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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ:
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathen. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. Amy Kind, Russell K. Pitzer, professor of philosophy and the director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. And we're here today to talk about her book, a debate done on what is consciousness between her and I should have asked you this before, is it Dr. Daniel, how do you say his last name? Stoljar, and
Amy:
Yeah.
PJ:
Dr. Stoljar. Dr. Kind, it is wonderful to have
Amy:
have
PJ:
you today.
Amy:
the book as a visual aid.
PJ:
Oh, beautiful, yes. So how did this happen? You know, you get together and you're like, you look like someone who'd be fun to write a debate with. Is that, you just like, you're at a conference, you go to a bar and get a drink afterwards, is that what happens or?
Amy:
Well, not exactly, but close, no. So I think I first met Daniel about 20 years ago at my summer seminar that was being run, that actually was on consciousness, it was on consciousness and intentionality. It was in Santa Cruz, run by the philosopher David Chalmers. And so that's the first time we'd met. But then we... got to know each other a little bit better when about five or six years ago I spent a research day during the summer at the Australian National University in Canberra at his invitation and so I was there for a good chunk of the summer and we talked a fair bit. We weren't really talking about these issues but we were just talking about all different sorts of things and then sometime... I don't know, in the last few years, the editor for this series, Tyron Goldschmidt, got in touch with me and wanted to know if I wanted to write something on consciousness and debating it and was asking me about possible opponents and I thought of Daniel in part because he has a sort of interesting position on the other side and I thought it might be fun to get into some of those nuances and I thought he'd be a good sparring partner and so he was really excited to sign on and um... there are, I should say there are a bunch of debates in this series so ours is on consciousness but there are are other ones on free will and on God and all different sorts of questions. But yeah, we're tackling issues concerning consciousness and we're excited to see it in print.
PJ:
Yeah, it's really awesome. I understand this is the whole point of the debate, but maybe just to center it, what would be a good way of defining consciousness? So that, like, I just thought I'd start with an easy question, right?
Amy:
Yeah,
PJ:
No.
Amy:
exactly. Well, it's like, you know, you got me, so you're going to get my definition. And then it's like not really fair to Daniel. He would give another one. But no, I'll try and do something sort of theory neutral. So first of all, consciousness is used in a lot of different ways in real life and in philosophy. And so sometimes we use the notion of consciousness or being conscious just to refer to being awake or so, you know, like you might... so to speak, pass out, you know, and go unconscious. So sometimes it's that sort of awake sense. Sometimes you might just use it as a synonym for awareness. So you might say like, oh, I wasn't conscious of the fly buzzing around until you brought it to my attention, right? Something like that. I wasn't really aware of it. So we have consciousness in the sense of awakeness, consciousness in the sense of awareness. But there's another sense of consciousness having to do with what philosophers often refer to as phenomenal consciousness. And that's what we were really focusing on. in the debate. And so phenomenal consciousness is often put in terms of the what-it's-likeness of experience. So you look out and you see a beautiful sunset and there's a certain way that your experience is like to see the reds and the purples and the violets of the rainbow. Sorry, of the sunset or if you're looking at a rainbow, the colors of the rainbow. I got distracted because right now I'm... hearing sounds emanating from one of my dogs. Maybe they'll
PJ:
Ha ha!
Amy:
make it on screen. But so, you know, there's something it's like to hear your dog snuffling beside you as you talk. And you have that sort of auditory experience. There's something it's like to be in pain, you know, to have a throbbing pain in your big toe, say, because you just dropped something on your big toe and that, the way that painfulness of the experience, conscious experience, emotions, other kinds of bodily sensations besides pain. So all different kinds of sensory experiences are something it's like to have them. That's what philosophers often refer to as qualitative consciousness or phenomenal consciousness. And we were really focused on that in part because it's in that sense that consciousness gives rise to some really difficult questions in philosophy of mind.
PJ:
Yeah, and obviously you could see how it would dovetail with a lot of other questions, like free will, for instance.
Amy:
Yep.
PJ:
And it's interesting, even as you talk about that, where you first met at that seminar, it's consciousness and intentionality, or consciousness and intention. And that there is that kind of distinction when you talk about the awareness, right? That the awareness aspect is more of that intentionality aspect. Is that a fair way to think about it?
Amy:
Well, philosophers use, so intentionality is kind of a tricky word. Philosophers use it in a few different senses. And so sometimes we talk about something being intentional in the sense of you doing it on purpose, right? So I intentionally close the door. I intentionally snubbed someone, right? Unintentionally snubbed someone. But then there's another sense of intentionality that has to do with representation. And
PJ:
Hmm.
Amy:
so, and this is a kind of technical definition. When a mental state is intentional in that sense, it is about something. So it has what philosophers refer to as intentional content. So my belief that my dog is on the floor is about my dog. There's a certain content to that belief, right, that, that claim. And so that's what we refer to as intentional content. Now one of the interesting questions, so just go back to the example of the throbbing pain in your, in your big toe after you've dropped something. on your big toe, we might ask... that pain has a feeling, right? It feels like something. But does that pain, that experience, is it also representational in nature? Does it have intentional content? Like is that pain representing bodily damage? Is it representing something else? And that is a question about intentionality in the philosopher's sense. And so the seminar that, when I first met between the phenomenally conscious aspects of mental states and their intentional content. So is one more primitive than the other or do they go together? Are all conscious states intentional or are all intentional states conscious? All of those kinds of questions. But going back to what you were asking about free will and agency and all other kinds of things, I mean, you might think that phenomenal consciousness is critical to our sense of of what makes something like a... what makes something have like, say moral status, for example. So you might think like it's fine for you to smush a certain bug because it doesn't feel anything when it gets smushed, right? It doesn't experience pain. And so you might think that it's only creatures who have those kinds of conscious experiences that get counted in our moral calculus. There are other views, not,
PJ:
Yes.
Amy:
I mean, you might think that other creatures get counted as well. For example, trees don't feel pain, but they should get counted in the Moral Calculus. interesting questions about the consciousness of plants that some people in philosophy have been taking up lately. But I'm not, I'm not
PJ:
Yeah.
Amy:
someone
PJ:
Ha!
Amy:
who is prepared to talk about that. But in any case, consciousness I think relates to certain other, all different sorts of issues. And one fundamental one is it does seem to be at least one important factor in our moral calculus about other beings. So, I mean, take a sort of topical example. like an AI program, you know, like, or... like take chat GPT or take, I don't know, any one of these AI programs that are running. And we might, I mean, it's interesting to ask it if it's conscious. And you know, there have been claims about, I think it was the Google program, right? The Google engineer claimed that, what was it called? Lambda was conscious. But in any case, setting aside what the program itself claims, you know, we might think, well, shutting off a, shutting is not the same thing as shutting off a person, right? And it's in part because the chatbot, for however intelligent it is and however much its states might have representational contents, nonetheless it doesn't have experience. Well, if you think that these current sets of chatbots, as great as they are, don't have experiences, you might think that is one explanation for why they don't get the same consideration. as a biological entity like you and me make up. So consciousness matters, I guess, is the
PJ:
Yes,
Amy:
point.
PJ:
yeah, a lot of ethical questions as well. And so you represent kind of the dualism side of this debate, and
Amy:
Yes, we do.
PJ:
Dr. Stoljar represents it. So you said he has a kind of an interesting position. Is Rosalian monism, is that kind of what you found to be really interesting on his part?
Amy:
Yeah, so let me set the stage a little bit, if I can.
PJ:
Yeah, for sure.
Amy:
So the big divide on these issues is between dualist positions on the one hand and physicalist positions on the other hand. So a dualist position, well, it goes back really to the beginning of philosophy, and certainly it's a position that might have been associated with Plato. Descartes is often considered to be the father of dualism. for the world, we need to posit two fundamentally different kinds of things, Descartes said. So we need to posit, you know, mental things like minds, and we need to posit physical things like bodies. And so that, and so likewise for consciousness, right, we can't just explain it in terms of atoms and quarks and all those fundamental physical building blocks. We can't just explain consciousness in terms of the brain. That's not to say that consciousness has nothing to do with the brain, but it is to say that There's something over and above the brain with respect to consciousness. So that's the dualist side. The physicalist side traditionally has been sort of that mental states reduce to physical states. So mental states like conscious states are just states of the brain. All we need is the brain, nothing else, brain and body. positions in that they only posit one kind of thing, namely physical things, whereas dualist positions posit two kinds of things, right, mental things and physical things. Okay. So then
PJ:
Thanks for watching!
Amy:
one of the things that's interesting, I think, about the debate that Daniel and I are having is that... The sort of traditional physicalist picture is a very reductive picture. So it just treats the mental states as physical, the conscious states as physical states. So that conscious state of experiencing, you know, the taste of a chocolate sundae, that is just the firing of certain neurons in the brain. Or that conscious state of feeling that throbbing pain in your toe, it's just again just the firing of a certain neuron. The typical philosophers tend to use the placeholder C-fiber firings when they're talking about pain. It's not as if anyone thinks that pain is literally identical to these C-fiber firings, but it's just a nice little shorthand way of explaining what that traditional physicalist position is. Daniel's position is not really a reductive position. So um. So he offers, and you know, really I'm better positioned to talk about my views than
PJ:
Ha
Amy:
his,
PJ:
ha
Amy:
but he offers, well I guess that at the core of his view. is a kind of ignorance hypothesis. And so he thinks that there are a lot of facts still about which we're ignorant and we shouldn't draw these metaphysical conclusions on the basis of ignorance. And so the fact that we don't know how the brain gives rise to consciousness is, should not lead us to conclude that it does not. And his, there are various possible possibilities, right, for explanations that we haven't happened upon yet. And ultimately, a kind of a resell in Mona's position, which goes back to Bertrand Russell, is the idea that there are these sort of basic building blocks of the universe. like say, quarks or particles that have mass, that some of the fundamental things are mass and charge. And those underlie, you know, all the find at this fundamental level of reality alongside mass and charge, we might also find these, I don't know, some kind of like proto-conscious properties or conscious properties and just like mass and charge and so on bubble up to create macro level entities. These like phenomenal properties at the fundamental level might bubble up to produce the full-blown consciousness that But that's not what the typical physicalist says. The typical physicalist is just sort of reducing. They're sort of putting their bet on a neuroscientific reduction. That's the typical physicalist position.
PJ:
Well, and it's been about 10 years since I studied this, but when I studied it, one of the main movements or more popular conceptions of this at the time was epiphenomenalism, which was
Amy:
Uh-huh.
PJ:
that all of conscious states are really, there is no agency to it. It's actually just following what our body's already doing, and we think we're actually doing something when really it's just. And That's just, I think that was really helpful for me to understand, not even, you know, the question of true or false. It's definitely a strange notion to the average person. Like, it feels very not common sense when you talk about that sort of, I would say the further along the lines of physicalism, that kind of like, that's super reductionistic, if that makes sense.
Amy:
Yeah, I mean typically, introspectively, it seems like our mental thoughts and... desires and so on play some sort of causal role. So you just picked up your glass
PJ:
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
Amy:
and took a drink from it and we might use that as an example of like you had the desire for a drink of water or whatever's in your glass. You had a desire
PJ:
It was water,
Amy:
for a drink
PJ:
yeah.
Amy:
of water. Oh, okay, okay. I'm just, I didn't want to make any assumptions there. So you had a desire for some water and so you picked up your glass and we think that causal role, right, in that action. It led to the action. And the epiphenomenalist says that the mental state doesn't play a role. So it's, so basically one reason, and this is a kind of challenge for the dualist, the challenge for the dualist is how, let's suppose we have these mental states on one hand, or conscious states. So take a conscious state Typically, we might think that, that conscious state, like one of the reasons that I'm hopping around is because I'm feeling this, you know, pain, right? One of the reasons I'm cursing is because I'm feeling this pain. So it seems like that qualitative experience, that phenomenal experience, that conscious experience is playing a causal role. Okay, well, so on the one hand we have that like pain, let's just call it like the, the painfulness of that experience, right? That's playing a causal role. from physics that every motion can be explained completely in physical terms, right? So like, oh, well, your toe contracted, you know, and that was some muscle which leads to this, which leads to this, and it looks like we have a complete physical explanation. So the question for the dualist is, where does mental causation come in, right? So if we have this complete explanation in physical terms, right, we can explain every physical action in physical terms. causes are either completely superfluous, right, like they're epiphenomenal, they don't play a causal role, they're not really mental causes after all, or they must really just be the same thing as those physical causes, right, like they must be identical to them. And the question is how we could get mentality involved in the causal picture of our actions if we're a dualist. So that, it's a tricky question.
PJ:
Yeah, the example, and I think I was listening to John Searle on it, this is a long time ago now, but that it's like the foam on top of a wave, right? Like the wave is doing all the work and then you just have this mental, just like kind of froth
Amy:
Mental foam,
PJ:
going
Amy:
yeah.
PJ:
on. Yes.
Amy:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And no, right. I mean, I often, so that's a nice analogy. I often think of it as like sparkles, right? Like if, you know.
PJ:
Yeah, I like that.
Amy:
You have these brain states doing all the work, and then there's this little sparkle on top of it, and this sparkle, what is it doing? But I think there are other ways that the dualist can account for these things and can have an answer. But the stuff about mental causation is definitely a challenge for the dualist, whether it comes to conscious states or other kinds of states, definitely.
PJ:
So there is one question I want to make sure we get to today, because I found this really fascinating, is that a lot of times the dualist conception is argued from a religious standpoint, but
Amy:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
you make a big part of this is that there is no, that you're arguing dualism from a purely philosophical, if I can even, you know,
Amy:
non-spooky.
PJ:
the word purely is dangerous, yeah, the word purely is dangerous, but from a philosophical, not a spiritual level. Can you explain how you've created that distinction?
Amy:
Absolutely, yeah. So I think historically the roots of dualism lie in, well, its historical roots lie in some kind of religious conception, right? And so a lot of people associate dualism with a certain kind of religious conviction, right? So you might think that if you want to believe that... that if you believe in certain kinds of religious doctrines like about immortality or reincarnation or other kinds of things, you must be able to separate a soul from a body, right? If the body dies and the soul lives on, if you believe in that kind of religious doctrine, then it looks like you're committed to a dualist picture. And so there has been a long historical association between dualism and religion. And in fact when Descartes argues for dualism, basically his argument relies in part on the fact that God has the power to separate mind and body. Like even though they exist together in you, right, God has the power to separate them. So Descartes' own conception of dualism relied on God. So it definitely had that religious aspect. But I want, in my own work, I'm coming at dualism from a secular standpoint. So I mean you were saying purely philosophical, but I guess I would just put it in terms of secularity or being, it's a secular position. So dualism gets kind of a bad rap. It's like in contemporary society, contemporary philosophical society, in the sense that like saying that you believe in a non-physical mind is like saying you believe in ghosts. Right? Like, you must have to believe in spooky stuff, right? Like, oh, first you're talking about the mind, and next you're going to be talking about ghosts. And I don't really think that we have to be talking about religion, and I don't really think that we have to be talking about ghosts. I think that we can give a dualist view that is perfectly compatible with what we know from science and with our naturalistic conception of the world. separate dualism from any kind of religious connotation or from any kind of spooky connotation and just argue for it on its own rights. And that's not to say that you can't give other kinds of arguments coming out of religion. I think you can. And you might be able to use certain religious commitments to argue for dualism. But that's not where my arguments are coming. convictions are, you hear some arguments that support a dualist view.
PJ:
Yeah, since I mentioned epiphenomenalism, which I think most people who don't study philosophy would balk at, I think it's useful to talk about, I mean, you talk about Descartes being the father of dualism, and when you talk about inserting into the causation chain, you know, there's, of course, the kind of infamous, he's like, well, it has to be the pineal gland in the middle of the brain, because that's the only, you know, and so that's where, like, it's either ghosts or you're, like, looking for that anchor point in the body for the, You know, and so I like establishing the extremes and the missteps, you know what I mean? Not that, well, I'm gonna get in trouble with epiphenomenalists, but I don't mind. But I think that's, you know, and I think it's been very helpful for me. I was actually reading in Origin on first principles and one thing that became very clear, you know, I grew up religious. I'm still religious the way I said that. I very much felt that Cartesian dualism. And then to read the way that the early church fathers talked about the soul as perception and movement is vastly different from Descartes' own. And it honestly feels much closer to what I think you are talking about. It doesn't require God to separate them himself, if that makes sense. So how do you argue for this secular dualism?
Amy:
Yeah, well there are a few different ways. So I guess a few things. So first of all, I actually think a lot of us have dualist inclinations. Like I think it might be the natural view. And again, this is completely meant to be completely separate from religion. So I mean, if you go to, let's say you go watch a movie like Freaky Friday, right? And you see the mom
PJ:
I'm gonna go to bed.
Amy:
and the in the movie, the mom is depicted as having after, depending on which version you watch, I think in at least one of them it has to do with eating a fortune cookie or something like that. I think one it's like they smash. But the idea is like we can make sense of the idea of the mom's consciousness in the teenage body and the teenage consciousness in the mom's body. And so that seems to, and it's not as if the brains have moved, right?
PJ:
Right,
Amy:
Like the
PJ:
right.
Amy:
teenage brain is still in the teenage body and the middle-aged brain is still in the middle-aged body, but somehow the consciousnesses have moved. And even if you don't think like that that's something that can happen, like you're not running out to buy fortune cookies so that you can swap, you know, with your mom, even if you don't think it's something that is going to happen in your ordinary life, in so far as you sort of can make sense of that as a conceptual possibility. it seems like something, it seems conceptually possible that the mind could come apart from the brain, right? That your consciousness could come apart from your brain. Well, I think that is a suggestion of a dualist inclination. I think a lot of times, another example I like to give is during the pandemic, I started doing these workout videos and... especially during the pandemic, there were these terrible, I live in Southern California and there were these terrible fires. So we couldn't even like get outside. You know, the one thing you could do during the pandemic was like take a walk outside, right? And then the air quality was so bad, we couldn't do that. So I was doing these workout videos and I'm sure it's not just the particular videos that I was doing, but a lot of times exercise instructors, so certainly the exercise instructor of this set of videos. was constantly talking about, like, it's, you know, it's not about your body, like, it's all in the mind. It's, you
PJ:
Hehehehe
Amy:
know, it's all in the mind, right? Like, now we've reached the part of the workout where it's really got to be mind over matter and so on. And, you know, there's, there's like lots of that all the time. Every time I'm exercising, I'm like, yeah, I'm exercising with a doulless because they're just constantly talking about, you know, how... it's all up to you and it's all up to your mind. And that idea too, right, that there's this, this mind that, that it, that it, it's not a bodily thing, it's not a muscle thing, but that it's something else. That's also a dualist inclination. So the point is, I think, the point is, and none of this is an argument yet, but the point is that I think dualism is a very natural position. I think there is, there's, There's this phrase that I've heard the psychologist Paul Blum use that says we're natural born dualists. And it is, I think, very natural to think like, oh well me, my consciousness, who I am, that is not just this brain process going. Okay. So, I mean, of course there are also natural views about... science, right? And, and that's where the clash comes from. Because on the one hand, we don't think they're things like ghosts, right? Like, so we think that we live in a world that can be naturalistically explained. But that, yet, on the other hand, we do think, like, oh, when it comes to exercise, it's mind over matter. Or we do think, like, yeah, like, in these, all these conceptual possibilities in movies, like, you can switch consciousnesses. Or you can upload your consciousness to the machine. All of those kinds of possibilities suggest. some kind of dualist inclinations. Okay, so that's just to warm folks up. But there have been some pretty standard thought experiments and philosophy, and I rely on them in my book, in my part of the debate. But so, one thought experiment that's famous, and that was originally postulated by Frank Jackson, who wrote the forward to our book. very generous forward from, from Frank Jackson. But, so he put forward the thought experiment of Mary in the black and white room. And the way the thought experiment goes is you imagine Mary being a color scientist and she is philosophers always like entrap people in rooms or do other things like
PJ:
Ha ha
Amy:
that. But
PJ:
ha!
Amy:
in their thought experiments. But anyway, Mary is a color scientist who has spent her entire life in a black and white room. She's never had any experiences of color. So... You know, imagine it all the way you have to, like she's wearing gloves and there are no mirrored surfaces, right, and so on. Okay, now inside the room, we give her all the science, black and white science textbooks there are and we let her watch black and white lectures on TV or on her computer. And so she has learned, she, I mean, she doesn't have anything else to do in the room. She has completely mastered color science, right? She knows everything there is to know about colors. and she knows everything that physical science can tell her about color. So we can say she's mastered the physical story. But now, having mastered the physical story and knowing all of these physical facts about color, let's imagine that Mary is, for the first time, released from the room, and for the first time she encounters a ripe tomato, and so she has the experience of red. Now she knows everything. everything there is to know about the physical story of Red, right? That's what she learned inside a room. But the intuition that a lot of people have when you ask, well, like, what happens when Mary sees that Red tomato for the first time? The intuition that a lot of people have is that Mary will have, I put it in terms of a kind of a-ha moment, right? Like, Mary says, a-ha! That's what seeing Red is like, right? Like, yeah, I knew all these facts but now I've learned something. And so the fact that... If it is a fact, the fact that Mary or any color scientist would learn something upon seeing color for the first time, even if they knew the entire physical story about color, that suggests that there's more to color experience than the entire physical story, right? Something more than that. And so that points us towards a dualist position. So that's one thought experiment. Another way, and notice that doesn't say anything about God, that doesn't say anything about spirituality, right? Completely secular argument. Another kind of argument that philosophers use... Okay, so Mary's just an ordinary person. This next one gets a little wackier, but it's a thought experiment that comes from David Chalmers. And David Chalmers postulates the possibility of these creatures that he calls philosophical zombies. Now, the philosophical zombies are not quite like the zombies that, you know, want to eat your brains. uh, not like the zombies of horror movies. So the philosophical zombie is just like, so let's talk about my zombie twin. So zombie Amy is just like Amy, just like me, right? Micro, down to the micro physical level, just like me. But now here's the twist. Even though, um, my zombie twin has the, the exact same micro physical composition as I do, zombie. Amy does not have any phenomenal experiences. So now when Zombie Amy drops whatever I dropped on my toe, right, a book, when Zombie Amy drops a book on her toe, Zombie Amy will say, ouch, right, and will say that hurts and will hop around and do all those things. But for Zombie Amy, it's all dark inside. Zombie Amy isn't having any conscious experience. Whereas when I drop the book on my foot and I say ouch, There's that pain behind those words. It's not all dark inside for me. So zombie Amy and me, my zombie twin and I are completely micro physically identical, but yet it seems like there can be a difference between us. Namely, I have conscious experiences, my zombie twin does not. And so that suggests that conscious experiences must be something over and above the physical, right? Because we're exactly the same. We're physical duplicates of one another. But we differ with respect to our conscious experiences. So again, now zombies get a little, you know, it's a little hard to conceive of them and, and so on. Are they, are they really possible? Are they really conceivable? I mean, these are fraught questions that philosophers have a lot to say about. But again, this is a completely secular argument. It doesn't rely on anything having to do with God. Just if you can conceive. of a zombie, that is a creature who's micro-physically identical to you but who lacks any kind of phenomenal consciousness, then that suggests that consciousness, that, that kind of creature is possible in some sense of possible, at least conceptually possible. And that suggests that consciousness must be something over and above those physical properties, must be something over and above the brain. And so that's another way that you might try to argue for, for dualism.
PJ:
Thank you.
Amy:
Um, yeah, I'll stop there.
PJ:
Yeah,
Amy:
I just talked.
PJ:
well, the color scientist one is wacky, but I think, and this is probably why most people are naturally, if they don't think about it, dualist, is when you, you know, you could talk about the qualitative state of color and coming to understand that, but I think we've all had this understanding of the first time we experienced the loss of a loved one, right, and talking to someone, especially, you know, generally children who have never experienced that and understanding that there is a very much a qualitative difference that happens no matter how much you study death, it's very different from encountering it with a loved one. So this isn't just like you can sharpen it with this thought experiment, but this is something that happens in a way that I don't know that the philosophical zombie, I don't know if that actually ever happens, but we know that the color scientist one, I think actually happens in real life on the regular, if that makes sense.
Amy:
Yeah, right. So, I mean, you might know that a death is imminent for your loved one. And so you do a lot of reading about death and exactly what it involves. And you do a lot of reading about the kinds of experiences that people have. And yet... It's not until you have that experience yourself that you feel like you understand what it's like. Like there's something that was missing no matter how much you read. I think that's right. In terms of philosophical zombies, let me just bring it down to earth a tiny bit. So, you know, we're doing all these advances in AI. And so maybe we could build an AI duplicate of you, PJ, right? And so we have our PJ bot. And you might think that the PJ bot can, like, you know, nod
PJ:
Thanks for watching!
Amy:
and conduct an interview and reach for the water glass and do all of those things. But maybe you don't think that the PJ bot is actually having, like, you know, these conscious experiences, you know, isn't enjoying the taste of the water, isn't, you know, feeling the water glide down its throat and so on. And so, although I... It's true that the idea of a philosophical zombie is a little bit out there. I mean, the AI bot isn't necessarily going to be physically identical to you. Nonetheless, I think we can get the idea of what zombiehood would be from thinking about a kind of AI bot.
PJ:
I like zombie hood. I'm gonna steal that and use that in my vocabulary now.
Amy:
Okay.
PJ:
So in a lot of ways, it's an answer to the Turing test. It would take a lot to make a PJ bot, but not to make a PJ chat bot, right? Something that would be indistinguishable
Amy:
Yeah, good.
PJ:
in sending texts back and forth.
Amy:
That's right. So maybe we think that there could be a PJ bot who could do a really convincing job of passing the Turing test, but would it really be, so it would be a PJ chat bot, but would it really be like PJ in the sense of like feeling, you know, what you're feeling. And I think a lot of people think like, no. And going back to what I said earlier, that's why we think it's okay to turn off these bots, right? Or to recycle them. And I mean, they're interesting questions. Gosh, I don't even know if I want to go down this road because I really, I haven't,
PJ:
Hehehehe
Amy:
I haven't read a lot about it. But you know, there are these, I think it's called replica, but there are these, you know, romance or sex bots and all different, or romantic partner bots. Again, I don't know that much about them, but I think that, you know, one of the reasons that we feel squeamish about certain kinds of things in that area is that we don't think that the bots really have feelings. You know, and so when we hear that someone's, you know, involved with a bot or something like that, it's like, ehh, you know, what exactly is going on?
PJ:
Yeah, so with the PJ chat bot, like if you wrote, if you're typing to it and you said, PJ's an idiot and I hate him, you know, or I hate you, and it responds angrily, we don't actually think it's experiencing anger
Amy:
Exactly.
PJ:
in the same way that, yeah, and
Amy:
Yeah.
PJ:
in the same way that makes us uncomfortable, the romance bot, because it's like, you're, it'd be very similar to looking into a mirror, you know, like just a more complicated mirror and just being like, I'm in love with myself, creating without any interference the They these return stimuli, I don't anyways but
Amy:
Yeah. No, right, like, so if, in surprise you can make sense of the idea of the bot responding angrily without feeling anger, that, again, is that, is the sort of way into thinking about zombiehood.
PJ:
Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm really take, I just, that's a really fun word to say and I need to, I need to move on. That's
Amy:
Yeah,
PJ:
zombie
Amy:
we can
PJ:
hood.
Amy:
move on from that,
PJ:
I
Amy:
but
PJ:
love
Amy:
yes.
PJ:
it. No,
Amy:
Cool.
PJ:
it's awesome. So that's kind of your side of things. And you know, I think I trust your professionalism and sense of fair play enough to ask. So what is Rosalian monism as, as kind of an alternative to this?
Amy:
Yeah, so if you think about those thought experiments, so look, I'm not going to, I won't give you, you know, like the entire story, but I can give you a little bit about the ignorance aspect of Daniel's position and the fact that he... basically is going to sort of, you know, defend the claims. I was trying to find some of his wording here. But so he is taking what he calls an epistemic approach to the problem of consciousness. And so take, I don't know, take either of the thought experiments that I just... offered, in both cases we're making certain judgments about what is and what is not conceivable and making judgments on the basis of that about what is possible. And notice that the claim about conceivability, like can we really conceive of Mary or can we really conceive of the zombie, that is a claim you might think about us and about like what we can and cannot conceive. And so someone like Daniel thinks that that's not a very good basis for developing a theory of consciousness. So he thinks that the fact that we're ignorant of how Mary could understand redness inside her black and white room, right, or how consciousness resides in how consciousness... how consciousness does not come apart from the brain, the fact that we cannot conceive of certain things, we shouldn't make metaphysical claims on the basis of those epistemic claims. And so he is offering a kind of ignorance hypothesis of sorts, and he thinks that, again, the state of the science is such that there's just a lot more to learn, right? And we... need to sort of see how it's all going to play out. And so his bet, one way to put it is that his bet is on science.
PJ:
Yeah, and so we feel like we have all this evidence, and he's saying that evidence will eventually be explained through science, and that really, that evidence is just ignorance. Is that one
Amy:
He's
PJ:
way of thinking?
Amy:
saying it only seems like evidence because we're ignorant of basic scientific facts. That's right.
PJ:
Yeah. Yeah, that may, I mean, I understand where he's coming from. And that's, uh, that's definitely, that makes a lot of sense. Um,
Amy:
So
PJ:
so, and go ahead.
Amy:
the, I mean, sorry to interrupt, just I was thinking I should be, I should help them out a tiny bit here. So, you know, it'd be like someone in, you know, in an ancient society, not knowing anything about, you know, chemical compositions of elements, right? And the fact that they can't conceive of water as being H2O because they don't even know what hydrogen and oxygen are. doesn't really tell you anything about the nature of water. Right? So we shouldn't make judgments about the nature of water on the basis of their ignorance about chemical compositions.
PJ:
Yeah, would it be as another example, and I apologize for bringing the sacred into it because I know we're trying to keep the secular, but like, for instance, when you see like lightning and you're experiencing lightning and it's like, can you explain the lightning? And it's like, no, it's like, well, then it must be the gods. And it's like, well, that no, we if we if we bet on science, it will come around.
Amy:
Yeah, no, that's another right. So, so if we think of lightning and thunder as like the wrath of the gods, right? That would be another explanation that seems like, oh, well, eventually we get to a scientific explanation, right? And it turns out that lightning is electrical discharge, right? And we don't, and we don't need a theistic explanation for it. And so right now, it might seem like we're as ignorant. with respect to consciousness as people in those other societies were with respect to the nature of lightning. So yeah, that would be another example.
PJ:
And I want to be conscious of your time. I should not I want
Amy:
comment
PJ:
to be respectful
Amy:
is how
PJ:
of
Amy:
much
PJ:
your
Amy:
is
PJ:
time.
Amy:
any difference?
PJ:
How respectful yes I want to be aware of your time. No but I Often find especially like, you know, you see modern-day kind of Platonists in the way that they approach this you both mentioned mathematics how Is like how can mathematics help us understand and I think part of that? It's helpful for me too because that was really important to Descartes as he was in his own philosophy. So as we talk about like the doula side of it, how does our understanding of mathematics help illustrate this discussion?
Amy:
Yeah, cool. So I actually think it helps me. I'll explain why. But, so most of us believe in numbers. You know, we take classes in algebra and calculus and whatever else. I mean, I haven't taken calculus in a long time, or
PJ:
Hehehe
Amy:
algebra for that matter. But, you know, I, I think that things like the number 3 exists, you know, the number 5 exists, and so on. I think I, you know, I have, um, uh. When I say things like I have two dogs, right? It's like, well, there's one and there's two, and there's some reality to the fact that there are two of them. The Tunis, zombiehood and Tunis will coin a lot
PJ:
Yes,
Amy:
of notes today.
PJ:
I like it.
Amy:
So what is the number two? Well, the number two is not something that I can pick up and put in my pocket. Even if I, let's do it with rocks. Like say I have. Let's talk about the number five just to have more rocks. Say I have five rocks, right? Well, it's not as if I were to grind up those rocks. The number five goes out of existence, right? Like the number five is something over and above those five rocks. So the number five doesn't seem like anything that's physical. It doesn't seem like it's completely explicable in physical terms. It can manifest in... all sorts of different ways, but whatever the number five is, it doesn't seem to be a physical thing. And so, yet, there's nothing spooky about the number five. Like, if you told someone you believed in numbers, they're not going to be like, oh, well, you must also believe in ghosts, right? That's super spooky, right? Or like, oh, next, you know, next thing. Like, who knows what the next crazy thing they'll be saying, you know, after believing in numbers. So... I want to use things like numbers as analogies for our belief in the non-physicality of consciousness, right? So just so we don't think there's anything spooky about believing in the number five, I don't think we should think there's anything spooky about believing in non-physical consciousness.
PJ:
It's, uh... It almost reminds me of Plant and Go's Other Minds argument, but it's
Amy:
Uh-huh.
PJ:
like an argu- it's like the same argument, but for Other Minds. I don't know if that makes sense. Ha ha ha! Um...
Amy:
You're going to have to spell that out a tiny bit for
PJ:
Oh,
Amy:
me.
PJ:
no, it just, um, his, uh, grounds for evidence for, um, we, we believe in other minds without a lot of evidence for it, right?
Amy:
Eh.
PJ:
You can't like see it. And, uh, but then when you're talking about consciousness, it starts to mess with that idea of other minds. And so instead you're dropping it down to, well, you believe in numbers without this level of evidence. It's just, it's kind of, you know, kind of
Amy:
Yeah.
PJ:
a turtles all the way down. Ha ha!
Amy:
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't so much trying to make it a point about evidence as a point about like in so far as Sometimes people say things like, oh, like how could you, like sure, we understand why Descartes was a dualist back in, you know, the 17th century. But now, but now, given the advances of science, right, given everything we know about the world, how could anyone be a dualist today? Like if they're a dualist today, it must be because they are just scoffing at science, right? Like it's not a scientifically respectable position, right? Like, yeah, sure, we know, we understand why Plato. and Descartes, but you today in the 20, in whatever year it is, 2023,
PJ:
Ha ha
Amy:
you know,
PJ:
ha!
Amy:
list, how could that be? Right? Like you must just be ignoring science, right? You must be non-scientific. And so I want to bring in mathematics just as an example of something where we believe in something robustly. We don't think of ourselves as being non-scientific for that. that, and for that belief. And so I don't see why the same kind of respect wouldn't be applicable in a domain where someone talks about the mind in a non-physical way. Like if we can talk about non-physical numbers, we should be able to, and not be scientifically on physical consciousness. And so it's not an argument. Like I'm not saying, I mean sorry, it's not this kind of argument. I'm not saying the mind or consciousness is like a number, right? I'm not saying that they're the same thing. But I'm trying to soften... Or, no, let me put it in another way, I'm trying to erode the quick dismissal or the sort of anti-scientific whiff that sometimes seems to come along with dualism. And the analogy to mathematics is meant to help that. I mean, I don't think it's just mathematics. I think when we're, you know, in a court of law trying to decide on matters of fairness and justice. Well, I don't think the fairness and justice are physical things. Like, where is the justice? Can we point to it? So there are other examples too, but the mathematics one is one that I find particularly compelling in part because it just seems completely clear that we all believe in numbers and it also just seems completely clear that they're not going to be given a physical explanation.
PJ:
Dr. Kind, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on. If there was one thing that you could leave our audience to think about or maybe to read further, besides your rather excellent book with Dr. Stoljar, what would you leave for our audience?
Amy:
Oh, good questions. Well, I guess I'll make one comment, and then I'll make one reading suggestion. So the comment is just, I guess I didn't say anything about how I respond to some Daniel Stolzor's positions, and I was talking a lot about what he says about ignorance. And my, so I'll just sketch out, and of course this is, you know, in the book if anyone
PJ:
Right,
Amy:
wants
PJ:
right.
Amy:
to read it. But I basically try to argue that... It's not enough to like yes, of course we're ignorant about all these things but pointing to the fact that we're ignorant about things we need some sense to We need, in order for ignorance to be an adequate defense, we would need to have a good reason to think that the kinds of ignorance we have are relevant, right?
PJ:
Hmm.
Amy:
It's not just ignorance in general, but that the ignorance is going to be relevant in a certain way. And of course, there are all sorts of things that we don't know, but just chanting ignorance all the time an alternate position. And also chanting ignorance, not that I think he's chanting ignorance, but in any case, making claims about ignorance also doesn't show how things are going to turn out, right? So it doesn't really, like you need some other kinds of arguments. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there. Like I agree that we are still ignorant of various things, but I don't think that settles the matter against dualists. I don't see how it could. In terms of things to read, I'm a big fan of David Chalmers' book, The Conscious Mind. Parts of it get technical, but he has very helpfully put asterisks in for the technical sections. And so you can read the book and leave out the asterisks... sections. I don't think I did any better the second time, but anyway,
PJ:
Ha
Amy:
the
PJ:
ha!
Amy:
sections with asterisks. You can leave those out. You can read it without having a high degree of technical philosophical confidence. He also wrote a paper called, I think it's called, The Puzzle of Conscious Experience that was in Scientific American and that is super accessible. So those are a couple of places to start. There's also a paper by Bree Gertler, who is, I think, at University of Virginia, and her paper is called something like In Defense of Mind-Body Dualism. I think that also does a nice job of making the case. She is not specifically focused just on consciousness. But nonetheless, I think that's another helpful position. There's also a fun, just for a fun thing that doesn't necessarily cut dualistic, but there's this little short story by Terry Bisson, I'm not sure how you pronounce that, called something like They're Made of Meat, or maybe it's just called Meat. It's available online. It's very short and it's just fun and it's something that sort of motivates this basic issue of like, wait, like they're conscious but they're just made of meat? You know? How can meat be conscious?
PJ:
Ha ha
Amy:
It's just a fun little story.
PJ:
Awesome, great recommendations. It's been an honor having you on today, thank you.
Amy:
Thanks, it's been fun talking to you.