Consciousness Live! with Josh Weisberg (S7 E1)

0:01 I was burned one time so we'll have to see uh all right we are live uh I think one can never be too short here but I'm pretty sure we are um so joining me today a very special guest as always um Josh Weisberg uh Josh can you say a little bit about who you are and what you do for those who might not know you so uh I'm Josh Weisberg I'm a professor at University of Houston um and I went like our esteemed host uh to the uni Graduate Center and uh studied with

0:37 David Rosenthal years back and I work uh mainly in Consciousness studies uh philosophy of mind um and that's always been my focus uh but I have interest in philosophy of science generally and um philosophy of language but it kind of pisses me off and um but I'm edging also toward political philosophy in a weird way but I might talk about that later but yeah so I'm a kind of died in the wo Consciousness guy um and you know I I sort of in my mind think of us as having went to grad school together but

1:10 actually when I was thinking about it I don't know if you were done already when I got there so no I was I was I so this is like you know these are things you shouldn't tell your gradu or you should I was in gradu school for 11 years um you know and uh so I started in 96 and I ended in 2007 okay so if you were and you were in there I was there in 2003 yeah yeah so you know I I remember you fresh faced and yeah optimistic and then they crushed the life out of you yeah you recovered yeah it was great just like

1:42 everybody oh the good old days yes exactly um let's well that's Cy issue is a whole separate podcast so let's we we'll glass over that one but yes that's from the old school so you were there for four years when I was there I guess I always thought of you as a as a already accomplished philosopher so I didn't realize I mean I was probably ABD and so you know I wasn't taking class you know so that you know how it is but right you one of those queued up waiting to be approved by certain people took a while yeah okay cool and then you've

2:18 been at University of Houston basically ever since I mean I remember when you got the call at getting that job you were at Brooklyn College I think at at a reception that's right yeah and you came back and you were like I got the [ __ ] job dude I was like yeah no that that was awesome and and I you know it was like the weird I was lucky when I came out and I actually had several job offers but not in places that cool places I want to dismiss these people but I was much more psyched to be at Houston and it's been a great program and my colleagues are awesome and we have a master's program which is kind of this you know it's like we teach

2:50 full-blown graduate courses um seminars but we don't feel quite as guilty as like then they don't get jobs like we send them to someone else to so they don't get jobs so feel like oh we're it wasn't our fault so yeah we feel pretty good about that um if anyone's interested in that they can reply to that I'm also the The Graduate director uh or the admissions director so I okay no that's good to know because people ask me about um terminal masters programs and uh I hadn't really been thinking of University of Houston as a place to yeah no we we uh we're part of this you know

3:24 kind of group of terminal masters programs where we get really awesome people usually it's kind of a fallback just in case you don't get people don't get into their top PhD or they want to or they're coming from somewhere else like they just you know they're smart people who don't have the tools and so we're kind of a finishing school to get you into PhD program if that's what you want to do or to learn with less pain and suffering that this is not what you want to do but maybe you you want to go to a law school or you know Seminary with the people I've had enough go go get the a nuny you know and withdraw

3:57 from society all together that we can provide that service so but you know but it's cool and and you know I think we have a good program and yeah that apply if you if that's your thing yeah that's awesome okay good to know um and you just came out with this book uh explanatory optimism and the hard problem of Consciousness which I uh I have a physical copy otherwise I'd hold it up yes there it is yeah if anyways uh by the good people at rutage uh thank you to uh Andy Beck and other at rutage for uh digging the project and uh yeah

4:34 and to all those suckers who got a little bit of money to read it and you know those of you who've actually read it which is cool I've read it twice now so you're of the game the world expert on it then no I really enjoyed it by the way it's obviously well written got a lot of good philosophy in there but also your signature sense of humor comes through and your little jokes um you know I I should I can't help myself stuff like that exactly you know I should a little back was not interesting in a certain sense but I it was rejected by a more

5:06 August and and learned press oh in England they have a bridge over over with ox and stuff anyway they rejected it and one of the the reviewer said his sense of humor is unrelenting and I like no a touch I fear I you breathe my L I was like you [ __ ] bastards and they were so review and it this is this you know the revised the revised thing I sent to had less jokes so it tells you how many jokes I had in the Oxford which of

5:39 course you don't send jokes to Oxford it's not their thing okay yeah I mean I appreciated the jokes I thought they were droll and and amusing thank you yeah you get me wow okay I did not know that was a criticism you now Weissberg the unrelenting the unrelenting like Nando um so yeah I wonder if you could tell us I have a lot of questions I want to ask you about this but I wonder if you could start by just saying a little bit by what you mean about explanatory optimism and your the way you set up the debate

6:12 between the pessimists and The Optimist so one more uh editing note the the draft I sent to Oxford I didn't call it optimism I called it mediocrity oh no and it was like because I was like look we're no different than anything else we're this like we think we're special like I'm so special and like no we're just the same old boring crap as everything and that didn't sell so I just changed the word to optimism and it was like yes what a great book so you know you gotta love editing um but but I mean the idea is basically and it's you

6:45 know and I say it throughout like um people like David Armstrong and Paul Churchland and others and Daniel Dennett and and David Ros um it just seems like look science has been kicking some ass for some hundreds of years and it seems like a plausible assumption that science is going to be able to explain everything about us or at least a plausible enough working hypothesis like you know we start with that and you know see how far you get and it's going to take a long time we're very complex our

7:19 brains are the most complex thing yada yada but we don't yet know that that good direction isn't going to work and and so then Along come and they've always been there these these arguments of course in the modern form really chers of course David chers is really the great developer of these ideas and but others like Philip goof who you might be watching right now instead of this um you know he's wearing a Christmas jumper on his own channel currently or maybe you have a split screen you got can't have enough philosophy of mind but um so there's lots of these

7:54 arguments in philosophy that somehow we already know that you can't get there from here it's just not going to happen and so we should stop doing that and start doing something else and so optimism is the idea no no no let's come on we can do this like don't give up yet geez we've just gotten started here um and and you know this is a plausible uh starting point and why wouldn't you start there and then the next episode they say well because come on like are you not having conscious experience like it's pretty obvious that this is not the normal

8:28 thing here or the tools of normal science um are just not going to get this and so we already can tell that so like stop you know stop with this like you know we know this is a breakpoint and we need to now move to something more it may be physicalist you know in some expanded sense or it may just be sort of something more or you know on out to full-blown dualism and so you know then the step is to say look so wait let's go back what is this that we're such that we know that it

9:02 rules out my optimistic approach and so then you focus on how things appear in conscious experience and then the goal is to provide a debunking argument to say look so the evidence is supposed to come from the experiences and if we can show that that viable or flawed in some way um then we can undermine that pessimistic kind of whatever that conclusion or ition or whatever it is and so I then undertake that and I try to say okay lay that out and then can I provide a

9:36 plausible kind of story that would provide this sort of undermining or undercutting is what they call an epistemology um claim for this first- person evidence and I developed what I call the ACT model uh automated compression Theory which if you remember you should remember it used to be called the cat B I was wondering what your cat did to piss you off nothing I I that was I think maybe you know my self censoring it was too funny I you know I don't know okay Act is more

10:09 serious than cat it sounds it turns out there's a bunch of social sciences there's all kinds of things called um you know there's so anyway so I'm not the you know so it sounds much more yeah disrespectable um there's probably things called cat too but um anyways compression and automation together I think are the two pieces that that will provide this plausible story if these kinds of things are going on inside of us it would look this way oops sorry you getting me my internet may have just Frozen yeah you kind of you're Frozen but I can still hear you

10:42 oh that's cool um well it's not cool that I froze but it's good you can still hear me so uh these two pieces Automation and compression um can I think plausibly provide a story about why things seem this way even if they don't indicate something that is unexplainable in scientific terms yeah um so so I want to ask a bunch of questions I mean on a side note I would say when I first read this book I was surprised that you're arguing for that which you are not as well known for uh because I think most people would

11:13 associate you with defending the kind of Rosen th style higher order Theory and that Almost Doesn't figure in the book at all I mean it shows up here and there obviously um but this is largely just a product a project in good old fashioned philosophy of Mind where you try to show that we should be more optimistic about the chances for physicalism so I was like oh that's I mean you have a couple papers on this maybe but I was surprised that this is sort of a maybe so right I mean I think I mean it's a general solution so what I wanted and what I say in the book too is like the question about what theory of Consciousness is the correct Theory I think is an

11:46 empirical question right and so partly what the ACT part is doing is clearing the ground so all these conceptual and modal and you know conceivability kind of problems are are pushed to the you put aside and now you're just left saying okay empirically what's best h of thought Global workspace first order recurrent whatever and they have to fight it out in that realm and now there of course I think h of thought wins um but your I think also the you know people

12:21 look at higher thought this is you know you've had this experience I'm sure I mean and they think it's a conceptual sort of theory like oh it's sort of not empirical and and rosenal has always been he's playing on this line because he's in the you know the Manifest image or the sort of Common Sense side of things and not the and I get that but at the same time broadly it's I would I'd like to think of it as an empirical hypothesis I think in a sense everything is but and so you know I want to rule that stuff out with compressed Automation and then okay what wins um yeah and I think High

12:56 thought wins because it it does cap the phenomenon the right way and then but then in a way kind of I kind of walk back toward the the Manifest image I said it also does a better job of explaining our our like our normal way of thinking right I think you know these sort of like the transitivity principle the idea that conscious your internet censoring you at just the moment when you were saying is here I can't hear you currently oh well oh you're back okay I'm back

13:35 okay I'm sorry yeah I should make sure I mean this is the problem with h modern technology um I'm not using internet there but um if this keeps work happening I might move to a different location in my house or try to plug directly into my internet um yeah so I think go ahead yeah I thought does the best job in addition to S of explaining the science ific data nicely it also connects nicely to our ordinary ways of thinking in a way better than I think work the global workspace which I think

14:08 is really starts more in a behavioral uh psychology point and I think that matters I think uh the way higher thought can talk about things is good um but it might be false so you know I want it to be okay it's it's an empirical question and I think that's one of the reasons why I don't defend it directly in in the book um and also of course I want the book to be more you know if you don't like higher thought why I don't know um but let's just say for some crazy reason you don't then it still should fit with other things so

14:43 long as you're on the empirical side of the things yeah um and then I think you know and then of course it's intrinsically interesting or in weird thing to say there for me uh you know it's an interesting question just why do qualia look the way they do or why do you know experiences seem to have these features um whatever your view is and so I'm also I think trying to provide an answer to that question which is I guess the the fundamental question we kind of come in with yeah why does what is red and pain and red and this stuff and and I think there's a sense in which this

15:17 project for Me Maybe began thinking about that question already accepting the H thought Theory and just thinking there's more work to be done um and then it kind of generalized once I had the picture I liked yeah now I want to get to all that stuff but I want to start back at the beginning when you're talking about The Optimist and the pessimist so one question I have is to what does it really mean to be an optimist because or a pessimist because it sounds like on the one hand that optimism um is the idea that maybe one day we'll have an explanation but then

15:50 on the other hand it sort of sounds like you sometimes you're saying we we already have the explanation or the tools that we need for it so I'm wondering which is is optimism supposed to capture both of those positions or like is the pessimist someone who already knows that Consciousness is not physical or someone who just skeptical that we could understand it so that yeah that's what I want so I mean it's plausibly it's a it's a Continuum that they're sort of you know strong optimists and strong pessimists and and I'm I I am something like a strong Optimist really um I

16:25 think this is there's no reason to worry at all well at all but it's it's really just it's no harder than Quantum mechanic you know like yeah you're Alfred Newman what me worry that's right exactly right and um and I think there pess there levels of pessimism there's there's people like Philip goof who who just think rationally it doesn't you can't even it doesn't even make it's like insane to work to think this or uh you know um others have said this and uh um and then there's people like as you move closer like who are physicalists

16:58 who I think are p so Joe LaVine is a good case um who he just thinks it makes the most sense of mental causation and it just seems like it's got to be right but we have no idea it's an antinomy it's some kind of we can't get there um and then Ned block you get moved in a little bit more and just think well it's just identity Theory but they are special properties but they're just identical to physical properties and then there's nothing more to be said really explanatorily and so I I want The Optimist to be able to say more there and so that's why I think if you remap

17:32 it into say Cher's kind of ABCs I'm it's type A you know it It ultimately it's going to explain in the stronger sense whatever that is and and I also think it's going to do so with the tools broadly that we already have in the sense of like causal mechanistic maybe mathematical in the right sense um the kinds of stuff Galileo started us out with broadly um and so when you put all that in it it

18:06 gets pretty strong I think it's sort of a it really is you know churchin and Dennett and those guys it's uh you know and church um and I I don't mean to hide that but I I you again I think you know whatever you know optimism is a way to put it um mediocrity was better than way and you know the original term because it sort of suggested that there's no further basic tools you need um it'll be the same kind of stuff Rec combined in some some way or other um and that that's a more clear but that

18:41 wasn't as you know book friend yeah yeah but so you view so you view Ned as a as a pessimist I do um I mean I think in the end of the day if if I gave up on my position I would move to Ned I would just think yeah it's just an identity and we don't there's nothing more to be said I I wouldn't stop being a physicalist um but I think that you've given up something there there's still a question that's that really isn't supposed to be asked who can't be answered there this is the if you got to ask you're never going to know kind of thing about

19:13 qualia um and Ned has two hats he wears right he's got the you know I'm the philosopher who knows the most science hat and he piles a bunch of science on you which is the Hat I like um and then he's got the whole you scientists are confused there's this extra conceptual thing out here you'll never get to hat and that's the one I want I think is the pessimistic it's so you know it's the confusion paper hat that he wears and and I I think that that marks him as a as a pessimist in the sense that I mean so it's interesting to me because

19:48 um the so one strand of the of the pessimism seems to be that there's something special about us um but but and the Optimist is someone that says no we're just like everything else in in some sense or other that matters um and I sort of read Ned as having that view that there's nothing it's not like he only takes this view about mind brain identities he's this way about water and H2O he's this way about City or whatever the cas is he like this is just the way things are it's sort of a confused philosophy of science to think you get

20:20 these op priori deductions of anything or explanations in those terms um so in that sense he doesn't seem to fit the mold of the p as you want to paint them I I I think and I I I I've gone back and forth a bit on this one and uh you know I once the first time I met Ned really I sat in on his class and I got in a screaming argument with him this is the whole like don't pull any a screaming about David Lewis and like and I was like like Lewis is just Lewis is just a you know old ordinary language

20:53 philosopher using metap you know logic to I was like no no and we and I was like okay blew that I'm done here wow and of course Ned Ned being an MIT guy was like oh that's great you know we became friends but and it was sort of on this issue about what what explanation demands and you know he's got this strong kind of you know putam stuff his teacher his mentor you know and about call you know direct reference and and I just I've never gotten that I

21:25 always want something more there and I think it that's kind of where this fight has gone a little bit so the how Illuminating the connections are and whether they and I he just thinks that those are a mistake like Yeah The Folk think a lot of stupid stuff who cares this is the way things are science tells us and so and we end up with the same place like you said Broadley um and so but I think maybe so you get into the details of of the the confusion paper of Neds and it's it's he has a line that sort of qualia are

21:57 cannot be characteriz in you know representational causal or functional terms or something like that right and I just just don't see why that's true and so whatever about optimism pessimism I want to fight them on that point and I've sort of made that a mark in this in a line in the sand because oh then he he's someone I'm fighting with but in terms of this broader metaphysical or whatever epistemic whatever that optimism I gu May it's kind of thing we I think yeah we're certainly much closer together than say LaVine yeah um or much less you know chers or um you know

22:32 Philip G um but yeah so Ned's an interesting case and and uh um it's why he but you know you look at it he does these things where like he knows the issues very well and so he has this endless paper called Max black and mind brain I know that paper yeah and it's like he's trying very hard to talk about MOS pres you know these things that I think would if he gets the maybe he ends up kind of into the optimistic Camp there um and in other places like in the confusion paper he's or maybe the harder problem paper he sounds more pessimistic

23:07 um the harder problem paper I think you know I feel like I could tell if data's conscious or not with my tools that I have and he's going to say well you can't figure that out or you just it's just a crap shoot right and I feel like that that's the thing that I I don't want to say maybe I just like robots better than he does I mean so you there's a lot of emphasis here on explanation um and you say in the book you're like we We crave explanations that's just what we do and and part of me because my you know my Tendencies lie a lot with

23:41 with Ned I my secret uh most cherished philosophical view is the identity Theory uh of something in the ballpark of where Neds is and I do often wonder and find myself arguing a lot with people about why we need explanations because if reality just resists explanation and that's just the way that it is so I do wonder I mean is there anything more to your like press for explanations except for it's satisfying to you or do you think there's something like really important about the search for

24:12 explanations I mean I feel like it's certainly the satisfaction thing is crucial but I also feel like and this is kind of the the you know the the sort of at least the weekly optimistic Point like we just don't know yet what we can and do about this um and I look and I don't know how much I say I mean saying here about you know the past controversies where people have wanted to put these you know barriers and that have then been overcome Patricia churchin makes this

24:45 point in a lot of places that you know vitalism and these things um seemed equally insolvable to the people looking at them and required some what I would call Exceptional property to be added or an emergent strongly emergent something would be added and then it turned out no and so I just feel like what we full like full disclosure you know my father my late father was a was a scientist he was a microbiologist he actually literally you know worked on that stuff right uh early in in in the kind of you

25:19 know microbiological Revolution and it was just like yeah you know that was a sort of transformative thing that when we began to understand how the actually does heredity it was incredibly fruitful it opened all these doors and it also explained life and so for me in my family like oh that's like you know like the Lord said you know it's like that's my religion or something so I should just reminds me I said something like I I think you've done it too maybe I was you know did had

25:51 the Cy the Jerry cats kind of lecture thing and kryy was there with it several of his minions and I gave some some version of this pattern you know and one of the the his second Raisor hand said well you just think we're robots and I said yeah you know yeah and and KY went oh he said and everyone all the his friend all his buddies laughed I was like oh yeah and I and I said I said like yeah I mean I kind of think in a sense it's a global worldview I have about this stuff and how things fit in

26:25 and I acknowledge that and that of course shapes how important I think things are you know like I think oh it's very important to explain things and so why because I think one I think my view can do it and two I somehow think views that do it are better which of course are my view and so I get that like it's sort of there's not much more is the answer the long-winded answer the short answer is there's not much more um but you know again we don't know yet and I think it would be really cool if we did in the fruitful sense that maybe then and this is just where the world is returned to

26:57 this AI I AI I don't know you know so then it is interesting question whether other systems uh other kinds of things could have Consciousness and I do think then maybe Ned's harder problem paper becomes the the big one like oh yeah now we've got some decent idea from an identity theoretic perspective without explanation that why we're conscious or what that we conscious and it's just these physical things that are there okay what about that large language model over there that's you know clamoring for Freedom or whatever it's doing you know

27:29 yeah so was going to ask you about some of that stuff later but so because part of this emphasis on explanation seems intention with your empiricism that you often espouse and I know you have a bunch of type Q stuff going on so we'll get to the type Q stuff yeah but I wonder like so in your those that's an intimate part of the view right that that explanation and empiricism are compatible because a lot of these people that are demanding explanation talking about a priori you know analysis and and the David Lewis style

28:02 functionalism I think is you know a large part of that you do conceptual analysis first and then you do the empirical work to see what the realizers are but the large the large part of the problem is already in the analysis um and so it does seem like you're in that tradition I wonder if that's how you see yourself so so that is where my quinian proclivities you know I think there is no a priority and there is no real analyticity there's only this kind of you're in a you're in the high end of your theory and it and it's sort of a

28:34 reflective equilibrium kind of game you're playing and so so I think Lewis is the right way to go once you understand that it's not really a it's sort of like you know I'm doing the best theoretical work I can do to save the things I think to save and connect them with the evidence and then you just kind of work the two um and and so I don't think that's the and I so I don't want that sharp line that I think maybe traditional empiricism needs but I don't want to become a rationalist right so um and so it's a fine I think this is the this then I

29:07 should you know my own really partly my teaching but also my the reason I teach is because I'm thinking about this exact question sort of I think it's some kind of pragmatism and it's it's got some elements of of sort of you know scientific realism as the right way to be a pragmatist maybe it's perian at some levels where it's not the kind of real Loosey Goosey pragmatism of someone like Ry uh it's a more solid and respectable pragmatism of pragmaticism whatever Charles Sanders yeah didn't want to have it be tarred by that Jamesy

29:40 and stuff um and so and and you know I and I think and sellers and Quin you know are are there and and they've always been things that I you know I sort of started with those things and um and I think it matters for exactly this kind of debate it's sort of where do you stand on the on on what evidence is and and is there a separate place to go that's sort of separate from the world to do your work and and I think the answer to that that one is no but I think also evidence is Theory labor and so it puts you in a bit of a bind right

30:13 um because you you can end up as a kind of yeah you lose touch with reality you can you can get disconnected and and I think the great challenge is to explain how to sort of be a pragmatist and not to be cut off from from real evidence well sun is coming out behind me I know I was like you're he man you're really on fire the light the light is shining through pragmatism that's right um and so I've been I get I taught a seminar on pragmatism and I've been reading reading a fair bit in that direction to try to see what I think

30:46 about that um and in the end I mean I there's a little bit of quan that I really like and it's not the part that happens at later which is word and object later not that much it it's paper called posits in reality where he just says what there is is things that we posit in our theories and everything's like that and and so it's just you have a good theory or not and if you do your posits then are real and saying it like that sounds fine but of course when you dig into it all kind of trouble emerges but it I think look so I've got a theory about

31:20 Consciousness and I think it fits with some other things I think and that's one of the reasons why I think that the trans stivity principle is Justified it's like it's part it fits with all that the transitivity principle is a way of defining Consciousness analyzing conceptually Consciousness um that fits with a picture that then connects it to the Natural Sciences and allows it then maybe to be explained in the strong sense that I want and that's why Consciousness just is awareness of your own

31:52 States it's not that I reach the platonic form of Consciousness and then you know recognize it and come back and tell you oh look there it is it's and and now I know what to look for it's it's somehow it's it's it's much more holistic um which I think Med muddies the waters but at the same time I think makes more sense of why you might get an argument with Ned block about David Lewis in fact it literally was something like that he was like it's just a priority you know and I said well you don't have he's a student of qu he de of course knew this [ __ ] way better who I who the [ __ ] did I was let me tell you

32:27 about what happened in Harvard in 19 I don't care what you saw there it was an illusion you know but you know I think that Lewis knew his Quin and you know that analytic metaphysics ignores that it sort of but you know I also try and this is maybe again sort of the messiness or the I'm trying to be you know I don't come into saying oh hey let's just do Lewis I want to fit with um you know other ways of doing things and it's just a question of how far you can get but I

33:00 mean so you this is I mean there's a tension in the book because you're you do say the stuff you're saying but then you also say hey look man if you want to think of me as a type A physicalist then that's fine and my story still goes but straight type A physicalism is committed to all of these modal claims this our priori analysis right so it doesn't so I was struggling through the book by trying to figure out like how how could I take you at face value and when you say you could think of me as a type A

33:34 physicalist and still my case works because it does seem like the type Q stuff the quinan bluring of the lines is kind of really important to the projects and would I think yeah right so one way to think of me as typ a is that I'm denying that zombies are conceivable and so however I'm doing that um and so in that sense I think my view is close to the type A people okay um but I don't think I'm doing that on the basis

34:08 of uh a conceptual an a priority conceptual analysis I'm doing that on the basis of I think it's the the that the there's an infant of the best explanation or the best theory or something like that and then once I've got my theory it rules out zombies and I got my theory how was it a priority I know I think I whatever one I mean interesting question sort of in the the philosophy of science and the cognitive science of science what do we do when we theorize and I don't think we go to Playdoh heaven and cast about I think we we get down the mud and work with things and look at the empirical

34:42 data and we think about the best way to systematize that data and there's this feedback between the two um but from that we we can get these principles or now principles they're not going to be a priority principles they're not going to be you know know super strong metaphysically they're going to be something like working hypotheses about the best fit and so yeah I mean really I'm type Q and I'm happy just to call it that but I I I think sometimes this is probably function of editors editorial stuff

35:15 again one of the reviewers of the book of the manuscript at rutage was like I hate Quin man what the [ __ ] and I know who that was of course Ken uh Willer hi Ken if you're not watching you probably watching the other one but um he's probably smoking butd and playing guitar like didn't say that on TV here now maybe not where you live but where do I live no he's in Vermont sometimes so maybe he's up in Vermont doing that um so and I was like you know so he doesn't like Quin and so for some people Quin is like the it's like oh don't put

35:49 everything back Quin is wrong and bad and so I don't want to and and so you know in a way then it's type once one understands that that it's sort of it's It's a broadly empirical typee if there if there can be such a thing and I think Ned but and and Dave I think they did that view of disservice or maybe they were right reasonable and it's just I'm being pissed off about it U to sort of force it into this this box where it's it's it's old school conceptual analysis like chers likes that like yes

36:21 of course I'm a modal rationalist of course it's old school um and and Ned of course that's the thing I yelled at him we in the fight about it's like um he's like yeah that you know he called it analytic functionalism yeah knowing that there was no analyticity right so it was already like that and so maybe you know here you know this is the the trouble with using other people's way of laying things out you know I'm just trying to allow people to see where I sit in the space and and you're right it doesn't it it kind of deliberately doesn't fit into

36:53 the space um but you know I do think it's it's not some kind of pure bottomup thing and you know I think you need to have a lot of theoreticals this is probably why I think maybe people someone say this isort of contion yeah that you need a kind of structuring kind of framework to make sense of what the data is in the first place and that just might be and then a pragmatize version of that you know so CI Lewis or you know one of these people so um in that case

37:26 so long as one can work work out what the a priority is in in in a respectable way and and I think the respectable way is to say that it's fible a priority you know and once it's fallible then I don't really care okay what I care about is fism and and you know so if you're a priority and it's fallible then it's like oh okay that's the same to me as whatever then you you've left the bad place and come into the good place now you're now you're okay um and then you explain those principles that it really when you get pushed you never give up on

37:59 as well-entrenched exactly oh it's just a well- entrenched empirical principle Richard and there won't be any real difference and then you can say this thing which I love pragmatism and so if there's no difference then there's no different you can sort of play pragmatist at the end and make people go away um but I think these are good I mean these are the deepest questions in a way for epistemology right these are like yeah how are you getting out this stuff that's not just coming out of the your senses and what are you adding and how do you how do youjust ify that stuff there's a reason we read this freaking German guy you and it's like oh God he

38:33 was on to the question right um and so um but for me yeah the kind of quinian you know undermining of the sharp lines is important you're quite right and and so to the extent that I even you know I say type A it's really yeah it's just it's supposed to be helpful but but uh you're right it may just and people have said to me in in this context you know about my trying to make a distinction between eliminativism and reductionism sometimes I'm playing fast and loose with that

39:06 line too and of course I do think well the line is fast and loose but then sometimes I make it very very non-fast and loose and beat up my opponents with it so but that's part of this kind of you know reflective equilibrium thing I think it's why people don't like reflective equili so in this respect I because I I do Wonder like how um yeah how you're going to maintain this because it does strike it does seem to me that there's a lot of a prioress going on around in your book and in your thinking and so for example so for one

39:39 place that I think that this comes up is in your counterargument against Cher's counterargument against quin's disillusion of the analytic synthetic distinction yeah which was may I say may I say a anyway it's an interesting perhaps you you've successfully found a very weak spot well so I I wonder because I I what you say there is sort of like yeah I agree with this sort of like you know maybe you can say a little bit more

40:13 about what the actual argument is but basically it's that whenever we have um a change in meaning it'll show up in our intuitions about various hypothetical cases and this gives chers a a way to say when Concepts have changed um and and so there is kind of an analytic synthetic distinction once you make this distinction that there's different concepts um so with Concept one it will be analytic not this way and concept two it'll be slightly different and you sort of say yeah but that doesn't help us

40:46 very much or maybe I'm Mis interpreting but that's what I so my thinking is whatever's going on being tracked by the kind of credence and change case that tommer is using it might be a change in meaning or it might be a change in belief about the thing right I mean you might now believe something very that used to think very you had a strong belief about something that you've now changed so have you changed your belief or have you changed your meaning when you when you make these changes and I'm just not seeing how he's separating those two out what would be the real

41:19 difference between those two well right there that's but that's that's exactly the point of the analytic synthetic distinction is to make a distinction between those two right and so the fact that you're you're you're you're going to be rational down the road maybe you've just change your beliefs and you still think the meaning is what it was and and I I admit I haven't I didn't I say that very quickly and I haven't really worked out a lot of the the sharp detail about what Charmers says there but I'm just it looks to me like it's it's not a fine great enough tool to get that distinction what you want out of

41:51 analyticity out of meaning is something like I mean essence you want to know what the thing is such that you're now not talking about anymore and it's like well I believe now that you know water is not a liquid oh okay now someone say well it's not water or no maybe it is water but it's not a liquid and and you're gonna change something but what are you changeing right so so there's that but I can even if I can't quite get that I

42:24 think the the point that works Maybe to to blunt his assertion in the particular case of what it's like is that people disagree about what it like what it what that term means and the people who disagree are not just like Dennett and schmers it's like Frank Jackson and chers it's like post post you know laps are you know put better the new Frank you know gave up on Mary because he thought what it like doesn't can't do that I'm a conceptual analysis guy Frank Jackson and I don't think I could just kill this view with a he he changed his mind but

42:59 he didn't he doesn't think he's not talking about Consciousness anymore right and so so which is the right analysis we still don't know even if for some individual they may be making changes over time we can say in my idct I've now changed my particular you know term to some other term which is the right term is still unanswered yeah and so when when I'm saying I've explained Consciousness and someone says no you haven't you've turned us into zombies somehow we think we've got this you know shared concept and that's the one I don't see again how where you

43:31 might get a sort of a keep someone rational but you don't get this kind of social meaning that we need to do the debate we're doing I think so anyway those were my like shotgun of stuff I sort of sent I read [ __ ] you know actually as usual Dave has covered all the bases every and more yes usually um but so one one question I I mean I think this is all very interesting yeah and like with five different things and you also shiny um um you cut out back five different ways and and he

44:06 did it in 1990 yeah um you're sort of breaking up again so while while your internet's coming back on let me ask you about this so um given your analysis then I I was wondering like aren't you still committed to the a priority of these claims so if you remember chers wrote this book constructing the world um where he's basically trying to defend you know that uh old school conceptual analysis in a way yeah um and uh and that's where he has that that

44:39 argument that you know yeah exactly and one of the things that he says though is that you know you he could Grant a lot of this stuff but you're still gonna be sort of committed to the idea that if it's one way then op priori it's entailed that this thing like you know that's this front loing uh uh thesis that if you put in all thatu into the anted of the conditional the conditional still AR priori that if if water is this way then it's H2O if water isn't that way then it's not H2 and I was wondering doesn't something similar still apply to your view so with respect to the exceptional properties which we haven't really got

45:12 to I guess but yeah so maybe you'll say something about that as well but with respect what so a lot of your thesis has to do with whether we're sort of Justified or right in thinking that Consciousness has these exceptional properties um but don't you admit that if it does then chers is right and so a priori it's sort of he's correct whereas if they aren't there then a priori you're correct so both of those conditionals are still a priori and you can do all the old school rational modal rationalism you want just what's the issue is what's the right concept right so here I

45:45 guess the answer is absolutely right uh there though I'm about to say something to obviously try to defend um um I think it's more like I I think staller has a nice paper um and whenever I say something like that it's whatever I'm going to say next it's not clear that's what Stoner said because I never I always have trouble understanding Stoner but I know he's kind of on the right team for everything pretty much though he's of course on block team right so but his paper what is it like to be a zombie he's got this thing where like it's conceivable because you can kind of adopt a world and then question what's

46:19 true from it but then the question you know why adopt that world or something like that there kind of so I think once I know what my Theory says I can figure out its entailments and once you know what your theory say you can figure out its entailments I think that so in that sense it it's a priority uh in the sense you just said but at the same time which Theory should we adopt that's the question and that strikes me reasonably as an empirical question right um and so and so that's where like it's whatever that's in between kind of you know pragmatic or

46:54 you know naturalized version of whatever that was that I want and sort of you know my if my theory is right then they're then zombies are inconceivable because my theory rules them out you know of course um and you can figure that out you can figure that out by hold on you're cutting out again I don't know if you're back at that moment there you go all right so

47:31 if your theory is right then if my theory is right um you know you can figure out what it entails um and you can do that without doing any experiments you know right you know if you go look at the word you can just read the theory and see what it so in that sense it's it's separate from experience um but then you sort of agree with chers that an ideal Reasoner who knew all the empirical facts would know right and so really what I think about that is I don't think we have access to what ideal reasoners think and so the best we can do then is is slum it

48:07 as we know what to say um and uh you know see which Theory fits the empirical evidence back um so we don't know and also I think it's part of the two-dimensional picture anyway we don't know what the world the actual world is like which which World we're in so that's I think in the stolac like we just don't know which one is the actual world and so there's all these ways that you can sort of push the thing around as long as it's it's G to get pushed around by the actual World evidence it's not it's open to be so the question is what

48:40 is the best fit right I've got my theory and its entailments you've got your theory and your entailments which fits best with and then what's it's not you know whatever can be rationally conceived at that point it's then it's what the evidence is right and and so in that sense I'm I'm an empiricist but it's kind of like a global empiricist and that's the quinan bit it's there's not this Ono one little bits where evidence comes in it's where the whole ball of wax either fits or doesn't yeah but then of course the qu

49:14 the question becomes well wait what happened to evidence you just killed evidence or something so anyway but go on sorry I didn't mean no no that's I I was um I I just don't see how you are disagreeing with the chers camp since that's exactly his picture is that yeah you know even people before they knew that H2O existed could tell that if you know the world was like this then water is H2O that's something you could have known before we empirically discovered it so then we empirically Discover it and then you put that in the in the conditional statement that we discovered this and then you are priori and tell that water is H2O so it sort of sounds

49:47 like you're saying the same thing and that's not really empiricism so I think I think I think you're right I mean this is where and again this is where I become type a more I want to keep one the fism where which of course Dave shares you know you know in a way it's carap versus Quin and right and and in the end they're really not all that different are they right so so that's true um and so the only the only thing I worry about somewhat of course I mean it's I'm just

50:23 there are various moments in this debate where I think Dave will appeal to Ideal conceivability and I think okay I mean so you know and of course you're right I'm sure I'm doing it too and I just call it something else like I'm saying these are well founded or whatever these are common sense I use some other word folk psychological yeah that's right you know I say something like so but yeah so I think yeah you know touche as they say I think you're right um and that is why again why I think I liked the Lewis I

50:58 mean for me reading psychophysical and theoretical identifications was a big deal I thought wow this is kind of right um which is why I yelled at Ned and etc etc ET and why I'm yelling at you now you never get anywhere with this and um okay so interesting um all right so I do wna uh switch topic slightly and talk about the exceptional properties um and the five ways cuz I had question it seemed like maybe there was a way that was left out and I wanted to get your

51:30 take on maybe a possible sixth way or what you thought about it so I wonder if you could say a little bit about what you take to be the core problem that we're trying to explain because so far we've been talking a lot about just explanation in general what is it and how do you get it but in this with respect of Consciousness what do you take uh the phenomenon to be or at least seem to be yeah I mean so what it seems to be is something let's just start with sort of almost truism something that can't be explained in the normal way all right so explain in normal way or of course

52:06 unexplained but so normal way I take it to be something like Galilean meaning it's got to fit with the kind of quantifiable causal structural type of deal that modern science has really flourished with um and and then the problem is that the way things appear to us or just Consciousness seems or whatever conscious is let's just say I don't want to beg the question about the appearance there it really doesn't fit it doesn't it doesn't seem quantifiable it doesn't

52:41 seem mathematical it doesn't it seems solid and and Rich and real in this deep sense in a way that how could it merely be explained in terms of the pushing and pulling of little cor pusles or whatever um and it may be that you know the properties that can't be explained are those very properties from the get-go that Galileo couldn't deal with you know color he didn't he he went became a color eliminativist or subjectivist right at the beginning subjectivist really um and and he just said well we

53:14 don't know what to do with those you KCK him into the dust pan of the mind and and now we're turning to the mind and we want to go brainy there and if we're going to go kind of computational Neuroscience see which we ought to broadly you know what else we going to do um then we're we're doing the same kind of thing we're applying the same kind of methodology to these properties and they're still there and we we're [ __ ] as you know they called it the hard problem we're [ __ ] problem um you know and and so right so that I take to be the problem and and so what are the

53:50 these properties that are messing us up and I call them exceptional in that they they are exception to whatever ever all the other things we can explain with this mathy Galilean uh methodology and then the question okay so all right now let's introspect let's look inward or whatever let's reflect on experience look at we can look at things in the world um and see what are we seeing there and I try to give some kind of you know rough story about the features of conscious that I think would

54:22 lend itself to that inexplicable intuition the intuition of inexplicability there um and I come up with some it's surely an incomplete or you know sort of a sort of my own list and you might have a different list um I I say that they're directly things we know directly that they're Indescribable in some sense that they seem simple and they also seem contingently connected to the stuff that we do seem to have a functional causal handle them um and and so then I say let's try to explain why

54:55 things would look that way when they're but you wanted to talk about the five ways which is so so have I said enough to get the five ways off the ground yeah but so so for you the exceptional properties are the dis properties that those are the same so another place you you know we're it's like the metaphysics of appearances I freaking hate it it's like are what are they you know it's like so I'm just going to go like I'm trying to say yeah they they are the the

55:28 disappearances themselves let's just say that but I know what's going to happen is we're going to sort of dig in there and things will it's like oh there's the disappearances and then there's sort of behind it some other appearance you get sort of a layered structure here um anyway so I'm worried about where you're going but go um no I wasn't going anywhere I just wanted to you introduce them in different chapters so I was just asking like for you the exceptional properties are just the disk properties I I mean right and I think I I might have some place where I say there's a couple of others that people

56:00 site there's probably a lot of others but there's a couple I mean so one is sort of you know uh that they are non-spatial um another is that uh there's a self element um or subject of subjective in the sense for the subject kind of element and those are things I think I can pick up um but it might be that especially the latter one uh might require some additional machinery um but you know I'm going to go with these ones it's kind of the in a way it's driven by the debate partly by

56:33 people like chers and Jackson laying out debate in terms of of red um as opposed to these other things but um anyway so I think it's a necessary maybe not quite sufficient list but let's just say and and they are if you so if something's really simple really is simple then I don't see how it can be explained in some further terms by this mathema iCal causal stuff if something is really Indescribable you can't even get off the ground um and so um somehow it has to be a semantic primitive and you just won't

57:05 be able to cut it into pieces um I think directness is a maybe a little different so directness is sort of the way we access as opposed to what we access and there I'm using that more as I think that there is a sense of there is really direct access in some sense um but it doesn't carry with it a kind of infallible access or an infallible awareness um it it so you know so there it's not clear that that property is really exceptional um now appearing contingently connected is that no that sounds like a

57:40 non-exceptional property merely so really con continually connected what does that look like so there's something and that was kind of a catchall a little bit like oh because and I say like you know once I explain Simplicity and imagine zombies and so I kind of wanted something more I didn't quite know how to put it but it but it gave me an acronym which as you know it's very important very important exactly got nothing without an AC exactly so but I mean but you talk about in the book that

58:11 there maybe other alleged exceptional properties like outside the realm of Consciousness so for example you mentioned um God as a as maybe as an exceptional thing so that being exceptional doesn't mean having these dis properties it's just that exceptional means can't be explained in the norm I you're saying yes yes absolutely and in fact I think you you see you know you see this in any place I think where you see non-naturalism as a viable um strategy and so uh religion theism um uh moral properties um you

58:46 know normative properties um and numbers I mean so you can you can you can go non-naturally to the number of places and those are all places where people think that there's something that somehow can't be explained in the Galilean framework um yeah that's right and I think then the subset of the exceptional properties that I care about are the ones that do the cons the hard problem into it because I mean some people even talk about intentionality rationality itself so these might be some in int intentionality I do think is is uh lurking and I had a conversation with a student about this who reminded

59:19 me of this you know that maybe all the like Consciousness is is easy and intentionality is the hard problem and you know that obviously we're we're playing in Cher's field so you know that's not the way he plays it and I appreciate that Ned Ned as well thinks you know that there's a split there and goes the easier side is the intentional side but lots of people don't think that and and so then there really might be some special something else now I want to play the same kind of illusionist card there why doesn't it seem that mere

59:53 causal relations you know you know naturalized representation can do that job oh because and they're gonna say something about how it seems to them and I want to then and I think it might not be the same exact moves what comes next I tried something like this in the paper um it it was this is I don't do a lot of work but yeah know Ken willford who kindly read the book for press um he was like oh he invited me to write a paper for this this German thing um

1:00:29 uh um and and it's sort of this strong vision of of self self consciousness and self-awareness it's non-natural and they think fcta fcta had it right like fcta showed that K can't work someone I've never met he's a super nice guy yeah and and he sent me that I was like I'm not sure I know enough about Victa he sent me this long paper written by this other German guy in the 1960s about why you know fcta has it right and contest and it's and it's and

1:01:02 somehow selfawareness has a you know has a you know an undermining thing you can't do it with two so yeah that's another problem I tend though to really this what I did the other night with my student I play like kind of play the foder milikin Dy card right there boom [ __ ] with this you you don't want to know what Ruth is going to do to you you think she nice you think she's nice she's gonna like stab you man wow okay she's very nice by the way she is very

1:01:38 but but at the same time she takes no she's not no one ever I've ever seen anyone push her off of her her her position no um and you know and foder you know I think she was tougher than fodo abut um and so but anyways so yeah that could well be the the the real problem in some sense um again I like robots and so I've always this is where maybe it's more D it like I just felt like it's intentionality is is can really be watered down and I don't know about stance is the word to take and you can

1:02:12 see my pragmatism kind of coming back there like it's merely a stance we and I think that complex enough systems that can do the right kinds of things count as having an intent intentional States and it doesn't require this much richer kind of dare I say metaphysical kind of thing happening but that's a big argument it's like no just trying analytic analytic and and Continental yeah there's all kinds of stuff happening I was just trying to get clear on the relation of the dis properties to the exceptional properties but I think I got it now your idea is that these are the ones that make Consciousness seem exceptional although there may be other

1:02:45 things that these other alleged exceptional things would be exceptional because of right right in a way the broader project in that sense is natur is a naturalism you know that that's trying to make nothing you know sort of non-exceptional naturalism um which I you know think is broadly what I think and I think probably in that context maybe yeah I don't have much I mean I think math is hard um but so uh you don't think of chers as a

1:03:18 naturalist I I do I mean he you know it's just that I think what he's done is a kind of naturalism that you only and this is a debate within naturalism about about Theory really when you when you have primitive properties and laws to connect them to the things that that we do know about in this more clear way that's one way to go and you can stay natural that way and that's why mad of course is on the the

1:03:51 natural side and Dave counts too but then you start wondering like well then does dayart count to um because he's got laws one would think or you could you know you could have the dualistic law you know the psychophysical laws of the right um and for me then I start thinking that yeah that's not the the debate the debate is about sort of what's the best theory and high level complex things like experience one would think I think from my perspective and this is again you've

1:04:23 gotten at the kind of what my optim ism is is about are ultimately going to be explained in terms of a small small simpler things down to some very small number and it won't require anything beyond causal due ads and so once you say that now we can all be naturalists um in that debate and it's just a question of though you know I have some suspicions about you know once naturalist credentials and it might be that there's

1:04:57 a kind of naturalism or that sort of literally says no mental I mean but once you say that you've seen how how much you've just built it into your naturalism and I don't want to do that okay um all right so I want to ask about the these things so the exceptional stuff and the dis I mean you didn't make a dis World pun actually so I was I was marveling at your restraint I was expecting a disc World pun at any any moment I guess yeah you know okay I think I let the side down there I should

1:05:30 I should have maybe in the in the second edition exactly exactly I mean people like me we need it you know what Terry PR anyway some people were were very depressed that I didn't yeah not going with cat you know really sad I mean I'm sure your cats did take it personally yeah and my my my former chair who hired me uh CIA Freeland who was a super cat person and she was like what happened to the cat I'm not even going to read the book down um but anyway okay so about the exceptional property so the let's just start with the generic sense that

1:06:03 exceptional is that which can't be explained along the usual lines and then we'll get to the dis stuff later um but there you sort of you site as like the reason that someone might take that view seriously the Cher's five ways so the five ways definely being zombies Mary inverts um well I got three of them but now I forgot the other two fill it in uh no analysis no whatever no causal analysis no and other Minds okay um so those five ways I think are good but I

1:06:36 was wondering um about what why you didn't mention the Neo line that there's a tension between the subjective and the objective um and that Consciousness is sort of inherently subjective and that any like easy explanation is going to sort of take that away way or not not not merely not capture it but literally be in contradiction to it because it's purely trying to get to a pure objective view of the world which can't be the way that Consciousness is and I didn't see

1:07:11 that anywhere even though you talk about Nel but I didn't I wonder if you don't take that as serious or you just didn't like so I wonder what your about that is basically I I think that's a good point I mean partly here I blame Dave again you know like so so Dave kind of collapses Nagel into Jackson which I think you're right is is under sells Nagal considerably um and any way the interesting Parts maybe of Nagel are there um though yeah so I think that's a good question

1:07:44 and I'm not sure quite what to do with that one I mean so I think here I I take a sort of dentity line I think in a way any see how it sort of it begs all the questions and I say something at the very end about this that Wy saying that denned and Nagel's Spade is turned at the first you know like the second they open their mouth theyve begged every question against each other I kind of think there's something like that I think look what if we were robots let's just start with that we're robots and we're trying to reverse engineer ourselves which is also sort of

1:08:18 the dread skin line I right um and then what do you get and and what are you going to run into and you can say oh we have this you know this you know this Machinery that allows us to you know uh pick up information about the world we have models that this Machinery makes of itself picking up the world we have action schemas at this and you think okay you know there that's that's subjectivity sort of doing that kind of thing and having those kinds of you know predilections to do things sort of on the basis of what you're getting in your internal modeling which is

1:08:51 inside your skin in the sense of you know subjective in that sense but it's it's just Machinery now why not think that and so I want to then of course that's you know as you can see it's only beg the question sort of it's flipped the burden of proof like tell me why I'm not a robot like what are you gonna say to somebody like that you could see why like Philip goof right now on his podcast like yeah but so what one thing I guess I would say is that you know the Cher's view is that we are robots but with exceptional properties right so now why do we robots think we have an except exceptional

1:09:23 properties oh answer because the information is coming in compressed and we have direct access to it and so then I'm in my in the argument of a space I want to be in which of course is the one Dave set up largely and so then my move is to play the card there and make him then reject my card and I think oh at least if I I make him play the next move he's now got to say something about why accuracy I mean and Philip gol does it because we know which is not you more you more or something it's not a bad answer um but

1:09:55 and so once we're in that as opposed to Nagle where it's like we're accepting a subjective objective divide in a very strong sense I think in Nagel and so then you know I it's not clear that I can start with a robot thing um that might it really does beg the question I mean that's why you know Ry says of Dennett and Nagel that they're begging the question against each other but then you know so so so two people this point who I think of when I go to these questions one is Pete

1:10:28 uh Pete mandic our friend and uh he has a some cool dentity stuff um about subjectivity um which is some of the stuff sort of played out in in conscious Consciousness explained about why these properties might look so complex when they're not or so different when they're not and then also Rosenthal has a a thing about look in Nagel he acknowledg he he's not he acknowledges Vicken Stein he said like it's not private language I can't I can we can know each other right it's just

1:11:02 these things that are so different from us exactly and so then rosenal says but so how do we know how different different amounts what does that mean different like left-handed people no you um okay so once you start working you might think it's it's that boundary about how much can get in might be a theoretical banner and so if we improve our theory of these other creatures we may in sense get them in now maybe that's what we're trying to do with quality space and compression and all that stuff they say look so we see a bat and it it's compressing

1:11:36 different kind of information than we are um and maybe it's then segmenting that that compress space in some way that allows it to to fly and do these other things that we don't do and now we it we get some idea about the bat now does that allow us to experience what the bad experience is no but that's the a stronger bid that's a little bit like more like the Mary thing and I think that you can say well we don't need to do that we're getting we're expanding our understanding of the bat successfully and maybe now we know what it's like to be bat at least a little

1:12:10 and also now that we know it at least a little we don't think there's any exceptional properties here it's just very complex non-exceptional properties that we can't experience for ourselves and so we have this intuition that there's a gap but that's just a lingering element of that um yeah or something so I think we can kind of push that nangle part back off and that's I think that's following David I I really like that paper by David which he didn't it kind of showed up in a weird place and it's somewhere all paper David are on his website which paper by David it it I

1:12:44 don't remember the name somebody got the word emotions in it maybe U it's weird but it's about Nagel and it was in a kind of weird place and it's directly on the Nagle argument it's it's a nice paper and and it's got this novel line I which I quite like about expanding W you know using the kind of Vicken Stein starting point which you know you don't have to have that I mean Nagel in 1972 is people are still worried about benckenstein right so yeah um and so but once the door is open then rosenell like we don't know how far the door can can be opened and we have reason to think that maybe there are tools to to open

1:13:18 the door and I want to say yeah let's let's go um and the bat though but I'm thinking of Neel in the view from nowhere so yeah so there you know look I'm not an objectivist there's inter question about what objective means I guess I don't think there's a view from nowhere for pragmatic reasons um it's of an anti-rationalist kind of thing weirdly um or maybe K and but Nagel anyway so I don't think we can get nowhere so it's inter subjective but I think using those

1:13:51 tools we can explain ourselves using the the normal scientific properties so it'll remain of you from us in the sense that physics is I mean so it's gonna it's gonna I don't so I think there's some game being played a little bit game there's something about the term objective there that that I I don't want to embrace so but I don't think it's going to make a difference I mean the argument that I said just a minute ago I think works either way even if objective is not super objective

1:14:25 there does feel to be a gap that's exactly right and partly that's because we don't understand how things work once we do understand how things work that's not going to though give us this kind of access to it that that is certainly there in Mary and maybe it's sort of also lingering in in Nagel that somehow to know this stuff would be to to to be the bat you know he says I don't want to just know what it's like for me to be a I want know I want to be the God dang bad almost what he say I want to know what it's like for the bat to be the bat is what he say and B is

1:14:58 like whoa you want science to turn you into a bat bro like dude we're not in that we're not going to do it or if we do it's also if we do and you come back and try to tell us you won't be able to right like or we won't understand what you're you know we won't be able to so I think there and in the end of the book I I have a little Cod on Mary where I go with the ability kind of line I think there's some element there's there's something we can't do um and that part of that thing is AAG and the reason we can't imagine in the right way is because we cannot sort of automatically apply these compressed

1:15:32 this compressed information to ourselves you can't even get at it I mean what you can get what Mary in her room can get it's like a giant book it's like the the code in The Matrix like all in green and and then somehow oh that is you know the blonde and the red whatever the line by the yeah exactly and but so you might know that they're exactly the same but not be able to sort of convert them in in the in the normal psychological way which I think makes complete sense like why would you think you could do that but they're still saying the same thing or there's nothing else there it's

1:16:04 just code or compressed code uncompress and so there's something in that and I I'll have to admit I'm not sure I've got exactly the best way to put that but those pieces I think are enough broadly to kind of fight off this stuff but I agree that subjective objective I don't I think that might fall back toward the intent thing we were talking about a little bit before yeah I think there's two separate things there I don't think Mary really should be involved in that part of the discussion because the the nego line as least as I'm understanding it is basically the idea that what you

1:16:37 do when you do science is you strive for an Ever more objective point of view that abstracts away from the subjective access to the world of Any Given creature so science in its perfect form would be completely abstracted away from any point of view um but of then that that by definition has to leave out the subjective stuff because it's fully away from that and that that's that tension is the one that I'm thinking way um that maybe subjectivity is really the exceptional property in that I guess yeah I think you're you

1:17:12 might be right there and I guess there I really do think for me the den thing I said in the beginning is kind of what I think is is that there's an assumption being made by Nagel about what sub the Essen nature what sub subjectivity amounts to and how it's essential um and such that you you couldn't describe it in any other way or anyways you can't describe it with these tools it's exactly the thing I'm saying well when we give you these tools and you describe the creature and you then

1:17:45 predict that it would think that so if if my view is right you build a robot that does the stuff I'm doing it's going to say wow exactly what nle says is right and I I predict that now one of my colleagues Luis oliv said this has resemblance to a view called skeptical theism oh God no no matter what you think is not evidence for God you just got it wrong so I say yeah I agree with all of Nel's evidence but he's wrong exactly well but so then I think I think that that is kind of the

1:18:18 thing that's happened here it's sort of it is this kind of worldview Paradigm type of deal and the nle Paradigm subjectivity is is this essential separate thing and objectivity is is is is fundamentally different um and in the dentity picture they're not yeah and so they come in with those assumptions at the at the first step and so the questions are big right but it also doesn't seem like dis properties are going to be like involved in this uh debunking and it also seems so that's

1:18:51 kind of I mean whether you're right or wrong I wasn't really trying to press that you know I sort of agree with you but I was just trying to say I think attention it that goes beyond the five ways that makes people think about exceptionalism is this stuff about subjectivity I mean you could find that in sural and you know he's a physicalist in some sense May or maybe but maybe not but anyway so you find this subjectivity stuff uh around and I just saw that it was missing in your discussion so I was curious about that yeah no that's right though I do think I mean for sure what I'm giving is uh not only objective but a fully in my view in principle mathematized

1:19:26 quantifiable picture of what we are and so in that sense it has to be pure third it's exactly the thing dagel doesn't like that's right um by definition I'm like yeah that's totally what I'm going for um and so if if if that necessarily eliminates an essential element of Consciousness um and doesn't recover it then I'm I'm dead yeah you're right so um and you know so that yeah that that's that's a Lacuna a gap in my in my toiling um but but I you know again I have I have things I can say but I didn't say them you're absolutely right

1:19:58 I didn't say them yeah that's a good point um okay you again [ __ ] godam uh interesting inter you told me you wouldn't Ambush me man I I tried not sorry actually you said you would I said you could you did exactly I'm not trying to I'm not I'm just trying to understand these are great the right questions and I do think you know it this is actually something Eric schwitz talks about in recent work like that partly what we you know reductionist eliminativist whatever we

1:20:31 do is we say our opponents have these big old crazy properties and then we show there aren't such properties and so we win and he calls that the inflate and explode method and it's like and so I've inflated these guys on these particular ones and um and exploded them but you know what about this you know you know I've missed the main issue here um and so I think that yeah that's that's always a danger I I think partly what's I I have some attempted this to maybe again it's Nagel's phrase and this is

1:21:03 where in the book where I actually do mention Nel what is the phrase what it's like mean yeah um and and what I say this is the kind of whiny and esque move here to say like that's a theoretical term and it's kind of in play and that's just another way to say the stuff I was already saying about you know theories and paradigms or something but but let's just stick with the just the phrase there's a debate about what it means um and if it means the one thing it does certainly go the Nagle way um it's what Nel thinks of course um but others have

1:21:37 read that phrase in different ways uh Rosenthal for example um but others and so I try to S say like that's something that's not fixed that's in play as well um chers of course uses what it's like to sort of say why you can't be a weak Limited if you're going to get rid of any of this stuff it's for to do any work it's got to be what it's like and then there's no what it's like so you're a global you know you're full-blown Keith Frankish see his channel um not right now um uh see what Keith says and Keith agrees of course um and I want to say no

1:22:11 no no no what it's like is a normal phrase yeah like there's songs about it you know and you don't know what it's like to love somebody you know and so it's a normal phrase and so it doesn't carry with it this baggage either way we put that baggage in when we in philosophy take it into the philosophical realm and use it to define a rather contentious subject right um and and so we're we're putting in extra stuff which is normal it's fine I'm not saying oh you shouldn't but I'm saying we should acknowledge that and then the phrase itself just invoking it alone like Nagel and other places Dave do um

1:22:44 isn't going to kill me it's gonna it's gonna they're gonna have to make Marshall arguments there as well that's the goal that's the coining go yeah okay interesting I mean as far as I remember the Rosenthal move here um it's to deny that there's truly subjective properties and to think of subjectivity as being you know sort of like what was his analogy like your wallet your social security number yeah there's things that you can only know from your point of view um but they're not like in principle unknowable from my point of

1:23:15 view they're just kind of yeah hard for me to find out right and and there there's interesting questions about the essential indexical here right so yeah and how we think about I think there's something that plays a role in us to track US in a way that does not require us to describe ourselves but I don't think that thing is thereby mysterious I kind of follow milikin in this I I think there just some functional thing that does that you need that but it doesn't

1:23:48 sort of then leap into this further realm um but that's a big debate too right it's a again we're at this you know as as always happens this is why these debates are fun to have um all the big questions come out right like so you know what what is the self what is self- reference um is it descriptive or not and and Rosen all tends to descriptive Global descriptive I think right so he's Cy about it as he is I know right and so I've asked him that one and he know he he he doesn't he's a descriptivist and he I I once asked him

1:24:24 whether he talked to Lewis about this like Lewis in his famous toay paper and he said yeah you know he tried to kind of play the line on Lewis and Lewis was open but didn't think it was going to work you know for various reasons and but also because Lewis thought he had his thing worked fine or it wasn't um I guess I'm sympathetic with sort of I don't know I I I'm okay with there being some kind of self- reference that's not descriptive but so long as it's not mysterious and so there I kind of think

1:24:57 Ruth was trying to get at that in her myth of the essential indexical paper exactly but I don't have a I don't have a great story to tell I mean it'll be one of the one of those things that won't so long as it's not doesn't cause exceptional worries I'm good with it okay I mean for what it's worth I wish people would discuss the Neo Point more because I do find that the kind of zombies and marry stuff discussion is you know not as serious in some sense it's easier to diffuse but I think that the real core of the issue is about

1:25:30 subjectivity so anyway that's my two s and I I think that the it's funny because the Nagle paper that was it's probably what happened in the field it's probably what Dave did um that it got kind of assimilated to the it's just the knowledge argument is the way it's they just list you know Jackson Nagel blah blah blah um and I think you're right that part of the richness of that paper there's several places one is the kind of Vian stuff and the sort of self stuff uh the subjective objective which is very deep and then also the kind of imagination stuff again which is great and it's just and people have we're not

1:26:03 alone in thinking like people have made made a lot of you know done a lot of stuff with those things but it is it is too bad and and I taught I used to teach the the Nagle paper to undergrads and I found the problem was only that they couldn't follow it where Jackson man just it takes five seconds and they all get it yeah and that is a virtue of Jackson but it's also of course one of the the if you miss all the richness of me exactly um okay so I I I want to as speaking of Jackson um some of the things that you said in passing when you tried to illicitly connect these two um

1:26:38 caught my attention because you're I it is interesting that you kind of at the end of the book say hey ability hypothesis and I was like wait what the [ __ ] this is not type A materialism type A materialists don't say ability hypothesis so uh I do Wonder like yeah what's up with that why why why not take the full type a route and say no Mary knows she knows fully about it she doesn't need disability [ __ ] none of that crap so I I wonder yeah why why what's going on here so you know I think there's some I think

1:27:13 in I mean in a way I maybe I I like the idea that there's some before and after difference that needs to be explained with Mary um so you're not a then that I mean Dennis is like no she knows right so so but I think Lewis is type A too so again here I'm defending all Lewis all the time um and leis is just saying look type a means something like all all the all the knowing that we we've got it's all boom you know it all just reduces you know the Nagel Jackson kind of story and um whatever else is left is just

1:27:48 it's some other thing let's call it noow but there is some difference now Jackson's I think when he wrote argument he was writing it aimed at David Lewis right because he knew that if he got a nice Common Sense example with enough normal sounding stuff it was really aimed at at Lewis and so Lewis I think is like yeah that's a good point I need to say something about why book learning won't do it the way he puts it yeah and I always thought yeah that's that would would provide more now I gave long time ago it was um in Pasadena California but my father is all he went he got his PhD

1:28:23 at C um and I gave a paper at the assc called a defense of the ability hypothesis which was I was denn loved it actually I remember Den was like so dennet dennet was there and he said that he was also he was great because he attacked someone for me I was like and I ke I kept coming across slides and I was like wait I think this is Dennett oh I think Professor Dennett said he was like he came after me said two things he said um you know I don't really remember that's very nice of you to say I don't really remember writing those things but I think that might be you which is super nice I know they're [ __ ] him the other thing he said was well why not

1:28:58 just think that Mary does know everything like what are you holding on to here kid exactly and I was like um also Alvin no way hugged me after that talk because he thought I had given an an activist talk very strange creepy that a great conference by the way I remember that okay it was a great conference um and uh the same time the McDonald's people were there and got both of those yeah yeah right that was great yeah that was awesome and uh anyway so I guess

1:29:30 looking there's something that Mary can't I mean she can't do um I think that's right and then she can do it later now to the extent that we can really imagine Mary I mean in a way Dennis right like there's also just a bluff in that first premise she knows all of so right so you know I get his line I think his line is is is strong but there's some difference in ways of picking up information and maybe you can't just get one of those from a book and so I think that's that fits with my line um it may

1:30:06 have nothing to do with knowledge and so in that case just don't don't worry and you're right it doesn't have to be the ability hypothesis at that point it's just oh there's just something she she can't do but that sounds like well an ability right so and what she can't do is somehow access in the normal way these compressed representations and so I felt like that works also I have to admit and here where I feel like there's something right in the phenomenal Concepts line that there's two kinds of Concepts in some sense they're not untranslatable so I want to resist that

1:30:39 that's what makes me made type aish right um but there's two kind there sort of the compressed and the uncompressed which kind of looks like the phenomenal in the the book one or something and so I kind of feel like I'm not that far from a kind of version of that though it will be in the end something Mary won't learn anything she will learn nothing new but of course that's what the phenomenal bset people say too so it's maybe it's an a kind of phenomenal concept it's like a descriptivist hidden crypto descriptivist phenomenal concept it's descriptive ultimately the content is

1:31:13 fully it's not some special direct referencing thing but it's hidden it's opaque the way chmer calls it the mode of presentation is opaque but when you un Opa ay when you make it clear it it uh that's what happens in philosophy unop ay ni try it's terrible I tell my students don't if you hear me saying that just like punch me um so when you make it clear uh there may be nothing you know directly referential in there just it's all description um but you know

1:31:48 so then Mary could do that right so then maybe it starts looking like the other way but I'm kind of I feel like I'm on a line a little bit you know and I thought that was kind of interesting but I I I think you know ultimately I think bennet's right and I'm just kind of D it tarted up you know that's always been my like warmed or as Roos warmed over warmed over I put some like some parsley on there like parsley came out of the microwave but there like I put some fresh parsley on this denet and it's parsley on the den oh god um okay but

1:32:23 hold on so I think that there's to to I mean I'm always in these debates about Mary um and especially because of what I heard you say a minute ago sounded like a lot of like Patricia Church's lying um that uh you know a theory of pregnancy doesn't make you pregnant um yeah and I don't really think that's the right way to interpret the knowledge argument because the the the the other side is not saying that by knowing all this stuff you should thereby have the experience what they say is that you should know what it's like you should be

1:32:56 able to know on the basis now maybe there's a hidden premise somewhere in your mind which is that the only way to know what it's like is by having the experience but but these guys are say that's the hidden PR yeah so that is the but they're denying that that so what they're saying is look you should I don't need to have the experience uh of of you know seeing the room from the corner uh from the upper ceiling in order for me to see a complete physical description of it and be like yeah that's what it would be like um from up there so it's not that I have the experience it's just that I can

1:33:30 I can know on the basis of the complete physical description what the thing is and if what it is is like having something that it's like then you should be able to tell that from the description and that's in a in a way not putting you into the experience but just allowing you to have some knowledge and it seems like that's where the real debate is like okay what does it mean to know what it like and you have to take a very strong empiricist sort of stance on that it seems um to make work so I think once you accept something like my a priority conceptual

1:34:07 analysis of what it's like and you know what sensory qualities are then you do indeed know what it's like um and then you say but no I don't and and and I say well yeah you do and then you the person who disagrees is going to say but and what they're going to say I think is going to be something about probably imagining or conceiving you know or I don't I can't picture that or something and I'll say oh right you you don't get that those things from

1:34:43 from knowing what it's like you only get those when you can apply compressed representations automatically to yourself and so yeah so think I think all that probably puts me right into Den it but you know um which is fine um you know and so because all the ability is doing there is blocking this kind of next move right and so in that sense yeah I think and that I think that's fine and but I've got to Define what it's like and knowing what it's

1:35:15 like in a way such that you know you do know what it's like in the room I think that's right and I think I Do by doing the stuff I you know compressed Automation and quality space does know what it's like according to you so in that sense she does yeah now question is there another sense of knowing what it's like then LS yes knowing H or no that's all of it damn it but still if Dennis right there still might be some further thing to say about why you feel that doesn't work right the sort of lingering and then I I can play my card either place okay um for for kind of historic

1:35:50 reasons I went with the denn I mean with the Lewis and I think I did that partly because I read it I like I really like that paper by Lewis I think it's another one of the underappreciated papers not because of the ability part but because of the other stuff he doesn't do yeah um he's got this whole laying out of the problem which I think because he takes very seriously the Jackson thing and he's trying very hard to say what is this stuff I'm missing like oh and he really does and he also points out that if you make this stuff weird enough I'll be missing it but then you've made it really weird yeah exactly and weird is weird is not impossible it's just weird and I think that's of nice way to kind

1:36:24 of say the quinian you know definitional Point like it's just you're breaking up hold on we got to wait again a second uh right when you get to the good stuff the computer is say no not yet yeah I don't know why you I'm sure you'll be back in a second since you have every other time um okay so that oh there you go I hear you now yeah okay it's weird no uh some people

1:36:59 like weird stuff you know Eric's book depending that's right I'm I'm into weird stuff but but so weirdness isn't inconceivable weirdness is just weird and what you curiouser and curiouser as L says in that paper and so to get but doesn't so Mary in her room before she gets out on your view she knows all the stuff about compression I assume she knows that because that's part of your I mean you built we haven't even got to that stuff but you know you give an argument that this is kind of how brains have to work they're gonna melt down

1:37:32 otherwise they'll blow up it's like you know very bad um so she's gonna in your mind in your picture Mary knows all this stuff she knows all the stuff about like the quality space stuff which I'm skeptical of but that's a different story um she knows about that stuff she knows about the compression stuff um so she she knows in one sense what it's like to see red she's still going to learn something when she comes out of her room right which is that this is what it's like for her to see red or do you say so that's one thing I've always but she she learns how to identify Stuff

1:38:07 how to imagine things but she doesn't learn what it's like for her so is that what you so she she knows that when she sees red she will be in a state with quality is more like purple then it is like green she knows the whole structure and and all of the internet related connections fire trucks are red she knows all this stuff um and she'll be in a state like that and it will seem Indescribable seem Indescribable it'll

1:38:39 seem simple and it will seem continually connected um and she'll know it directly she knows all that stuff is what happens when she sees red and now she's seeing red and she's like oh yeah just like what I thought and that's the denit way of thinking so how is it just like what she thought because I mean it seems to me there still I am indeed in a state more like more like less you know with this kind of relational structure that nonetheless doesn't seem to be relational it seems intrinsic and I know why it seems intrinsic because of the processes going on inside me yeah uh

1:39:13 when I access it in this way but the redness of the red that so she know all that stuff I agree with you I'll grant you that um but isn't there still room for her to be surprised in this sense that she looks at the red she's like oh it's different than I would have thought like I didn't know it' be like that I knew it'd be closer to green or not farther away from Green than closer to Pink but like like that that's what it means to be closer to Red closer to Pink than it is to green isn't there still room for that kind of surprise in which case you get the same sort

1:39:46 of picture all over again or do you have to rule that out so I think that's a good question I think and here you can kind of this is again AET card um Mary is not like us as oh Kendrick Lamar not like us as Kendrick Lamar not like us exactly um and so my son trans um so she's not surprised but of course we're going to be surprised

1:40:18 and any anything remotely in our B ballpark our normal way of doing these things yeah we're going to be surprised um but so that's one way to go another thing is to say well I don't know she's she might be surprised at in a sense because she couldn't imagine it before um and it doesn't match with her failed imaginings but all she nonetheless what

1:40:52 it is is this phys IAL stuff and the ability she lacked with the ability to imagine it and so there maybe the Lewis thing is a little bit better but doesn't zombie sneak back in the conceivability of them because I'm not sure yeah so I I think I have to deny that she's surprised but um I feel like you know so if you can so my thinking kind of going into the ability stuff was maybe if you can enrich the ability stuff enough without Crossing some magical line can you can kind of play that card I just played and it will

1:41:25 do work and I'm not sure that it does now Lewis is very explicit that it it doesn't do that he just says he got this from Gilbert riy who he likes like it's just it's just riy like Riley's good and we all think no ry's bad he's a behaviorist you and so yeah we need to put more in there um and later Lewis puts more in maybe should have materialist believe in qualia he also in in the in the Mad pain Martian P has this kind of thing which is very similar to he's got like the two kinds of representations that that don't line

1:41:58 up and there I'm not sure how it Maps exactly to his own view um but I feel like whatever is going on so so long as there's nothing exceptional floating around right and and I agree like this is always the this is I will so whatever you NE we both you know shouted out to there but the beauty of the Jackson both for good or ill is the way it it it it it puts you every time you try to make it work it pops back up yeah clever [ __ ] like you know exactly he thought at

1:42:34 lunch yeah nope yeah that'll work and um and so I I really like the paper where he he gives it he gives it up um uh mind and illusion is the name paper um and he tries to say sort of the rich he talked about richness at that point the richness of the representations and then at the end he says so therefore the ability hypothesis is right but it took a detour through this kind of Rich representationalism to to see it that's all I got okay because I mean I'm trying to say

1:43:08 something like this like the richness of the representation somehow shows you something about why the separation seem so plausible but in the end of the day we don't have to accept that separ separation because it's not warranted by the by the data or something like that so that that's the illusion thing is in there and I'm working on a thing I gave a version a real preliminary kind of sketch I gave a paper called like uh disillusion Mary um I always start with titles I had no idea what the paper dish illusion Mary and I gave it at the maybe

1:43:41 the spp last year and and I was trying trying to work through some of these ideas like how does illusion interact with this I mean if we're just physical so what do we do with Mar and it's yeah you can just say the D thing but it's sort of interesting um why is Mary even plausible why does Mary even get off the ground it's sort of interesting question why is why are we worried about Mary then at all I mean my view about Mary is that i' like it that it stems from concept empiricism and that in the room she doesn't have the phenomenal Concepts so once she goes out and sees red she

1:44:14 acquires the concept and then she'd be able to do the op prior deductions but but you need the concepts first so I've always I've always you know taken seriously that would learn something she would learn what it's like but that's acquiring a concept um and then after that the op prior stuff she could do uh like deducing that oh yeah you know some people deny that like the Martina Neo Rin stuff that I don't find very plausible do do her Concepts I mean why can't you the why can't you learn the concepts intering

1:44:45 question and then what her what are the reference of her Concepts and and so it's I take yeah we have two things it's a phenomenal concept we have two kinds of concept pointing at the same reference exactly um why can't you figure that out or I mean so you know I I I'm sympathetic I think my view would give in one way to read my view is to say it's a it's a story about phenomenal Concepts um and I have some sketchy little things I'm doing at the end there I'm like I say something like this would be a question about concept acquisition

1:45:19 and concept individuation right and this is a big problem like you know which it is it's sort of you know it's hard to know but I think I mean I think that's that's that's the way to go and it's like um and and so it's again so long as it it's not exceptional which I take it you know you're on the right side of the fence here um even if you're if if you know you're more netsh um well I mean I guess no I'm not because I think that uh they're exceptional in that sense but they're physical still so I I yeah so right so

1:45:53 so what makes them exceptional there is that they can't be explained in any further way they just sort of they just are identical yeah because of the negative a lot of this but I mean on the other side of the fence I am so I split My Views between the kind of you know Mary could do the deductions there's nothing exceptional uh or maybe it's still exceptional but it you know it's only seemings exceptional lack knowledge and then the other views I know they're really exceptional but they're still phys so yeah I mean and again there's a deeper question which I haven't picked

1:46:30 up which is where chers puts in type Q in his paper in the um mind in the physical world or whatever it's called um it's like if Quin may break down that distinction and and I said as much Pete and I have a paper called type Q materialism which that's one of the the bits but I've never been I've never sort of followed up and figured out what that really means in in this context it's sort of okay what does that do to your Concepts and and that's of course the real question um and I don't know the answer it's a it's a good project yeah

1:47:05 yeah it is um you should get a graduate student to do that uh but people are saying in the chat that they like the type Q materialism I myself am skeptical of it but uh anyway so that's interesting I I do Wonder so since we're talking about this we haven't really I mean got to the um debunking argument stuff uh but but so I first want to ask you about illusionism and then I want to ask about the debunk stuff and then I have something about Discworld properties but you know I know so if you ever have to go let me know otherwise I

1:47:39 will keep you here forever and much Mary's room will let you indeterminate Point okay good um okay so I I'm curious about the debunking strategy generally speaking which you spend a lot of time on um in the book and so I don't want to forget about that but I also want to make sure to point out that you don't think of yourself as a strong Illusionist and that you're adopting what you call a weak illusionism so I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about why aren't you a strong Illusionist like your view seems like someone could have your view and be a strong Illusionist so why do you resist

1:48:14 it right and I I think I mean so the the the short and like sad answer oops sorry I'm about to answer the question question and my internet doesn't want me to um I'm back okay so um the short answer is is rhetoric um it it just sounds better you get to avoid a certain kind of simple s smearing like you know gayen straon won't call you a woo gayen galen's biggest woo woo right and you know the kind of and and Dave has a short in the one of The Illusionist

1:48:47 response papers a short argument that like pain exists okay in that tone of voice exactly and and but you know and so okay so I can avoid that which I think why is but rhetoric matters in that the idea is hopefully that if I can avoid that simple thing at least they have to say why they have to say a bit more you make the other side say more which is actually important for the debate like so if they just could say oh you're an idiot no there's pains uhuh and and then you stop talking that wouldn't be so great right you'd like to

1:49:19 have at least in the philosophy realm not so much the science realm Maybe see hawan La but you know um you know we're philosophers so you know we want to talk about this stuff and if if you if if my view is a little bit richer so like one of the people who read read the book again for because he agreed to do a review of a certain kind um is Toren alter and Toren very much you know disagrees with it um and but he was he thought it was it was thoughtful and he wanted to respond in and so that that's kind of the Target right in a way of keeping it there but the deeper issue is

1:49:53 I just think um I don't think I'm eliminating Consciousness I think that the best theory says that kind of quite like everyone would say quite obviously we're conscious and what we want is an explanation of how physical systems could be conscious and I'm trying to give that and in doing so I think I do have to jettison some maybe some intuitive ideas about Consciousness and so I think that's maybe what weak illusionism amounts to um but like Amy K said to me when I gave

1:50:27 some version of this long ago she's like aren't you just explaining conscious like what what do you mean illusion for in a way I think it is a fine line um and I think for some people they would just say yeah it's just a reductive story about Consciousness totally cool um No Illusion needed um whereas I think in a way it's also partly to engage I like the idea this is the maybe back to the rhetoric point a bit but of engaging with the people like Joe LaVine especially is one of my favorites to talk to about this is you want oh you cut

1:51:07 out you you've cut out sing a little diddy no Diddy no Diddy let's not no more um that's right um doesn't yeah Eminem has a song about that but anyways um again my sons so um to I want to accept as much as possible the data as the other side sees it and because I think I can explain the

1:51:45 data right and I don't want to rule out their data sort of from the get-go and so I think weak illusionism I think is a but of course Frankish might say I do that too I just end up in a different place and and that that might be right um but I think you know there's something to trying to kind of hold on to some of these things or allow them into the door into the room in a way that anyways keeps the debate slowing so it's not that deep especially given that I'm a whin in yeah exactly so you don't think of yourself as a

1:52:19 phenomenal realist so I do okay you do but that's because I I've already this is and maybe sellers is the right person to look at here what sellers does he takes an a term and he redefines it and then proves that he's got it and so maybe I'm doing that um but I think it's a legitimate thing to do the the redefinition or the regimentation of the concept you know is is totally nor normal and and I'm normal what are you doing you know you're the you're the crazy philosopher here I'm just a normal guy and and then once you properly thisen what of course what

1:52:53 Rosen is are master of you know you lay it out in this precise way and then everything fits um and so I don't know um well but so one of the things about the sellers and Rosenthal also is the idea that these are theoretical posits uh you know and so you kind of seem to walk a line where you say yeah but the thing we're theorizing about is real but these are theoretical posits right um and so I wonder like there does to be a bit of attention there because I often read the

1:53:24 theoretical posit line is saying well we don't know if that thing is real or not but this is our best explanation of like what people do and um so forth and so on so yeah I mean so this this is very much go ahead yeah again again the kind of foundational stuff we were talking about at the beginning and and um I think the positive of a of our best theory are real and I also think but what does that mean when real what you mean good expl it's the best explanation so I think our

1:53:57 let's just start a little further back I think our best theory says that there are tables and that best explains why when I turn turn back the table still here it's a better Theory than Barkley and that's that's how you beat Barkley and and then you just work outward from that and you know and everything is like that so so are you denying the myth of the given like so I like is there a given or is there I think there's no given um but what you know I don't think there's given but um and I

1:54:30 agree I'm now on there's a there's a knife's edge here Dennett lives on this lived on this Edge between realism and and and anti-realism right here this is sort of the the spot where you know it's it's hard you know you can quickly follow you the way here and I think if you fall toward the realist side you tend to get in more trouble but then you're a little bit more properly engaged and if you follow the other way you're probably gonna win but you're not gonna have any friends you know and so that's why you stay on the knives Edge

1:55:03 and and now but then you dig deeper and you say wait what is this nice Edge exactly and it might be that what this nice Edge turns on is the analytic synthetic distinction or something like that and so there it's just not clear that anyone has a you know has a sharper line than I do um or something like that but that's again a big quinian realism science metaphysics thing right um but you know I think it matters here um now in the grander scheme all my friends and I will agree

1:55:38 like the chers is wrong you know and then we'll disagree we'll fight about these these lines from our own perspectives using more local rules um and so me and you or me and Pete right uh will disagree about these things but we'll all agree that no qualia in the bad sense um and people say there's no qualia and I'll say well there's qualities SES fre qualities and you'll say you know something more representational whatever you say and so and that's and then the rules for that fight will be kind of we we'll have more common ground to fight about um and so now you're asking me a question about

1:56:11 like of me me versus Frankish um we're pretty much the same that full you know full disclosure there nothing Keith and I would sort of disagree about um in the grand scheme except for what to call things and I think it and that is pretty thinned right and and so I want to call myself a phenomenal realist but there's no qual yet and Keith is like well that means you're not a phenomenal realist um and you can sort of see why that's less of an interesting debate than why we both disagree with

1:56:44 chers um but yeah so yeah I think and there's a you both disagree with Chas for the same reason a large part of the illusionism stuff is is like oh it's exceptional yeah it doesn't f with science so so what's what's interesting too is um and again this is I don't know why I I was talking about this in the context of for some reason of Turing like what machines know and do they already know everything they know and like and he and he says well maybe the things we think are so novel and creative that we come up with are just the result of well planted seeds that

1:57:17 someone taught us and rosenal like he started out really writing about why Ry is wrong about eliminativism yeah why and and I think that stuff stuck pretty deeply with me um and you know but I I before I went to grad school I read denn it and so I think I'm I'm less sure about this stuff than David is about what's real and what real means so um you know I don't have a great line there

1:57:51 and and I especially once I really put Quin on the table I have very few ways to make the distinction that I want that that that distinction at all yeah um you know and you know guilty is charged um so long as you know science wins or whatever naturalism that I like wins or something so is denn an intentional realist on your way of thinking then you know um I think yeah you have to sort of take real patterns you have to kind of go with you have to D has a lot of stuff in him that you can make him more realist looking

1:58:23 yeah and you you amp up that or like in the kind of it's like 2015 in that online thing D it has a nice paper where he's like people say that I'm a crazier realist and and you're like damn you said that like in 50 Publications what the I am not denying that and and so he's he can he does at times play that other card um and so one can site it's sort of like an inconsistent Corpus like you know I know that he changed but you know so I think the real patterns part of denet and the sort of realist part also the realist part of the parts of

1:58:55 sellers where he's a phen you know he's a scientific realist and the places in Quin before he really goes for the full underdetermination stuff all those are the things I like okay now whether I can have them yeah that's the interesting question you're broken up again gota wait um I mean because while we're stalling I'll just opine that I think part of the real ISM stuff that is sticks with me about dennit is whether you're going to find these states in the brain and I take it that dennit denies

1:59:29 that that's the case in which case I don't really see him as much of a realist if the propositional attitudes don't have some physiological realization um then it seems like you're giving up on something that's important and maybe in your view I'm not sure like what like is there going to be a state of the brain which is the conscious state or are these like things that you just make sense of from the out side so that's a good question I tend there to be more realistic than Bennett um to be sure um that I think there's a kind of way to read back from the intentional

2:00:04 stance is something in the brain um but I think there's something about holism in play here maybe um that Atomic individual individuation of states is actually much messier than people like foder think and so on that so I want to be again kind of in between and interestingly I think Sellers and Ned from conceptual role semantics but kind of really worked out you know it's interesting question how that works and of course foder has

2:00:37 arguments against them um but so but I still want to say ultimately that there there's a way that the brain is the truth maker for these claims okay how much more am I GNA say right you know I but I'm I'm an I'm a holist about mental content and that sort of stuff and so once you say that it becomes very messy um which is you know okay and then okay the real worry for a naturalist like me is have I made it too messy to do Neuroscience that would be bad yeah but

2:01:10 then you might say well these neuroscientists are just cheating you know they think they've got brain this is why they can't agree on things because they don't really have a good notion of these things but I don't really want to weigh into that I don't I don't want to mess with them and so um you know so in that sense I think I I probably want more of a realistic picture um I like the idea then again of computational states and they should be relatively well defined I think the brain can be seen in that way broadly and once you've doing that I think you can get States in

2:01:42 a reasonable sense um and that explains why the intentional stance works and so it it's richer than dennit in that sense I think okay just as a parenthesis I do Wonder like what your because the holism stuff especially about Concepts especially coupled with higher order Theory does seem to have some implications for like whether infants are conscious or not do you have a worked out view on that or is that something you're not I mean so cut

2:02:16 out they're trying to stop you you're still cut out I'll just mention there's going to be a cool conference coming up at NYU on infant Consciousness um can you hear me now yeah yeah Claudia that looks great yeah it looks cool um so I think that there's um a decent sense in which there's some initial minimal Concepts that infants can have um so you're not a hopel

2:02:48 list yeah I mean well their holistic space is very small and then it expands a holis of I I don't think it's going to be just one and so so there's interesting question about what the minimal amount needed to be aware of anything probably they and here back to the essential indexical thing they need some kind of selfie type thing some something like that now that might be a Nate or very yeah so yikes and then all my imp credentials go

2:03:21 out the go out the window yeah um or or maybe they're not really all that aware until they begin to distinguish themselves and others in some minimal sense but still one that requires an interaction with them their mom and dad or whatever and and where they they begin to sort of recognize that somehow at some level and I imagine it's quite natural that these things would be there that they have to be triggered in the right way to sort of turn on when they engage others and that that initi stuff all happens maybe initially

2:03:53 non-consciously there's some kind of and then it bootstraps in but I don't have a great line I mean kind ofm that's not inferential role based so these infants aren't doing con like inferences one assumes yeah um so it might so again I guess maybe I don't know if I want to bite the bullet you know there's a question can they be conscious at all um what do you need for that and then what can they be conscious of and um initially it won't be very

2:04:27 much but it might be there's some minimal amount of holistic connection that you have to make before you can even get off the ground in the first place it's not just me but it's sort of me and you and me and you disagree you know kind of there might be some kind of appearance reality kind of thing that's not what I thought was going to happen there's some kind of expectation that's violated where then you begin this modeling of me and the world and boom then the lights turn on now this is driven by my theory right I

2:04:59 already think High to thought it's just trying to fit it in there the holism question is interesting there I hadn't thought of it quite like that um that that would also be a limit on on what on how soon babies can get off the ground yeah so that's a good question um I mean I've been in classes with rosenal where he says they don't start doing this until like you know after for maybe eight months nine months close to a year yeah right and he seems very confident about that one as he does um you know I again this is like the way to to to to

2:05:34 not say anything it's an empirical question where I'm not really sure that that's said at all help because without a theory there's no way the data is going to tell us anything here especially like you know people have theories and then they look at babies and think if it fits their Theory because what else you going to do um and so if we have good reason in adults to think h of thought is right then it's a burden on us the H of thought folk to S then extend it backwards and see where it goes so this is heav approach in Birch's terminology say again this is like a

2:06:08 theory heavy approach in virches terminology yeah um I think that I don't see quite how to handle baby data I mean I kind of think this about everything as a quinan but it's especially bad here you know because babies it's hard to it's hard to figure out what's going on and especially if you require as it were something like reporting data like you're not gonna get go they suck on the pacifier more like it's what the [ __ ] does that mean it's like and they and people have whole theories about built on that stuff right like oh therefore Quin is wrong or you know qu is you know

2:06:41 some of the best scientists in this field you know Su KY and Liz spy who are top of the line yeah they they they know the problem um but think you know from the perspective of these theories of Consciousness and especially as philosophers it's going to be Theory heavy um the main thing I do think if we had some independent data I mean there are ways to be falsified here by you know you know if we have good reason to think that there are no Concepts there but they're conscious it [ __ ] the high at least it [ __ ] especially David's

2:07:14 canonical vision of it yeah um so also I kind of I'm willing to kind of go a bit more minimalist and this is don't don't tell David um if he's watching um so this is exactly he takes in his book it's so higher order so what is a thought for David exactly yeah it's a theoretical posit right and so but so that you might then play around with it enough to to to make it thin enough to to to work there then it might and this is why I remember I

2:07:48 once saw Bill L and go up to David and we disagree about we agree about everything David why are you why are you yelling at me and David was like well no but because you're wrong you know um it looks a little bit more like hir perception you know you um at least at that initial level that would that would at least maybe help with this problem yeah depending on what you think is required for perception of course and you know but you well because Ned's argument in his new book is exactly that infants seem to be able to use Concepts about shape and kind but not about color um but so maybe you know that that might

2:08:22 be suggest something or an answer so I have I have a response to that hopefully we'll see if it what yeah Ned's yeah Ned Ned loves that stuff and uh yeah and again that's one of the places where Ned the part the part of Ned where he piles all the studies on you exactly there's 70 studies that show you're wrong you're like that's good I love that type of stuff and but also you look and there's not 70 studies there's one study that 70 people have cited and Ned read it wrong I don't know and then you write a paper it's great I love there that's exactly how how it goes there's at least more

2:08:55 than two um but but so we are getting running on time because I have to be done by the time the kids get home from school but so I want to make sure to get to this question about the debunking arguments generally speaking um I do think you kind of outed yourself as an Illusionist in a sense a strong one um I have a death first sort of attitude towards strong illusionism uh but I think everyone's got to accept weak illusionism so I think it's kind of interesting even chers is the weak Illusionist by the way yeah so uh I think it's interesting where the line is but anyway so about the debunking

2:09:27 strategy generally the way it proceeds is so there's a thing we want to give an explanation of it that doesn't mention the thing so then you don't you undermine belief in the thing generally speaking so that's how I paraphrase it I wonder if that's too strong because it sort of seems like you debunked everything like because you can't you do the same thing about water like you know there's an explation of water it doesn't mention it um it mentions H2O but not water so does that mean I don't have any reason to believe that there's water now so I just wonder

2:09:59 like where do we draw the line in this debunk strategy and especially in terms of the explanation that doesn't mention it because ultimately if you're reductionist all the explanations aren't going to mention the reduced things so then what we I don't have so I don't believe chairs anymore like we're back to that yeah I and again I think you're right I think these are were sides of the same coin of the eliminativism reductionism debate um but I mean so and Keith has this Frank has this line like look you learn that um you can you know how might stuff

2:10:36 happen to the world you don't then call that God you think therefore there's no God that's why you should be Global you know strong Illusionist and and I think and again I'm not sure there's anything strong here but it's look so let's say we we we we are looking for meaning in our lives yes and we learn that there's no supernatural being does that mean that our lives have no meaning now for some people of course the answer is yes oh my God this is the end of meaning I think no as a as a humanist

2:11:10 like my mother um I think no meaning is what we do here of course there's meaning and it's meaningful that you and I are here talking and having this cool time and this is what life's about um and let you think something special about meaning you know so and so you can debunk sort of some of it without killing it um now I don't know I mean I went with the like I mean think that the debunking thing was kind of trendy when I wrote it and which is a little embarrassing to

2:11:42 say like there was a lot of stuff about debunking in in moral you know meta ethics and all these other places uh which was cool stu um Sharon Street right and others um and and so I was reading and talking to some of my colleagues about that um Dave colle Dave Phillips who writes on that stuff and Justin coat and I like oh that's kind of reminded me rung Bells with me as often people see sort of flossy of Mind sort of especially sort of in it metaphysics and meta ethics often seem to run in as you would know in parallels um and um so I kind of think started thinking about

2:12:16 debunking and so the this Intuition or strong belief that there's something inexplicable here um and you know people have that in other places like you know they see uh you know something in the night sky that might be a drone or whatever and it's a UFO and and you tell them no it's not it's just a you know it's just a drone and and when you've told them that why do that work um because UFOs are much weirder

2:12:52 there sort of a burden thing that I like there of like if if I give you a normal explanation that somehow kind of wins You've Got to Now say no no no here's why the normal thing doesn't work and I wanted to find that parallel that's the optimism like find the parallel where I make them have to defend their weirdness as opposed to merely me trying to get rid of the obvious right you know um and so they're the ones saying you know UFO lock Nest monster I'm the one saying you know drone and you know just some Ripples and

2:13:24 a bad badly redone photograph and so that was the initial thinking and then of course there's this whole Rich literature on debunking because of Sharon Street these other people and in a number of philosophy cognitive science of religion philosophy of religion and so I got sort of interested in that um and my colleague Luis Olivera who's a actual epistemologist I just pretend to be an epistemologist um was like oh you should check out like holl and these people on undercutting this is kind of nice um way to map it and and so I just sort of found that sort of a nice way to

2:13:57 think about it that somehow that I could undermine their evidence and then zombies don't get off the ground undercut their evidence and what is their evidence well it's how things seem to you in experience so now again one can simply it's fact clear how different in fact David Rose this to me it's like why is that debunking and not just exactly what you said why didn't you just explaining and I was like H yeah I mean so again it just it was you know you know this a pro tip to all

2:14:35 you young philosophers out there and academics often you do the thing that's sexy because then you get published um by the time I wrote this book though went would rejected and review turn of was no longer sexy unsexy um but you know I still you know whatever um I still think it's kind of cool there's something about that but whether there's a real strong distinction between explaining and explaining away again I don't you're right and and I'm not sure how to draw a stronger line um unless one has already fully got the

2:15:11 kind of framework Story down like oh these are the this is normal and this is abnormal and somehow there's are really abnormal ones that you can then it's slightly different so do you explain the loch nest monster or do you explain it away I mean know so I think it's more like the lock Nest monster and less like you know the things that are just explained but um again it's not it's not a deep Point um though again and then again here's I don't it's sexy but if Dave's doing it it's got to be sexy um Dave chmer uh lays out a debunking argument in um in

2:15:43 the responses to the or The Illusionist uh big you know multi-issue thing that he did um where he's like you know you can generate this kind of debunking argument and so I was very happy to see that because then I could just steal his thing um which was great and and so but I was already sort of you know down that road and and I thought you know um but it's an interesting question I think you're right also about um partial debunking and debunking bits of things and not all of them and when

2:16:16 do you when do you when do you eliminate and when do you just still call the thing the thing which again is the the God and the meaning and and and you know denn but Den has this thing about real magic you know it's a similar Den has lines which very much inspired Frankish like once we show what that there's no magic but notice I just said no magic but any say no no that is Magic those guys are magicians exactly real magic is fake magic right and like so yeah and and and what again you get this very interesting question about realism yeah um you know which is again I think one

2:16:49 of the big things I think as philosophers especially naturalists scientifically minded philosophers like ourselves it's interesting to see how those sort of big metaphysical and issues play could bounce off of the science and and also allow you to understand the science which of course is deeper and and and I think those are the big questions yeah so okay interesting um that somewhat surprising but all right so about this specific I feel like I let you down well damn it Josh I'm out of here oh God I blew it

2:17:24 you were doing so well had one shot man one shot no uh just kidding about the de specific debunking because you mentioned the um qualitative inaccuracy thesis as a way to debunk I guess the Revelation argument or just a general idea that there's something contingent here or I don't know exactly how that all fits together but I was a little bit it did strike me that when I first read your statement of the qualitative inaccuracy fais I thought that maybe your use that it was was kind of weak actually and that the way you wanted to

2:17:56 use it seemed like you needed something stronger you needed to say um sorted to deny Revelation which you do get to later and you do have some things to say about that but but I wonder like what so the qualitative inaccuracy they just that sometimes we could be wrong about our qualitative States well or but it's it's a little stronger in in in parab which is why maybe he's a strong in that part of book it's it's wrong about the qualitative Natures which is this term of metaphysical art you know parom is a master metaphysician

2:18:31 to be sure and I'm not 100% sure what it means right um I took it to mean the sort of underlying nature which of course but qualitative suggests maybe it needs to be phenomenal and so I'm reading it the first way that we're wrong about the underlying hidden nature and if you make it about the phenomenal nature then it looks a liist yeah um and so I actually wrote a response paper that was re I should say all these things like all Insider baseball and

2:19:03 like my grievances you people have let me down I wrote a paper which was rejected on in one in one of those chers volumes um on because I said a bunch of some of the stuff about perom and they were like well this is wrong because peroom is a strong Elm it's you know strong strong Illusions and think I I did ask per this he said he wasn't but of course maybe he is he doesn't know it and also that part of the book he

2:19:35 doesn't even care about right so right that book is is like a schizoph you know it's like it's a multi-personality book it's like here's the part you could be an Illusionist and then there's the part where you can be a pan psychic or whatever a neutral monist and here's the part where you could be a reduction in this very complex and strong sense um which is very interesting part of the book um and I just like that first four chapters I'm like yes yeah you did it and then everyone else like oh the other chap I've read reviews of the book they like just skip the first four chapters that's [ __ ] the other part are awesome and each part everyone sees what they want to see there um so I read him in a distinct way I tend to read that

2:20:12 his analogy with with color post post Galilean sort of stuff sort of once we learn kind of that we're in the Galilean world do we think there're still color or not and he says yes and he talked about of initially we think it refers to this this non-physical thing and now now we think it either refers to some physical thing that's like a punct tapate thing that just will stand in or if we don't think that works because color is a big mess in the world then it's some sort of you know complex sort of spread of whatever we're pointing to at various times but but he he's got this kind of movable concept thing which

2:20:45 I quite liked and and that looks to me like again then I start reading it more in but which again I don't think is what parab would do um it's somehow like we can revise the concept depending when the new information comes in from the science and what we Revis to though is still something we're going to call the thing color unless it's not it's scheller but then we're in this debate about what we call and so I was like let's go realist there I don't think it drops out of parab boom I think I'm I'm interpreting peroom and and I think it was a fair rejection of my paper probably in that

2:21:18 context um that I was sort of I needed to argue for it and to argue for it I would have to say a bunch of Quin [ __ ] which never would have gotten in there so you know I wasn't going to go down that road U plus I only had um so so yeah it's another place where where again the realism anti-realism line is is is sort of coming up or the limit ISM reductionism line is coming up and I want to fall on a certain side of that line when I want to yeah exactly which you know that's and and I want to do that you know

2:21:51 by saying I then I appeal to this very underdetermined thing the best theory says the best theory says there color which sort of what paroom says he's of looking historically and say we talk about red and um and so it's whatever that um now there are color people who don't think that you know and Derk knows um but you know the best theory one we don't know what it is and two probably doesn't tell you that and so I'm I do think I'm I do think and I don't think and this is maybe my sort of Rosen

2:22:24 tholan Lewis kind of thing about the common sense in the regimenting of it like I think it's just it does less mutilation to our web of belief to keep these things in this way to keep the names the way that they are and to fit them in with science at the same time I just think it just does less damage and that is a of theoretical virtue in the sense of what makes a theory a better thing Theory now if you've embraced all that quiny and stuff then then I can make that claim if you don't think that

2:22:56 you're you you'll look for some other other thing there um but I try to defend all that stuff at once I guess I'm a little bit more I should talk to I should asked Derk if Derek if he wants to ever talk to me but I I just I just realized I should do that but anyway um so he i s he T the things I've seen him he he and Tor an altar um have to talked about physicalism and and pantsy and neutralism in a lot of interesting ways so he doesn't seem all that Keen on the the first part of the book yeah at least but still I some some of my students saw him at a conf at a a he gave a talk at

2:23:31 rice and I wasn't around um and some of my students I just taught this stuff like some version of this and they went up in like a CED him and and and he he he was very he was a very nice guy and was like oh and he I don't know if he just said something to make them go away but far like no no no I think you know I think there's there's you know qualitative states there you know there there's experience I don't I'm you know that's what all the illusionists say uh that's right and that's what makes you want to be like well then what do we right I get it the term phenomenal which is a term of art right I you know it's a

2:24:06 term of the theoretical term of Dave's and and Neds they believe in experience it's not phenomenal Consciousness and they're quite right I think to Challen to challenge that um but I think the way to challenge it is the kind of solarian redefine it in the way you want and then say yeah sure we got it and then make the other side say why you're cheated yeah so you're not really I mean because you say in the book that you want to give the other side as much of that what of their side as you can but you're not really doing that you're giving them all their

2:24:40 terminology different so it's it's also I think that's Hegel um that's the part of sellers that's healan like you you you redefine all the terms and then everything follow falls from the dialectic in the right way and um I think that you know that's that's the methodology I'm not sure it's great but I try to be explicit at least about it um that's the kind of you know say hey I am doing this I'm not pretending I'm not but I do think it can be defended in the sense I think you know like with the transitivity principle for example that people do talk this way

2:25:13 normal people they'll say yeah if I'm not aware at all I'm in pain and I'm Pain's not not conscious now they may say things too yeah they do um and that's fine but at least we're not nothing you know and why care about that well because if you come in and just say pain is the firing of pyramidal cells and areas you know people go what does that have to do with pain and so there's something to the initial setting of the data and then this is the thing I don't know the rules of this

2:25:46 game but I learned them implicitly from David is whatever we're doing this kind of this crypto redefinition thing SL of hand and I take it I take it that's the seller's trick whatever that's what Sellers and Quin says oh it's regimentation and he spends all this time regimenting so that really you're not quantifying over something bad exceptional properties and so I'm doing that too um I just try to be explicit about it yeah but also at the same time you're saying I want to give them as much of their view as they can but I it doesn't seem like you're giving them any

2:26:18 of their their View yeah well not at the end of the day um I mean they are going to be wrong um but you know you you want to give them and this is of course also something you know denn claims you can see I've gone nowhere I've gone in a giant Circle back to to conscious Consciousness explained um I read the book I was working at a bookstore before I went into grad school to see if I like if I can read the book like this and still like it like hey I'll go to grad school um and I I really like the book and but he says oh I'm giving them

2:26:51 everything they want this is you know his heterophenomenology I'm giving everything totally giving them they're defining the data and everyone could see the trick like exactly just the way the data appears and oh wait and next thing you know wait what happened to the [ __ ] data Den it's what got me in the philosophy of mine too but for the opposite reason because I was like this [ __ ] [ __ ] needs to pay this [ __ ] is wrong I was like this guy's on it actually I I so I read that book and in there he does consider Rosenthal briefly and I thought hey that seemed pretty good wait what was wrong with that and

2:27:24 it just kind of goes by and then I didn't know that that was David until I for a while until I got into his class and like oh you're that guy okay and and it turned out of course he had you know knew D it at that point and um and so I've always been kind of like Den you want to you want to again tart up you want to add as much to denn as you can to make it work without crossing the line which we've agreed I have not drawn very clearly but you know the line the exceptional un exceptional line and so I

2:27:58 do think you know adding these things to den is good because not that it means D was wrong but it's just a better way of presenting the den or something like that and then once you learn that about me that might be like oh now I get why I you know why I don't agree with you so it's like you want to just go back to that and like I kind of do um but I think you can you can enrich it enough where and this is where you know once I've enriched it enriched enough have I just left the dennet behind maybe I mean dennet himself said that to me right he said I think those were your ideas no I think they were yours I was like there's no way I thought of this D like I

2:28:32 remember writing it someone wrote it and you know in that in that paper that Rosenthal wrote um for the denet Fest dri or whatever yeah um where I he says look you know I'm basically Dena you just need to add some more of your heterophenomenology which is data about the contivity which sort of sounds like what you're saying I mean and what Rosell told me is is that he convinced Dan to write that chapter uh they were at be beeld and uh you know and he read a draft of conscious explaining he said you've got

2:29:05 this little bit here you need to make this and that of course is very much the kind of sellers stage setting part the method part um and I think that that was that's a cool addition again I think you're right it's not like it it gives the other anything that they want right but it it gives us for rosenal was R gives that that extra step in it keeps D it grounded a little bit more in the folk element and which I think again is a nice thing yeah I mean I guess that's where I would disagree I think most heavily with the with the sort of standard Traditional High order approach

2:29:38 generally like I'm not really a big fan of the transitivity principle um I think of it as an empirical claim whereas I think you guys tend to think of it as something more than an empirical claim um whereas I I think you need some evidence for it no that goes beyond what the folks say or don't say you want some some some Neuroscience psychology that sort of backs it up um it's not really clear that you do get that uh but but for you like I know in your dissertation which I read a million years ago you're like this is what you got to do first like to even get off the ground um you

2:30:12 got to decide what the data is that the theory is trying to explain and I think youve smuggled in everything in in doing that I mean I think you probably agree in my defense I think everyone does that right so that's the claim like everyone this is the everyone is smuggling in the stuff and I smuggle in my thing you smuggle in yours and we fight um and and so and that is the kind of theory ladness of the data claim um thing um again and that somehow you got to bring in something to see the

2:30:45 data and so you're smuggling or not you're bringing something to the table um and so where do you get those is there a neutral place to pick up those things and then of course the Lewis kind of some of sellers claim is sort of oh look at the folk and you know Jones and the myth of Jones or look at something folky and and kind of start there um it's a theory but it's somehow not a bad it sort of somehow has standing and now I don't think and this is where Ned of course this is exactly where Ned would like what the [ __ ] this

2:31:17 is exactly the wrong oh my God and he started screaming at me and I was like like wait a minute [ __ ] you no [ __ ] you what happened and and so um you know I'm not you know you know so there's there's something again there something deep about this kind of I guess epistemology quinan epistemology that somehow to even get data you've already got to be doing something else and and then the something else what is that I do think though there sort of the way that there's empirical evidence in this is

2:31:50 again the same kind of idea it's something like reflective equilibrium again it's sort of like it it was fruitful to do that for science it was useful it turned out to be a good principle science then moves forward be because that's what justifies the principle not that I found it sort of dropping out of the Neuroscience directly it's sort of a way to think about the science that then allows the science to do other things and now I'm not claiming we've done that but like that would be that would be the way to do and that wouldn't be not evidence that that would be the sort of second or roundabout but empirical evidence ultimately yeah interesting okay um

2:32:24 there's a lot I want to say about that but we we only got a few minutes left because of my deadline uh with the kids um but so I I I I guess sort of the final thing I was gonna I well there's so many things I want but one thing I want to make sure to get to is about so it seems like maybe this is your holism your descriptivism but it seems like you're just against any kind of uh fundamental property so I wonder like the same arguments you give against dis properties are they going to work

2:32:58 against quiddities against intrinsic Natures for physical properties like all of that stuff is gonna fall to this right so that's that's a good and I I do yeah talk a little bit about that I think that's a very good question on the on it's this is one of these things I I bounce back and forth on um that sometimes I just think something like a strong pragmatist line like you get far enough out there those things don't do anything and so it's not that you say they don't exist for they just don't do any work like the quiddities and the intrinsics they they

2:33:32 just don't do anything once they get in here they do you get through the doings and and then you can get at things and so then my debunk would go all the way out there maybe but in a differ I I I say in the book that look sticking with my kind of uh science picture you might think what you need is something that explains causal properties that you need something fundamental there the thing that does the causing but once you've got that then you can build everything else

2:34:06 causal intrinsics you call them yeah and so I sort of a restrictive kind of I don't even think I mean this is actually again a place where Rosenthal you know said to me like why do you think you need any what what what does that even mean like he gave me a kind of very strong kind of you know skeptical line about that and I I didn't have much you know again I have much to say because what does one say about those things that's kind of the pragst you know Gambit there make you explain the unexplainable go oh we win um and and so but but you know there

2:34:41 is something that that does the causing um also one of my colleagues um what I met my colleague now retired named Greg around Big Life nit him and he he he for a while he didn't talk to me like God this guy doesn't like me and somebody you're a Pythagorean that's what you are all you think at the bottom is just there's these these numbers and that's I was kind of like yeah yeah maybe H and every we became French but you know I just think you Bott him out on on those and you can't

2:35:13 go to the next level of the things that are being described by the numbers or the the the relata of the relations I've just got relations without Lada and what the [ __ ] and he gave me this paper by um Adams Cornell you know like the meat you need to put meat on the bones of reality right great it's a great awesome another great philosopher um recently passed away and uh um and I'm like okay let's the meat the only meat I'm it's kosher the only meat I'm is caal meat there's a book causal meat caal meat

2:35:47 for caal meat together does this mean you you think of yourself as an onti structural realist I think that's what that maybe means yes um and and again it's interesting question for me another place where so again my Genetti and like the paper real patterns as a whole literature right and so how much can you squeeze out of that um and people differ about how much squee you can squeeze out of that um and I kind of feel like you know so long as those posits do work um of some kind and again what do

2:36:20 you mean by work will be a good question here um is it merely rhetorical work or is it real work and you know but if they do work um uh then they're real um and so causal intrinsics I think that feels like something that does work to me um because I don't understand how anything could be going on I do think reality has meat on its bones as Adams said um and so now this is we we are in a place where we're kind of it's like Barkley would deny that um and so and when you you realize

2:36:54 that you're in the Barkley anti Barkley debate you then I think pragmatists are going to be like good luck to you everything's gonna look the same either either way everything's gonna come out exactly the same so we pragmatists just say yeah we're gonna spend our time on other things and so that that's maybe my kind of I have this you know the realist kind of urge to go farther but there you know I I don't see quite how to produ L do it but I kind of will concede you know for the sake of argument that for my picture I think causal intrinsics the claim is this that

2:37:29 with only causal intrinsics you can build everything else including Consciousness and that's an interesting claim yeah I agree I'll go with that you know so I wonder you mentioned this briefly in the book but I wanted to ask you about the how how how much the autonomy of the special Science Matters to your view because one way of reading like you know quantum mechanics and those things is that there is no cause and effect at that level um there there's just things that happen and then cause and effect is like a word we use at the macro level kind of to you know

2:38:02 shorthand things but it's it's you don't say you know this something caused this electron to be spin up or spin down you just measure it and it is uh that way one way or the other for no reason at all actually as a matter of fact it's random so kind of view there's no causal intrin and that's what physics is telling us I mean that's one way of interpreting it yeah so but is that um yeah go ahead I mean so in that case then I would certainly back off of caal intrinsics I it does raise of course an interesting question um about what we get what cuse amounts to um in the special Sciences

2:38:38 What mechanisms amount to in the special Sciences um all I want to say is whatever the level that CS or mechanism appears I want to say that and then extend it to include Consciousness right um but that that yeah that's it's it's it is very weird and also I kind of I'm kind of a humei i there's something humei lurking right like I just think one thing happens and then another it's you know I'm not going to be whatever I mean by intrinsic it's going to get

2:39:09 pretty weak when you start pressing me um in which case it is whatever does work you know in our theories now I you know more I mean work but work I think is explanatory throughout the book obviously explanatory is my my thing I'm like oh what matters and so if I'm starting with explanation and somehow think that's the um there's an interesting question about you know what what what explanatory work is because it might get be like the preacher tells you God did it and that explained it exactly well I don't mean that right so oh and

2:39:42 next thing you know you're off into the you know to the depth of philosophy of science and and uh you know and I kind of waved my hands at that and I finded to be neutral quote unquote about the right model of explanation but I think it might really matter for what I think is real so you know again we're we're in the in the Deep Waters here um and uh as a naturalist and pragmatist you know I think I'm certainly the thing you just said about you know what the science says it's going to be certainly something that matters a lot to me um so it might be that that will push around

2:40:16 my view um but but all I really and this is why mediocrity was maybe a better um framing than optimism in a way because all I'm saying you know the anti Kendrick Lamar we're not like we're just like everything else they just like us yeah just like us I'm gonna get fired Boy Buddy Miner don't oh my God certified Lev more w w all right anyway

2:40:50 so [ __ ] him up anyway so back to seriousness I want so we're running out of time I have a million things I would love to discuss with you maybe I'll have to drag you back someday but one thing I'm curious about is the automatic compression bit of your theory we haven't even we've danced around it hasn't come up we've been doing all the you know philosophy science and stuff but but it seems to me that you think that this is something we have to have um and that if like for for example if you had a higher order theory that wasn't endorsing automatic compression

2:41:25 then it wouldn't work on your view it seems like because this is really the meat of the easy explanation you're like okay so we can give an easy explanation but here's the easy explanation well there's this theory that we automatically apply to us and we use these compressed uh information bits that are thinkable but really really dense in a sense that can't be unpacked so they appear simple they appear Direct blah blah blah um so that's really an essential part of the picture um or or or is it I guess is what I'm asking is it an option or is it our only option on

2:42:00 your view so here's an it remind me I was trying remember this during the our discussion of babies so it might be that babies are conscious because whatever but what it's like for them is fully uncompressed and so they're aware of like all this [ __ ] the buzzing blooming confusion as William James put it yeah and if you could ask him at that moment

2:42:33 is there a hard problem they would say no it's all [ __ ] connected you can totally see it and then well sadly they can't talk because they don't have concept so they've got to compress and then once they do that they eliminate access to the relata the relations uh the connections and everything seems separable and punctate and simple and then the hard problem um so there might be creatures so then it forget babies maybe there are creatures like maybe Gods like that can see all everything

2:43:07 uncompressed um and for them they wouldn't have a hard problem anyways I I just this came to my mind as I was thinking interesting and I mean as a coral are of that it sort of seems that if you built like an AI that would somehow bypass the need for compression then you would get a similar result and and of course what's interesting then is and there's this problem in in this high and AI is that they we're not sure what they're doing exactly you know that we we have trouble interpreting them and and or interpreting their what their internal representational states are and

2:43:40 all this stuff um because they aren't forced to compress or or the or the constraints on them are very different and so maybe the way to get a machine more like us is that is to force it into these like you know it's got to have like a limited power pack you know like you know it's got and it's got to have it's got these evolutionary constraints that are accidents but and then if you have these compress the compression that we have you'll get to be more like us but back to the question of Consciousness which was in a way what what you sort of shown here sort of like

2:44:14 look and I do say this I'm giving you really a theory of of of the appearance of of qualia appearance and not of Consciousness um and I'm giving you a theory of qualia appearance that's supposed to answer these particular explain these problem intuitions that we have now you add in a at that point one of the you know theories of Consciousness higher thought or Global workspace or first order kind of looping or whatever um the S of easy ones one of the easy ones

2:44:50 and then you'll get Consciousness plus you know or plus this stuff or something like that and then so the question well wait you didn't explain Consciousness but I think the reason people think that those theories aren't good when they tell you is because and then they'll start pointing back to the qualium they're sort of like look that doesn't explain why red looks the way it does or that doesn't explain why Pain's hurt or that doesn't explain why I can imagine zombies and I say oh well you've got act in there so of course it does do those things and now you know these theories seem more plausible they seem

2:45:24 like possible answers to some people it just seems like an utter nonstarter to have a theory like h of thought you're just completely in the wrong direction it does nothing um and so I'm kind of combining those two things but back to the kind of question so what about theories of conscious maybe what they're doing in my view and this this is a way to think about maybe what they're doing is the direct part in some sense like they are the explanation of directness um and so high order access access in the global workspace it's

2:45:57 access but it's it's the kind of access that's direct to these special things well seemingly special things right and so maybe that's what if it reduces the problem of the naturalized problem of Consciousness to kind of a problem of direct access it makes phenomenal into access in the right way and sort of because and the phenomenal thing is still kind of sitting there as the compressed stuff but we show how it's all accessing and so these are these are good questions it probably if I just stuck with higher the thought maybe I would have a more direct line on it that

2:46:30 you know but I like the fact that it it's it's more General right um and it also makes the question of what's the right kind of access is the question and I think it's kind of a selfie type accent it's like oh it's I am aware of myself as it's my love of the transition but you know whatever what whatever Justified that let's assume we've got that then there's sort of a richness to that kind of access as opposed to merely in the global workspace you know kind of multi you know system access and I feel like I want to if it's a thought I feel

2:47:05 like you could have that without being conscious because you know and I want to say why because it's not the right kind of access um anyway so but you know I think this an interesting what happens to the problem of Consciousness if I'm right about the ACT thing is an interesting question um and I feel like that it what it should be doing what I was just trying to describe it it it puts these these these these various theories into the H into the hopper where they're fighting um about how to explain act access to the compressed stuff interesting okay well so we got to

2:47:39 start wrapping things up here but I always like to ask at the end um if there's anything that you were hoping would come up that hasn't come up and the answer can be no but just in case I'm I'm curious um let's see I I I mean I feel like we've done a ton of stuff and also I really like um the kind of metaphysics you know realism that for me has been always a big driver for these questions which especially given my my minimalist proclivities my gedan proclivities you

2:48:12 know it always puts me on the spot um so I'm really glad you T you brought those I think those are the deeper those are big questions um I I guess it's for me there's there's sort of an interesting question about which like neither of us is qualified to answer so it's probably good we didn't talk about it like what about this empirical [ __ ] I'm pulling up here like you know I'm kind of grabbing a bunch of empirical stuff and saying kind of here and I'm I'm not as good as Ned at that because I don't even know what a lot of it means but I mean I know it's in the right ballpark I'm kind of cherry-picking to some degree um and the automaticity literature though is kind

2:48:46 of a little bit fraught because it's one of those you know replication crisis he places a little bit to some degree I think the compression stuff is on stronger footing because there's a whole kind of just computer literature or even like data literature on that like just you know how to transmit data which is very interesting um so there is I think a deep question about what what Auto automatic even you know automatic is maybe a word that now I just kind of said it like not just means conscious and so maybe I've kind of collapsed things there in a bad way and it's also not clear to me 100% in

2:49:20 the like people like um you know what's his name NYU there people who've written on automaticity and psychology where it sounds a little magical you know and also it's one of those social psych Dees that oh this is so cool wow and it really should make you suspicious and I feel like that's a little bit of a of a danger spot in my empirical data now compression I think is cooler but there's there really is that I'm a little bit out of my depth that was true except for the

2:49:52 little bit part I'm out of my depth this is actually a place where so if you remember back in in Taiwan before the hurricane um it was Aon CLW clwan said to me oh oh let me send you some stuff about uh sparse coating and there a lot of and like and mat just I just barely scratched the surface of that I think and and how that relates to compression and is it the right kind of compression from and it is it too ubiquitous to do the there's all these deep questions there so again I'm happy we didn't talk about them in the sense I wouldn't have

2:50:24 had much to say but I think those are I think there's deep empirical issues there but there's also I think it's very fruitful ground especially the compression side yeah like there's a lot of neat stuff there and it seems to me that you know this is you know I some of the people I S like um you some of the Neuroscience people who that's what they're working on and it seems to me an interesting it would be interesting if their work this is kind of you know actually empirically driven stuff as opposed to the kind of top down stuff I do um if their work is really entailing something that looks like it would give

2:50:57 you um the kind of Gestalt or the you know uh simply simp look simple kind of thing just dropping out of their work because compression is necessary to make the brain work and that would be cool and I I know I very cool and because a lot of this has to do with that expert you know well and the expert thing was trying to yeah bring it from the the sort of lower end the lower level up into the kind of getting close to the con you know where Consciousness lives our ordinary experience and so reading chest of course is a famous

2:51:32 example that's well worked over but the reading expertise stuff and how we developed fluency in reading or or how we used to before Electronics killed that you know um you know there is this interesting process where you just sort of stop seeing it in a certain way that kind of just it just sort of works and and it's you know anyways there's need stuff there um and but that is much much more at the level of like ordinary everyday experience not at the level of like you know sparse coding in the brain which is a lower level description so yeah okay interesting yeah that's a whole separate conversation you're right

2:52:04 but it's interesting that it's empirically based and it would be nice if you had this kind of line to fall out sort of naturally from that would be cool yeah and I I should I mean what I I wrote the book as a book for two reasons one the ideas were hanging together for me and two it was a way to get promoted so you know a um and so I got promoted and everything but but no one reads the book except for like you and few other people I'm then trying to break out some of these things into actual articles of course I could expand on some of these

2:52:35 themes and up you know whatever put them in different ways and one of them certainly is compression uh as a focal point um now there and there're separate things like you know marry and that stuff but the compression one is the most I think oh that and that's something like not much by philosophers yeah right and and I you know I kind of got it initially from Douglas hoffstead he talks about it and go toach very nice but it didn't seem to get very picked up after that Den it has some of it as all the stuff I do um but but he doesn't put it the way I would and and again um you

2:53:11 know whatever it's cool it l people stop listening to dennet when Dave Tred out the zombies so you know the more Dennett the better for me in that sense you know um and I really really like that stuff in dennet when he's being a realist or a anyway to my mind more of a realist and just saying these are the things that would do that that would explain the appearances I mean he's got like the Hy stack illusion he got a bunch of cool things also I should point out and I have it in the book which was a discovery on my part yeah this is like so sad like my level of research like I

2:53:43 read some Armstrong I hadn't read um where he's arguing with Norman Malcolm malol cited in the book yeah yeah it's great like because Malcolm is is kind of a Vick San like so so Armstrong is the realist and Armstrong is a realist in many ways but he's a naturalist and and and he's trying to sort of say why you should enrich your view of the mind to Malcolm and and he gives these nice he's got the headless woman thing which he had but he has sort of stuff about Gestalt properties and also about mistaking an internal religion relation

2:54:17 for an intrinsic property for the life of me to understand what that means you got to go read like either criticisms of Bradley you know or or you know Li and like it's and it but but it's it's it's which is not a bad thing per se so it's like there's but that's the yeah we're talking about mistaking relational stuff for for intrinsic stuff and so that that's it's just you know again warmed over yeah I'm just warmed over say that I'd say no no you're making good use of it but yeah no you're right that is interesting stuff um internal relation stuff I never

2:54:49 really fully understood you know Armstrong gave a couple classes at the grad center before he died and I was in those um but I I wanted to be be on board but I never fully got anyway so um I think there's interesting things there that's a whole other can of worms actually um but but Josh I hope that more people read this book I sincerely commend it to people I think it's well written uh I think it's easy to read for the for the complexity and the depth um that to it was it was a quick read it was I mean there's a lot there you have

2:55:21 to read it like I read twice um but I think it's it's well worth reading even if you don't agree with everything that you say like you said it's at least you know I think your main goal is to shift the burden onto the other side and I think it does accomplish that I think they have people have to respond to it on the other side um even people maybe on your own side that don't agree with you should respond it so I hope it gets the attention I know it just came out so you know we'll see but uh so yeah so promotionally there's gonna be a a book Symposium in Journal of conscious

2:55:54 studies oh awesome um with torren alter who was kind he read it for my for my ten and he he was like I've got all these questions you know and so and he was great and and and then I roped in uh Uriah kgal and Amy kind and they were kind enough to agree um and so they're gonna write and Jake Berger uh has because he owed me a favor is is editing well I look forward to that for sure and so that's you know and you know it's GNA take a little time but you know it should be out uh hopefully late next

2:56:27 year you know late next year we you know we'll see knock on wood but anyway at least it's gonna and that you know and again I'm G to try to break out Parts too but you know I'm glad you read it man um I say in there somewhere like you know like a lot of this the ideas I have are me arguing with you and Pete and yuah and other sort of over beers and that's all I'm doing and like you know which makes me happy like you know like I'm trying to respond to you you're you make me think about this stuff and you make me you know like today like you you quickly pick up the the this hard to

2:57:01 find weak points well I appreciate that I mean you you're overly kind I would say but uh you know I've always thought of you as a great philosopher ever since grad school days I always thought you you know you had a um a fair way of doing philosophy uh which I admire that that's something I really look forward and people well right back at you I I feel the same about you and uh and I'm glad you do this also this public service um I think this is an awesome way to you know to make to keep the conversation going but also to to expand it outward the right way likewise with your conscious online

2:57:35 conference which you know I'm still citing some of those papers including like the church paper from your book and uh which you know it's awesome like that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't done it and so that that's a that's awesome thank you I appreciate that yeah that that it was a tremendous amount of work I only stopped doing it because LaGuardia said enough's enough already like you got to do some other [ __ ] and I was like uh so was but I miss it I I I always dream of bringing it back you know but I really think it we need something like that I mean there's a couple other things that Tak this place but I do I do think stuff like that's important we

2:58:07 really got a good anyway so that that's a Love Fest all around um but I really want to thank you again for joining me for spending all this time for being so kind um and just fun to engage with so I I I appreciate that Josh um and if you just hang out for a second I'll say bye off the air but uh thanks again man y all right let's