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I was reading this old Eliezer piece arguing against the conceivability of p-zombies. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7DmA3yWwa6AT5jFXt/zombies-redacted
And to me this feels like a more general argument against the existence of consciousness itself, in any form similar to how we normally think about it, not just against p-zombies.
Eliezer says that consciousness itself cannot be what causes me to think about consciousness, that causes philosophers to write papers about consciousness, thus it must be the physical system that such consciousness corresponds to that causes these things. But then…that seems to discredit the ability to use your own consciousness as evidence for anything. If my own conscious experience cannot be evidence for me thinking about consciousness, why should we think consciousness exists?
Am I confused about something here?
No, Eliezer does not say that consciousness itself cannot be what causes you to think about consciousness. Eliezer says that if p-zombies can exist, then consciousness itself cannot be what causes you to think about consciousness.
If p-zombies cannot exist, then consciousness can be a cause of you thinking about consciousness.
So does this suppose that there is some “consciousness” variable in the laws of the universe? If consciousness causes me to think X, and thinking X can be traced back to a set of physical laws that govern the neurons in my brain, then there must be some consciousness variable somewhere in these physical laws, no? Otherwise it has to be that consciousness corresponds to some physical phenomenon, and it is that phenomenon - not the consciousness - that caused you to think about it. If there were no consciousness attached to that physical phenomenon, you would go along just the same way, thinking the exact same thing.
Almost.
The argument doesn't rule out substance dualism, in which consciousness may not be governed by physical laws, but in which it is at least causally connected to the physical processes of writing and talking and neural activity correlated with thinking about consciousness. It's only an argument against epiphenomenalism and related hypotheses in which the behaviour or existence of consciousness has no causal influence on the physical universe.
I can think of two interpretations of consciousness being "causally connected" to physical systems:
1. consciousness is the result of physical phenomena like brain states, but it does not cause any. So it has an in-edge coming from the physical world, but not an out-edge to the physical world. Again, this implies that consciousness cannot be what causes me to think about consciousness.
2. consciousness causes things in the physical world. Which, again, I believe, necessitates a consciousness variable in the laws of the universe.
Note that I am not trying to get at what Eliezer was arguing, I am asking about the consequences of his arguments, even ones that he may not have intended.
Yeah so I think Tomasik has written basically what I’m saying https://reducing-suffering.org/dissolving-confusion-about-consciousness/
yud is always like "it cant be that if it werent so then you wouldnt have thought it werent, so it must not be not false". Oh no my sub-yud IQ might be showing