Consciousness Live! with David Papineau (S3 E4)

0:00 says going live all right we are live joining me today a very special guest David Papineau David for those who don't know you can you say something about who you are and what you do okay I'm a philosopher national philosopher I talk for a long time at King's College London last five or so years I've been spending spring semester at the Graduate Center Cooney in New York so I work I work inclusive mind but also in philosophy science and

0:35 metaphysics my courses here at Kuni is on causation interventionism I used to do epistemology but I kind of moved away from it or maybe epistemology has moved away from me and I don't advertise myself as in this place anymore but I used to be that is how I started I thought of myself anyway floss your mind metaphysics facio science well I didn't know that about the dark past that you had in epistemology well it wasn't really epistemology as people now think

1:07 of abyss Maji it was to do with I saw this process of science and it was methodology and to do with what you know what what method should we use how should we think to get at the truth and I thought of epistemology as a practical discipline and I mean back then there were people who did intuitions about analyzing knowledge and then that kind of went away and now it's come back if you ask me with a vengeance and we I just wrote a paper I don't know if you saw it about the disc I finally found a good way of arguing that the notion of knowledge is not a

1:44 good notion I mean it's very central in everyday thinking and I think that's a bad aspect of everyday thinking and I I look at all my young colleagues who are exploring all these intuitions about about knowledge and norms of assertions of action the so on I found a way of our units all a pity except interesting we have always intuitions I haven't read that paper but I saw it on your website actually can I mean this is I'm gonna have an epistemology here eventually I talk to Clayton Littlejohn who I think you know but I'm

2:16 gonna the Clayton Clayton Staton's my colleague in London and it's because of plate that I wrote this paper ah he no he's he's very big in this in this knowledge first business and one of the issues they have is statistical evidence in the law look should we go on about this I mean this is not people people who tuned in for consciousness we're gonna get to it we got that why can't you convict somebody just on the basis that it's highly likely I mean

2:50 it there one that all a hundred people 99 of whom the guilty and you know that and that's all you know why can't you convict them and intuitive you can't and and people literature and philosophy of law about what's behind this kind of prohibition on acting one next to school evidence and my colleague Clayton I think has put his finger on and he said the thing is that we feel that we can't convict somebody unless we know they are guilty and there's no way we can know that we have up on the Lottery's no way

3:23 we can know that we haven't got the one innocent person and he thinks that's what's driving our intuitions even though we're perfectly happy to commit on the basis of eyewitness testimony when there's only a kind of you know there's a 1 in 1 in 5 chance the person isn't guilty but there at least there's an 80% chance that we know whereas in the in the lottery cases the snake of statistical evidence there's a hundred percent chance that we don't know he's for sure don't know and so we shouldn't

3:55 convict and I look at that and I think but hang on I mean that might be how he intuited you think that maybe won't be intuitively do but it's a really bad idea you're going to be convicting a lot of innocent people and you know there's no reason to favor the eyewitness over the statistical evidence and all this looking around us here jerking us around is the concept of knowledge which involves kind of causal contact with the fact known anyway so that was Clayton's idea and I say Clayton you're right about our intuitions and highlights how the notion of knowledge

4:29 is screwing us up right yeah that's interesting yeah I'm gonna have to read that paper before I generally try to avoid epistemology my whole life actually we shouldn't be doing this okay but you know I mean your work has always been very influential on me I've always admired your writing and the way you approach this stuff and especially your book thinking about consciousness which i think is a classic in this in this field and in fact I'm having my students currently on my class on science of consciousness reading the appendix on the case for materialism so my thought

5:04 was to basically to start there I think this is something you still endorse is that correct this the kind of causal closure argument for for physicalism yes yes I mean I've got a bit uneasy about the way it's standardly posed because they've using causation that I'm quite sympathetic to which suggests that often some event like bit of bodily behavior enough so we do the scientists do want

5:36 me to describe the cause of closure argument first before right before I turn yeah I mean you gonna spend some time here in by current misgivings so the real gist of the cause of closure argument is that the world as described by science doesn't seem to need to explain things at the most basic level in terms of anything except fundamental force fields

6:10 that don't include any special force fields that are present in in living bodies or conscious bodies or sentient bodies or anything like like that so the idea is that that physics is complete unto itself what happens in the physical realm is determined by all these very simple influences that don't include any soui generous mental influences and if you accept that and then you want to say but look what happens in my mind does

6:43 make a difference in the physical world after all it leads me there to act in certain ways I influence the physical world you wanna you wanna assume that some physical changes have have mental conscious causes well if you if you think that well you better as it will push the mind down into the physical world any way the mind can make a difference in the physical world is by itself being physical and that line of thought I still find it pretty compelling as indeed do printer's pretty much everybody in this line of business

7:16 and I mean we'll probably be talking about an epiphenomenon us and dance I Cassandra Cillian monists and all kinds of people and they all more or less respect the causal closure of the physical they have all these strains used because they feel they can't have anything making a difference to what happens in the physical realm at the most basic level except except limited number of physical forces I you were talking about the history of this III have a view about the history of this

7:50 which is that this is a very modern thing we don't realize how modern it is I think if we went back a hundred years inform scientific opinion wouldn't wouldn't have found our argument comparing a talk because they would have thought that there are plenty of soui generous vital forces mental forces alongside gravitational forces chemical forces and so on and they make an independent difference to what goes on in the physical realm they wouldn't

8:23 have had any difficulty I mean that they were kind of Cartesian interactionists and and it's kind of modern micro science that I think has has persuaded people out of that we now think everything is made of atoms and subatomic particles and then a lot of us are kind of brought up with this picture of how reality is constituted and then you don't have any room for these extra

8:56 vital mental ray forces but I look back at the history of this and the kind of argument I gave you see appearing very frequently in the middle of the last century tygo Putnam and open hi and David Lewis Armstrong Jack smart – all Dale Donald Davidson all thinking that the bottom level everything is run by these basic physical forces and so if we're not going to make them mine epic phenomenal

9:29 we better think of the mindless constituent in the same way and I think the history is very interesting I I have at a very crude view I think that that once you have a generation of philosophers who were taught atomic chemistry at school then you're going to have this kind of physicalism and I think atomic chemistry being taught at school was a pretty late the late thing I mean I don't know when it when it we could go and look but I suspect not

10:01 until until after the first world war the 30s and perhaps the earliest person who starts worrying about this kind of hegemony of macro physical reality is Russell Bertrand Russell in the analysis of matter as circuit 90 and he particularly was somebody who was making his living writing popular science so he really got into modern micro physics much longer much earlier than the average runner philosophers and

10:37 so he was writing maybe see a relativity the ABC of atoms the ABC of atoms yeah I mean this is important point in it's also we want to distinguish it from the kind of person excuse me interaction problem that comes from Descartes it's not the same as there's a the mind-body problem is traditionally construed would you say that's correct so I mean Descartes did have a version of this problem ah as Leibniz pointed out today caught look your physics which is all in terms of impact in the

11:11 conservation of motion okay let me sound slightly funny story lionesses thought was basic 17th century atomic physics leaves no room for the mind to affect the physical realm without violating the basic laws of physics and that was likenesses you lion it's thought the Descartes had a slightly wonky verge of basic impact physics which somehow left a little bit of wiggle room for their mind to make a difference but so so Leibniz said if they can't had the right

11:44 physics he would have had just a problem for interactionism that I was I was describing but it's a different problem from the standard one look here's the mental wrong here's the physical realm they're so very different how can they possibly influence each other if you have any kind of lightweight human constant conjunction view of causation there's no reason why two different things shouldn't influence each other and indeed I think scientific orthodoxy through the 18th 19th early 20th century was de facto a kind of interactionism it

12:21 had vital forces net nervous forces forces of sensibility and irritability all kinds of security the forces associated with mental entities and they were taken to be able to influence so mosha no matter our force fields and this was a nervous energy that's where that comes from exactly the potential energy of the nervous force the 97th idea was was the nervous force field was it was a special kind of force field that was associated

12:54 with with sentient conscious beings and and when you were deliberating you built up the potential energy of the nervous force field and you were full of nervous energy and then when the time for action came you release it into kinetic energy smoothness is really beautiful yeah and the way it's new energy she's full of energy exactly that's when we say it exactly and in a way it's Newton's fault right not his fault but you can trace it back to the success of Newtonian mechanics because the equations work but

13:27 they don't specify a mechanism and so you know spooky action at a distance isn't so spooky after you see it work a bunch of times and you don't understand how it's working but I don't think that's a bad bit about Newton I mean it's true that that modern physics doesn't allow action at a distance that's going to violate the conservation of energy in various various ways but it's still pretty spooky a lot of the Newtonian force fields I mean they aren't they are all operating by you

14:00 know contact between atoms bumping into each other and so a nervous force field wouldn't be any worse than electromagnetic field and that in that respect it's prettier yeah all force fields are pretty ethereal and so would the nervous energy field I mean no it's it's what's bad about it is I mean there's nothing kind of as it were from the point of view of basic physics bad it's just that we don't think that there are special force

14:35 fields that are present only in minded beings I mean that's that's the odd idea that there's a special force field that I mean in the 19th century these were regarded as perfectly regular force fields I mean Newtonian physics doesn't list what are what are the basic forces are the Christie magnetism and gravity and know about nuclear forces but they had a list of forces of cohesion chemical forces forces of affinity and

15:09 then forces irritability Sensibility vital forces I mean they didn't especially think that some were more spooky than others they were all just in the same line of business right yeah so I mean so use your you're arguing for the idea that the cause of closure argument would only be available or convincingly available to someone post atomic physics post the kind of micro physics that comes to in the 19th century right is that and that's an

15:43 empirical if there's two aspects to the micro micro physics one one is that I think the evidence against special force fields comes from from physiology kind of intracellular physiology by intersecting I mean Huxley and Hodgkin the operation of nerve cells explained entirely in electrical electrical chemical ways once you get that you feel

16:17 well at that level we don't seem to need any of these fancy force fields but there's something more general going on in our philosophical tradition which is microphonic moderate microscopic physics as a whole ie a reality beyond the level of what's observable I don't think we realize how how modern that is philosophically I mean we know that idea was there in Descartes in the 17th century but through the 18th and 19th century that idea went away physics was

16:53 all to do with charting the behavior of observable objects and via empiricism Kant idealism I mean the whole tradition was against the idea that you could get at the reality behind the appearances way and that was very built into the that I'm just trying to get 18th 19th century scientific ideology Newton

17:27 hypotheses is not finger we chart the appearances that was the good idea Descartes strangely was associated with the bad old ancient regime look at those ridiculous vortex theories and so on that's all you don't want to go in for that kind of thing to the extent that in the 19th century certainly in France and Germany the dominant scientific view was the atomic theory shouldn't be taken seriously that's not what we do in science we don't make up these these fairy stories

18:00 we're really interested in in explaining the motion of observable bodies and various things like that we're not interested in making up stories about macroscopic particles and and the philosophers really had that as their worldview so we might talk later about Rossi lien monism sometimes interchangeably used with the term neutral monism but our modern view which is kind of fully committed to the

18:34 reality of micro physics was no part of the original neutral monism neutral monism was mark's term and for those people they took it as obvious that reality was constituted out of the kind of thing that was given to you an experience there were the Givens of experience he's with the basic building blocks of reality that was the standard scientifically informed marquee and view circa circa 1900 and the neutrality was where were these things mental or

19:08 physical well you could kind of group together a whole one of these kind of given like things in terms of did they will appear to do you from a certain perspective than you were thinking was mental things if you group them together as you know Berkeley like the appearances that make up a table and then you were thinking in those physical things and these things the Givens they were neutral they were neutral between the mental and the physical and you get it in the in in the logical positivist Vienna circle debate about was the basic

19:41 language the physical language or the mental language do you think people in favor the physical language were physically but they weren't physical it's like we think of physicalist they want people who thought basic materials in reality were atoms of that they thought the basic material so reality were were tabletops and things like that as opposed to experiences of tabletops that was a debate anyway so I think it's about beyond that to be to be any kind of physical Anat now are you've got you got to take seriously the idea that

20:14 there's a reality of macro mechanisms behind the appearances which many of us grew up with but but equivalents in philosophy hundred years ago that would have been a very strange view yeah I mean I find the history here so fascinating so I under what you think about like people like Democritus and an early Greek atomism who had a priori reasons for positing unseen elements so so I understand your view about the modern scientific approach and the way micro physicalism came to dominate but it

20:47 certainly wasn't a new idea that there was a hidden aspect to reality sure I mean I said that the face of history I know reasonably well cuz I used I used to teach this before I was at King's College London I was in Cambridge in the Department history philosophy of science and one of my jobs for 10 years was to teach the history of the philosophy of science so I read a lot of Descartes and Locke and mutant and human Kant and so on so I and and and 19th century people thinking about

21:21 atomic theory so I know that period very well and it's the kind of peculiarities so I don't know very much about people on but certainly they were serious atoms Fatima's Lin and there were certainly serious atomists in the 17th century but the idea of Newton and Locke we can't seriously get behind the appearances they both thought there were things behind the apparent sister we couldn't get at them but then the whole Bartley Hume can't neo-kantian tradition

21:56 by then it's a peculiarities of the last two centuries of our philosophical tradition idealism became completely dominant if not idealism the idea that reality was composed of what was observable and I tell my students took that you don't ask everybody until about 1950 in our tradition was an idealist you know you know you're not following right so their cap was 90 mil was an idealist right Russell was an idealist

22:29 uh you know a Jair was an idealist just about old enough to remember this I came in and people used to still be dealing with that yeah I found when I I found that very surprising when I you know you first hear about the logical positivism yes love it wait a minute idealism Oh we may be who should be told mice but I want to do one more thing because this really brings it home his Hempel pimples

23:04 serious logical empiricists late logical empiricist and kind of founding father of you know recent American philosophy of science I grew up with him pimples theoreticians dilemma and it goes like the theoretician assignment we had these theories in science right he's worrying about theories about unobservable atoms and viruses and radio waves of certain bullies theories right and he says one of these theories good for if you're keen on theories you've got a dilemma because either the theories are chanting what's true at the

23:42 observable level in which case we don't need them because we could just describe it all an observable level or they're making false claims about what's going to reservable level in which case they're not a good idea at all so either way we'd be better off without serious wonder theories but for right and and when I first wanted in philosophy we were invited in saucer science to cut our teeth on this problem and we came up with all these answers it was kind of heuristic be useful to have theories because then they generated new

24:15 observational predictions or you know it was convenient to have theories because you couldn't remember all that observational stuff without kind of deriving it from this story about atoms and we we tried various maybe they were kind of inductive predictions that you would be led to via the series you couldn't get out of the observations ah and I can remember reading in 1964 platinum what theories are not right and he says so you're wondering why we have terms like electron and virus and radio

24:51 waves I'll tell you why it's so we can talk about electrons and viruses and radio waves and I looked at that and I kind of you know it's one of those things you're you were kind of ready for it and my mouth dropped open I thought yes yes why was I writing all those s easy answer here but the truth is that that for hempel and if you go and look at Nagel the structure of science I mean for those people it was kind of deep unwritten but complete commitment that the business of science was to describe

25:28 what was observable because that's what that's what reality was and then there was other business making up stories about making up stories and that was how they thought of it they didn't take seriously the idea that there really could be electrons and radio waves as part of reality they mean they came out of tradition for which that wasn't available so do you think I miss a tangent but do you think scientific realism is part of the story about why-why-why physicalism came to be prominent I mean it sounds like sort of what you're setting in the background is before scientific realism was a serious

26:01 contender physicalism wasn't either right but but in a way what I'm saying is for that tradition scientific realism wasn't even an option right I mean they didn't yet think that all the stuff about atoms and viruses and so on was a possible can another counter what was reality I mean then don't ask why they were I mean they they could have been

26:35 serious content in process we can't seriously think about things that we haven't observed them that was part of what was in the background so I mean they thought theoretical talk was meaningless right but there was a kind of prior commitment that reality was just made of what was observable that was that was the deeper yeah if you look at Nagle done in a chapter four structure science it's about realism versus instrumental isn't about about theories and ad agonizes and perhaps around them and his conclusion is that this isn't a substantial dispute he

27:12 thinks that that really these people are arguing about what's the best way to tell a story relative to what we all agree is the serious stuff which is getting observable stuff right so he wasn't even prepared to think there was a there was an issue of scientific realism but MIT but once you think there's an issue then there's a debate but with true you get you get you get latter-day anti scientific realists like fan France but I mean we're all fan frozen's and epistemological

27:45 anti-realist he thinks it makes perfect sense that they should be essence and so on but we just have no evidence of leaving it those older guys thought it didn't really even make sense that's that's oh right yeah that's so interesting so I'm wondering what we're gonna say about someone like Hobbes because what as you're talking I'm thinking so you know the brain is perfectly observable macroscopically respectable Oregon people like Hobbes you know they say consciousness assistant emotions in the brain so they don't need microphysical microphysics he was the 17th century science endorse their

28:21 atomic theory so here's the weirdest thing about our tradition right so Descartes and Hobbes and all the guys back then will fall on microphysical realists I mean we're absolutely committed to the mechanical view of the world the world's like a clockwork it's called these bits we can't see them but we'll figure out one day what they are so they were perfectly fine then what happened in the 17th century nobody got very good at figuring out what was behind the appearances right they didn't really come up with any good

28:52 microphysical theories I'm even simple things like what's the what's the cause of ear pressure and you knows the air pressure that was observable but and was it me was was was it kind of little particles like we think was it the it was made of Springs was it some kind of squishy elastic medium they they had no way of figuring out and Newton and Locke decided that you shouldn't in science go in for that kind of speculation you could speculate but it wasn't really a serious part of science so they were kind of epistemological maybe if on

29:27 franceour like anti-realists it's not but it's beyond our beyond our Ken and then in 80 to 90 centuries we had to kind of idealist turn you deal with the skepticism that's implied by the Newton lock view by eliminating the reality of this supposed stuff behind the appearances so as I said I mean no Hobbes strikes me and and a cart and laminates I mean all the boil all the 17th century Magnus as just like modern

30:04 people in this respect it's it's it's the funny two centuries in between two and a half centuries in between that I think is so so curious and in a way many people have lost contact with how people thought back there right yeah and I think that's that's it that's what's good about this sorts of conversations and reminding us about that so so I mean personally I find the causal closure of the physical argument for physicalism very convincing that's what sort of convinced me to be a physicalist to the extent I am I don't think I have myself as like a real

30:35 physicalist I think of myself as someone who thinks physicalism is a live option and hasn't been refuted so I don't know if I actually believe it's true or not but I certainly think that it's this one of the more plausible accounts but what's what's the Oh should I mean you think it's bit specifically in relation to consciousness is that is that where you in relation to the mind yeah so yeah well I thought we're going to be talking about zombie argument Cimmerian so we're getting there yeah we got her again but I've been but I think this case for

31:08 physicalism is important because it sets the base for all of those other discussions yeah but but I wonder what you would say it's because sometimes people say that this whole cause of closure argument depends on when engineers call being a closed system and we're not we don't have evidence that the universe is a closed system in that sense so I wonder what you think about so I mean so I I get that this is an empirical inductive kind of argument that we're making for the causal closure here but it's not I mean we don't know it do we we don't we're not it could be

31:42 false sure it's it's it's an empirical claim I mean I don't know where one would want to get off the bus I mean only thing is specifically of making room for a non-physical mind to influence the physical world I would with thinking in terms well wish me kind of non-physical interaction with as I said to you a while ago I mean that's an

32:16 option that's a serious option but it's quite striking few contemporary pluses of mind few informed philosophers are so flustered by generally are very interested in taking it I mean not many people do and how would you argue I mean that mr. popper Eccles views that that there is a nervous forsen in the mind it's is doing its thing here and there and and it's very hard to observe and

32:52 and in fact it's if you take that view seriously you might be disinclined to take the kind of neuro physiological evidence as conclusive against it and it's very difficult to to kind of prove there's no processes in the mind that can't be explained in terms of electrical chemical processes that's a very hard thing to establish conclusively to somebody who's not I'm not sure saying that all we have a study of closed

33:27 systems and the real world is the closed system is really going to help you with that argument I mean sure in the laboratory we try and engineer a closest and see what goes on and and you might think that that findings you get for closed manageable systems laboratory can't be extrapolated to the real world that's kind of Nancy Cartwright's line of argument often real worlds much more messy don't suppose

34:03 that fundamental physics governs things in in the real world I don't find it very convincing sure so sometimes we start with a closed system and then we study it and that will seems to work nice and simply physical then we worry about is that an artifact of our just being so restrictive and won't be allowed to influence our system so we look at a slightly more complicated system and we get the same answer and and somebody might say still but all this distance you study are from a certain perspective fairly limited or closed and how can you extrapolate to two systems beyond that

34:37 and my response is why do you think that being simple enough to be studied by human beings is an inductively relevant property of things why why do you think things are something it's not different behaving differently when they're beyond our ability to study I mean I think we've got a pretty reasonable sample yeah no I appreciate that I'm not saying I agree with this line argue I'm just wondering I'll press oh no that's closed systems argument I don't find that convincing I would if I was inclined to be an interactive

35:11 duelist I just go straight for the line that that's the story that makes best sense of the non the manifest non physicality of consciousness ms i mean it moves many people right and the ability of the mind to influence the world that there are there are special special causal influences operating in minded beings that then it's very hard for science to see I mean that seems to me a coherent position say it is for

35:47 what it's worth I'm an especially want to argue from Authority it's striking that can you name any contemporary philosophers who take that line I mean I see I'll take that the physicals not closed I don't know there's planting oh maybe I was about to mention planting and I was about to mention EJ low right those are about the only two but they've influenced a lot of people so they're those two people have a lot of followers and I think that view is kind of common currency among well maybe but I had an email exchange with pentagram at one

36:24 point about about this and he was one being with the consciousness in determinism left room for this independent mind to make a difference and I try to persuade him that no it didn't I think it's pretty clear it doesn't right you know quantum mechanics is that the chances everything that happens are are fixed by prior physical circumstances and then what happens is random I mean that's that's what quantum mechanics is and if you think that what

36:59 happens isn't random relative to the price of physical circumstances then you're contradicting quantum physics oh I'm not sure that's that's clear I mean if I was going to be a duelist I'd be a quantum duelist to be honest but but certainly there it doesn't seem to be a contradiction of quantum mechanics there if what you think is like some kind of non-physical consciousness causes the collapse of the wavefunction and from our point of view it appears to be random but really it's you know determined by the mind of the person or something choose two thoughts there one is it cut causes the collapse of the

37:33 wavefunction the other is that it does it in a non-random way right the first idea is well it doesn't grab me at all but it's got reasonably respected we'll have to see it lets in the philosophy physics and if you believe in collapses the wavefunction which many people do I it's a bit mysterious what causes them and maybe a direction with a conscious mind is a reasonable thing but notes that still leaves the point I was making against planting her that that when the

38:09 wavefunction collapses may be determined to do something do so by influence of the mind or some some kind of special circumstance what then happens is random and that's that's built into quantum mechanics that once you fix the basic physical fields then whether the radium atom decays or not or whether that molecule in your brain divides is a

38:45 random event and if you think that appears random we shouldn't is something extra this nervous forcefield that's influencing whether the molecule divides cogent position but you're denying quantum mechanics in it's saying that the basic physical fields fix whether it's fix the chances of its dividing and you're saying now there's something else makes a difference in the chances lying that's that's that's contradicting quantum mechanics just as much as as we've been assuming all along

39:23 Cartesian style Interactive dualism would contradict basic physics plus the assumption that there's no mental force fields but it's just a little bit though it's a it's it's the view as I understand it there's been different ways of developing but one way of developing it would be that the probabilities are fixed by the physical unfolding of the wavefunction its outcome actually so if it's 50% up in 50% down which one actually we observe might depend on the interaction

39:55 with the mind and you say well that's a Rand it randomly collapses or you could say there's something about the non-physical accent interaction which okay randomly determines which way to go that it like this so here's what I'm saying is stated by quantum mechanics but here's this molecule there's a 50% chance of it staying together fish percent chance of its dividing and those chances are fixed by the prior physical circumstances and that's it it's just

40:29 random okay now you say in addition let's suppose that consciously I decide to lift my arm make a difference to whether the molecule divides or not right and so now we have something extra presumably in the cases where you decide to raise your arm now the divine is going to go up beyond 50 percent say to 80 percent 90 percent maybe a hundred percent okay oh no that's not the view it doesn't change the probabilities that just doctrine is

41:01 which one we happens oh and a non-random way so it appears random because really what I would interpret quantitative it's like when I say the probabilities here I mean all things considered probabilities I mean a single case chance that's what the quantum mechanic says that the Sinclairs chance of the molecule dividing is 50% and then it's just up to randomness whether it divides or not yeah well that's a that's an assumption because you could equally formulate the view by saying that there's no physical

41:33 process which predicts which of the two outcomes is going to occur which leaves it open that there's a non physical process which influences which of the two outcomes occurs okay that's that's fine but I do sit in that country explain the case but I mean I'm not saying it's not a consistent story I'm just saying that to the extent that a nervous force field would have contradicted standard non quantum physics so the thing you have in mind contradicts standard standard quantum physics in in this way con affiliate

42:16 says specify all the physic circumstances here's this possible outcome it's going to happen 50% of the time and nothing else makes any difference to whether or not it happened that that's part of what quantum mechanics is saying those if there's a single case chances it's a single case chance with respect to this molecule that it's going to get in fact you saying no no fix all those physical circumstances an add the action of my will and now the single case chance goes from 50% to one and you're still collapsing the wavefunction collapsing

42:53 the waste function is imagine that that's not collapsing the wavefunction taxi always function is a matter of it's going from being indeterminate whether it's going to divide or not to it's becoming determinate that it's divided either it's divided or it hasn't so it's that transition from the from the wave functions not collapsed to its collapsed ie from its being a 50% single case chance to actuality time being yes that's the collapse of the wave function but when you collapse the wave function you leave

43:26 it open by the nature of the case whether it's going to go to split or not split whether the events going to go from 0 to 0 to 1 and so that's supposed to be left open by the collapse you collapse the wave function for now what's happened is it's gone from an indeterminate situation to a determinate situation either one or not but in collapsing the wave function you do not determine which way it goes that's right and you have in mind that the will is

43:58 going to determine which way it goes so the will is doing something more than collapsing the wave function it's also deciding knock right yeah but it's not a physical process which is doing that so it doesn't contradict the mathematics of quantum mechanics in any way it doesn't matter any more than a nervous forcefield would contradict the mathematics of of Newtonian physics so there so doesn't contradict what we observe either on the base other predictions of the math ah no it would it would what it would contradict what quantum mechanics predicts because quantum a case + assumption that there's

44:31 no there's no analog of nervous forcefield predicts that we'll get 50% splitting and 50% not splitting given those physical circumstances whereas whatever else might be happening but you say no no given those physical circumstances plus action of my will we won't get 50% we'll get one so that's contradicting quantification that point yeah I see what you're saying there I guess I still would disagree but

45:03 we I guess we should talk about some I mean yeah yeah it's a good point but I don't think it does that's fine it's fine we don't the will may anyway have different preferences but anyway so I'm not a duelist so thankfully I don't have to worry about those and as far as I understand like the view of David Chalmers who's defending this low bay his view is the one that you're saying which is that the interaction with consciousness collapses it in a random way people so that is the standard way of formulation so he's not very you don't get freeway he likes to explore

45:37 they weigh the quantum mechanics needs room for the mind to make a difference but I don't think he thinks just for this reason the class believes at random well it's a very good model for making decisions and being in control of actions and so on exactly yeah that is what he thinks I think that's right okay so this we all got started on this because I was asking whether you still accept the case from causal closure to physics to endorsing physicalism and you started saying well you had some

46:08 reservations I don't know if we ever got to those reservations we haven't we haven't yet we have they're kind of they're kind of ticky in the philosophy of causation so I'm quite moved now by difference making the cancer causation probabilistic approach because they're causation being a high-level phenomenon not something they're in basic physics right so there's always a question when you identify causes what kind of grain are you identifying with that so me here is a classic case here

46:44 a flask it's got water in some gas it gets 200 degrees centigrade the flask explodes why did the flask explode when you can say well because all the molecules inside we're moving around in these precise ways and Bingman they found a flaw in the glass and exploded or you might say if you're all you're interested in is the glass exploding I mean it's a glass bottle let's suppose it got 10 degree centigrade that's what caused it to explode so you've got the very generic property of getting 200 B centigrade

47:17 you've got the very specific property of the of the molecules moving in very specific ways and which do you want to attribute the effect to and I think the natural thing is to tribute to the temperature and not the highly detailed movements so this this is in line with with Stephen yeah blurs idea that causes should be proportional and once you get idea of get away from idea that causation is there at the level of the most fundamental physics and think of causation as a somewhat higher level phenomenon and then there's a question

47:50 about where as I said do you identify the causes and you might want identify the causes in generic terms as the temperature reaching a certain level as opposed to specific molecular movements that realize that generic temperature in a specific case and similarly you might want to in the mind think that what's causing my behavior it's a generic property that corresponds to my wanting to hail a cab as opposed to the very

48:23 specific neural arrangements that realize that in me right and so now you think well so the causes this is this generic mental phenomenon rather than the very specific neural neural arrangements and once you think that you might end up thinking well there's there's an effect my arm moving there as a mental cause and not a physical cause and and so it looks like a physicalist like me arguing for physic listen from

48:56 the causal closure of the physical might have kind of cut off the branch that I'm sitting on because now thinking about causation and physics and so on I convinced myself that that is not true in every physical effect has a fine-grained physical cause some of them are properly attributed to coarse-grained mental causes and and that's the kind of worry about the way that argument physicalism is Stanley posed in in terms of causal closure but I think that's I think that's just a kind of

49:31 rather techie complication because you could clip the argument for for physicalism about the mind in in terms it didn't really use the notion of cause as opposed to him when I I'd said earlier look I've got this kind of worry about about causal closure and proportional causes and then I phrased the argument and I didn't put it in terms of causation at all I put it in terms of the way the physical realm unfolds is determined by a bunch of basic forces I didn't talk in terms of

50:06 causes at all and I think you can put put the argument for physicalism by the mind in terms of if everything is determined at the physical level and doesn't leave any room for an independent mind to to make a difference in that argument we'll go through just to say yeah that's interesting because I was gonna ask you earlier about you know generally I think that physicists have moved away from talking about causation at the fundamental level anyway I mean you're physicists say things like well we're just describing patterns and we can turn either notes mathematically but we don't care about the causes down there I'm fond of mechanics right I

50:40 think that's right I think if you get to the level of fundamental physics I mean the ways nobody put everything is time reversible if if you if you run the movie backwards it's still in perfectly good accord with the laws of basic physics if you run the movie backwards it's not in accord with every day phenomenon of cause and effect if you see somebody selling put the movie backwards the causes are somehow going in the wrong direction

51:13 so the physics is all fine but the causes get turned around so so causation is somehow emerges and floats above the basic physical best basic physical processes are symmetrical and time the causes aren't they must involve something more than the basic physical processes yeah so a can I also ask what you're talking about here what your little techie problem and philosophy sentence is that related to the causal drainage problem that junkie absolutely so let's put it like this so Kim says if

51:51 you have a a multiple realized functional type property and a physical one then you ought to regard this as the cause that excludes that as the cause you can't have two things being the cause of some results so you you've got to be reductive physically so it's no good being a non reductive physicalist because because this thing will be excluded by that well I think I think it's Ned block refers to his his causal

52:25 drainage problem he said hang on it's worse than you think yeah here you've got a reduced property like say mean kinetic energy mean kinetic energy reduced temperature so you want to tie production to something physical but Ned said you can't stop there because there's the temperature and then there's specific molecular movements right and by your same argument this is going to exclude that so the temperature is not causing anything and nothing is

53:00 causing anything until you get down to the most fine level fine grained level of physical description so that's the causal drainage problem it's so so a reductive physicalist in the mind it's still going to be in danger of having their type reduced mental properties being excluded by more fine-grained realizations of those type mental properties yeah so you don't think it has anything to do with the multiple real is it realizability point it works like this if you can block Kim's

53:36 argument then you will possibly save causation for not just the generic properties like mean kinetic energy but for multiple realized properties so blocking Kim's argument gets inverted generic properties and the even more kind of super hyper generic multiple realized properties Kim's arguments any good it will push you down not just from the multiple realized generic properties to the type

54:10 identical physical properties like mean kinetic energy but all the way down to the most finest grain realizes of those right it happens I never liked the idea that seriously multiplied realized properties can be can be causal I've never liked that idea it's well I don't think they can fit into laws I mean I've been running about this fluid for 130 years now photos very radical special

54:50 Sciences picture makes no real sense in terms of laws and causation I've always felt felt that but I so I always thought it should be like temperature and mean kinetic energy but I never really wanted to go all the way down to the most fine-grained realizes that seems to me like a kind of uninformed physics worship though I think other people have that intuition that the real the basic physical level but I think that's just a

55:22 mistake when it comes to causation I think the real determination is going to be physical level but causation is a rather more high-level we're abstracting away from all the details to get causation right yeah I think we're so many of us are sort of human in this respect that we're taking causation at that level to mean something else like it's like constant conjunction or something a lot weaker then necessitating or determining the effect but this is so weak is good there but constant conjunction is still it

55:59 hasn't this it hasn't got to a symmetry it doesn't constant conjunctions kind of point both ways and you want something when it's got a real arrow it to get causation it's I think it's very akin to thermodynamics it's akin to the the way entropy always increases and that's going to arrow but there are rows not in basic physics so you have to add link to basic physics to get there the arrow of thermodynamics and similarly I think you have to add something to basic disease to get the error of causation I suspect they're very similar but nobody can really unite the two phenomena yeah it's that tough I've always hoped that

56:32 something like decoherence from quantum mechanics would help but I talked to Sean Carroll about this once and he said it won't help so I guess I just have more than bring that in decoherence is really part of the problem here not part of the solution yeah one hopes otherwise but say more about by what you mean by that well decoherence is itself a thermodynamic problem do you go here it happens in a certain direction in time well decoe hearing out like that

57:05 it's splitting into the future and basic physics is temporally symmetric so you've got to add something to basic physics to get the asymmetry of decoherence so the asymmetry of decoherence is another asymmetry akin to the asymmetry of thermodynamics and asymmetry of causation and if you think about it's not so fine decoherence is somewhat course brain phenomena at the level of the full description of the wavefunction there's no decoherence you

57:38 have to do some coarse graining together right yeah that's the interaction with the environment too so I wonder so I mean now I'm sort of a bit confused about the status of this causal closure argument so what reason do we have to identify the mental with something physical and specifically let's take a conscious experience of pain or something like that or a conscious desire for drinking some water so so I'm moving my arm on grabbing some water yeah for dramatic

58:12 effect I drank it so I had something like a conscious thought to desire etc you want to say that was the cause of my arm movement right how do I do okay and but I want to say that that's identical with a neural state and so I'm happy to say the neural state was the cause and in fact you know the neural state is identical to certain distributions of ions and electrical discharges so I'm happy to say that was the cause so which physical thing on your account caused my behavior I mean on this on

58:47 this it's the mental thing that did it the coarse grained property I'm just confused like where the identification is going on here can we can we discuss this on the assumption we're physically so oh yeah atholea because I thought you were worrying about what had happened to the argument physicalism but let's suppose you got noggin fizzes and not necessary people in terms of causation but in terms of the work basic the world would be absurdly complex and Rube Goldberg this rule in England in English we say

59:24 he's from a solution we've got Rube Goldberg if if there were mental processes alongside the physical processes kind of marching in step so we'll assume that we've got a physicalism now now your sword is look I wanted to say it's going to mental cause and not a physical cause no I don't want to say that I was only saying that in the context of how we're going to pose the argument for physicalism where you started off that Argan physicalism on

59:58 the assumption that every physical effect has a physical cause and now as proportionality stuff seems to stop you saying that at the beginning of the causal closure argument so now we have to redo the whole course on closure Aachen we've redone it we end up as physicalists ok so so if I have a conscious desire that's going to be identical with something physical now the question is I was saying but it's generic and the physical property is very specific now I think is identical with a generic physical property so it's

1:00:32 identical with the property let's suppose of having some neurons arranged in some rather generic specified way and now in any particular person yeah their neurons will be a certain size they'll be kind of placed in a certain place in their brain they'll be kind of touch each other in very specific ways but there might be a zillion different ways like that which all realize the requirements for having a desire to drink some water and what's doing the

1:01:08 causing is a generic property of having some neural arrangements of a certain shape does happen does that make sense it's just like look having a certain mean kinetic energy for the molecules that's a very generic property it's realized by lots of specific molecular movements right but at what all the molecular movements have in common that causes the valves to break not just I mean causes the sealed container to break not the very specific ones very

1:01:41 specific ones might cause it to break in that particular way at that floor and so on but the generic result of the container breaking at all or my arm going up at all that's explained by the generic property I see are you gonna say the same thing about perceptual experience because there I took your argument that they're sort of well I guess that maybe I'm getting confused or hung up by the word intrinsic that use a lot because I know you kind of snuck in at the end that intrinsic properties can be like

1:02:13 functional properties so maybe you're gonna are you gonna let me just ask are you gonna take the same line about like seeing a blue shirt like I'm looking at your shirt right now that that's gonna be identical with a generic property or is it a specific normal property that's going to get identified there generic I'd say yes so you're taking up an stuff I've been writing about

1:02:46 recently I've got a book in draft now which is about the nature of conscious sensory experience what's what's going on when we have sensory experience it's when I you know I can see you on the screen I'm hearing certain things I can see this see at my window and somewhat what's going on now focus on my conscious properties that I have when they go away and I close my eyes those those conscious properties what are they what are they how they constituted

1:03:21 metaphysically the book is called a metaphysics of sensory experience as it happens so my my targets here are or direct realism who say the conscious property is a matter of a relation and external relation to to the the fact being observed outside my head that's one view that's disjunctive ISM direct realism has probably explains what's going on when I'm having a hallucination or illusion that's one view none of you is representational ISM which says that property i'm having is it's constituting

1:03:55 a property of representing things to be this and so and how argue against both those views that no no both those views if you look at them closely they might look intuitive the other view is a bit like the old sense dative view that i want to distinguish myself basically it's its feelings going on inside my head that's when it really is and it doesn't involve facts outside nor does it even involve representational relations that doesn't

1:04:29 involve relations to truth conditions it's just something going on inside me and that's what I argue in the book now as it happens I'm a physics I think the things going on inside me can be identified with various physical things going on inside me now you asked me well it's going to be pretty generic things if it's just a matter of my seeing something blue lots of neural Arrangements specific you know arrangements could realize that generic properly it's a generic neural feature that I want to identify with the conscious property but why I paused it's because the physicalism doesn't really

1:05:03 feature in the book very much at all my arguments against the direct realists and the representation lists would be just the same if I was a Cartesian duelist I still want to say the conscious properties on trinsic properties properties depend on me and not on anything outside me and into that extent the representations and the direct realness are wrong so yes I mean some of your arguments would be weakened a little bit if you were Cartesian duelists because it's a little easier to

1:05:35 understand how a non-physical mind can have a relation to an abstract proposition than it is for like a physical brain to do so oh yeah I mean look I can remember long ago I used to I think I said you know sure if you've if you've got these weird mysterious non-physical goings on then it's kind of cheap you know and a few more mysteries while you have to represent things beyond the head but no

1:06:08 I don't I I think that that really is an extra different mystery and if you solid a mystery of there's a nervous forcefield inside the head and that affects your behavior and constitutes your consciousness okay I'll give you all that and now tell me how that thing has the power to lay down conditions for the rest of the world to observe in order to be true purely in terms of its intrinsic nature

1:06:43 looks I mean I say this so loudly and confidently because I mean I realize having written the book that what I'm doing is drawing out the consequences of the right account of representation as I see it I've got a fairly naturalist opposed to representation I think a representation is essentially a matter or the relation between the vehicle and external circumstances which is to do with the vehicle being used by the agent to stand proxy for those external

1:07:19 circumstances visa visa agents behavior so I got all that in place and when I got out of place I start thinking hang on it makes no sense that that this the parrot is for me consciously should depend not on the nature of the internal vehicle but on what external circumstances that internal vehicles been recruited to stand proxy for why should that make a difference to how it feels right so that's that's my thinking now I guess other people who think of representation in some way as being kind

1:07:58 of extruded out from the nature of you internal consciousness that's very natural way of thinking about representation what I do a lot in the book is saying come on tell me how that works it just doesn't seem to me to be a good story about how the feelings inside your head could reach out and lay conditions on the world I mean it's the standard thought experiment we use here's look you could have a cosmic brain in a vat a cosmic swamp brain that coagulates and out of space by chance for 20 minutes just like your brain all

1:08:32 the same inputs and outputs keep it going for 20 minutes I take it many people would that it would have the same conscious feelings as you but those conscious feelings wouldn't really be representing anything they'd just be feelings of a certain shape that's that that's the challenge to the yeah watch it once you've got non non-physical conscious feeling this representation comes for free yeah I mean there's what I want to ask I guess the the reason why I was thinking what I thought was because of this dependency on the vehicle stuff which I'm so pretty

1:09:07 sympathetic to I mean I guess I'd say my primary commandment is I like the identity theory so I like you know mind brain identity and that's probably my deepest commitment in philosophy although I wouldn't say I believe it I certainly think that that's the thing I want I want to be true the most so I'm suspicious of my leaning towards the arguments there because I already want it to be true anyway that's the thing I I'm committed to the most so I like these kinds of views like yours the mental paint by Ned and then this kind of vehicle thing that you've been talking about recently so I like those kinds of views but I'm not against

1:09:40 representational ISM either so in fact I've defended a version of it a higher-order version here and there so I'm you know my credence azar distributed so I'm not coming at this with an axe to grind I'm not trying to save representation with them but I am curious because you say the in the I haven't read the book but in the paper on this you say you know here's a sentence the dog is blue or shirt is blue although there's a typo there and it says the short is blue but whatever so is this shirt is blue and you say what could have it was written in black ink in Times New Roman and it could have

1:10:12 been written in all these different fonts and different colors and express the same representational content which is obviously true however that sentence the vehicle that realizes it is pretty specific and not generic the arrangement of the ink the kind of the wavelength reflective properties that it has that those are fairly specific properties so I'm wondering where else do we find generic vehicles because the ones I think about seem to be fairly specific ones unless I'm misunderstanding this

1:10:46 generic specific thing which is possible so so nice analogy it seems to me so we have the specific sentence the one you're looking at certain font right but they're seasonally a perfectly good sense in which it would be the same sentence typographically we're considering its shorn of its

1:11:20 meaning if it was written a different font a different color in fact I mean it's a real challenge for computer scientist Hofstadter is wonderfully interesting about this too to locate to identify the generic physical property that's required for a sentence to be the sentence in English the the shape this shirt is blue I the letter T followed by

1:11:54 letter H followed by letter I followed by the letter S but but there is a very generic property and where I mean it's pretty responsibilities to do with our abilities to to read but there's a very generic property that's necessary is sufficient for being an English sentence of that shape have you ever written I so love Hostetter on on this stuff do you know about hostas ambigrams no huh I don't know as much about Hofstadter as I shared I've only read you should after this is such a treat go

1:12:27 and get meta magical famous it's it's deflection of essays from the Scientific American he did it 1020 years ago he did he did the column used to be Martin Gardner mathematical games and he took it over for two years and he wrote about 20 wonderful essays and and the whole book is a delight and it starts metal magical femurs is an anagram of mathematical games you turn over your on the title page and he has written many

1:13:01 magical femurs by Douglas Hofstadter as an ambigram an ambigram is a palindrome typographical so it's it's symmetric around the middle and he can write by Douglas Hofstadter in a way that is it'd be symmetric around this line and we can read it fine it just looks like my doctor says and then you look at it you think how can he make that the same shapes on both sides and it's just to do

1:13:35 with typography you come in the range of saints that you can recognize as a letter A and letter G are are quite enormous I mean they're not unlimited loosely but and you can find one that represents letter A and one representative gene is remember mirror image that it's such it's such fun may ang you can see be quite easy actually anyway I'm I'm I'm rambling the point is that yes there is a very generic physical property which is a

1:14:08 matter of being that vehicle and I think that's a nice analogy to to the the intrinsic property is going to be that vehicle in the brain so I guess I'm thinking what is this intrinsic probably going to do it I thought it is going to do two things it's going to constitute a certain type of conscious experience and it's also going to generate a certain kind of internal behavior I mean that's

1:14:43 that's its role car vehicle that vehicle of representation and that seems fine and generic property can do both those things yeah I guess I just have a different intuition about the sentence I'm not sure with a kin and how to make okay though but do you know the work of Bob Shingo by any chance he's at the grad center he's retired now but he was in the minister Department I wrote a he's written a bunch of stuff on like how different fonts and how we when we call the same word the same word when is it the same word again it's

1:15:16 actually really hard linguistic linguistically like to do that if you get serious about the details so I guess I just think it's yeah there's a generic property I guess I see that but when I look at that sentence I think that sentence okay so it sort of they have been otherwise it had to lay in written that way my sentence liking but the same content could be written differently but not the same sense it's interesting me I hadn't told about this at all but I'm perfectly happy with the idea that what it takes for me to have an experience of

1:15:51 a shirt being blue is that I have a certain generic neural property ie if we're thinking about things like sentences in the brain almost required is I got a sentence which is one of the very specific formations that in English typography will be the sentence this shirt is blue and so you can you can vary the font you can vary the let's not vary the color that we vary the font

1:16:25 will vary the size we will rain the font size will vary in front type and it will still be the same conscious I'm very happy with that are you really because now I'm even more confused because I thought it was the intrinsic nature of the vehicles which determined the kind of experience so if you changed those properties of the vehicles it seems like you should change the nature of these are the kind cy generic property shouldn't be an intrinsic intrinsic just means it's being possessed by me doesn't depend on how things are with any other beings and that generic property can be intrinsic in that in that sense it doesn't depend

1:17:00 on so it's just a denial of the externalism or or something like that so desolate intrinsic means there so yeah it doesn't mean a most specific physical characterization it doesn't mean non-relational in the real sense of that word because there's tons of relations internally within the brain which might matter good good so then huh so as long as so the idea that the vehicles are what determined the conscious experience is really flexible on your way of thinking about it because what counts at the same vehicle you're

1:17:32 gonna be pretty open about yes the book is pretty non-committal on these issues because the aim is just to argue for a pretty open-ended position against the alternatives direct wheelers position and and what's my real target is a representation as view which is kind of the dominant view and everybody pays lip service to representational it's about experience but and I used to pay lip service to myself I mean at the

1:18:05 beginning a book I say look I you know I used to be a rip I used to think eyes are representation lists when when Sharma's and boy say did this survey must be getting on for 10 years and I yeah what do you think about sensory experience are you directly a list a sense danger of serious really I don't think representation list and I only when I was thinking about in detail because I thinking about phenomenal concepts and was especially thinking about representation I read a paper

1:18:37 perceptual and phenomenal concepts try to think what did I think about floral concepts I realized I had commitments about what was making perceptual states conscious hi there consciousness very very changing with various changes that was just antithetical to what representational is think and I started thinking about what it was to be a representation about sensory experience and I realized and it involved lots of weird and to my mind implausible implausible commitments look

1:19:11 for instance if your representations about sensory experience what do you say about the fact that I have a certain experience because my when my wife comes through the door as indeed she just did I heard it and and I heard wifely wifely and now suppose that my Australian doppelganger with a identical-looking wife his wife comes through the door and now I take it he's gonna have just the

1:19:45 same type of sensory experience that's suppose for the sake of the occupant but if your representation this then that must mean that those two experiences have just the same contents representational contents and and now and this is standards for representation lists you better not have the representational experiences representing the particular wives because those would be different representational contents and if you

1:20:17 were a committed representation Asst you have to have different experiences because they're different particular wise but nobody wants that so they end up saying therefore the sensory experience can't represent particular people and I think wow it looks like the theoretical tails wagging the dog here surely my sensory experience represents my wife I mean I've got a whole bit in my brain that's devoted to learning what phases look like so I can recognize my wife again and producing a constant experience that goes with her I don't

1:20:52 want some philosophical theory telling me that eccentrics where it doesn't represent my wife so that's that's how I started and and yeah then you end up reading a whole book that's the beauty of philosophy but I want to go back a couple of steps I want to talk about that specific plane but I want to still get this vehicle thing because I'm still so I mean the the part of the thing that's I can I'm not being a very articulate right now and the argument

1:21:25 from sputtering is not a very good obviously so I'm trying to formulate what I'm trying to say but it seems like the way you're doing the things right now is tying the vehicle the identity of the vehicle too much to the representational content that the vehicle happens to be carrying whereas I thought your view is that these were independent but now it's sort of you're saying I hear you saying that well the same with what kind of vehicle it is it can be lots of different things as long as it's got that content it's the same vehicle no my view is the conscious

1:21:59 experience goes with let's think we're physicalist the physical generic physical nature of the vehicle the representation let's have a completely different view they think the Constitution spirits goes not with the vehicle but what would the vehicle happens to represent man I mean when you think it's true it's it's it's a pretty crazy view I mean it's pretty crazy now that one be rude in philosophy but it but it's it's not a happy view so especially for the naturalist

1:22:34 representation it's but look the here's something going on inside my brain and the representation is thinks that what makes it feel the way it does is what it represents outside my brain rest know if I had a different vehicle representing that same thing it would feel different sorry Hema if I different vehicle riffing same thing would feel the same and now I jumpin it and if I the same vehicle representing something

1:23:07 different it would feel different and I mean that's the basic commitment of representational ISM and that's just really weird how it feels it's not to do with what's going inside my head but what outside my head the thing inside my head has been recruited to represent that's I mean that's that's that's what that's what full-on representations and things look it's very different from what I call in the book weak representational ISM which is just the view that sensory experiences do represent not

1:23:45 that they're conscious nature is fixed by how they represent but just that they do represent right and of course and of course that's certainly true that the century experiences represent but by my grass they don't represent essentially in virtue of their conscious properties Sarge or analogy with sentences look here's a sentence that shirt is blue it represents all right but it doesn't represent in virtue of its property as a sentence just that sentence could have

1:24:19 met nothing at all of something different or does mean something different different nouns it represents not because of its shape as a sentence but because of how it's used by English people and I think the same about about conscious sensory brain states but what makes two vehicles the same in the brain [Music] good question and that I mean that's nuts that's kind of on to the question which I thought you didn't

1:24:51 impress me about look I've got a time to talk because I have a couple of appointments now Becky oh yeah sorry I wasn't even looking at the clock we can end whenever you're ready we can yeah well we should wrap up in the next five minutes okay can you can you wrap up but I was I was saying that I thought when we I came on you gonna press me about theories of consciousness was i higher-order serious integrated information serious global

1:25:23 work space theorists and so on and and we haven't talked about that I'm quite glad because I'm not sure that well I have to have you back because I was gonna ask I was gonna I thought we had a another few minutes more than five and but these things tend to go on for like about two hours or so you oh I just know that's not my fault there's no big deal so I'll wrap this up here I was just we do we do it now yeah sorry about that that's my fault for not

1:25:56 clearing that beforehand yeah do you want to can we carry on some other time absolutely yeah yeah because I would I do want to ask you about those things and really we haven't even got to the I mean the things we haven't talked I think are fairly fundamental and important but we haven't even got to the stuff that I yeah you were expecting me to talk you have a choice yet and I could email my student now and say can I put it off for half an hour and then we could could not wrap up in a hurry would

1:26:29 you would you I was just gonna feel bad for the student but I mean yeah if you're if you're köppen of that all right III think that's fine no it's a student in my class reading a chat about his term paper we set aside half an hour I think I think I can email them and say can we can we just discern it for half an hour okay all right I think that's okay just just look I'm just doing an email now quickly ah well thanks David I I feel bad for you do this but huh I'll still let you do it no I'm assuming look where

1:27:07 everybody is self-activating now can you give me another 30 minutes I'm videocast I didn't went on so long sorry about that sorry

1:27:51 blame Richard Brown I'll take the blame for that there so that's one and now I've got another one student after that I'll do the him too yeah dungeon bus let's hope they say yes

1:28:43 if they say no then dinner market right yeah exactly they look at it absolutely yeah sorry sorry bye interruption okay so now we got half an hour that's fine okay cool thank you I appreciate that I I feel I should have we should have mentioned that before we started when we were chatting about it no I didn't imagine that that you would impose two hours on your views so it's that long as one it's been two and a half hours and well we won't go there but anyway and often they are an hour and a half so it's not like it's unheard of but anyway I did want to ask you your views about consciousness I really enjoy your

1:29:18 interactions on Twitter you know I know Philip well they're pretty well and that you guys argue a lot so why aren't you a pants I kiss is one question I wanted to ask and the second and the reason I sort of saw some exchanges between you guys suggested that you were more sympathetic to Pan psychism than I might have thought and I wonder if that's because of the causal sorts of things that we've been talking about because I do think and psychism has a leg up on a lot of other non-physical that's used in that area yet no pen psychism look curiously all

1:30:01 all the theories are consciousness that we know we're not doing about the metaphysical series of course we're not in the business of kind of empirical double work space to either contest them metaphysical theories of consciousness consciousness separate from the physical realm and so on they all respect the causal close to the physical so when Chalmers and Jackson first convince themselves that the conscious mind couldn't be physical they felt compelled to be every phenomena lists I mean they weren't interactive duelists they said look clearly the physical realm is

1:30:35 closed doesn't admit any independent influences if the mind is independent is just going to have to dangle I mean they were prepared to bite that bullet because once they'd they'd commit some sense of mine was non-physical they were forced to it by the causal closure okay that's fair for Chalmers by the way he he has type D physical and dualism that stands for Descartes he was open to epiphenomenalism but even in his first book he was like you know I could be an interaction duelist and I don't see a

1:31:07 problem is that right I mean I I read the first book and I I think I reviewed it I mean I did review it I did know it's not one of those cases I mean you know that you know the classic philosophical joke I mean have you read that book read and I haven't even reviewed it but I didn't read it and then reviewed it but I formed the impression on reading it that that the Epiphone on ISM was his preferred option

1:31:41 in the conscious mind and we could go back and have a have a look anyway that's not here he's moved as I see it from favoring epiphenomenalism to favoring Brasilia and monism and the interesting thing about that oscillation is both of them respect the causal closure in the physical so so and and and Jackson has moved from every phenomenalism to two

1:32:16 physicalism yeah boys he thinks epic Ramzan is so horrible but he doesn't move to Cartesian interactive dualism he moves to physical is absurd everybody's kind of avoiding somebody coming to the door so we were we hope we get into well cuz I was asking about and psychic so let's let's suppose we're in the wrong of theories that respect the

1:32:50 causal closure ah yeah sure if if if I was somebody who thought that Oh conscious reality was metaphysically extra to the reality described by physics which is what the standard anti physicalist arguments push you to knowledge argument plus

1:33:26 conceivability argument so on then I would be pants I kissed I guess I mean it's a way of having the conscious mind separate from the physical in a way that is very much an accord with the idea that there's no causal processes that are different from the causal processes prescribed by physics that's not why I'm inclined to would suck in this is this pen sucks it's not

1:33:59 the thought that if I were an auntie physicalist then I ought to be a pad psychist that makes me sympathetic a sarcasm it's more the thought that and here's a different thing so I've always felt that the reason people think there's an expiratory gap hard problem and so on it's nothing to do with technical philosophical arguments is to do with the fact that we all for reasons probably to do with architecture of

1:34:34 minds find physicalism almost impossible to believe we're all intuitive duelists it's a psychological phenomenon it's our resistance to physicalism has a psychological basis it's it's like everybody thinks that time moves right you do felissa classes that you know doesn't even make any sense really but some arts and it's it's the way we are inclined to think and and I think we're trying to think about the mental and the physical in the same way we think trying

1:35:08 to think of some words that's clearly they're different when in fact when we start doing nurses will realize they're not I think that many people doing the science of consciousness in philosophy of consciousness don't realize how far they're in the grip of this mistake and duelist intuition and when it comes to to the science of consciousness I think this people makes people think look we need we need a chunky serious theory to kind of draw the line around the brain

1:35:42 processes that that give us this extra thing let me turn on turn on the writer who is this extra kind of magic duster around in certain areas of reality and I don't think that's a good way to think about consciousness and the science of consciousness I mean I think that's a little bit unfair the way you're characterizing I've just explained to you why I why I feel attracted to pen psychism so I've I've been kind of encouraged by recent stuff by Peter

1:36:18 Godfrey Smith and Eva Gibran and her associates about thinking about the evolution of organisms and their developing sense of self and evolution of central nervous systems and and at what point do we kind of start getting consciousness and and I've started to think look the important thing is not look there's certain physical processes that have a special glow rather it's that at some point you have subjects you

1:36:54 have you have centers of cognition for whom certain physical states are present those physical states are like something for those beings but the new thing is the beings not the physicals then they specify a physical that any physical states could could could play that role if if they were recruited by by biological subjects to to feature in their in their deliberations and action control and so on so that's a sort say

1:37:29 you know any physical any physical states have gotten away with all to be conscious you if there's only something for which they're conscious so that's extent of my parents are ISM there's nothing special about about conscious physical States is just there they're playing us right but it's not real parents I give them in a sense that they they aren't experiential when they're not playing that role on your view are they no but the real pad psychist there any pro to experiential I mean there's not

1:38:13 really like pet psyche is amin i one point in writing something says this yeah that this there's some affinity was some shared shared claims with pen psychism right to be excited by that he did i saw that but that means that's just physicalism right it's just saying there's nothing special about the the mental is just more physical stuff or means in the right way so any of the physical stuff could i mean that doesn't sound especially pan psychic to me it just sounds like it's physicalism really

1:38:49 has to resist the idea that there's some special blows I mean the intuitive idea clearly is is mean it's it's it's antithetical to physicalism but I do worry intuitive idea is driving a lot of work in people looking for the neural correlates yeah and so yeah like you know there's got to be some special neural chemical property that's gonna give rise to consciousness I think Ned thinks that way sometimes you know it's a something about the fact that it's changed from electrical

1:39:23 activity to chemical activity that's significant for for conscious experience that could only be that may be something the way I'm thinking about it should push you towards asking which is its consciousness and important natural Chi what what what explanatory task is performed by appeals to consciousness

1:39:58 what happens when things are conscious that wouldn't happen otherwise and I think if you're asking that question you might get uneasy about about Ned blocks idea well there's access consciousness but that's not the real thing what way it kind of really interested in is phenomenal consciousness and I'm not sure that once we're notions of accident higher-order representation of mental states that's an important thing we can explain a lot of things in terms of that

1:40:30 global availability that's an important thing we can explain a lot of things in terms of that but now there's supposed to be this extra thing and I want to know what are we going to explain I had a bit of an epiphany so I was talking to neuroscience was 20 years ago and I said you've got to be interested consciousness no we're serious neuroscientists we're we're physically swam you know interested in various kinds of cognitive science flow charts so one day what's this expert in consciousness and I said look there's always interesting data dorsal stream

1:41:09 processing and that's not consciousness I mean that's not conscious isn't that amazing he couldn't be interested in that kind of thing morphine pain a morphine pain is still conscious you wouldn't have expected that isn't interesting and I said yeah yeah that's interesting but that's just to do with access right you're you're saying that the way a pathway is accessible you are saying that the morphine pain is accessible you don't need an extra notion beyond access to talk about that and I started thing yeah and you're right you're absolutely right

1:41:41 what is this extra thing that we can explain in terms of some mental state being phenomenally conscious and I never seen a good answer mean this there's the big debate no blocks cognitive overflow stuff about the sterling data at the back of the brain and there's a huge debate between Ned who thinks that this kind of stuff that you forget very fast was conscious and the poets say no it wasn't conscious and then they try and explain what's going on but I don't see

1:42:14 how the difference between whether it's conscious or whether it's not quite makes any difference to explaining all the performances so yeah yeah I'm a part of that debate we're actually thinking of some experiments that might help us arbitrate between those two views at their level but I want to go back to the pan psychism a bit because just just to be fair it's not their view that consciousness is something extra to the physical their view is that the physical is identical to consciousness and so I

1:42:50 mean that certainly Philips view it's the idea that what consciousness is I'm excuse me what the physical stuff is like electrons or their charges whatever is a bit of consciousness okay turn up now I was in fact using extra to the physical in a slightly term of art sense there so the the Rossini modus pants.i cos they do in a sense thing that what's conscious as extras physicals

1:43:23 going to have this very specific notion of what we're told by physics and what we're told by physics is everything's characterized scripture you know these electrons and what are the things that do certain things and there's protons and you you say there are these things that play certain roles so all physics gives you is the roles kind of the structure of

1:43:57 what's going on and it leaves out so they say the there realizes things that play those roles there underlying properties the quiddity z– and and that's where the consciousness comes in and they have in mind you could have another world which has just the same structure as our world but where different things are playing playing the underlying roles and those things wouldn't be conscious and that's a zombie world today right they say that's

1:44:30 how zombies are concealed you're conceiving of a world in which the same roles are played by non conscious thing so that's the sense in which I think they think of the conscious stuff as extra to the physical and I guess I'm not attracted by it I'm not inclined to be receiving monist I don't see the attraction and idea that in addition to all behavior described by physical is a further fact about which things are playing the role so they're committed to

1:45:04 the view that there's another world just like this world in which bodies have sizes and they resist accelerations and so on but whereas in our world that role is played by mass in this other world there's a different quantity smash that's responsible for the resistance and bodies to accelerations and so on right and my reaction is no that's not a different possible well that's just another world with massive I mean how

1:45:37 could you have a quantity that you know resistance to acceleration proportional gravitational attraction and so on and it not be mass why are you duplicate in these qualities to no purpose so I I see no reason to allow the space for we call it mass or not I guess it's a terminological point it's like what water on Twitter that's like yeah I think there's water there some people say no it's not would it be a different quantity I mean it does it make sense to suppose a world might have exactly the same shape in terms of the basic

1:46:11 physical patterns a different quantity play play the wrong way as a standard human and view that's what we're brought up wins but it leads to this kind of necessary ignorance we don't know apart from the case of direct conscious access which which properties are playing playing the role in question I mean yeah so yeah but would you agree with the limited claim the conditional claim that that if you're a pants I kiss then you can explain mental causation in in the

1:46:48 normal way because if there's a certain mental act causing a physical act then there's a brain activity causing the physical act the brain activity just is consciousness on their view so consciousness has a causal role yes yes I mean there are lots of taking issues here I mean so Richard Howell is argued that pencil writers house is Robert Hart Robert how exactly in this orthodox wrestling monist form that gives rise to epiphenomenalism because you get the

1:47:31 same causation in the actual world with conscious fillers and the zombie world with non conscious fellows and so the difference between the conscious and unconscious worlds i was making a causal difference but I think pen suckers can reply there very reasonably that if you're a human about causation which of course they are being that psychist then what it is to to be something that causes some result is to is to be the property that plays a relevant

1:48:05 role in the actual world so you know I think I think Penn cycles are resilient and cyclists are fine on the causation I don't have a problem with that I think the whole the whole metaphysics is under motivated in the first place yeah yeah and I don't yeah I mean I said I think the one would argue against the metaphysics anyway on the grounds that it needs to this absurd Ramsey and humility I mean you you don't know what's playing the roles even if you

1:48:38 know what the roles are pretty well so independently of anything to do with consciousness I'm inclined to be a dispositional essentialist about basic basic physical properties I also think it's under motivated I don't see what's wrong with ik waiting properties with ordinary non resilient quiddity physical properties III don't buy the

1:49:09 conceivability argument knowledge argument program in the first place so I've got no problem with regarding identity of conscious properties physical properties it's just like all scientific identities I don't seem to see a need to find some possible world to make good disorder that some B's are possible yabbies just on somebody's just aren't possible it's my view yeah no I agree I think they're not even conceivable so I'm definitely unbarred but with that there conceivably not

1:49:44 possible why why suppose everything that's conceivable is possible it's a very strange view and I mean sure mr. Jackson been arguing this line for a long time but there's a lot of smoke and mirrors and when you really unpack it it's not very close yeah I tended to have some sympathy with that but but I think that even if you take their view that everything's out pretty Orry what what's a priori conceivable is possible i you know i've argued for the existence of things I've called Shaam B's which are just conscious beings that are

1:50:16 merely physical I think that's conceivable so if that's conceivable that's possible and so I don't think that on a 2d semantic view you can have both of those be possible so one of them's got to be inconceivable it seems to me the only way to choose is where you pre theoretically already found plausibility so that's how I would I would I would argue for the conceivability of the zombies theme possible I grant that but I don't think they actually they seem conceivable but I don't think they really are ah I think they seem possible yeah it means this issues about exactly what we

1:50:51 understand by conceivable I think they seem possible but they aren't possible I didn't make the sequence even when I think they are conceivable but yeah what do you think about I mean sir do you think the merely physical duplicates that are conscious are conceivable to right nearly physical duplicates not a conscious yeah any physical duplicates but hang on okay now I'm lost you so I think I can conceive a being who's physically just like me and not conscious and that's a

1:51:33 merely physical duplicate in the sense it's only a physical duplicate it's not a conscious duplicate but if you ask me to conceive and I can conceive a physical duplicate who is conscious that's easy too but I don't understand what I'm supposed to concede when I conceive a merely physical duplicate who is conscious merely means just physical duplicate and no a conscious duplicate so how am I supposed to conceive a merely physical duplicate it is conscious I'm good yeah no I meant to say mean just purely physical so just just a physical duplicate with nothing

1:52:10 else because sometimes wanted people want to sneak in some other kind of stuff in there but I think no you can have just a fit just the physical duplicate and also consciousness that's perfectly conceivable yeah so I concede that by conceiving that here's a being that has all my physical properties and what's more it's conscious properties identical to its physical properties yeah exactly just like I conceive something which is

1:52:43 h2o and what's more water is h2o so I'm conceiving something that is h2o and thereby water I mean surely I can see them but see I think of what's conceivable as just as what can be as it were written down as a sentence with another contradiction it right I think clearly I can conceive Cicero is not Tully even if they're actually the same person and even if these are Brut million terms what's to stop me

1:53:18 writing down Cicero not equal Tully who's gonna stop me writing that down I mean and that's all it takes to conceive of what's in fact an impossibility I mean I so I think the people who think that there's some difficulty of conceiving that are way down a hole that involves thinking of the contents of thoughts in terms of sets of possible worlds and there's no possible world chorus so I can't conceive something like that and no we don't have to think

1:53:55 of conceiving in terms of sets of possible worlds and thoughts having contexts like that we just have to think of conceiving as taking the words and the language of thought Cicero not equals and tidy and putting them next to each other I'm conceiving something to which no possible world corresponds but why do we start thinking of of conceiving x' in terms of relations two sets of possible rules in the first place complete mistake yeah that's interesting point but it does bring up the question I know where I'm keeping my own the time we got about a minute and a half before we're

1:54:28 gonna serac this up but it does bring up the question about this intuitive resistance to dualism because I have no intuitive I mean excuse me to physicalism I have no intuitive resistance to physicalism I've never found a hard chick to conceive the physical being mental and mental being physical as soon as I thought about mental causation I was convinced that the mind must be the brain in some sense or some physical property but so why do so many people find it so hard to conceive of this I

1:54:59 mean if your views a little bit but so on my view did to to resistance is not to do with finding it hard to conceive but finding it hard to believe so as I think about it I can conceive ah as I said I haven't seen being having all my physical properties and I can conceive that the conscious probably just all those physical probably I just I just conceived an idea that there you go but I say it's hard to believe so I

1:55:34 can I could conceive I don't know water being I could see something being sodium chloride and I could conceive its thereby being water by conceiving that water is NaCl but I don't believe it at all but let's let's try and try this here's his I've got some papers I've got a paper called Ricky's proof that we're all intuitive duelists I've got a I've

1:56:08 got a slightly non-standard but I think completely accurate I'm reading of the argument in pink end of naming necessity let me try this little test case on you suppose I ask you to imagine that imagine that Marilyn Monroe is not Norma Jean Baker okay how you get how you getting on just I'm doing it but I'm imagining two separate people one being Marilyn one being Norma Jean yeah yeah okay yeah supposed to sail and that's a bit hard

1:56:43 what am I supposed to imagine right I mean it's just what is easy no matter there to be water okay so no I said look I think when we ask people to imagine being a zombie III are being which has all the physical properties and then conscious properties are different people find out perfectly easy they understand straight away what you're supposed to imagine but when you are somebody to imagine not be Norma

1:57:18 Jean Baker they might say well I don't quite understand what I'm supposed to imagine is one person I mean they believe there's one person is one person how am I supposed to imagine one person not being themselves I know you can do a bit of work I mean yeah with with with the appearances but you're not really imagining Marilyn Monroe not be Norma Jean Baker I'm not imagining the same person being a different person right yeah I think people don't have the corresponding difficulty with imagining physical properties not being conscious properties and vice versa so I think that just shows that that we didn't ever

1:57:52 buy the identity in the first place if we bought the identity look if you were serious identity serious right and you really think that the the pains and the seafaring same thing right there's just one thing that just like Marilyn Monroe's not my G bacon and then somebody asks you imagine a zombie who has and you're thinking I'm being asked to imagine they've got that property and not that property at the same time right well then what am I supposed to you messing I think it's this is this is my argument that we are all intuitive junus

1:58:25 I don't think any of us have that reaction first time around that what am I supposed to be imagining this just one property there I think so I did I think I did okay you're you're a happy natural born sighs I am I am but it's like I think it's works better than you do h2o because nobody in their right mind believes you can you can conceive of a world where there's h2o and the physical laws like ours and yet no water no one believes that a doctor can conceal it that's right there penny of people who didn't use to believe it

1:58:59 well hang on mean pets by the time he knew about HJ we knew about water but right know that many people don't believe me suppose you don't let your chemistry very well I mean you kind of yeah okay once you know that but that's what the importance of the theories come in I I got to let you go because I don't want to keep this student waiting any longer than we already have so we send them my way but David I want to thank you for your time this has been a really enjoyable discussion I learned a lot from talking from you with you reading your work to by the way so I just appreciate your time willingness to have these kinds of

1:59:30 discussions you're very active and in the online area you know do lot of podcasts and Twitter and all that stuff and I think we need more philosophers like you doing that so I really appreciate it which is very nice to talk to you thank you for having me on take it easy enjoy your situation what's the work done and be in touch okay cool I'm gonna end it I'll say goodbye offs off air just really second