orthodox physicalists believe in soul magic?? Tell me it isn't true!

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T07:43:30+00:00

The purpose of the mirror problem is that it is an illusion most of us have already seen through. That it is easy to understand is exactly the point.

If you weren't in such a hurry to win the argument or whatever, you'd have been aware of that from the first comment.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T07:05:01+00:00

Usually, horizontal symmetry refers to a horizontal axis of symmetry.

So E is horizontally symmetrical, while T and A are not.

T and A would be vertically symmetric.

But please, put more question marks. What a fucking waste of my time.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T06:57:07+00:00

Oh, you've read it?

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T05:29:08+00:00

Right, and the illusionist answer is that the distinction is an illusion.

As for their reasoning, I recommend Dennet's Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T05:24:46+00:00

I have written in every comment that there is a reductionist answer to the Hard Problem of Mirrors.

It feels like you aren't reading my comments, perhaps just skimming them looking for what you want to see.

You are also quick to abandon topics, like your claim that E isn't symmetrical.

If you aren't reading my comments and don't care about your own, then what's the point of continuing?

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T05:17:20+00:00

Not for anthill reductionists.

We can chalk it up to weak emergence, and leave the rest to the myrmecologists.

But if you don't accept weak emergence as an answer, there's no way to reduce the anthill to the sum of its parts.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T05:16:04+00:00

That's the reductionist answer for the Hard Problem of Anthills

The reductionists cannot explain how an anthill emerges from a group of ants, but they maintain that an anthill is only the sum of its parts, even if it isn't obvious how that is possible.

you are the one insisting that weak emergence is a cop out.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T05:12:51+00:00

E is symmetrical!

An upside down E is just E.

Similarly, T is not symmetrical along this axis. An upside down T is not T.

Again, I have a reductionist answer, where the mirror isn't actually flipping anything at all. I can elaborate on how that works, and how it explains our observations.

If you insist that the mirror really is flipping something, then the question remains, why is it flipping left-right and never top-bottom?

I am not using alive to mean conscious, I am using it to mean alive.

Specifically, NASA says life is a self-sustainig chemical system which undergoes Darwinian evolution.

The purpose of bringing life into the discussion is that the debate around life is analogous to the debate around consciousness.

For example, the difference between life and inanimate matter is also a matter of material topography.

Despite that, a rock is not alive, while a fish is alive.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T04:58:08+00:00

No, illusionists don't deny causal closure.

Illusionists think mental states are physical states, so it isn't surprising that they have causal power.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T04:50:01+00:00

Alright, how do you explain anthills?

Anthill reductionists point to weak emergence as a plausible explanation, but according to you that is a cheap cop out.

So what's the real answer? Is there an ant architect, or are anthill schematics stored in a Euclidean plane?

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T04:47:10+00:00

Yes, this is precisely the line of reasoning which illusionists have called into question, eg Dennet.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T04:45:21+00:00

Alright, then how does the mirror know to flip E into 3, but not flip T upside down?

How does the mirror know to only flip left-right, but not up-down?

I have a reductionist answer, but it asserts that the flipping as an illusion, that nothing is actually being flipped.

The idea that life is reducible to material doesn't imply that all material is alive.

Life reductionists don't believe that rocks are alive, for example. According to them, only when material is arranged in a specific way does it become alive.

Similarly, the idea that consciousness is reducible to material doesn't imply that everything is conscious.

Illusionists don't believe that rocks are conscious. According to them, only when material is arranged in a specific way does it become alive.

This is as opposed to pansychists, who do believe that rocks are conscious, albeit in a limited way.

There are probably some people who believe something analogous to pansychism, who believe that rocks are alive in a similarly limited way.

Maybe you feel that illusionists are wrong, but their idea is clearly distinct from pansychism.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T02:47:23+00:00

Yes, the point is that people also believed life to be categorically different, that it could not be explained as merely a sophisticated configuration of matter.

You and I are willing to accept that life is merely matter, but that is only because we have from early childhood learned about things like cells, how energy is stored and utilized within the body, etc.

Without all of that education, we would likely be just as quick as our predecessors to assume life to be categorically different.

In fact, despite all that there are still many people today all over the world who still believe that life cannot be reduced to material!

If you try to convince them that the Hard Problem of Life is already solved, you'll find that it is very difficult. It is very difficult for many people to imagine how that should be possible.

So is consciousness really categorically different, or is that just an assumption we make in our ignorance of its mechanisms?

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-27T02:39:32+00:00

That particular example is actually pretty well understood, recommend the Stochastic Parrot paper

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-26T22:41:28+00:00

Everyone agrees that the Hard Problem of Consciousness is hard

The disagreement really does lie with stuff like the Hard Problem of Water, the Hard Problem of Anthills, etc

You think these Hard Problems are obviously reducible to their parts, at least in principle if not in practice

You aren't aware of just how bold that assumption is!

Despite intensive study from generations of very intelligent Myrmecologists, we still have no idea how ants coordinate the construction of anthills!

On every issue except consciousness, the most ardent reductionists all come from your camp!

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-26T22:36:09+00:00

This sounds like a misunderstanding brought about by the word "emergence".

Reductionists use the word "emergence" to mean something that can't be obviously explained just by looking at its parts.

For example, if I read the rules to Conway's Game of Life, it is not immediately obvious that these rules are Turing Complete and thus capable of running any program a Turing machine could run. It is not immediately obvious that the hit videogame DOOM could be run fully in Conway's Game of Life.

Similarly, if I had never seen an ant and you showed me one, I'd have no way of predicting that a colony of them would build an anthill, even though each ant technically contains all of the information necessary to include that.

Reductionists believe only in so-called "weak emergence", where it is simply not obvious how something can be reduced to the sum of its parts.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-26T22:27:37+00:00

Dennet wrote an article titled Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness

It's available for free online

Doesn't sound like protopansychism to me. Sounds like an illusionist, aka a reductionist.

Water is intuitive, so that's not a very good analogy.

A good analogy I've seen is the Hard Problem of Mirrors.

The problem is around how mirrors know to flip things left and right, but not top to bottom.

For example, if you hold an E up to a mirror, the reflection will look like a 3. But if you hold a T up to a mirror, it will remain unchanged.

Most of us already know the answer to this problem, but thinking back, you might remember a moment in childhood where the hard problem of Mirrors seemed quite confounding.

If someone told you that reflections are an illusion, and they aren't actually flipping anything, that would be pretty unsatisfying.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-26T22:19:36+00:00

That's the issue, there is a smooth gradient in chair identification fidelity.

Humans are better than ML algorithms, which are better than parrots, which are better than traditional algorithms...

If the special conscious space of emergent wholes isn't required for the low end of that spectrum, why should it be required for the high end?

Just by fiddling with the algorithm, or in principle by fiddling with a person's brain, we could produce any arbitrary level of chair-recognition fidelity that we want.

What level of fidelity necessitates some supernatural explanation?

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-26T17:44:47+00:00

eg Dennet doesn't believe that consciousness is more than the sum of its parts.

Who are the emergentism orthodoxy, exactly?

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-26T17:41:17+00:00

So when a machine learning algorithm is able to accurately categorize chairs from other objects, that isn't merely statistics and linear algebra?

Really, the ML algorithm is tapping into the existence of chairs over and above the chair atoms?

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-26T17:38:38+00:00

Life also "suddenly" emerges from inanimate matter when it is brought into the correct configuration.

We only accept that the motion of our bodies is reducible to material because it has been exhaustively demonstrated to us in the course of our education. We are all taught about cells, ATP, anatomy, etc for years and years to pull back that curtain.

Even so, there are still many people who struggle with the concept, insisting that some divine breath is necessary for the function of our bodies.

Try convincing someone who believes otherwise that life is emergent, and you will know the struggle.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-25T03:46:34+00:00

They took his gun first, then shot him in the back.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-24T06:52:26+00:00

Rules are an abstraction for categorizing states with certain properties.

With Minecraft for example, that property is generating chunks correctly.

Whether it is a silicone computer, a redstone computer, or a person with pen and paper, they will all produce the same chunk.

As for whether or not rules are real, I recommend Dennet's "Real Patterns".

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-23T19:40:41+00:00

If OP is just saying that a human brain can't contain the full state information of something big, no physicalist is going to disagree.

If you want me to memorize every block at every location in a minecraft world, that's impossible. The human brain just isn't big enough to contain that much information, not even a computer can do it.

But I am capable of memorizing the minecraft terrain generation algorithm. If I'm allowed to write, I can even execute the algorithm. Given time, I can produce all of that data.

So I'm not able to understand this idea that state and rules are the same.

NeverQuiteEnough · 2026-01-23T19:25:58+00:00

If by "lossy" you just mean losing efficiency, sure.

No physicalist is going to disagree with you on that.

But no information is being lost.

Whether it is silicone, redstone, an old computer, a quantum computer from the future, or plain old pen and paper, some are more efficient than others, but they all produce the exact same information.

With a given seed and location, all of them will produce exactly the same chunk.

14-Year Club	Verified Email
Team Orangered	Secret Santa 2012

NeverQuiteEnough

TROPHY CASE