[FRIAM] WAS: P Zombie Couches

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Jon, 

I don’t what to trivialize your insight, here, but it seems to interact with one I woke up with.  As an experience-monist, I believe either that all worlds are possible or no worlds are possible.  Also, as an experience-monist (but not as a behaviorist) I am allowed to experience the world in a variety of ways, as present, as past, as future, as fantasy, as dreams, and, as possible, or impossible.  But here is where I may be giving way to some variety of introspectionism; if so,Eric, jerk on my chain: I may speak about the quality of the experience.  

 

So here’s an example:  when you reach an … um … an advanced age, you may find that you spend a lot to time looking for lost items, items that you have had in

your hand only a moment before.  Let’s say I have “lost” my little pod casting device and am looking for it.  [What turns out to be] my old clamcell phone is sitting on my desk, peaking out from a pile of papers. For a moment I experience that phone as the missing podcaster.  What is the nature of that experience?  Well, it’s vague and less complete, more shadowy, than the subsequent experience of the clamcell which appears when I brush aside the papers to reach for the podcaster.   A hoped-for experience is an experience in good standing; it is just less predictive of experiences to come.   Also of interest is another kind of event, where I find I am reaching for the missing item before I have experienced it.  Now, as a behaviorist, I would have to say that reaching for an item is about as diagnostic of experiencing it as anything else.  And interestingly enough, the occasions on which I experience the item by reaching for it are much more reliable than the occasions on which I experience the item by “seeing” it.  

 

Eric, can I say any of that without being burned as heretic?  Is it vicious dualism to speak of my experiences, or only virtuous hierarchical integration.  And no, Frank, these experiences are not private, any more than the writing on my side of the cup that is sitting on the table between us is also private.  

 

Threading the needle, here. 

 

Nick 

 

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2021 10:51 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] P Zombie Couches

 

I am not entirely sure I get the argument, though I suppose I get what
is at stake. The argument reveals itself as a *hanami* argument in that
*dualism* stands to gain a lot from the argument's acceptance and stands
to lose little to nothing from the argument's rejection. The Wikipedia
explanation leaves me cold, though I like that each time I read it I
read something different.

For instance, I am unclear why imagining a possible world where some
property fails to exist is sufficient for establishing the same property
as failing in ours. On the one hand, the argument hinges on a fidelity
criterion, that some worlds fail to be identical by some "additional"
property. On the other hand, there is the inconceivability of excising
such a property (non-trivially) from the collection of all comprehensions.

For instance, consider the following possible worlds:

0. A possible world where all of the integers exist except for the
number 2. One glaring criticism with this example is that there does not
exist such a possible world, that is, the integers having a two is a
necessary fact. That "couchishness" is in many ways less easy to probe
than the integers likely draws attention away from such details regarding
possible worlds logic.

1. A possible world with the Integers and without even integers has
implications for the basic operations of arithmetic. In particular, what
happens when one adds two numbers? Further, removing the evens means
removing a countable number of things, but over the space of relations,
excision may be uncountable.

2. It is worth thinking about the topology of the space of relations. A
world with p-zombies may produce a punctured *plane of immanence* that
behaves very differently than its convex counterpart, i.e, comes with a
different set of expectations about the world and thus calling equality
into question. The idea is that the relations themselves can be
interpreted as a kind of endomap on the powersets of the world. Fixed
point theorems like Brouwer's or Banach's then are possible consequences
of the continuity of such endomaps; the convex worlds guarantee "having"
such a fixed point where the punctured worlds do not.

3. It is arguable that our world only produces approximate symmetry, and
yet affords the notion of actual symmetry. In such a case, symmetry
appears as a kind of spectre, a limit point not actually belong to
the world. To some extent, I can see physicalism as the thesis that all
such properties are in the closure of our world and therefore in our
world.

4. Lastly, what could I mean by a world where everyone "has" a ham
sandwich? Is "having" a sandwich a function of agreement, proximity,
or whatever? What aspect of the p-zombie argument relies on qualia?
Can it effectively run the same over any kind of property?

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