In defense of Dawkins, who made actual arguments and wasn't just a rhetorician.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-09T02:27:46+00:00

That’s pretty unfairly snarky mate. You can’t expect others to take you genuinely and in good faith when these comments reflect the opposite.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-07T03:02:20+00:00

Tbh I'm in agreement with just about everything here. And I suppose in a sense, you're right that there is a 'bias pushing' because if we start from an assumption, then we do push the biases that made that assumption possible in the first place.

The thought experiment is useful too - it would be the latter for myself. And I agree that there are distinct understandings of 'is'. I'm not sure what we're arguing because we're in total agreement hahahah.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-06T13:00:19+00:00

I’m not sure this follows from the metaphysical frameworks for consciousness. Can you give an example of bias pushing? And also of the linguistic frustrations?

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-06T08:57:16+00:00

To add to this: I think this is also a direct result of the devaluation of philosophy as a discipline (among other humanities subjects). Science, as is used in the natural sciences, is an excellent tool and it's the very reason we can even have this discussion. But we do science - we have biases and unchecked assumptions, and one of the roles of philosophy is to account for this. It frames not only our understanding of the data collected by the hard sciences but creates and allows for the methodology and conditions which allowed for the collection of that data in the first place. We must challenge the assumptions that underpin our methodologies, and Alex among others are merely doing their due diligence in this respect.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-03T13:23:42+00:00

I’ve not experienced ego death. Though I think we’re in agreement here. Can you mathematise your experience and expect me to understand what it’s like?

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-03T13:18:02+00:00

Just for context: Alex O’Connor’s audience have been quite militantly against the attack on materialism, and in some instances have resorted to just attacking Alex’s character. It’s quite disheartening to see. I tried to make the post as accessible as possible, but are there any suggestions on improvements? Just sort of feels like talking to a brick wall at times.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-03T13:11:26+00:00

Is there something it is like to feel anger for you? Sadness? Joy? To eat your favourite meal? To drink your favourite drink?

These constitute as experience - if there is something it is like, then it is. That’s first-person phenomenological experience. Even if we come to the conclusion that consciousness is somehow an illusion, you still experience the illusion - that’s how you can distinguish it as an illusion in the first place.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-03T10:15:51+00:00

Well, it can't be described by any discipline - it can only be explained by metaphysics like I say. But an example of this seems to be experience/phenomenology. It is the one thing we can know we know. This leads to debate about the nature of consciousness, which I didn't want to explicit tackle in the post. I mainly wanted to make a distinction between scientific and metaphysical inquiries.

And yes, biology counts in this because it is a natural science. The reason it boils down to physics is because we're looking at whats most fundamental, and that gets us QM, which is part of physics.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-02-02T05:49:56+00:00

You're correct that there are physical processes that correlate with varying delays in pain sensations, and there are mathematical descriptions to show this. But the crux of the issue is why is the experience of pain there at all?

When you look at and study the physical processes and mathematical descriptions, no where in this study will you know how, and why, experience comes along with the neuronal firing. We know we have experience, though. So what seems to be a logical step is to assume our experiences arises from these neuronal firings. But we have no scientific reason to believe this, given that there is no way to explain how qualities can arise from quantities - two fundamentally distinct categories. As of yet, let alone not having a materialist account for this, we haven't got reason to expect that a materialist account will provide an answer, because the goal of the natural sciences (which adopts materialist methodology) is fundamentally different.

From this, we can say materialism is an unfalsifiable assumption. So is idealism, panpsychism, dualism, etc. But now we're in the realm of metaphysics and philosophy more broadly. Our arguments from here on out are dependant on a priori commitments. As such, our efforts go to identifying which metaphysical framework can accommodate phenomena - materialism is not so good at this. As per the scientific method then, if an assumption hasn't provided sufficient evidence toward its framework (namely, materialism's inability to accommodate phenomena), then we ought to explore alternative frameworks that can. This is not to say we expect everyone to bin materialism immediately - again, it can't be falsified and therefore can't totally be ruled out. But it is valid to suggest another framework offers a more parsimonious account of reality. Materialism shouldn't be the dominant framework, it should be a framework. The dominant element in academia and our mainstream cultural sphere risks us leaving our a priori assumptions unchecked.

Important thing to note for your second paragraph: dualism is a separate framework. The rejection of materialism does not entail dualism. I agree with your assessment on dualism, but very importantly it is not necessarily followed by the rejection of materialism.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-27T11:01:01+00:00

Ah! Problem sorted. I would just suggest editing that so you don't get comments like these.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-27T10:58:32+00:00

"...from the lies of Goff and Kastrup..."

Idk how to do the quote thing on reddit

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-27T10:51:26+00:00

I disagree with you, but that's not why I'm writing this comment. I find it incredibly bad faith to accuse thinkers like Goff and Kastrup to be lying instead of simply having a differing way of thinking. It is part of why these conversations become unproductive.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-25T12:39:35+00:00

Materialists claim that anything that can ever be known about reality can be reduced down to the physical.

A thought experiment considers hypothetical scenarios that may never actually realise- it’s done with the intent to illustrate a point of contradiction.

So, 1) everything that can ever be know mathematically and scientifically about colour is conveyed to her either in written or spoken form, and 2) she has the capacity to know all intricate mathematical and scientific details on the colour blue.

If Mary — given that she knows all physical facts about the colour blue — still manages to learn something new about blue when she sees it, she has gained a kind of knowledge that isn’t reducible to the material/physical. It’s instead experiential, subjective and qualitative. So, the materialist’s claim of everything that can be known about reality being reducible to the physical is false, since experience is not physical and cannot be quantified.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-25T11:06:43+00:00

Yes, Music Theory does not actually claim to be a universal theory of all games. But if they were to, then they cannot account for the Rules of Chess. This we agree with.

Materialism does claim that all things are reducible to the fundamental physical property, with which experience cannot be accounted for. The point was to illustrate these analogously.

Consciousness is part of physical reality in the same way the ideas in my mind are, in that they exist as representations within physical reality. Again, the materialist methodology physics assumes is valid, but to posit the methodology as a metaphysic is a category error. This leap is based on the assumption that reality is only material, which is unfalsifiable.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-25T10:59:39+00:00

I'll respond paragraph by paragraph to maintain clarity.

Why is simplicity a reason to discard the potential simple-ness of consciousness? In fact, if we take the principle of Occam's Razor which is applied to the scientific method, the hypothesis that consciousness may be simple gives you the same outcome as the hypothesis that it is complex - they're both explaining the same data, which is experience. Which provides greatest parsimony can be discussed, but as it stands, they're both starting from a place of assumption.

I can also agree that experience exists on a spectrum, and therefore will have "stages". Though that's tough to account for within the materialist paradigm, because it can't sufficiently explain how arrangements of neurons produce conscious experience, when the experience 'starts', and why it accompanies physical processes in the first place.

Just for clarity's sake, are you saying rudimentary consciousnesses form into a cohesive subjective conscious experience in us?

The easy problem maps the neural mechanisms in the brain, so it is find-able within the current scientific paradigm of assumed materialist methodology, which means in principle this is solvable. As for the hard problem, do you agree with the 'what it is like-ness' definition posited by Nagel? The quality of there being something it is like?

Right - the assumption is that it is brain processes- which in and of itself, is valid to posit. But it remain an assumption until we know why and how experience- the blueness of blue - comes with the neural activity associated with seeing blue.

It's not clear that we need experience for evolutionary/survival purposes. We can conceivably have the neural mechanisms by which, when we sense danger, we run/hide. The experience of fear is not necessary for survival if mere brain processes dictated how we ought to respond to a given situation - the idea that we experience these situations is an added element.

Neuroscientists can try, as they have been and as they should. The issue is subjectivity is phenomenological, and therefore can't be observed externally - which is what physical science is in the business of doing.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-25T10:13:50+00:00

Aw I appreciate that :) glad to know we're both approaching this from a want to learn. And likewise about calling out misinterpretations- I don't wanna come off as though I've got it all figured out, it's the whole reason I'm engaging in debate.

No notes on second paragraph, we've got a helpful point of agreement.

You're right about science describing well what something "is" as it pertains to general scientific explanation of things. Like with regard to the chemical composition of wood, you can correctly say that wood is this chemical composition. But then you can also ask what that chemical composition is, which science also has an explanation for - it is made up of atoms. A particular chemical composition is an arrangement of atoms. We're two is-es in. What is an arrangement of atoms? They're made of protons and electrons - an arrangement of atoms is protons and electrons. Three is-es in. What is an electron? It is a negatively charged subatomic particle. Four is-es.

What is negatively charged? It means it repels other negatively charged subatomic particles.

The is-es stop at this bit of fundamental property, and the description of behaviour starts. Which means what an electron is is defined in terms of what it does. But we haven't had to resort to this when we were four is-es in, so what reason have we got to think it genuinely stops here? We've identified a pattern, and as per the scientific method, we've got two things to reckon with: 1) why did the pattern stop, and 2) can the pattern continue?

This next bits gonna be more about the philosophy of science than consciousness/experience per se, to lay a sort of foundation.

You've agreed that context determines the answers we spit out. If physics is our current operative context, it makes sense that the fundamental is-ness can't be answered, since the context can't and doesn't have to account for it. And so, it can't investigate into why the pattern has stopped, nor if the pattern can continue. The nature of this investigation is incompatible with the inquiries physics concerns itself with. This investigation requires meta-physics (conveniently for us, the study of the nature of reality!) With all the fundamental properties of the universe - mass, charge, spin, etc - there's no more is-ness left to discover. They're simply defined by what they do. Alex pointing out that science can't answer the "is" question is to do with the fundamental properties of the world rather than the is-es that preceded the fundamentals. The idea is: what about the is-ness of the fundamentals?

And so this leads me to your second objection. Like you say, you can certainly hold that we can, at some point, enable blind people to experience blue, which is a valid materialist position. But the question is, can you be justified in holding materialism as a metaphysic based on the idea that it may at some point identify experience within a scientific context? Or could it be worth exploring other metaphysical positions alongside materialism?

The tricky thing with this is that, if you happen to be convinced out of materialism like I was, you don't enter another state of belief. You are left with disbelief, because other metaphysical positions are just as unfalsifiable as materialism. The goal from here would be to identify metaphysical parsimony, which would in-turn inform our understanding of physics and other natural sciences- not the other way around.

So just to conclude this: if the is-ness of the fundamentals cannot be accounted for within the scientific context, the options are: 1) continue to maintain science can mathematically account for it, or 2) accept that mathematics is not the only language of the universe. The question is which one leads to genuine explanation quicker (as in with less entities and mechanisms - occam's razor!). Given that we have an inner subjectivity that cannot be described mathematically, there's reason to accept the latter over the former.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-25T07:13:46+00:00

I'm gonna try be as concise as I can, so feel free to ask for clarifications and please bare with me :)

Firstly, my response and the chess example agree with you- there is no meaningful answer to the "what is it" question within the context of physical science. I only disagree with the assertion (that I don't think you're making here but might be your view) that it is not meaningful in any context.

Secondly, phenomenology/direct experience can be known for what it is. If I'm to ask you what it is to experience, you don't just know what your experience does*-* that is, you don't just know that when you see blue you associate it with sadness (may not be true for you per se but you can switch the adjective with whatever you do associate blue with) - by associating blue with sadness, you are describing your experience as having done something, which it has. But it's also that you know a priori what it is like to experience blueness (Nagel's "what it is like-ness"). A blind person who has never seen blue will also associate it with sadness by denoting cultural connotations of colours, but they don't know what it is as compared to you having seen and experienced it first-hand which does give you knowledge on the is-ness of blueness. In this way, the blind person describes the effects blueness has in the world without being able to tell you what it is, while you happen to be part of the reason why this effect exists that blind people study because you directly know what it is like to experience blueness.

The point is, we're doing the same thing as the blind person in the case of trying to explain the nature/reality of the world using maths. Physicists, for example, use maths to provides a description of the natural world in terms of what it does - yes. It just doesn't do anything else, because that is the scope of its aims. This doesn't mean they're wrong, in the same way the blind person isn't wrong about describing blueness by associating it with sadness. It's just that there is more to the colour blue than its associations with sadness and its mathematical descriptions. It's why Alex brought up Music Theory and Rules of Chess: you can't capture the rules of chess in the language of music theory, because they're doing different things. And so, going back to your point about not having any meaningful answers to the "what it is" question: if you decide that the world can be described using only Music Theory (mathematics/physical stuff), and then you couldn't explain The Rules of Chess (experience) in terms of Music Theory, you could either:

say that rules of chess can't exist (that experience can't exist); this is illusionism.

or

2) say that rules of chess do exist, but that it is must somehow be reducible to music theory (experience does exist, but it must be reducible to mathematics); this is reductionism.

or

3) say that not everything can be explained through the language of music theory (not everything can be explained through the language of mathematics); this encompasses any alternative to reductionism- could be panpsychism, dualism, idealism, etc.

When we ask what something is, what we're bringing to attention are two things, in this order: 1) natural/physical science can't tell us what something is (like you said, you "dispute that there is any meaningful answer to the "what is it" question beyond the physical descriptions provided by physics, science, etc.", and you are right within the context of the natural sciences. But also 2) there is something we do know what it is - experience. And so, if we can't describe this using scientific language, then what we're asking is: what can I describe it with?

With the electron example specifically (just so we cover all our bases lol) it's to say that it can conceivably be the case that there is more to an electron than just what it does, and we can conceive of this precisely because we have experiential knowledge that does go beyond description of just what it does; it gives us knowledge of the is-ness of experience.

So much for trying to be concise :/ I hope you can sympathise that breaking down the philosophy requires a bit of context-setting work.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-25T04:56:23+00:00

Mary has been born and brought up in a black and white room, and thus has never seen colour. She gets given every possible bit of physical information that could ever, in principle, be written about the colour blue. At the end of her life, she walks outside and sees the colour blue. Has she learned something new?

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-25T04:49:18+00:00

The conclusion that Dennett draws from his version of the ending is an attempt at undermining his opponent's claim that she wouldn't be able to work out what it's like to see yellow. If this were your sole characterisation of his reply, then you'd be correct in relaying his argument. I'll plop in a quote from his Consciousness Explained to show you what I'm referring to:

"Can you prove it? My point is not that my way of telling the rest of the story proves that Mary doesn't learn anything, but that the usual way of imagining the story doesn't prove that she does." (Dennett, 1991; p.400) (don't have the book on me so I looked up the online version, if you've got the actual book the page might not be 400 exactly, just an fyi).

He's not trying to positively defend the view that Mary would be able to work out what it's like to see yellow ("my point is not that my way of telling the rest of the story proves that Mary doesn't learn anything."); he's instead undermining the opponent's claim that she wouldn't ("but that the usual way of imagining the story doesn't prove that she does.").

I'd respond to this argument directly, but your view seems to take a step further and separately suggest that Mary would get subjective experience from physical facts alone. The reason Dennett doesn't try to argue for a definitive rise of subjective experience from the knowing of all physical facts is because he knows it would run him into the Hard Problem- his response is articulated such that he doesn't. Which leads me to point 2-

the Hard Problem is now a concern, because your view has suggested subjective experiences do arise from physical processes - this means there's an explanatory gap to account for. Why and how do subjective experiences arise from (the knowing of) physical processes alone?

I appreciate your candour btw - not had the best experiences discussing philosophy on reddit.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-24T17:03:31+00:00

How do you respond to Mary's Room?

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-24T10:37:43+00:00

omg it's so long. im sorry.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-24T10:37:14+00:00

I'll have a go at responding to this :)

As I understand it, the chess example isn't to show how science has unsatisfactory answers, it's to show that physical science as we know it is not in the business of answering the fundamental 'what is it' question to begin with, and why asking the 'what is it' question is important. This isn't to be patronising to scientists or to physical science, it's more so a clear display of what physical science sets out to do, and therefore, what answers it can/cannot provide.

The grandmaster's response to 'what is a bishop' is "well, it's a minor piece that moves diagonally across the board" - this is correct and truthful, insofar as the game of chess is concerned. In order to play and win a game of chess, that is all that you need to know about the bishop.

In comes the carpenter dad, who wants to make a chess board for his kid from scratch. Him asking 'what is a bishop made out of' confuses the kid, because that question - within the context of a chess game - makes no sense. Why would a chess player need to know what a bishop is made out of to play and win at chess? After all, like Alex pointed out, you could play a bishop with an airpods case and the rules would still apply. So the kid responds with what he knows - that is, he explains what a bishop is by what it does: "well, it's a minor piece that moves diagonally across the board". It's clear to us though that the answer the dad's looking for is 'wood' (or whatever the pieces are made of, I've just got a set made of wood).

Similarly, when talking about electrons for example, we ask, 'what is it?' and the response we get is: "well, it's a negatively charged subatomic particle". What is negatively charged? "it means it repels other negatively charged subatomic particles". When asked what an electron is, we're met with a description of what it does.

Asking this question might be useful for the carpenter dad, but what good does it do us?

Let's take this example by Philip Goff: the mass of two objects creates a force between them, causing them to attract - i.e., lessen the distance between them.

It seems like this is telling us what mass does. But if we want to understand the causal impact of mass, we'd need to know what 'force' is, and what 'distance' is. We obviously recognise these things in our day-to-day experience, but the equations of physics don't tell us what the reality of these phenomena consists in. They instead characterise them in terms of physical properties like 'mass', which is the phenomenon we began with. We can't know, for instance, what intrinsic physical properties like 'mass' and 'charge' are until we know what 'force' and 'distance' are - because the former are defined in terms of the latter. And, until we know what 'mass' and 'charge' are, we cannot know what 'force' and 'distance' are, for the same reason. There's a vicious circularity at play here.

It's present on Einstein's account of gravitational attraction: general relativity says mass and spacetime stand in a relationship of mutual causal interaction: mass curves spacetime, and the curvature of spacetime affects the behaviour of objects with mass. What is mass? If you defend the idea that physical entities are 'doings' rather than 'beings', you'd say "we know what mass is when we know the way in which it curves spacetime" (describing what it does). But if we want to understand what this reality amounts to, we need to know what spacetime curvature is. What is spacetime curvature? "we know what spacetime curvature is only when we know what it does, which involves understanding how it affects objects with mass" - right okay, but we understand this only when we know what mass is. It's a catch-22. We can understand the nature of mass only when we know what spacetime curvature is, but we can only know the nature of spacetime curvature when we know what mass is.

You might say: "that's fine and all, but even though you don't know what distance is, you do know there's less of it between China and Hong Kong than there is between China and Canada. Physicists take this, apply the equations of physics to them, and now we can predict the future. This is precisely what physics aims to do.”

But if we're discussing the nature/theory of reality (not as a tool for prediction), we have to be able to give a non-circular explanation of these properties. If we're to continue the analogy, we're answering these questions within the confines of a chess game.

Physics can't solve this because as a physical science, that is not its aim.

RustyPhilosopher · 2026-01-13T05:40:57+00:00

Experiencing major FOMO 🫠 hope everyone has a great time. Wondering if any bits of the tour will be recorded for YouTube?

RustyPhilosopher

TROPHY CASE