According to @keithfrankish.com there's nothing qualitatively it's like to experience severe pain, or taste coffee, or see red. You only think there are sensory qualities. But is there really nothing it's like to have experiences? www.naturalism.org/philosophy/c...
Are Feels Real? Reflections on Frankish's Illusionism | Naturalism.org
www.naturalism.org
November 3, 2025 at 1:16 AM
According to @keithfrankish.com there's nothing qualitatively it's like to experience severe pain, or taste coffee, or see red. You only think there are sensory qualities. But is there really nothing it's like to have experiences? www.naturalism.org/philosophy/c...
@annakaharris.bsky.social is partial to panpsychism in her book Conscious and in her Lights On series, but I agree that it has little if any empirical evidence going for it. My review of Conscious is nevertheless pretty positive...
www.naturalism.org/resources/bo...
www.naturalism.org/resources/bo...
The Cost of Consciousness | Naturalism.org
www.naturalism.org
November 1, 2025 at 1:56 PM
@annakaharris.bsky.social is partial to panpsychism in her book Conscious and in her Lights On series, but I agree that it has little if any empirical evidence going for it. My review of Conscious is nevertheless pretty positive...
www.naturalism.org/resources/bo...
www.naturalism.org/resources/bo...
That and what the explanatory target is. I don't think Kevin is an illusionist so what emerges for him is what you think is an illusion.
November 1, 2025 at 1:38 PM
That and what the explanatory target is. I don't think Kevin is an illusionist so what emerges for him is what you think is an illusion.
The CR as originally specified doesn't act in the world in service to its own survival and agenda so doesn't need an egocentric behavior-guiding world model keyed to affordances.
October 29, 2025 at 12:35 PM
The CR as originally specified doesn't act in the world in service to its own survival and agenda so doesn't need an egocentric behavior-guiding world model keyed to affordances.
~7:00 "...we want to be right about something..."
We're right that there is a seeming, of say pain or red, but not right or wrong about how it seems if it's a basic quality since there are no criteria we could be wrong about that are involved in recognizing it.
We're right that there is a seeming, of say pain or red, but not right or wrong about how it seems if it's a basic quality since there are no criteria we could be wrong about that are involved in recognizing it.
October 25, 2025 at 12:15 AM
~7:00 "...we want to be right about something..."
We're right that there is a seeming, of say pain or red, but not right or wrong about how it seems if it's a basic quality since there are no criteria we could be wrong about that are involved in recognizing it.
We're right that there is a seeming, of say pain or red, but not right or wrong about how it seems if it's a basic quality since there are no criteria we could be wrong about that are involved in recognizing it.
What if AIs eventually meet all the criteria of personhood? Or is that logically, nomologically, or technologically impossible?
October 24, 2025 at 4:51 PM
What if AIs eventually meet all the criteria of personhood? Or is that logically, nomologically, or technologically impossible?
@davidchalmers.bsky.social is right that sensory qualities will be underdetermined by math precisely because there is no *phenomenological* description of red: its ineffability rules out capture in any objective terms. By necessity there must be ineffables as basic terms of description.
October 24, 2025 at 4:06 PM
@davidchalmers.bsky.social is right that sensory qualities will be underdetermined by math precisely because there is no *phenomenological* description of red: its ineffability rules out capture in any objective terms. By necessity there must be ineffables as basic terms of description.
I hope this meets the medical profession's criterion of first, do no harm.
Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses
naturalism.org/sites/natura...
Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses
naturalism.org/sites/natura...
October 22, 2025 at 12:40 AM
I hope this meets the medical profession's criterion of first, do no harm.
Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses
naturalism.org/sites/natura...
Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses
naturalism.org/sites/natura...
On his view there's nothing it's like to be conscious: there are no experiential qualities by which we distinguish things like pains, colors, textures, sounds, etc. So he denies the existence of that which I think needs explaining about consciousness and instead wants to explain why I think that.
October 20, 2025 at 3:09 PM
On his view there's nothing it's like to be conscious: there are no experiential qualities by which we distinguish things like pains, colors, textures, sounds, etc. So he denies the existence of that which I think needs explaining about consciousness and instead wants to explain why I think that.
Right, we determine our choices, they aren't *pre*determined, as you say in this paper. And you rightly say microlevel noise has to be constrained, not amplified, for us to have top-down control. So how can indeterminacy make an act more *up to me*? philpapers.org/archive/CLAT...
philpapers.org
October 14, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Right, we determine our choices, they aren't *pre*determined, as you say in this paper. And you rightly say microlevel noise has to be constrained, not amplified, for us to have top-down control. So how can indeterminacy make an act more *up to me*? philpapers.org/archive/CLAT...
Indeed. The libertarian claim that individuals could have chosen otherwise in actual situations in a way up to them, not chance, drives some very punitive responsibility practices: retributive punishment. But there's no naturalistic basis for that claim. See sect. 7 of philpapers.org/archive/CLAT...
Thomas W. Clark, The Disutility of Indeterminism: Commentary on Potter and Mitchell - PhilPapers
In “Chance, Choice, and Control: Free Will in an Indeterministic Universe,” Henry Potter and Kevin Mitchell defend libertarian free will against the charge that indeterminism would undermine, not enha...
philpapers.org
October 14, 2025 at 11:56 AM
Indeed. The libertarian claim that individuals could have chosen otherwise in actual situations in a way up to them, not chance, drives some very punitive responsibility practices: retributive punishment. But there's no naturalistic basis for that claim. See sect. 7 of philpapers.org/archive/CLAT...
Origins of Santa Claus
Shared via Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic
claude.ai
August 27, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Fun question! The concept of "Santa Claus" was fixed, that is its reference was perhaps(!) determined by, what the attached summary from Claude describes. So how does the referent of my concept "the taste of ginger" get determined if there's no non-conceptual taste to conceptualize?
August 27, 2025 at 12:13 AM
Fun question! The concept of "Santa Claus" was fixed, that is its reference was perhaps(!) determined by, what the attached summary from Claude describes. So how does the referent of my concept "the taste of ginger" get determined if there's no non-conceptual taste to conceptualize?
For each specific supposedly non-existent non-conceptual sensory quality that we conceive of when conscious there's a specific concept, e.g., "taste of ginger," so one wonders how that concept gets fixed in the absence of said quality.
August 26, 2025 at 8:44 PM
For each specific supposedly non-existent non-conceptual sensory quality that we conceive of when conscious there's a specific concept, e.g., "taste of ginger," so one wonders how that concept gets fixed in the absence of said quality.
Will have a look, thanks, and taking phenomenality to be a species of representational content is I think on the right track. We don't see or observe that content, rather we see the world *in terms of* it, what for us as conscious subjects consists of the phenomenal qualities of our experience.
August 26, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Will have a look, thanks, and taking phenomenality to be a species of representational content is I think on the right track. We don't see or observe that content, rather we see the world *in terms of* it, what for us as conscious subjects consists of the phenomenal qualities of our experience.
The ghosts you'd say are conscious non-conceptual pains: they don't exist, but we might deploy the concept "non-conceptual pain" to refer to a non-existent intentional object. All there is in consciousness is conceptual content, some about a host of non-existent qualities, each one derived...how?
August 26, 2025 at 5:20 PM
The ghosts you'd say are conscious non-conceptual pains: they don't exist, but we might deploy the concept "non-conceptual pain" to refer to a non-existent intentional object. All there is in consciousness is conceptual content, some about a host of non-existent qualities, each one derived...how?
I apply (deploy) concepts in categorizing, reporting, and thinking about experiences like feeling pain, so feeling pain isn’t itself the conceptual content “I’m feeling pain.” You seem to collapse the distinction between conceptual content and the non-conceptual experience the concept picks out.
August 26, 2025 at 12:55 AM
I apply (deploy) concepts in categorizing, reporting, and thinking about experiences like feeling pain, so feeling pain isn’t itself the conceptual content “I’m feeling pain.” You seem to collapse the distinction between conceptual content and the non-conceptual experience the concept picks out.
Good question. Fear of death threats, DOJ investigations, other sorts of retribution? In any case, a joint statement from them would be pretty powerful, let's hope it happens.
August 25, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Good question. Fear of death threats, DOJ investigations, other sorts of retribution? In any case, a joint statement from them would be pretty powerful, let's hope it happens.
I take it I'm not a concept, so in applying concepts to myself as a conscious being I apply them to aspects of my experience that don't present themselves as concepts or conceptual content, e.g., pains, tastes, emotions, etc. But for you all this already *is* conceptual content, right?
August 25, 2025 at 5:34 PM
I take it I'm not a concept, so in applying concepts to myself as a conscious being I apply them to aspects of my experience that don't present themselves as concepts or conceptual content, e.g., pains, tastes, emotions, etc. But for you all this already *is* conceptual content, right?
Ok, the application of a concept results in conceptual content, e.g., "a pain of some sort." But to what does the application of a concept get applied? You'd say it's another concept since it's concepts all the way down. There's nothing non-conceptual in consciousness to conceptualize, you'd say.
August 25, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Ok, the application of a concept results in conceptual content, e.g., "a pain of some sort." But to what does the application of a concept get applied? You'd say it's another concept since it's concepts all the way down. There's nothing non-conceptual in consciousness to conceptualize, you'd say.
Being in the vicinity of tomato with your eyes open normally results in the experience of seeing it. The tomato is visible and you're looking at it, and the experience involves sensations such as that of redness. On my view, these are representational contents in terms of which the tomato appears.
August 25, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Being in the vicinity of tomato with your eyes open normally results in the experience of seeing it. The tomato is visible and you're looking at it, and the experience involves sensations such as that of redness. On my view, these are representational contents in terms of which the tomato appears.
You understand what it means to see a tomato, presumably having done it many times. It's like something to see it, or hallucinate it, or dream about it. All those conscious episodes involve qualitative states such as red as an element. No screen, no theater, no observer, just your experience.
August 25, 2025 at 4:03 PM
You understand what it means to see a tomato, presumably having done it many times. It's like something to see it, or hallucinate it, or dream about it. All those conscious episodes involve qualitative states such as red as an element. No screen, no theater, no observer, just your experience.
You: "If they deploy some concept or other, just not the “pain” concept, then they’re consciously in pain in a sense, just not conscious of it AS a pain." If deploying a concept *results* in conscious pain in a sense, then such pain isn't itself that concept, but its result, thus non-conceptual.
August 25, 2025 at 3:55 PM
You: "If they deploy some concept or other, just not the “pain” concept, then they’re consciously in pain in a sense, just not conscious of it AS a pain." If deploying a concept *results* in conscious pain in a sense, then such pain isn't itself that concept, but its result, thus non-conceptual.