick to the world and get my excuses in my little daughter woke me up at 5 o'clock this morning so if I if I perform badly it's not it's not because I am actually brilliant in general but just well I guess I'm the only one here MA modest in this sense I guess I look a most

2:53 attracted to the identity theory and I guess I still think it's a bit of a change in our Landis view and not very yes i I'm curious that you guys know what you mean when you say that these used are modest I'm not sure what you know let's just come with you oh I see okay so maybe I might ask keep it so what do you mean when you think that your views are modest well I think there's there's there's a great deal about consciousness that everybody agrees on okay so we can sort of pick

3:27 out the kind of states we're talking about when someone's attending to something perceptually and they're able to tell you about it and you know give you information about it and I'm seeing this pull there and it's rare and it's got these properties and so well there I mean a conscious expensive at the airport okay so we're all kind of happy about that and our lives are made up of these things and we're all agreed on that what's the question is what's going on in those cases what's what's actually happening and I think we all have just everyone who thinks about consciousness

4:01 at all is completely agreed about sort of about massive elements of the picture that there is all kinds of [Music] biological processes of the decoding neural processors that are carrying assemblies and well first of all the light is hitting my eye and it's being stimulating the cells in the retina and then there's a signal going from there to the enroute event from various waste stations to the visual cortex of the

4:33 back of the brain and then vast networks of neurons are being activities being triggered in vast networks of neurons and all kind of stuff is happening and we have a sort of rough idea of what they are doing they're extracting information of various kinds that shape and color and distance of all this kind of thing and they're M and the higher level ones that are categorizing what you're seeing as an apple as an object in Apple so and then this information is then being made available to other systems that promote all kinds of responses make the emotion responsible

5:07 associations memories believes are being formed and you're getting ready to act on the basis of that driving you to react to various ways all of this stuff is I mean these are all what David channels are called the easy problems but of course they're not easy at all they're it's really all the neuroscience of consciousness psychology so we're all agreed I think pretty much not on the details of course crashing out to do the details but all agree but science is at work on this and it's there so there's a continuing project or after projects explaining and articulating what's going

5:46 on and at some point I suppose we'll get pretty close to a final count of ones and my view is modest in that I think that's that's it once we've got that account we'll have much finished now the accounts that I think it's not being obviously no no no there's something else happening there's something some kind of mysterious about social newsrooms yeah yeah they're sort of in a world of experience that is somehow in some way additional to all of that but

6:21 maybe it's the product of that but it's not the same thing as that there's something extra happening the interior world of free and if you want to call them Amalia the way that the apples feel that way that seeing Apple feels to me privately in a way that could and and this this world of private experience can't be investigated by the standard methods of neuroscience it's completely private to me no one else can investigate you know these even be sure it exists I mean now my do is modest and I mean you think that there isn't such an inner world but it's a kind of illusion created by all

6:53 the first by the processes of the first kind and I say I think that's a modest view it doesn't it's a rockem's razor don't if you could explain our sense that there is this in the world in terms of processes of the first time without actually endorsing the idea that they have either this strange essentially private world then I think that's the modest way to go maybe we can't in the end but let's try it so Philip what do you think about I mean I have something

7:29 I want to say but I'm just curious about what you might think about this between some modesty that he's making I think that was a really nice articulation of the view and I mean I probably got a lot more time for this but for Keats view than other people sort of on my side of the debate as it were you know I think it's coherent I think it's philosophically defensible oh one difference might just be a question of starting points you know how do we start thinking about reality how do we

8:05 III think we just have to start with what seems most evident and it seems to me that I mean I completely agree with Descartes up to the the second meditation you know a little bit later it gets a bit dodgy but the thought that our immediate awareness that nothing is more evident than our immediate awareness of our conscious experience immediate awareness of awareness awareness of our pleasure in our pains and our visual and auditory experiences

8:40 these are better known than what we know about the external world in some sense the external world is that one removes I'm more certain that I'm having an experience a visual experience of this table than I am that this table actually exists you know it's quite easy it's getting the mindset that maybe I'm in the matrix and being deceived by evil computers and there isn't really a table out there but I know I'm having an experience at the table even if there's nothing outside of my mind that it corresponds to so so I think Descartes was completely right there and these are

9:16 the you know the sort of philosophical intuitions of the let me not ramble you know so I think Descartes was completely right that so so I guess my disagreement with with Keith is that he see hist he seems to be using starting with his empirical data about the world about the external world and using that to undermine the reality of conscious experience I think in a sense that's

9:48 appealing to what is less well known to undermine what is better known and so in that sense there's some something in some sense irrational about about this because I think the reality of consciousness is is better known then the the the reality of the empirical data that is Keith starting I mean I start with the empirical data as well you know I'm absolutely you know the empirical data must be taken seriously and must be accounted for but I think there's another source of data that's even better known which is just our

10:20 immediate awareness of our own feelings and experiences and we've got to take both of these seriously in our theory of reality so Keith talks about Occam's razor Occam's razor is don't alter multiply beyond necessity in my view it's necessary to account for both the empirical data and the reality of our experiences that were immediately aware of and I think actually as a as a scientific community we still haven't quite come to grips with that I mean I think few people go so far as key

10:54 in denying the reality of consciousness or phenomenal consciousness if you want to put it that way but I think when people try to explicitly think what's the aim of science they think it's to account for the data observation experiment if you if you've got a great theory that can account for all the data observation experiment and then that's job done whereas I think no does this other thing you know if you've got a theory that can account for all the data observation experiment but come on account for the reality of pain then your Theory's wrong and so Keith is

11:30 wonderfully consistent on this I think most people are sort of a little bit confused cuz yeah of course consciousness exists but they don't explicitly accept it as an empirical date sorry as a scientific datum in its own right over and above the data of observation and experiments so that's the difference that the Keith starts with just the empirical data the data rub Gration experiment I think there's another source of data the reality of consciousness but just one quick final point given that these are just basic starting points it's it sort of gets difficult to argue for because it's sort

12:05 of every argument I need some premises yeah it's pretty and a tional sir I mean it's the old adage I mean probably at least going back to the exchange between Chalmers and Denis in facing forward and facing backwards lip-balm of consciousness where you know there's one side claiming that you're leaving out the most fundamental data to explain the other side saying you're importing stuff that shouldn't be imported there how I mean before moving four leg words given the how foundational this disagreement is is there any hope of moving forward in these debates do you guys think I

12:37 mean how do we argumentatively move forward when we're dealing with something there's nothing underneath well no no you go I I think the particular that quite well it is a difference a starting point um I'm not sure I think we in a way we all start in the same place we start with how the world seems to us [Music] and then you know we do various kinds of experimental manipulations in the world

13:11 and we form theories and we try and maybe correct our if initially intuitions about the world are you how the world seems to us is is it I think I think pretty much everybody agrees that how the world seems to us is a sort of illusion I mean it seems that there are some you know colors painted on the world around us that we live in what David channels calls either the world well all these these comes act actually intrinsic features of the surfaces around us and I think and that's the same for other sensory qualities and you

13:45 know science kind of says well it's not really like that I mean atoms and so on a not really colored and there wasn't any sense in which they're colored what there are out there are surfaces with those kinds of reflectance properties and so on and the color is also at a weak kind of illusion in them though right I mean well that's that's I'm not talking about that position one just because everybody here steps that here scientists have corrected our initial impression right that this is the very idea that there's a problem of consciousness comes precisely because conscious because science has corrected arts original starting point which was

14:19 kind of looking where colors are out there out there painted on the world science comes along this way no they're not really actually now then we say but there's a real right so well then it must be kind of in our minds or something okay and so already this idea that we're acquainted with an inner world of qualia of kind of color surrogate so that we're in our minds is already a correction of our original starting point so what what I I don't think there is a sort of pre theoretical stuff what does the slightly just what we're inclined to say as in you know

14:52 it's completely untutored people and I guess that there is I don't know we'd have to do some sort of survey of people see what they'll have a very untutored people but nobody's completely unto uted and so what we have are these are you know it's bunch of intuitions then we try and systematize them kind of try and sort of make some sense of them we do a manipulations of the world and try and produce a theory that shows how things hang together and so I don't and what these kind of tells is one thing this tells us is that we are kind of just part of the natural world ourselves it seems we're not in material souls that have some kind of

15:25 special access to reality we are just biological machines and so this inner work if there isn't in a world of some sort that were acquainted with it too is part of the natural world and our acquaintance reality is going to be mediated by some kind of mechanism just as our acquaintance with the properties of things around is it going to be mediated by some sort of mechanism and until we understand that mechanism I think it's presumptuous to say well we just trust its deliverances you know whatever it tells us about this in a world must be absolutely correct and infallible Matt's a starting point now if we're part the natural world it's a product some kind of mechanism and it

15:59 could be misleading I think Elysium is just taking seriously the idea that you know we're not anything special when it comes to subjects you know experiencing subjects I definitely think you know we're not ever anything special I'm a part of the natural world and so on and but just is it going back to the start of what you're saying is it is it really true that we're all we start with seeming x' is that really true I mean if you think about you know your knowledge of your partner and your friends do you start with this seems you know there seems to

16:34 be somebody talking to me what's the best explanation of that as a scientist you say you know this seems to be except you know experimental data what's the best thing you know I think we start from there is somebody talking to me here there is there is a table in front of me I like hunting as phrase alvin plantinga's phrase properly basic for the things that we take is basic and it's okay to take them as basic we think

17:08 it's rationally permissible to take it as basic I mean he sets this up in the context of wanting to prove that God is properly basic but you know that's very controversial but I like that kind of framework we're thinking what is the things that are properly basic I don't think anyone either in you know in science or in relationships with others or comments as knowledge what starts with seeming and tries to clean up evenings you start with you know trusting your senses trusting your sense that those other

17:41 people they're not infallibly that doesn't mean to say it's properly basic doesn't mean to say it's infallible but it's an it's a ration the acceptable starting point so among my Russian Lee acceptable in my view starting points are trust I can trust my senses I can trust introspection my apparent awareness of of my my experiences so I don't start with the seeming I start with the reality which is not to say it's

18:15 infallible but it's it's it's it's a starting point to accept what to seem accept the seeming to put it that way it's not starting with oh here's a steaming it's trusting the seeming just as we do with our senses yeah things I didn't mean anything very very intuitive judgments about how things are and yes I mean they're our starting point yeah so shall we start with intuitive judgments but we don't stop with them necessarily that's the point yeah they're fine places to start you

18:46 don't get any when it's you starts with but that doesn't mean you can't go back and advise them I don't think I don't think it was I'm not a foundationalist I don't think there were certain facts that uh that formed the basis we'll know John that I think everything is to some extent so to some extent theoretically informed yeah but you have to you have to rank them a certain sense that you have to rank your initial starting points and what I'm saying is I mean I spare I think I have two disagreements with Keith one of which we haven't gotten to yet but broadly speaking what

19:20 we're talking about now is I would say I rank the the apparent awareness of consciousness as as more certain a more certain starting point than the apparent awareness of an external world like regarded but so that's that's one thing yeah but also okay I don't think there isn't yeah yeah sorry I did you write the claim that the redness that I perceive is a feature of the Apple itself how would you like a bonus

19:55 night I would say that if you are ranking these claims the redness that the redness that I'm over the quality of redness that I'm experiencing as it were I would write that is a property of the Apple itself of the surface of the Apple as pre theoretic intuitive I would rank that as much more basic than the claim that it's a property of my mental my mind I think like the imprint British empiricists did that yes upon when you haven't done any philosophy and you're just going about your daily life you

20:29 know yes it seems completely obvious that the redness is on the surface of the Apple but as there as human the British empiricist said you know you just reflect you once you reflect carefully do a little bit of philosophy it becomes apparent that it's it's it's it's quite easy to doubt that the redness is really a property of the thing out there indeed there might not even be a thing out there that's good you you you you find that that's not not as certain as you initially took it to

21:04 be and you discover that but the the the apparent awareness of other red quality in your experience is much more certain so I think after one does a little bit of philosophy it becomes your your apparent awareness of your own experiences and the qualities involved there is much more certain than your apparent then your initial pre theoretical sense the only had done from philosophy was very funny but I think

21:41 you've already you've already taken the fatal step as it were and yes once you there is a certain way of there's a sort of theoretical lens you can use to look at your own to applying to you only the perceptual abilities and introspective abilities which makes that sort of picture incredibly compelling there's some picture yours back and I think that in itself is fascinating it's interesting and really you know wise out for explanation this is what David Chalmers calls the metabolic of the illusion ponder and that is a very

22:15 interesting fact about us no it's everyone agrees that that needs explaining ok and then interestingly David thinks it will probably be explained in terms of all those first kind of information processing processors even though that impression is true and there is this this kind of in this this inner world he thinks how intuitions about it can probably be explained to information processing job circuits but the point is I think you have to take a few theoretical steps to get yourself in the frame of mind where

22:47 that seems incredibly compelling surely our initial stuff we're talking about basic starting points the basic starting point is that you know the world that we live in Eden well it's yes this is David charming people who know a lot more about what is philosophy than I do tell me there are other ways of going here well you don't go into this kind of Cartesian the Cartesian then it calls a Cartesian gravity is incredibly strong it sucks me but people tell me you know

23:20 more that there are other ways of going and that's a fairly intuitive level so can I just keep it just acting how you respond to the maybe this is your response that landing about it so when Philips talking about the Cartesian moves the message about right before you get to the second meditation right at the end when you're swimming and you know this could be it this could be the matrix this table these colors these experiences do you do you think that's already making the mistakes right there

23:54 is that where the problem originates because I think that that's kind of starting to say we're onboard with Philip I'm gonna say yeah that seems to me like pretty foundational right there how you characterize it is where the theory comes in but right there that this the experience I'm having is given to me in a certain way regardless been left out there in a world that means I wonder what how about you respond to that claim it was a bunch of representations okay a representation of the world and of your pabts of your you know in a world now yeah but now you're you you're giving theory now Keith no you know you're accusing me of

24:27 smuggling in Cartesian theory right but I'm I'm not basically this is this is the picture that hangs together best with everything we know about step with our intuitions and with our in about starting points I thought we ought to get about Saturday okay point do got any points but I'm asking I'm trying to I think Richards question was slightly different is how I understand what's going on in the Cartesian case how I what my own take is on what cup Descartes is doing which is explicit if theoretical I think because he's engaged in doubt and these kind of things which

24:58 no I don't i think i think which it was asking you is there a legitimate certain starting point here that's what he was asking you we didn't seem a good account of us of a starting big survivor you reject that there is a certain starting point or you tell us a starting point that's okay claim as it is the one that I mentioned before which is all the judgments were inclined to make about the world I think that so I think that's to reject

25:33 a cart that's to reject a case so that's to disagree with you know a car doesn't say you know I'm certain of the judgments I make Descartes says I exist as a conscious subject as you know the conscious mind and Richards asking you do you think he was wrong to think there's something of certainty here right he didn't say he didn't say I you know I think therefore I know what judgments I make I I thought about the the general skepticism about the

26:05 external world run right skepticism about myself which is a yeah I was asking about whether you can get a legitimate place to start here now and the skepticism about the external world I don't even know if that's really what Descartes cares about Michael I mean there's a lot of textual evidence that maybe he's not even really motivated by this is umber but the the Philips claim I thought was that here's a place to start where we have some intuitive judgments about what is certain and one of those is experiencing things and so

26:43 forth and so on and you take now you don't have to read in I know you know you don't want to overly theoretically characterize that point but isn't that still a starting point and I thought at the beginning you were saying yeah we start with you know our intuitive judgments and this is one of them isn't it that what we start with with the journey of judgments that there's that as well that I'm this subject of some kind that's experiencing this world and so on and then we can reflect on these judgments and we can ask ourselves what grounds we have for them and we can start to entertain skeptical hypotheses

27:16 about most of them some of them we can't pass manage to doubt that doesn't show they're not they're true what he seems to me that happens is there's a kind of move that Descartes then makes from I can doubt the red apple I can doubt that my judgments about the red apple are true but there's something here that is in Dube indubitable and that's my experience okay so we turn a skeptical plane into a sort of foundational knowledge plane I can be down I can I can be I can and I can't be certain

27:52 about the Intel the external world so I must be certain about something in turn I think that's where you where the mistake goes I don't think it's an argue that makes it sound like an inference and dico explicitly says there isn't an inference here it's not saying it's not saying B it's not because I can doubt the external world there must be something else Descartes saying is there anything I can't doubt let's find out it's a practical exercise he claims when you know you can say no you can say no you disagree but he

28:25 claims when you go through this you find out that you can doubt that there's an external world but you can't doubt that you exist as a conscious mind I mean I'm actually prepared to be a bit more modest as I said earlier just say what you find at the end of this exercise is that the the your existence is the conscious subject is much better known than the existence so that you know I'm not saying anything's infallible but but

28:58 that's the Cartesian you know but that's the song it's not the you you're studying which seems to be where we start with these intuitive judgments and what we're explaining trying to explain the intuitive judgments I think you know the Cartesian claim for what it's worth and you might just say I don't buy it I haven't given any arguments for this I'm just the claim is that there's something we know better than anything else and you know is that our existence is a conscious mind it's not a it's not the starting point I am I might be repeating myself but just to make it clear the

29:31 starting point is not I intuitively judge that I exist as a conscious mind the starting point is I exist as a conscious mind there are issues about the self and I mean the fact that I'm making the judgments implies some sort of juncture you know I mean what exactly what what we mean by the subject here I mean and how thick it is in the other on this this takes into a lot of complicated issues so I know it might seem easy but let's just bracket that from let's just talk about the idea of the world of experience and it seems to me that what the sort of the Cartesian

30:05 process and since I but this is actually de cartes but the sort of Cartesian process is that you can begin to doubt the external world think that maybe it's a sort of matrix kind of well or something but you can't doubt but then what you do is what you the starting points I can't doubt that I'm here in this world outside it's just obvious it's there and I'm experiencing it and that's the that's the key theoretical position you realize the reasons for doubting those two not trusting those judgments completely and then you saw but then you say well but that's something that I'm acquainted with here

30:38 there's something that I'm in direct contact with here if it's not an external well it must be an int there must be some internal kind of al-haq of it or something that's and that's what I'm really acquainted with and the intuition is that you're really acquainted with something that has all these properties that is blue and you know the sky you can see blue sky and house all these colors in this quality part I look quaint it with those things if they're not features of the external world or I can down then I they must be features of an internal and it's that notion of acquaintances that

31:10 then internalizes all of this stuff now I think that move is a theoretical model I mean it's a I think it's a credibly persuasive room for reasons that are fascinating psychologically fascinating but I think it's one that can be resisted a key what what you've just done there is is I don't think you characterized how the Cartesian understands herself you've characterized a diagnosis of what you think is going wrong so you the Cartesian doesn't say this is doubt Abul

31:46 therefore there must be something it's not able therefore they say oh no when I go through this process I see that there is something that's not going to so you you you're diagnose okay so we're in agreeance I'm not suggesting that's how the Cartesian I think they're seeing it the wrong way so what are your starting point that that you can see you so what are your starting point so you reject that there is so you reject the cartesian starting point which I think was Richards question what worry so what

32:19 are you at what are the starting points what are your starting point find out about reality how I mean trying to judge things are that I'm living in this you know three dimensional world with all these you know painted all over with qualitative properties and so on and that I'm kind of here physical being maybe I have intuitions about my mom's physicality I don't know but we can go into other I have all these judgments about how things are most of them are just you know just the same as anybody else's and then we start doing science we start we start realizing that maybe I think but maybe I have intuitions about my non physicality because you know I

32:54 could I can dream or whatever I would have these reasons people maybe have for being journalists and then we do some science when we think about this and we realize how my abilities and my judgments and so on and dependent on stuff that's happening in my brain and I think maybe physicalism of kahlúa happen so we just trained the idea is to try and do what you know will facilities of the aim of philosophy was you know it is just see how things in the world is sense of the film in the voice sounds a little more when we do that I think we load away we realize that that Cartesian picture compelling as it is because it takes maybe I've misunderstood your view then

33:29 Keith ah I thought you thought the Cartesian let's call my way of thing about consciousness that you know the Cartesian way for a sake of discussion I'm sure that could mean all sorts of different things it doesn't mean dualism to be clear but you know there were but it doesn't obviously mean Judaism but I thought you thought that was pretty natural and you know a natural normal believe but but that there's sort of some reason to doubt but but now it seems like you're saying it's it arises from philosophical confuse I think it's a very natural bit of folk philosophy I

34:04 think it's I think though I don't think I weigh it into it I don't think it's kind of innate but I think there are features of introspection features of our access to our own perceptual abilities that make that picture incredibly compelling and that you only need to do a little bit of sort of you know not the sort of lhasa feel it involves classes you know you just need to be like a sort of reflective six-year-old and you very yeah can I say can I say two things I mean okay so now I think you're less of an illusionist than I thought you were cuz I think the

34:37 I think the illusionist I think of Oh Richards disappeared I think of the illusionist as someone who says you know this is not for the self of confusion this is our normal way of thinking about things that was pain and that you know of it but that's just wrong whereas I think that the people who think like is it Baker or hacker as that paper is there anything that's like to say about you'd roll Snowden's got a papal as it you know you think there's some sort of self confusion I don't think that has illusionism that's like

35:09 if in a something but but the second thing I want it so that's interesting I've learned more about your position maybe but anyway the second thing on a tape oh so – just just I I so yet that those philosophical intuitions of the sixteen-year-old you know who starts think about philosophy and thinks you know what I see is red might be what you see is greener I really trust those intuitions they're so universal and I

35:42 think in the 20th century there arose a sort of suspicion of those two intuitions like oh they're just schoolboy philosophy and we go we go up to Oxford and Cambridge and we overcome though I'm not talk about Yuki I've done about twentieth-century riots you know they're just we grow out of them but I think that was sort of a kind of intellectual snobbery and I think I think that's what I base my philosophy on there you know the the thoughtful 60 near are these natural philosophical intuitions that that you know I think are basically sound because I think that's a big that's clear statement

36:20 position and I think you do trust those intuitions then I think the position you end up with is really quite possible and which is basic my answer I'm suspicious of them because I think you are laid down this kind of and I think you are forced to make the kind of words and which you do with it great you know rigour and care for us and you know you you I mean if you're going to trust those intuitions then yeah if I trusted the might I think I build along a similar path to you um and in a way I'm not even saying the look like certain we

36:55 shouldn't cuss about I think I don't think we have to trust them I don't I think there's another way of doing it and I just like to plug that you can trust them and still be not a man psychic I'm not sure what laughing of the intuition doesn't seem to me to lead you anywhere it's a place to begin theorizing and then different commitments will push you in different ways but I don't I don't I think if the reason why you don't want to trust the intuition is because you're afraid of where they're leading and that's kind of not the best known as judges here we go we can gang up on you because I my one

37:31 of my my I mean partly my reject this sort of you but I broad characterize its Cartesian other but I also think that they're not my other target is that the physicalist who think we can trust those intuitions and all of those intuitions on the cheap as it were without doing you know without paying the metaphysical price for it well we didn't I mean it's a pretty high price to say that my experience of read is just an activity in before that's a huge price are you kidding it sounds kind of I mean most people find it like just wildly

38:05 implausible so that's a huge metaphysical price that the identity theory I don't see that they're getting away with anything cheap here there's a lot of work that needs to be done even make that intelligible how something like that could be physical so I don't really see that I'm trying to get off on the cheap I'm just trying to say look I'm not gonna give up on consciousness but I also think there's good reasons for physicalism so you know don't import too much theory and I think that's actually what you do you know Eric's which agate which cable had this nice blog post about you keeper he accused you of having a strategy of inflate and explode where you take a concept that

38:40 you don't like and you pump it up with all this extra crap that no one wants and then you say let's know in that loop it goes away but that was that's theoretically loading the game and all we're saying is there's a starting plane which is relatively very neutral and maybe need to be refined but it's not gonna delete I mean worrying about where it goes is sort of a problem I guess I don't I mean I've been to this with a few times and I think I think there is a a theoretically neutral one a starting point it's very simple it's like okay

39:14 it's whatever it is that is happening now as I attend to this Apple in front of me you know if I was happening in relation to my being aware of the Apple that's a theoretically neutral point but that Jenner that that doesn't that if that was our starting point we wouldn't have any of these intuitions about it this being something problematic to explain something that could be inverted and we we wouldn't even be a problem what is it Oh guys I hate to interrupt but we just got a comment here says only philosophers could spend half an hour trying to agree on where to start

39:46 [Laughter] yeah that's about that about right we are going to get on the pancake is Amit I just think we've got a it's really nice set up actually there's really nice interesting disagreement and agreements I think me and Richard agree on the Cartesian starting point right main Keith agree that if you start with the Cartesian starting point you did you go away from materialism and Keith and Richard agree on materialism but so this is a nice sort of symmetry that's yeah

40:20 we've got all the positions here for Phillip here I guess if I you guys want me to put up these questions now or should we wait until the end maybe to do that I'm not sure this is a little bit out of Holly but it is an interesting question from Andrews as how do you respond I think he did responded to being right but they want to know how

40:53 you respond to her criticism that we would have found these extra properties by now I guess I would say that just a red herring it's not even relevant but what would you say yeah yeah I did have a little brief blog post on this so they the kind of so I think that's completely spot-on if you're talking about a kind of dualistic pants.i kiss and when people initially hear about pan psychism you tend to think the electron has its physical properties like mass spin and charge and it has these other consciousness properties so it's like a kind of dualism and that would lead to

41:27 exactly the problems Sabinas pointing to though you know what these extra properties don't seem to be in physics but I think that the pun psychism I would defend at least is radically non-dualistic the idea is that physical properties like mass spin and charge are forms of consciousness so there's not two kinds of properties there's just there's just the properties physics talks about and how does that how come seems like to make no sense at first but it's this Russell Eddington line that actually physics doesn't tell us what mass spin and charge are it just

42:00 characterizes them in terms of behavior what they do it doesn't tell us what mass is it tells us what it does the behavior it in dows to particles and then upon sags bosal is is that mass is a form of consciousness so that's how you get around that problem so it's a way of you know so it's a way of bringing together these two problems this is the essentially that you know that the problem sometimes call the problem of intrinsic natures the physical science just tells us what stuff does it doesn't tell us what it is

42:32 the problem of consciousness how the hell does consciousness fit in you bring them together and solve them both at once by saying consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter but it's not not some extra stuff there's just the stuff physics talks about but physics doesn't tell us what it is that's the view and so I mean do we we don't expect that we don't respect physics to discover these property the campus was covered by physics discovers what they do but not what you are yeah consciousness is unobservable at least and is that you know you can't look inside someone's head and see that you

43:04 know you can't look inside it people say like you can't test punt psychism and I say yeah you can't test any theory of consciousness you can't look inside a particle and see it's well check whether it's got feelings but you can't just as you can't look inside someone's head and see their experiences this is this is I guess why par the reason key things it's a lot but but you know if you're in the game of being a realist about consciousness then the one big problem is that it's not observable but so this is a hypothesis so any theory of

43:37 consciousness is in that sense not testable all we can do is correlate what brain processes with conscious experiences and then try and formulate the best hypothesis to explain those those correlations and I think upon psychism is the most you know that the best explanation of what's how those correlations are obtained why so why that you keep you can't correlate things with consciousness you can only

44:14 correlate them with signs of consciousness precisely as you say because you have no access to another person's consciousness and in fact I would even say in our own case all we can do is correlate the conditions with our own judgments of consciousness I dispute that keep the reasons we've been talking about because I think again coming back to plunging his phrase what are the start what do you take is properly basic I take his properly basic you know if I'm having a conversation with my wife I take it it's probably

44:47 basic she's telling me she's happy or whatever I don't take it as properly basic she seems to there's a seeming of her you know it's probably basic she's talking it's properly basic I'm having an experience so III think when you talk to someone and you take their word for it about their consciousness you're not starting with their words and inferring by a principle of the best explanation and sorry inference base excavation to their consciousness you is you're taking their consciousness as probably basic so I think in that sense you can correlate

45:21 experiences with you can't see them but I don't think that's the only form of basic judgement possibility of any me but there was all kinds of cognitive machinery involved in producing those reports and we can insert imagined neurological conditions in which they know you know it won't be perfectly sincere what she's saying and trying to be but some things come sort of haywire with the machinery and the report not that for you isn't a possibility always

45:55 a possibility you just ignore all situations I mean that's a possibility of a skeptical scenario doesn't like intrude on my everyday should I step in for this bus or not I don't know this could be an illusion I mean I don't I feel like we don't need to worry about skeptical those kind of skeptical claims let's get there their relevance or everyone you know what their action with your people I'm not worried about whether you're not telecom and I think what the data are after the science of consciousness and if it's the reports then we need to be sure that the reports

46:28 are really about what we sure we can correlate the reports of consciousness with neurological conditions and so on those it's kinds of different kinds of stimuli and so we can do that that the question is whether we are there correlating with consciousness itself and unless you think that the relation between all agreements between consciousness and the Reports has got to be mediated by some kind of processes and it seems if we don't have some theory of those I don't see how we can just take the reports as a transparent window on the experiences and if we

47:02 can't them they're not the right gauge of us even in our own case how do you know that your judgments about consciousness are correlating with your actual consciousness of course the machineries of course the machineries there but the starting point is someone's talking to me someone with their own mind is talking to me and and then we have a theory for what's going on and of course you know you know I'm talking by telepathy you postulate a theory to explain those basic starting points but Keith what are you telling me that when you talk to a close friend

47:35 your judgement that they have a mind is an inference to the best explanation from their behavior what do you think I mean by mind if mine is something essentially private no no just in some sense you would agree with you know in some sense you would agree with that they that they are you know that there is an intelligence here an intelligent person is that an influence the best explanation you know I'm a Riley or not okay fair enough fair enough maybe uh it's just I mean and if you want to go

48:08 if you want to go hetero phenomenological about consciousness and you know if somebody eats it as I'm in pain and I'm just going to accept it and say yeah absolutely no that's pretty much all there is to be in in pain he's reacting in all this bunch of ways as far as I'm concerned transparent normal it's a fact that's underlying this fair enough I take that challenge back but you seemed I thought we agreed there are different starting points and you seem to be coming back on that they seem to keep saying no there are really only

48:41 your starting points and that's that's betrayed by the fact that you say no we can't correlate with consciousness we can only correlate with with people's behavior or reports or something but that's just denying my starting point I take it to be properly basic that that's another conscious mind is talking to me I think that's a properly basic starting point I mean just where you start you can be logically no I don't not in a

49:19 foundationist way I mean the starting point is no where you start but then you can go back and retrace your steps and you know cancel that out and take a different route I know it's I don't think it's not a cumulative process it's a process just seeing how things hang together and where you start or may not you may not end up in a place that's consistent with crazy make sense but you know you can undo your starting point is it why don't if that's the case why don't you start with us and then argue that you undo it so I'm not sure why you

49:52 why don't want to say look we start with the reality of consciousness but then we're the resource to revise and feel things and so on it instead of denying the starting point altogether oh I mean if you ain't you have a bunch of intuitions about a bunch of intuitions about the reality of consciousness and about if you are interested Jewish uns we're not starting as intuitions we're starting with with I am a conscious mind you're started with intuitions that you trust it and that you call you know properly basic but now still you know regarding in the Mauryan tradition here's a hand I mean uh it's a bit more like that there

50:27 is there we're starting there yes you're assuming something like a relation of acquaintances in all of this but there are certain things that you know that you whatever you in this context is is directly aware of in a way that doesn't involve any kind of mechanism that isn't naturalistic no way they're filming that just that consciousness is real doesn't see this is the inflate and explode strategy it's like you want to import all of these theoretical claims and say well those are untenable and yeah they are I don't I don't think I would defend

50:59 that view but that's not just saying that consciousness is real doesn't require you to say I'm directly acquainted with it I didn't I am directly acquainted with consciousness and you need any philosophical sense like Russell meant I mean I mean I think I can tell the story about about that but it doesn't I don't think that's part of the data clearly I think if your starting point is one that that can't lead you to illusionism then you've obviously imported some theoretical claims into it but I simply do to illusionism Alec my point is that you

51:33 could start a consciousness is real and then do a bunch of the area and then revise and say oh whoa gee that's not my feeling that it really must be an illusion so that company more like honest toil as opposed to fast way of getting to illusionism and guarding like you don't misrepresent you what I'm quite happy if you want to start yeah I'm not I don't yeah I I think the way we start is not with intuitions about you know there being an inner sort of Cartesian realm I think their intuitions about the world just being and everything all the qualitative properties that are supposed to populate this in a world being out there I have just that's just a that's just a pale of

52:07 a claim on how I think people want to think people's intuitions are but if they're all intuitions are all thoroughly Cartesian and that is our starting point in these sort of you know the de facto way that that's where people shall find then I'm just going to argue with them from there well but that's my toe because I agree when I was when I was 16 I was like the red light is red what are you talking about already I was like the it it was but that was a confusion and I was you know I was led away from that by speaking about how we mathematically characterized light and how rare is it mathematically characterised and so

52:40 forth on so I revised my starting point and that's the kind of point I'm trying to make to you it's like why don't you start this with like the claim that consciousness is real and then argue that it's got to be revised as opposed to thing that's starting there it is wrong I don't mind you my starting point isn't anything that of the kind that Philip calls your properly basic it's my society one doesn't have any special epistemic status it's just wherever you have to enter the the debate from so I don't really think that to me that isn't how the world seems to me in a completely prettier entity I can't even remember

53:13 how but if that's where your way in is then I'm okay I'm not saying you shouldn't start from that point I'm just saying you don't stop at it maybe maybe we we've been ganging up on Keith the whole discussion maybe we should give it 11 maybe we should maybe make Keith Richards me that something Gang Gang away we do have a question for Keith I guess if you hope to before we stop ganging up on them from Dorian it's

53:47 Keith how do quasi phenomenal properties appear or wrestling actual qualia without an acquaintance with them for example I can reference my keyboard do you having the right kind of a queen all right I understand the question quasi phenomenal properties I that's a term I've used to mean whatever properties it is that our judgments about qualia are in fact sensitive to so a nice if we say is a you know in order but I'm acquainted with this red quality now I'm not that's not just and I say there

54:22 wasn't such a thing the judgment isn't true but I didn't just sort of make it out of the blue just randomly with that you know there was some I make these judgments in a systematic way and certain circumstances are not in other circumstances and so on so I'm my judgments are tracking some real condition and I use would quasi phenomena pockets for whatever it is whatever I've seen physical properties properties of my of my neural processes that my judgments are cause an artifact

54:58 causally sensitive to so that's what I mean by but I don't think we don't need acquaintance with Parlier to have those properties or to misrepresent them to misjudge them to be actual anyway the crazy phenomena properties are the properties that are misrepresented as actual I'm actually trying to think of these as actually as properties of the external well the powers in objects to a phrase of a circle I guess so the question is as I understood it is asking how is it that you can misrepresent them without having some equations with the same yeah that's

55:32 okay yeah it's so yeah yes how can i if they don't exist how can I represent things as as having those profit well we come up with and all sorts of don't exist that's in itself the problem of representing non existent things isn't sound applause and we Nick Humphrey has this nice example of the impossible triangle this object which if you look at it I'm a certain angle it looks like that's exactly like a object that he's impossible in three-dimensional space

56:09 but you still reckon your representative that impossible object that's how your visual system represents it you as an impossible object I think of inertia illustration where things seem to be all that lovely what's it called the the weather tone seems to be continually increasing or an audio it's on yeah and a nearly increasing current rate increasing your brain is representing these things as something they couldn't possibly be how is it doing that well now that's an interesting question and I don't know I don't have an answer but I don't think there's any reason in principle to think

56:41 that they couldn't be done because we have so many examples where it is done can I can I ask one more ganging up on Keith's question I somehow thing sorry I'm getting a bit carried or I'll get it because I'm getting interested in listener I'm not being it again I somehow think you're surreptitiously denying my starting point so let me try and nail e-mail the question to you but say you know why why do you trust your intuition that there's an external world more than your intuition your cartesian

57:17 interest all said pretend you have the cartesian intuition right send you me why should I trust my into there's an external world more than I Cartesian intuitions I don't I just think that's okay we were talking about starting points I don't trust any of my intuitions I think everything is perishable in the light of wider theoretical considerations we were just when we talk this is what I say when I talk about starting again I don't mean your sense things that are properly basic I mean just you know where you come in and I think there must be double think with epistemic force it must be

57:51 said that's starting put in something no but just let's talk about intuitions then that's you know why you suppose you start off in your a Cartesian you have these Cartesian intuitions but you also have let's call them beliefs I have a belief that I have a belief that you know this Cartesian ways and I have a belief about the external world it seems to me you're giving more weight to the external world beliefs than the

58:25 Cartesian beliefs why I suppose because I'm well why should I want to agree with you let's say out because I seem to be in I think the picked rising devotes not that I'm kind of liking this isolated figure sitting by my stove you know but I mean actually in this massively complicated world which we have managed to explore and investigate at multiple different levels of organization and we've understood how these different levels of organization hang together you know in an outline and how it all fits

58:57 together with a you know a picture of the cosmos and we can we we we've got a really rich picture of this and we seem to be kind of little bits in this interesting little bits in this picture and that we have a kind of a perspective on it all and we're beginning to develop theories of how we have that perspective representational theories of mind this sort of thing we're beginning to explain this and it seems to me but that's kind of a way to go is to see how we little little relatively insignificant you know cosmological fit into this big picture and it seems to me that the ways more likely that we are just complex organizations are the

59:31 other stuff that we've been we've begun to understand that I'm able in this very way to represent the rest of it to itself and creators being a subject that seems to me just the more plausible picture Bamber I have some company it seems an inflated anthropocentric and Exhibit C an arrogant idea but how things seem that there are some things that seem to me that just incorrigible in that way but I have these kind of special status in this world of having acquaintance with certain basics about it don't matter

1:00:04 like the Horrigan critique of that it's the Philip was responding to their that this is a pre Galilean kind of right but returning us to a we're special I know you just wrote something about this oh yeah I don't want to I mean so let's gang up on you okay what do you know what you say about this to your brute dragging a spatula very answer percent trick making the human experience special pre Galilean worldview which is

1:00:38 a part of what I heard keep listening well it's well as I wrote a blog post responding to John Hogan's article on this this morning actually you know I think it's quite the opposite I think you know if for non-pants I Kissed s– human consciousness is something incredibly special that has only existed on our planet perhaps and only in very recent history and you know consciousness I believe I take to be the the source of all that is of real value in human existence whereas in in in existence actually whereas if you're upon psychist you know human

1:01:12 consciousness is just one highly evolved form of something that exists quite generally in the universe and so i think of it as a kind of new cut Copernican revolution that you start putting human consciousness as the center of everything gets uh yeah I don't see what I think of it as something you know as a highly evolved organization of something that exists everywhere else in the universe it's not special so what so what's my work what's your critique at me then given that uh the thing that I think it's a highly evolved form of is

1:01:46 just you know sort of regular you know non conscious matter right no that's that's the disagreement but we're on we don't think Hawaii mm yeah I'm Justin why are we on the same side that we don't think there's some point in this right yes well Shinzon you think the light was always on everywhere I think so you like banana turn plane so that's the commonality but for the sake of having and for the sake of having an

1:02:18 argument where do you think the the Cartesian or the slightest goes wrong oh you must think I go wrong somehow I mean there is something wrong with unwillingness to to question I am willing to question I just got it up just got it correct that I am willing to question it I just don't see I'm asking for a reason why I should question it you need to look at the alternative picture and see

1:02:51 if and you can't judge this just by looking at one sort of you know in a bullet proposition and you know I do accept that news you look at the nature of the whole prop the whole picture is being painted on how it hangs together with more pictures that everyone else is painting because when I do that when I do that why will I suppose being too nice because you just think oh yeah that

1:03:35 we have we agree that that in a way humans are not that special I because I don't think their light ever comes on you think because you think the light was always on everywhere you interestingly you guys I mean I've spoken to you individually and I've heard you each say kind of shocking to me and I know that if you didn't have the view you had you would take the others view so I know Keith you've said maybe you would go his way if you took those installations seriously and I know Philip I said that if he rejected parents autism he'd become an illusionist whereas I had like a desk first

1:04:06 both of you so what it's well I mean I guess first for illusionism for me it means with the you know the guy looking at the girl in the red dress you know and it's Philip or Dave you know it's probably do Elizabeth yeah what's not know what the other I mean Phillip is I would challenge the transparency of phenomenal concepts I mean that's what the whole the whole

1:04:39 business is built on and that it just doesn't seem to me to be justified given what we know about introspection and so forth and so on so I think that if I was going to say where does it go wrong I think so I want to believe yeah consciousness is real I'm not going to deny that but then when you say well then we have a transparent access to its nature through introspection and it's like hit the brakes that's the kind of that's a claim that seems to me roughly in tension with a lot of psychological data actually so that's where I think I would most likely rip this I don't know

1:05:14 buck yeah and I I do you think that's where it hangs and falls and we're getting more into the intricacies of the debate now you know so that my popular book Galileo's are ever coming out I don't talk about this stuff at all was a brief appendix actually but but I do think that this is and this is maybe where I disagree a little bit David Chalmers on the you know that he you know he sets things up in his two-dimensional semantic framework and I think that's just a sort of in some sense of distraction what is what it hangs and falls on is whether you think in introspection we have access to at

1:05:52 least part of the essential nature of consciousness and I think we do so I think you know we a pain of pain is a feeling and all there is to a feeling is how it feels and when you feel it you know how it feels and and that that's not that's what a feeling is so in some sense you you know the essential nature of the feeling when you feel it and you attend to it so so if you do think we if you deny that if you think we have no introspective access to the central

1:06:26 nature of consciousness then you've no way of ruling out that it could be fog standard physical properties you know whereas if you do have access to its essential nature then it looks pretty implausible I mean maybe you have to do a few extra removes like the knowledge argument that it's that it's that it's not physical so I do think it hangs and falls on that but I suppose I would dispute that there's any good reason to doubt that and I think there's good reasons in favor of it as well just just one so I suppose is that pre theoretical

1:06:59 is that I suppose I think that is [Music] careful careful reflection on this on the pre theoretical starting point its leads you there so it's a sort of so this is this Peter Keith storm at naive realism in some sense yeah naive realism is pre theoretic common sense but there's also I think what Gaiman strawsons called deep common sense which is then you know what what seems to be the case after you have reflected and of course you can make the accusation that oh I've won has gone philosophically astray but that might not be the case it could be

1:07:33 just that you know you'd think that it's better to trust what seems apparent after careful thought so so I would say careful thought on those Cartesian starting point leads you to thinking you might attend to put it in the jargon phenomenal concepts of transparent sorry come I didn't say you might have got empirically astray as opposed to philosophically straight so right I think about things like paid isom Boleo where people say yeah I know the pain but there's no painfulness to it what seem to need you couldíve I mean there's two ways to interpret it you could say look that's not a real pain

1:08:04 because they don't have all the functional our feeling parts or you could say that is a real pain it's just that being awful isn't part of the intuitive nature of pain they come first you can have the pain without the awfulness without the hurting this and it still did they say it's a burning pain and you know a congestion is the intensity of it so in some ways it's actually coherent to say I mean I'm not saying it's the only way interpret this condition but it's conceptually coherent to say that there's a pain and it's they're feeling part of it not part of the intrinsic nature of the pain that's

1:08:36 something extra but back the way we enjoyed so just because I so I think I do grasp the essential nature of a pain when I feel it I don't think I've I don't think I have any kind of intuition that painfulness is essential to pain or like I guess the pain is that it's a feeling and I'm sort of suggesting that we have evidence that maybe it well it's it's sort of an ephah bliss and it lets you know it's you know you can't you

1:09:09 can't put in other terms what it's like to feel pain or what it's like to see red you know this is but yeah yeah yeah there's more like pink than it is like blue you can say it's stabbing or burning or that it's an awfulness that's you know that I'm averse to and I don't ever there's lots of yeah you can't precisely characterize it other things you can say about it well I think these are comparative notions aren't they rather than right but but they're not the things that fought like it fine houses nice thinking the essence of something and what necessarily follows

1:09:41 from the essence again maybe that's getting a bit technical foot and but um yeah I think these are comparative notions but that's you know if someone if a congenitally blind person's never experienced color they're never going to get on board with this game at all they're not gonna know what the hell are you talking about saying it's more red than P so yeah yeah so I think you do know what well look more like a company in fact yeah I suppose so you can capture certain structural features of it or something a girl had the cool part at the end of his bat paper where he

1:10:14 says let's probably do an objective phenomenology where if we try to characterize what it's like to be a human in terms where you could try to explain it to someone who hadn't had the experience and maybe they wouldn't understand it perfectly but they would come some way towards knowing what it was like and I'm not sure that's entirely impossible we haven't done our job at it but we haven't worked really hard yeah yep so right so I mean it doesn't rule out that we give even if we grasp the essential nature introspectively it doesn't rule out that there are other ways of doing it maybe people are more or less on mice

1:10:47 like Sam Coleman think there could be ways of capturing the nature of experience without actually having the experience but but I still think that's good so that's that's not inconsistent with thinking that we grasp the sexual nature consciousness and I don't think it's inconsistent with painting ammonia or something you know the if because if anything that you say there's the essential nature in say oh there's the thing without it well when I oh I see what you mean what do I grasp the

1:11:23 essential nature well I suppose I'd say that is in some way a different experience if it's if it doesn't have the painfulness it's in some way to this pain us in Burley opus I think it's in some way it's a different experience right if it doesn't happen I see well yes so I mean there's there are lots of when I I loose ly say you know the essential nature of pain right there all these rough-and-ready ways of referring

1:11:55 to experiences like you know that headache I had yesterday oh they're incredibly general and vague that's not really what we what we are what we grasp the essential nature of in space what we grasp the essential nature of is you know this experience I'm attending to right now from Chalmers calls these direct phenomenal concepts direct experience real concepts so that that I grasp the essential nature of and I take it that so the pain us in Moliere person grasps the nature of what they're experiencing right now I grasp the nature of the pain I'm experiencing

1:12:28 right now we both call them pain and that's a kind of rough-and-ready way of referring to this broad category of types of experience but it's the very specific determinate experience that you grasp essential nature of this whatever it is no it's just one thing looks something when I'm in pain something's happening something's happening that's pretty momentous you know as far as I'm concerned yes something's happening we can all agree on that and that's perfectly compatible with realism of the most strongest forms all with illusion

1:12:59 because something is happening and I'm detecting that it's happening now and maybe this is where I can sort of push glitch it a bit here because everything you were saying to fill it there I was you know with a hundred percent no so I think so what I my mind senses um paying something's happening I'm detecting it I'm representing it to myself in a certain way and perhaps judging it as involving something that will qualia or quality or whatever paying all the awfulness of it or whatever but I've no access to its direct access to its to

1:13:32 its actual nature it may be vastly different from what I think it is all I really know is that it's causing all these reactions in me there's something there that's causing all this my reactions and kind of my my sense of its reality is connected with all those reactions I'm aware of what it's doing to the way it's pushing me it's you know it's it's it's it's kind of doing all this stuff to me that's what matters and if it wasn't doing anything to me it would kind of be nothing that's kind of now sorry that was very compressed what I wonder was [ __ ] what he thinks I'm

1:14:06 missing out there because obviously Phillip thinks I'm missing something very you know I'm missing out the sort of pure all fullness of the pain you know which doesn't you know cannot be identified with just this cluster of reactions and stuff and the mechanisms that have brought from voting all my representations of mine respective representations of all that there is some underlying reality that grounds all of that somehow what do you think I missing me you [ __ ] [ __ ] about and well I don't know this is a bit subtle question

1:14:40 because actually this to kind of get to the heart of how I don't really can't Allegiant ISM is abuse that it's not a consistent view because I mean it's a little bit like the debate between in free will between the compilers and the chart for determines so the determinant says there is no such thing as free well the compatibilist says the idea is you just misunderstood it so I cannot help by here the claim that you just made as a there is consciousness but you misunderstood its nature so that's what I hear I don't understand how a convenient

1:15:12 other than that to be honest with you and so that's what I would say it's what you're missing is that you've just explained consciousness and sort of doesn't exist but you but you just don't want it you just don't want to come out and say look by consciousness it's just this representing it to myself in a certain way blah blah blah you want to say no no it doesn't it's not real and that's the part where I I really just I'm confused I'm not trying to like make a you know I know the try harder line I've tried pretty hard and I just don't see what other else is to the claim well if that's all it is that is just a it's just a miracle it's

1:15:46 just just a verbal difference there's no problem well I always pretty trying to be bribing quite explicit that what I'm denying the existence of this phenomenal consciousness in that very specific sense that's linked to all these thought experiments and the stuff that Mary couldn't abide and the zombies would laugh and so on and so I've tried to be clear that's a particular consciousness that I I denied exist the conscious in a particular sense I don't you know these experiences we call conscious experience of properties view them materials you're proposing kind of if if you're if that's

1:16:42 all it is I mean I'm then I don't see why you need you need identities here because at least you know type big kind of identities brute identities because there's nothing more you've just a lot you know you've given a functional account of consciousness so there's no you know you deposit any extra identity we all know it just is all that functional stuff but there's havoc causing all these reactions that have been represented in this way that's the end of story type a so but you tend to talk of yourself as a Type B I can't say that I am non-committed as between the

1:17:16 two issues a bunch of garbage and beverage and are we I'm just you know like I don't know why I have to pick one I think they're both plausibly there's argument them and I could see how the type a view could work but I could see out I'd be me you could work and I don't really see that we have good reason that they were the other so far seems to me perfectly consistent with an indeed you know supportive of a type a position I haven't seen any reason for saying and yet it's of course there is kind of there is a matter we have a paper on that that's not interrupting but I have

1:17:48 a paper on this called the identity theory in 2d where I try to try to I mean it's basically like a reasonable Frank Jackson you know I don't want to but anyway so that I think that actually yeah that there is a way that you can go from giving a kind of functional characterization of consciousness cells involving awareness of mental state and then find out what is doing that here and then make the identity so you kind of get him a Lewis seeing an identity as opposed to what kind of Tidy identity so I'm not against the type a move I just think it really depends on what the functional characterization of

1:18:19 consciousness is you know and I'm not always on a temperature that you can really get that so I get vibe accolade you know between the kind of mental pain no no functionally script so I don't know but I'm I'm not sure why I have to they're both good materialist years and I would defend either one they are both good materialist views that up internet what Phillip things about this because I think one is you know the time eight one is is that there's no question about that being echo heavens materialist view

1:18:51 and it's essentially the same as mine I think the cost as a lot of details but the other one it does seem to me that there's some kind of extra property here that you know with which the identity is being made so there's an extra property how I get a needs work identity don't take two properties and identify them identity say there's only one property well okay so once that's I mean that's one of my complaints a lot of people lots of Jack smart you know objected everything a lot of people say well yeah

1:19:23 you're doing this identity but you're two things there but that just misunderstands the nature of identity if the identities change I want to know do we need to explain to viewers watching this will type in type they are we assuming yeah probably I mean yeah I will just mention that come on shout it out Eric which cables well collective consciousness about how terrible introspection is I would just like to maybe we'll come back to that and a lot of a lot of reason to doubt that getting back to ganging up on Keith so that you guys can gang up on me well yeah so why don't why don't we say a little bit about what the type eight I'd be

1:19:55 distinction is does anyone want to do that well I guess usually the I guess things Amba are incoherent that that we define conscious states just in functional or behavioral terms to feel pain pain as a matter of a certain kind of response behavioral

1:20:28 response to bodily damage so that's just part of the meaning of mental terms whereas the type B position is a is a in empirical identity c say yeah some bees are conceivable because consciousness continental concepts and physical concepts are completely different and you'd never know that they were the same thing but science has showed us that they are the same thing right just like water and h2o so you wouldn't know a priori I said in your arm sure the water was h2o

1:21:03 molecules but turns out it is so yes so you wouldn't know that pain was a kind of brain activity but turns out it is so it's not true by definition but it's it's it's true yeah but I think actually I think this is where I'm more on Richard sides and Keith's side actually which cuts cuts the original Matthew because I I have a lot of respect for that I like everyone's view the type B position cuz if at least the version of

1:21:36 it people like David Papineau think you know when I so the view is I understand it when I think I'm introspecting I'm thinking about my pain in terms of how it feels I'm kind of pointing at something inside myself but I but I've got no access to what it is I'm just cleaning it something I don't know what the hell it is you know if you have a review and it turns out to be a brain stay what's wrong with that view that seems to me a perfectly sensible view what I dispute is what we were arguing about earlier that I think

1:22:10 that's a crazy view of our mental concepts that I think when you would tend to your pain you do know at least some think about its nature that's why you care when other people are in pain because it's terrible and but you both dispute their dispute so given that other people and I think you know something about it initial nature but not a physical nature so that's why I think that's the more of a translational yeah we had a big argument about this in the you know we know so what what's wrong with the type B view I think I'm just going back well okay so yeah it depends I think yeah I

1:22:44 think that we build in a lot more into these sort of introspective demonstratives than we think so if what you're doing is saying look yeah something's happening in me something's happening in me I have no idea what it is and it turns out that no it's fine it turns out it's a basically make that identification fine that's no problem with that so then we're thinking of consciousness in quite a different way we think you may not in terms of all the reactions of this myth we just think you something's happening right now something that is associated with all these reactions yeah I have no problem with that at all and if that's what

1:23:18 being attacked be physical it is then I am if you but I don't think we do we've been that we mean something and then you know these demonstrative these concepts that we're supposed to be phenomenal ones they're supposed to somehow pick out something that is kind of distinctive in some way what way well it's supposed to be in the sort of way that supports all these thought experiments that could be inverted we use the word qualitative there what exactly do we mean by that I don't know but we have some more substantial theoretical grip on it than just whatever is happening now in me well at

1:23:53 least I think a lot of people do and now once you start is for two more that then I'm not onboard with identifying that with a brain state because it's quite this brain state you know could be this yeah this whatever it is that's happening in me now could be quite different to whatever it is that's happening it could be inverted when these thoughts but Mary could know everything that's happening in me now but not know what there isn't all of that then type B's it type the identities of easy but also very uninteresting maybe maybe it depends on

1:24:27 where these whether you think all those thought experiments are essentially connected to phenomenal transparency grasping the essential nature of consciousness so as I understand the type B position would pick out the notion of consciousness through these thought experiments through the Nagel expressions being something that it's like to be but they say that those very concepts don't reveal the essential nature of their reference so it's not just it's not just like we an artificial concept like whatever is going on inside

1:25:00 me like Jack smart had its the the the orig original concepts that Nagel picks out that the thought experiments pick out those very concepts don't reveal the essential nature of their reference those concepts once you start you know conceptualizing what's happening in you in terms of those concepts you end up going down this list wrongly Cartesian Road if you're not careful and then you can sort of say well I just make these identity I don't really know what these things are but at the same time these

1:25:31 these notions are doing all this sort of kind of intuition pumping as they would put it you know they work that they're doing two things I say no they're apparently when you're being a type images they're just very thin and you can just identify them with any old physical stuff at the same time they're doing a lot of sort of metaphysical heavy lifting and getting you into a sort of property John I don't think the same concept can be doing both at the same time so I think they'll happen oh I think I think Papineau would say it's not the concept that's leading us astray

1:26:05 it's just we just have this very strong intuition the consciousness can't be physical and that's just an intuition that maybe needs a psychologically but it's not the concept that's leading us astray hello again you how you separate the boundaries in there between the concepts and the theory that's embedding the money it's just a messy thing but this just kind of one reason I mean why do I take this kind of apparently you know boneheaded position there you know and it's not like anything because I'm trying to diverge us into a different way of thinking of this stuff okay I'm trying to get rid of these okay why don't they're trying to get rid of the

1:26:38 concepts on the theory that's embedding them I mean I don't know just just you know as then-standard sit in a cup of tangled kite string instead of trying to sort this out let's just try and frame a better way of looking at it in terms of I don't see you doing that because what you I mean the way you started out you say look you know there's a world out there their colors colors are on the surfaces of the world that's what it's like that's what so the organic stuff is about what it's like for us to experience the world so you're not

1:27:11 denying that there's something that it's like for us it is characterizing it in a very thin way but I I don't see you and this goes back to your early at my earlier I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make between phenomenal consciousness and consciousness I'm gonna run out of butter great so I'm just gonna plug myself in carry on okay starting point was was just was partly a tactical point against against don'ts Philip was you know a starting point isn't with the Cartesian of is it's with the identic world I mean I'm not attached about any special attachment to the homo to that to that starting point a busy that's

1:27:48 gotta be the starting point but you're not behind that there's something that it's like you're just characterized what it's like for it that's being a better business that talk I'm resisting that whole prod that whole way of conceptualizing consciousness of which that term is apart and their navels use of it I mean it's these things are not there embedded in theoretical approaches to consciousness you can't just say you know what it's like is the most you know vacuous term in itself it only starts to get meaning

1:28:24 I mean that's what makes it a very useful intuition pump is that it seems quite innocuous like it's niacin because it's like some the rolltalk calling this way all the time but it's then used in various kinds of theoretical approaches the consciousness bound up with these very not know she wouldn't know what it's like it's not like and now you're taking this innocent term and doing some stuff with it that you've no right to do on the basis of it

1:28:56 that is the way it was innocently introduced but people do that all the turning they say if you're boring you don't know what it's like to see red if you haven't tasted pipe and eyeball you don't know what it's like to taste pineapple that's an oculus that's yeah you can marry easy and building extra stuff in there and I don't think the conclusion is dualism obviously because I think that if Mary had the concept phenomenal red and she would be able to make these deductions to the physical substrate so I don't think that you have to buy certain that you can't it seemed off I'm sorry to say that she doesn't learn what it's like to see red and she sees red I mean and that's that's a

1:29:30 normal way of talking that's the way ordinary person talk no problem with the old way of talking I'm no problem with you know the hetero phenomenology with people's reports of what things how things are with them of course I not only take those as you know auditive in the sense that we don't question them if someone sincerely tells you this is how it you know feels whatever yeah we take that that's a datum we just don't treat it as an it as a transparent window on some inner reality that's the difference and that's writing you with me that's what I was saying to Philip earlier right but that's a theoretical Kane not just but you want to deny that there is

1:30:02 even something that it's like because it leads to the theoretical claim or anything no I'm just I'm just insisting that you know there isn't a transparent wing of it yes there's talk of what it's like and it's important part of our practice with each other and understand each anything thoughtful is an incredibly born social function and then and indeed what we call consciousness have probably evolved for them for social purposes I don't think what we take seriously is just the report the report of Neville saying oh there's something something is that the report

1:30:36 is sensitive to something these think these reports are not random we just don't you know how do you know how do you know it's not it's sensitive or something I mean what you're able to know able to engage with each other in various ways on the basis of these reports in the ways that you know these reports do a lot awful lot of work for us in a way they wouldn't if consciousness were happy phenomenal more just you know absolutely intrinsic I think but anyway don't good so they're they don't work for us they they earn their keep now what we just don't we don't do is is see those reports as a

1:31:10 transparent window and some inner reality that is hidden from us and could be different from what it is in other people and so on and so and if all the reactions or reports are same it's the same you know so then it seems to be the one on one hand wicked you're wanting to sort of take this kind of talk what you say there's more than just as it were the reports I mean it and the associated behaviors and so on ah and whatever causes them well card endemic crack at you but you want you wanted to say that what causes them it isn't is not transparent to us because

1:31:47 action is not transparent so how do you know what caused them is anything that how many if we just conscious just going to be a word for what I call the quasi phenomenal properties whatever it is that it's causing these reports at these reports are sensitive dependent with you I mean if they just terminological but if you're wanting to take to accept the books that what they're these reports are report socks cheese container they were these are reports off it's something of which all these various claims about Mary and zombies new

1:32:20 versions and so on true and I'm not well they're all epidemic Lee true that this is the example just claims about epistemology they're not claims about metaphysics mary is a knowledge it's what she knows inversion is about how can I know about your so these are knowledge claim and that's not metaphysics so I'm not saying that it's true that there could be inversions I think that's an open question I don't even know if it's conceivable I mean it depends on you know how those color spaces are and who knows what followed

1:32:53 but Michael is that you I don't think I'm I need to do all that stuff that you're saying to just maintain the common sense claim appeals on that I can see it seems like at least prima Fauci in my room at night when I was 15 I was like yeah you know this could be a dream and they're still red over there and how do I know that my itch my pain feels like your pain that was a thought I had when I was very young I'm trying to explain to the doctor how it hurts and so I mean those things are epistemic in nature and then you can and then you can argue oh yeah well they

1:33:26 don't reflect the real nature of the faith not that college do I think you do but okay I go ahead illusion isn't that because that's how we represent internal reality wants at least once we've done a little bit of reflection innocent or not yeah that's how we represent it that's that's how we conceptualize our mental lives on with phenomenal concepts and I think phenomenal concepts Randy to misrepresent basically illusionism is phenomenal concept strategy with the rider that radically misrepresent that's

1:34:03 because everyone just illusion is in that sense I mean maybe the radical part is where the gradations will occur but remember even taller even even david Turner says these organic properties are illusion they're they don't represent things out there so they're says they're an illusion so everybody's an illusionist and some week then a week weak I am strong enough to the point that I don't think there's a harder problem put it like that let's just tie pain I mean you don't need to be an illusionist to be a type-a physicalist well I kind of think that the I think there may be a bit of

1:34:40 daylight between between the two but I think they're pretty place do we got any time a physical type a prezzie gloom is often described precisely as eliminate some I think charmers that just just they do that it's awfully hard it was pretty well limit in a Tamilian is the positive part of the program which is not just denying the reality of the consciousness and the Cartesian phenomenal sense but also trying to explain our intuitions about it that's the way I character and I want to get some up a chance to Jesse in being patient but I'd say the way I characterize these debates is as a debates between

1:35:13 so a limited ISM to me can't be a real view unless what it means is that there is a certain metaphysically loaded conception which I don't accept so for instance in the neuroscience textbook I teach introduction to neuroscience and in the textbook the first chapter of the neuroscience book they say they are they are limited materially and that they there's no mind or consciousness but then in the next paragraph what they say is oh what we mean by that is that these are non-physical things and we can explain everything physically so that's

1:35:45 not a limit of ism that's just they saying we want to eliminate this weird conception of the thing that we're trying to talk about not getting rid of the thing you want to talk about that's exactly what says the weird conception is an illusion and the task so we eliminate the weird conception which I explained why we have it so I think Keith I mean – Keith is saying when we get involved in the zombies and Mary and so on we're going wrong but I think what that you know what the type B person

1:36:19 says and I think I'm kind of backing up what Richard said early its own gang in a few and what it says is no no no no the the the the Mary stuff the zombie conceivability in the mote that's all epistemic that's all follows from the fact that physical and phenomenal concepts are different and that's they are different and that's fine and so zombies are conceivable of course it's a mistake if you accept the conclusion of the argument but it's not a mistake just to think Azzam bees are conceivable or that you know Mary would gain new

1:36:52 propositional knowledge so to that extent you get into the thought experiments without going wrong what it seems to me that the that were the with the were the materialist has to say you do go wrong has to be just with the phenomena as far as you of it when you get to the point where you your intuition is that you know in these in having these concepts we grasp the essential nature of consciousness then the materials I say that that's going wrong then the second question here about I thought he thought that was our

1:37:25 natural concept but now I'm getting more the impression the it's actually a concept you get to when you go a bit wrong philosophically which to me it makes it less of an illusionist position they lose the true illusionist position should be it's just unnatural ordinary concepts a very interesting short paper by David Lewis should materialists believe in qualia where he basically says our ordinary notion of we do have an ordination of qualia he thinks we don't have a term for it but he thinks people catch on to it so easily that there must be a folk concept in substance and he thinks basically

1:37:57 that he seems to think it does involve something like what I had called phenomenal transparency and he says that's what you have to deny and then he kind of says whether you call this illusion illusionism eliminative ism or revisionism is is kind of terminological it's a bit like you have someone in the freewill debate you know the difference between the the compatibilist who says they're a revision list or the hard determinist to make them agree but yeah so that's what it seems to me so maybe

1:38:29 I'm not sure this might be the scream of Keith I think I think the type B person can say you know you do fine you're not going wrong when you think Dom bees are conceivable it's just the philosophical error of inferring from not that they're possible actually Paulo Filho made you're saying that it's that they're prima Fauci conceivable that way you don't go wrong I think you actually do go wrong if you start from there conceivability because I don't I don't think they are conceivable ultimately and I'm you know trying to argue for that in very places but certainly what I can't I don't deny that they're prima phosphate conceivable so they seem

1:39:02 conceivable lots of people think that they're concealing them I don't think you can deny that I don't think that by the way just this might be useful because someone was just asking us if Keith could define illusion from Steve so thanks for I wonder if that might help people say a little bit about what is an illusion on your view uh you know it's a systematic misrepresentation something like that you know a representation that's a misrepresentation that systematically happens in certain situations that's

1:39:35 something like that not a lot should be built into you know no point doing a lot of ever so oddly language philosophy on the word illusion it's just a label just do it want to feel it if I can't remember what I was going to say second area of it need a cup of tea so what question about whether whether the illusion is an actual sort of you know a sort of feature event or a bug or a feature of my introspective system or whether it's a product of theory and I used I was you know I I really like may come for his

1:40:09 book soul dust he kind of doesn't like the word illusion illusion as many long its oldest was a lovely version of the sort of innate illusion idea the idea it's actually an evolved feature of our introspective systems to create this this and this this change that we have this Cartesian world and it was a lovely book but the way I see illusionism just as a program is that it's a can spec there's going to be two components there's gonna be some sort of some features of our introspective setting them the nature of introspection itself

1:40:42 and there's going to be some kind of theoretical gloss on that and you can combine these two in different proportions maybe on some views it's almost you know it's kind of hardwired into our introspective systems that as soon as you start thinking about this you immediately default to that position although there's it's that introspection is no it's more sort of open and we interpret it there's a heavy theoretical class on it so notes I see illusionism as a program as a project you could be anywhere along that spectrum and I sort of move back and forth along a bit in different times so that I don't look just just for how we use the term I'd like to keep it open and the key of this

1:41:17 and if you think here I think missing absolutely central to the debate that disagreements and point agree there is the notion of transparency and acquaintance I think that is the absolute core of it and if there was one thing that I wanted to as well as my core commitment in thinking about contra is to deny the acquaintance and I think everything else pretty much follows and I think that is actually the wasn't word for like Earth sort of deep dividing point between two views you know the

1:41:51 chasm between them is the people who believe in acceptance I think that only its significant theoretical choice yeah after that it's theory building on each side of the chasm we can agree on that I mean that's what I've tried to push in a lot of you know my academic work and where I think I in some sense disagree with David Chalmers or you know yeah that is where it hangs and falls I'm not sure about whether I put it acquaintances but whether you grasp the Weber introspectively grasping centrality of consciousness I think it does yeah I agree it hangs and falls on that in my

1:42:24 view can I just jump in because I mean this sounds like I'm gonna make a boneheaded comment that guess I ought to do that I shouldn't be told but so I mean it just kind of occurred to me and also content or just according to me but obviously illusionism there's a view about introspection right it's the the illusion is an introspective illusion but but why do we need introspection because my belief in consciousness barely involves introspection I think ordinary conscious experience without introspection is the same where we're

1:42:58 trying to divert trying to explain in the starting place and so I'm just not so even if there is an introspective illusion why should that have anything to do with consciousness itself being real or illusionary okay this is something I've been kind of at the moment and actually my position is evolving something this very much a higher-order position and I think you have this sort of you have the kind of mechanisms of first order representational mechanisms and you have the the processes of access

1:43:31 consciousness and so on and I think that's all pretty much gone without the illusion as you were you know that's the mode of operation where you're just in the world and you're not reflecting on it and of the world in some sense you're there in the world but you're not there in the world as a conscious experience or of the world and I think the talk of phenomenal consciousness or sort of starts to kick in when you do engage have our order representations which are sensitive to I think sensitive to not

1:44:06 directly to adjust to the represent national states involved but to the whole or wider psychological effects of those states they kind of the impact that thing is making on your associativity emotionally the priming effects that it's having all this kind of stuff and I think that's all sort of swept up into account into what we call phenomenal concepts and kind of attributed to the object that's causing them so right our sense of redness is a sense of a power in the object to do all this to me where this is referring to the all the psychological effects and reactive dispositions that are arising

1:44:38 from my seeing that thing so the and so a openness maybe wouldn't know about red understood because she wouldn't have all these same you see ations that redness has for as part of the said the richness of redness is like it is drawn from my experience of red things and what red things mean for me and how they have a primary and how they say it's this impact the world makes on us which we conceptualize under some sort of normal concept and kind of project we see does that power in the world to create that stuff and that comes in with this kind of higher-order stuff now I still think don't think about in realist as I don't

1:45:12 that's explaining you know that's explaining our intuitions about phenomenal consciousness rather than explaining you know I mean you want to say that's it I don't want to put it in realist as cuz I want to stop people thinking of those terms because I think they distract someone gets them down I don't think Goodrich and by Richard are any that much different I just think that the deck band which you might get people thinking in a way that they shouldn't be thinking it's me any difference the same post alright so I can't remember what question is we're

1:45:48 talking for introspection and consciousness sounds like you're saying you're a realist about consciousness it's just the introspection misrepresents it and then gives us the wrong idea about it's what it is twenty questions there in the ordinary pre reflective sense there's the Reds the Blues I'm not focusing on them but they're there I mean not that's consciousness it's when you just met even seems like an extra step and that's a tingles an illusion there they didn't seem to affect the ground forces so I just I'm really resist this idea of

1:46:26 using the word conscious because you know as Liz Irvine there's all sorts of things we could pin that lady below there's all kinds of discriminations at different levels which have different degrees of effects and which can be tested for in different ways and we could you know there's this contra bit I think she's ranchers want restless launched mantras there's all kinds of different sexual and reactive states that we could pin the label on what is this consciousness I mean yeah innocent its whatever this stuff is but this stuff is multi-dimensional multifaceted and once we start you know trying to

1:46:58 pull it apart and electrons from outside this notion of you know this world of consciousness breaks down at all that we're left with is the illusion of this unitary world of consciousness it's multiple dress stuff again you know there's all kind of where's it all come together doesn't all company it just seems to all come together when we probe ourselves ok maybe I can just put it it slightly different angle I guess we spent a lot of time thinking you know what's it's a really interesting discussion a I'm really about you know what's hardwired into it or word is where do we go wrong and so on but you know it seems to me that both of your

1:47:31 views have to deny something that seems pretty evident Keith's us to deny that were acquainted with our conscious state which it denies that you know has has to accept that conscious states are identical with electro chemical signaling or that you know seems pretty itself seems pretty hard to make coherent sense of my view is the only one that doesn't have to deny anything and and you know if that if that led to the reason people were put off except taking these things that seem evident as

1:48:05 true was because you'll it seems to lead to dualism which is empirically dubious but you know the great thing about this Russell Eddington masochism is it gives you a way of accepting these things which seem you know to most people as evident as 2+2 is 4 you know without in a way that's consistent with everything we know scientifically so I don't but that's when the fair characterization but I won't deny any of that stuff I so in fact I think you have to deny that the same here that's that is the

1:48:38 important thing which is that the consciousness as we have it in what consciousness is because well your view is that there's some micro physical other kind of thing which is consciousness but students school or whatever and that seems you need to be the more radical thing than that's been to say that it's electrical electro physical I mean the micro nominal properties there we have no reason to believe that there are any such things whereas we have tons of reasons to believe that there's ordinary

1:49:10 comfortable internal reasons to believe their electrical chemical properties so it seems to me that I'm not the one denying anything and I don't really care about winning but you know I went radical or it's not my point is you don't have to deny these things that seem pretty evident but what am i denying that that a feeling of pengon is literally identical with it with a kind of brain activity that person what seems evident is that that is not the case but not many people

1:49:50 don't I mean oculus didn't think that was evident Ostin that was evident so you can cherry take all the people who have thought that was evidence I'll cherry pick all the people who haven't thought that so I think that whole you know oh it's so hard it's just cherry picking because I asked the undergraduate half of them say it's obviously the brain have a loop they can't I don't think pointer point I guess I guess it comes about what I do think is that this is the transparency stuff that in some sense you know I do have to deny that out here but I don't know there's an empirical reason for

1:50:23 that and that's a different debate but I actually think the thing you have to deny that you know that my experience have read is basic is even more radical because the experience of read is made up by these other micro phenomenal party knows what they are I won't even talk about how they bond together I know you yourself but who cares about the combination from just that there are parts to the phenomenal experience of LED does not sit well with the ordinary notion of the experience of bread I think that's

1:50:54 actually a more serious issue there than this other one yeah yeah at least respectively are meeting aware that it could be parked to the red it seems kind of yeah basic and that that seems radical to me so I'm not saying I'm saying the pants I guess maybe in a way that other people I know aren't because I generally think these problems are hard and I don't I'm you know I don't endorse it but I don't think that yeah I know I said that's first but I was mostly kidding about that I just don't think that there really I think the empirical stuff overrides the intuitive

1:51:27 stuff at a certain point and whereas I'm one of them too I just think that once like what cheaper thing once you start getting into the details about how bad we are introspection I mean it was that question for about Eric's Fitz Gables book and you know I just think that's too quick from and you know Dennett does as well there's these really cool and interesting mistakes we make about our own conscious experience fine but I don't wait why does that intern I don't think that entails the falsity of

1:52:00 phenomenal transparency because the claim is very specific claim about a very specific kind of experiential concept what charm has caused direct phenomenal concepts so the claim is you know when I attend to a very specific determinate feeling I'm having right now and I think about it in terms of just in terms of what it's like that's the kind of nature revealing concept I've never seen anything any of these cool things about it's not saying we never get another thing wrong we're you know we'll complete father so I've never seen a good argument from empirical data as to

1:52:33 why that's wrong what's wrong with the family data in that eric has worried where they do the beeper stuff and they have people report and you get all these really wild I mean there's no agreement there's nothing like like what you're saying I feel like if there were direct phenomenal concepts they would come out on there shut up tell me about the setup people go about their daily business and they have a beeper and when the beeper goes off they're supposed to stop and reflect on what's happening right then and report it I forget what the Sam some kind of forget the name of it but it's supposed to try to get people in their day-to-day life to stop and

1:53:09 focus on their conscious experience and to report what's happening right then at that moment and you get all kinds of variations people make mistakes or not even sure that what but you know what's going on what they can say so just it doesn't seem to be the uniformity that year you're expecting maybe I should have a look at that and see what I think about but yeah there's a lot of time you're not constitute a every morning you know and you you you're not attending and you're drifting off and you know there's also say you know these very specific kinds of concept where you

1:53:42 are attending you know and form your concept on that basis so I guess I'd want to know whether these are such cases that were thinking of and we might think I'm dodging the question by making it such a specific kind of concept you can never go wrong but you know I the claim is not based in empirical support it's based in a certain view about consciousness that about these kind of

1:54:16 direct concepts because and this is something we talked about before but I just don't I wonder if Keith has done the same on this but it just really seems like it'd be really hard to ever like talk to people about consciousness if there were if it was all based on the direct I mean it's kind of like a relative of the private language argument it's it's when I say I'm in pain and you say no you're not we're using pain in the same way in that sentence in those two sentences and not a public way so there's you mean a really good way to make these kinds of

1:54:48 things parked in the public discourse but obviously we talk about our state to each other all the time well I suppose we are able to categorize our experiences in rough-and-ready ways and in some way we're hardwired to have a theory of mine in some sense do you know I guess we all agree on that you know to assume but I think we're hardwired to interpret people as as having certain kind of experiences and we have those experience rekon SEPs from our own case but we're sort of hardwired to apply them to others in certain

1:55:20 circumstances if someone's crying you're hardwired oh yeah I've never seen why that isn't a way around the private language argument worries that it's minutes there might be philosophical concerns about you know why does evolution get this right rather than just just doing what's good for survival why does it get us the right theory of mind I mean but you know big philosophical issues the bus it's just more that when you say I'm in painting and you're expressing a direct phenomenal concept and I say no you're

1:55:53 not in pain and have to be using a public language concept and so we're not on about the same thing anymore and yet obviously we always talk about the same thing when we speak to each other in these ways I don't think we are using the direct phenomenon direct phenomenal concepts are quite weird you know they're quite unusual those that are and we're using non direct phenomena concepts I mean I guess in some sense none direct phenomenal concepts are derived from direct phenomenal concepts but but but when I but most of the time we use non direct ones I think sorry I don't have taken as off a weird tangent

1:56:27 yet sorry come only if I could come in on a slightly different angle on this yeah hang upon nothing whatever we agreed that acquaintance is central here one thing that bothers me about that is who is the subject of this acquaintance relation so now I guess on and cycads view the subject is the physical object that corresponds to the

1:57:02 amalgamation Li of the relevant Micra physical consciousnesses but have we any idea in your case for instance what is that is it you're a bit of your visual cortex is it your your entire brain is it a central nervous system is it you is it your body I mean no your glass is part of it I mean and how many of these are associated with your body and how does this with Quentin's relationship between that

1:57:36 physical object and these properties then get translated into reports issued by your cognitive system okay it's a lot of different questions that I mean that the pants I guess needn't think that the subject is an indivisible thing that continues over time and there's only one thing you know it could be could be changing parts of the brain over time and but like it's an open empirical question isn't it I take it with what we're all looking for or you know a lot a lot of people working on the science of consciousness

1:58:09 you know the neural correlates of consciousness and different theories were different different views about that so I suppose you know the subject is whatever is the bearer of the neural correlates of consciousness at that particular moment so yeah so it's gonna be a large part of the brain I'm you know and you know what this is a general theory so I you know that as I see things the neutral data is correlations between conscious States and brain States and then you need a theory you know and this is one very general theory

1:58:42 so ultimately you've got to bring together the science and the you know with a out the philosopy palinka just make progress by doing neuroscience well you can do if you take the illusionist view fair enough but if you've been a realist about consciousness you can't just do neuroscience neuroscience just gives you correlations and then you need a theory that explains those correlations so we need to bring the philosophical theory and the science together and this is what people are doing like head of house on Merc spend the year and lab of to Nonie you know the interpreting that empirical theory

1:59:15 of integrated information theory in a pun psychist framework so so that sense that but then you should I feel fast day but you can also take like a thomas viewer and take a deflation era view of the self but he can still be a pen psychist yeah Galen's news Dawson's B is his man view which is that each individual experience is yourself experiencing it go together oh you can be a pretty obvious that the sellers yes they don't have to be followed a card in thinking

1:59:50 you know there's right invisible substance yeah yeah no it's interesting now how this is sort of undermining sort of dissolving the one of us not one of what's into a static points about the nature of the self and her self awareness and self consciousness to myself as a unitary experiencing being which was one of the things so neither Descartes thought we could start doesn't have to be the same over time it doesn't have to be you know I don't think we I don't think you have Cartesian certainty

2:00:24 that against galen's view for example so gaylen's view is you know you're a new self every three seconds yeah I don't think Cartesian considerations can rule that out because all that's not doubted you know your experience right now on that's inserting on her they can't conceive did he thought he was persisting I think that was this that was his ultimate view but I think you have to go through God not deceiving us

2:00:58 to get that I don't think they can't thought what you're immediately aware of is is yourself as a persisting substance I don't think I don't know no they called school of even argue that Descartes wasn't really a substance dualism you know yeah exactly so I mean there's room for interpretation here but but the thirty point wasn't like I exist as a stage through time but merely I have consciousness I have a space now the there's canals they're exact there's a there's an experience that's the

2:01:30 starting point and the rest is theory well but what were you gonna say it's about relation between the reports because it's how that acquaintance gets translate that acquaintance relation gets translated into reports because you say we can do correlations but the only way we're going to do correlations is between some sort of indication of your state of consciousness you know hjortur button or something else you've got to give some indication of your state of consciousness and then we can match that up with you know scans away

2:02:02 so what's happening in your brain or something and we've contrived identify the neural correlates in that way but what we're doing here is mapping the correlations between the scans of your brain and the indications you give of consciousness and suppose in some other there has to be some sort of mechanism that is interposed between your direct awareness and the the indication you give you know the indication doesn't just followed directly by someone the Queen just sort of agents a correlative of acquaintance where you can directly do something in

2:02:36 relation to your directly experience there has to be some mechanism so yeah when it find if we there's a failure of apparent failure of consciousness where we don't get the indication when there's a certain basic that could always be due to a failure in this mechanism it could be that that bit of the brain that hasn't lighted up in this case was the bit that was involved in the mechanism of producing the indication rather than a bit that was involved in consciousness itself seems one situation bits a B and C light up and the person indicates

2:03:08 consciousness in another case bits just a and B like that and the person doesn't indicate it and the question is what C part of the neural correlates of control gets are part of your thoughts of the mechanism by which the awareness of consciousness is currently there's no this is kind of you know and then it's point I guess about the you know with with his examples with made we must and there's no way of doing there's no way of telling because very could be like one neuron is the neural coverlets have come just an everything else is part of the mechanisms of agency it could be the

2:03:41 possible in your coverlet of consciousness that's really interesting I thought you were gonna try and say there's some I thought you're gonna anywhere yes that's really interesting the science of consciousness is really hard if you're the kind of consciousness realist like I am that thinks consciousness is unobservable I mean you know how do you can't look inside someone's head and see the color but I wouldn't say it's gonna be too far you know I mean is minds interesting paper by Ned block the even harder problem of consciousness where he

2:04:14 worries about things like you know how do we know it's the specific physical state you know that we wouldn't share with the silicon duplicate or it's some more general computation or function of state that we would share with you how on earth – these are difficult but you know III I think these are these proposed theoretical challenges you know sometimes the ante physicalist argument goes like oh well things would be really hard if your view was true and I'd be like ok so it's hard that's life you know the the human situation is not idea

2:04:47 it would be nice if we could if everything you know if we could just focus on what's observant I think that's why people want to just focus on what's observable and quantifiable and and and because that we've learned how to be precise with that and and it's nice it feels like we've got something that works unfortunately we know this other thing exists that's hard to fit in that so these are challenges but I think some I think some theories are kind of just one quick thing I think some theories are gonna be more plausible than others that that I think the view that it's just one you're on it's gonna be a pretty implausible theory so it's just

2:05:20 very building you know I think I know I think I think you're making a strategic error there maybe it's because there's a sense in which I kind of have a little bit of liking for pants – I'll tell you why and I think but I think it'd make a strategic error because it's so long as you're trying to integrate it with the science and think that it's test scientific there's no way you can come up with a clever protocol that will filter out that will discriminate these different components precisely because one is not detectable observably any way at all so and you can't do that you can't intercept so don't try just say

2:05:57 well if you can come up with a protocol I mean you could say it's implausible this one you're on well it's implausible but the natans conscious but this is like this is like you know people the church lands caricature that the you know the anti-material argument as you know no one knows how to explain consciousness therefore it's impossible I mean it's like things with big agree there's a big challenge here but I don't see why it's impossible getting much better you have to it that's part of your fear I think that is

2:06:35 not empirically and you can sort of come up with some sort of idea of well it'd be weird if it was just one I'm a charitable but you could say it's more plausible or you could come up with a priori consideration for saying you know maybe should be there such a bit of it you're not going to bed to do any real science on it and you shouldn't try you should say look this is a way of this is a way of finding a place for you see what your view does what one psychism does quite nicely is it doesn't mark about with interactionism or anything like this it says we have these intuitions and we really want to trust them so what do we do well let's bury it away right there in the intrinsic nature

2:07:09 of matter where it were no harm as if it's not only to feel with anything but it's just gonna zyk we're sort of infuse everything with it with with with with it with a glimmer of consciousness and if we want to trust that intuition that's a nice way of doing it doesn't muck about with anything imperative doesn't risk any any refutation and it guarantees that our intuitions can be held on to as long as we want to one option that's one option and when you try to do slice with it it seems like you know there's a program here but there isn't because correlations can

2:07:42 never be you can never establish correlations with the thing itself precisely because it's undetectable I'm just not saying why this would be a knockdown objection I mean you know if we can take if we can say if we can say if we can map commonalities between you know certain people have this experience and certain you know work we can come up with more or less plausible interpretations of what great and we can say what all you can do is map commonalities in the indications they

2:08:16 give of conscious that you can't map correlation you can't map similarities commonalities decide commonalities in consciousness itself you can only map commonalities in the indications of conscious I think there will be in terms of what's directly noble but I think there will be more or less plausible theories of which which brain processes cut but well then it's just a Priora you just think it's not a pray all right how you do I mean if you're gonna push this hard enough in any scientific theory you know there's always an infant sorry any

2:08:49 empirical data there's always an infinite number of theories consistent with that data and we but we hone them down in terms of theoretical virtues parsimony elegance you unity so I you know I think some TSA's some ways of explaining the data are more plausible and others the experimental results will have no but it's going to be entirely at that level of that those levels of pacifism there's no experimental results

2:09:22 have never been no bearing on this because they can't separate out which bit is due to the the actual real consciousness and which bit is due to the the bits that translate that awareness into actual into indications of consciousness and it could be wondering could be one atom it could be a it could be a time-space point of a line I don't know no it couldn't it's not going to interesting nature or anything but it could be the smallest unit of which there's has an intrinsic nature I'm not judging i I think I'm gonna have to go in a second cuz but my

2:09:59 partner's stuck in a car park with babies falling asleep and I will say it's it's it's it's an interesting challenge but I'm not here but I still think some ways of interpreting if you start with correlations between I'll say one more thing last word on this even if you start with correlations between you know reports and you know you even if you start whatever correlations you you

2:10:34 can still and say look it in anyone who's had this experience this has been going on in the brain right you haven't pinned down what which is the bit about current which is there actually under life and consciousness and which is underlying the response I agree but you can still start with those correlations and I think there's gonna be more or less plausible ways of dividing up but it's it's something I'll have to see between those two elements what's causing the responses and what but it's certainly an interesting challenge and I'll have to think about it tomorrow but go on Kiki

2:11:07 you have the last word it's a very interesting and it's a very what's the word I want it's it's a successful way of taking that intuition seriously I think that's kind of the way you have you have to go in somewhere like that if you take the interagency seriously and the cartesian intuition seriously and my oh if i were to do it myself i would just say and it's it's it's it's not I think to do with Sciences of

2:11:38 purely pure part of metaphysics it's just this extra ingredient in the universe that is not empirically detectable and it just kind of lights up everything and we can't do any science on it and there is that's how the world is it a fundamental level and what's nice about that is it it insulates those intuitions that you want to keep hold of from any kind of possible refutation I think if you don't do that then and you do go and doing the science then you end up where science will gradually creep away creep away exclaiming more and more of the functions and reactions include and then dispositions including

2:12:11 our dispositions to have judgments we're phenomenal consciousness including our introspective abilities including everything including everything that you've said today we're all bits and then you'll end up with nothing left hold on maybe I've misunderstood what we're arguing about here that I mean yeah I think that when science that identifies the physical processes that give rise to the to the speech it doesn't mean that it's a limit it's ruled out consciousness it I mean the pun psyche is view would be that contrast like underlies those physical process but it would make it less

2:12:48 plausible but you need anything more than those mechanisms and well because if I have it right because if I thought your argument now that my argument was that you shouldn't engage with the science you should just treat it as a sort of matter and an extra what would that rule out that the point is the point is that that the puns Lycus thinks is that when you're studying identifying the physical processes I think using the word mechanism is the bit is cheating a bit here when you identify the physical

2:13:20 processes that gives rise to the response those very physical processes occur due to the Proms of consciousness roll out no I know I know I know what the view is I didn't mean that it would rule out the possibility of there being the intrinsic natures I meant it would it would tend to chip away the intuition that there must be something there that once you'd explain all your reactions that are associated with control dispositions in fact including your judgments about phenomenal consciousness itself when should you know all the stuff that david chance to expose as part of the meta problem processes once

2:13:52 you've explained all that you'd figure how convincing this pretty much everyone I think agrees that we are we are under the illusion of having a phenomenal phenomenal in a world which can be explained in physical terms the question is whether the illusion it permits the illusion is actually there's an actual reality underlying back you know we are we have physical mechanisms that create an Sambas you know they're under the illusion of being conscious right there are physical mechanisms in us that create that would create the illusion of being consciousness it consciously whose map of the world create illusion to be

2:14:26 kind of even if we were right we would think we were conscious even if we were to I think everybody's pretty much agreed on that is whether those mechanisms are coincidental Israel actually tracking the truth about it and my point is that once you start doing the science and explicator those mechanisms you may lose your intuition that there is a reality underlying a phenomenal reality underlying that's why thought that's why playing with us that's like only the science is risky interesting I mean it's almost like the Descartes Descartes arguments against

2:15:00 animal consciousness he argued that if you raise someone in a basement and they built these mechanisms and they built something acted exactly like a dog then they would just realize that oh yeah there's nothing special about dogs they're just basically mechanisms and and they're true theoretical Gryphon maybe they're being conscious and just go away because all that could be understood like if you if you're a duelist that's right if you think consciousness is somehow extras the physical processes and then you identify all these physical processes that explain behavior yeah you're gonna think Oh consciousness doesn't exist but but

2:15:33 the pun psychist doesn't think that they they're studying these things physical processes and and they take them to be forms of consciousness so so you identify the physical the intrinsic the intrinsic nature of those persons that's not I mean when you say intrinsic nature people tend to build too much it's not like it's this extra thing that is extra property it's just that is what the physical state is physical science describes how it behaves but that's sort of it's the isn't the idea that it's the intrinsic nature of the fundamental

2:16:07 constituents that it's physics describes in that causal and dynamical terms in functional terms and which could have been something other than consciousness presumably it could have been I don't think the thing itself could have been at something different I don't think the physicals the physical state is what it is and it can't be another thing it could have been could have been a world in which the the fundamental realizing property was something other than consciousness I mean in our world it isn't if you're right but I don't know what it would be a difficult day but it

2:16:42 would to go have all the things functioning properly yeah we can tell whether it was by doing experiments whether it was if we were transported to another universe we couldn't do any experience to tell where the consciousness was the fundamental realizing thing there yeah yeah consciousness is an observable [Music] yeah I'm guys it's been over two hours and I know I don't know what a car park is that sound like there's a baby in it

2:17:15 and that's not good so I'm gonna change regret I'm gonna have to say maybe they have to do another one of these and end this discussion today it's been a very great discussion both of you thank you it's really good fun actually I'm really thinking about what's hardwired and what's thing what's theoretical has been really interesting is very key I think we haven't really given Richard enough time to talk and tell us about his views and I think we saw apologize for that but

2:17:49 again well yeah I'll go ask you guys later and we'll do this again possibly but mostly I just wanna thank you for being such charitable Malaka with you guys people who disagree still friendly still serious trying not to talk to each other whether you agree with it or disagree it's a very elegant and well-written and lovely presentation of the view and yeah really at least that's very kind of you to say so in the US November 13 yeah but absolutely looking

2:18:28 forward to it all right guys go ahead and end the broadcast now okay thanks a lot thank you all right I think we're going to be clear here