Tom Clark

Intro: "...only when we understand how the internal subjective aspects of our experiences impact our actual behaviour will we understand why consciousness evolved, and why it exists in some species but not others."

Q: How can subjective experience impact behavior if it's not identical to the NCC?

The causal role of sensory qualities like pain is already carried out by their neuromuscular correlates. If identical to correlates, they don't add causal power, if not, there's no story about how they add it. Evolution selected functions, not qualities. See sect 7 of naturalism.org/sites/natura...

Still need to explain how indeterminism, which may well exist in nature, adds to agency. As you point out in another paper with Potter, causal slack has to be *minimized* to allow for effective action and origination, thus for responsibility. naturalism.org/philosophy/f...

AI and Authorship Be transparent about your use of AI

Here's a stab at a policy for acknowledging collaboration with AI: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Both determinists, you highlight the causal story while Dan downplays it, indavertently abetting retributive inclinations based on the idea of the libertarian agent. But you both endorse criminal justice reform, you radically, Dan conservatively. naturalism.org/resources/bo...

Universal determinism may not hold, but even if indeterminism played a role in the evolution of agents like us, it doesn't afford us control over or responsibility for our actions. Determinism is no threat to effective agency, but rather a necessary condition. naturalism.org/philosophy/f...

In a separate pre-print to which I've responded they say that indeterminism and an open future are necessary for moral responsibility, but also that indeterministic noise must be constrained to be effect agents - go figure! www.naturalism.org/philosophy/f...

We don't rationally want indeterminism in how we percieve, decide and act, on pain of losing control. @wiringthebrain.bsky.social and Henry Potter say, correctly, that indeterminism must be minimized for effective agency. So why their worry about determinism? www.naturalism.org/philosophy/f...

Indeed, and any indeterminism in how the agent decides or acts (and there might be some) makes the act less their doing, not more. We rationally want to be determiners of our actions, not be free in any contra-causal sense as Potter and Mitchell suppose. Agency is compatible with determinism.

You're not going to find the terms in which the world is represented, e.g., colors, in the system that does the representing, e.g., the brain. The meaning (propositional content) of this sentence is real but only the letter forms are visible.

Yes, although the title is still in German. The link should take you to the English version.

Dynamic for sure, but there isn't an infinite range of sensations and we distinguish them in terms of their recognizable phenomenal characters, which of course often get combined in complex gestalts. Words necessarily can't do justice to basic qualities is my point.

I think so otherwise you end up in an unsustainable indefinite regress of description. But if you can discriminate indefinitely more power to you!

Do these sensations have their own phenomenal character? If so, how would you describe them? If not, then cinnamon's character can't be described in terms of them.

Well subjectlively cinnamon, say, presents as having a unique character that can't be decomposed into further components, and if it could those would be the ineffable qualitative ground floor. Descriptions have to bottom out somewhere.

That's quite the chart of possible flavor/aroma components of sake! But there's of course a limit on a palate's descriptive prowess since there have to be sensory non-decomposables.There have to be ineffables on pain of an infinite descriptive regress.

Bewusstseinskultur: Towards a culture of consciousness: Spirituality, intellectual honesty, and the planetary crisis—how to protect your self-respect and fail gracefully

A new book by @metzinger.bsky.social lays out an epistemically responsible and spiritually deep response to the looming climate crisis, one that pulls no punches in its critique of religion and capitalism. It's the unflinching, honest appraisal we need right now. www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B0FZ...

Feels and Functions: On the Purported Identity Thereof A critique of one brand of physicalist realism about phenomenal consciousness.

Yeah the causal contribution of consciousness isn't obvious even though it seems to accompany only certain functions and not others. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Feels and Functions: On the Purported Identity Thereof A critique of one brand of physicalist realism about phenomenal consciousness.

The feeling of pain seems to play a causal role in pain behavior but when we analyze the functions associated with such behavior, we don't need to mention that feeling. What gives??? @matthiasmichel.bsky.social @earlkmiller.bsky.social @johanneskleiner.bsky.social

substack.com/home/post/p-...

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...

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.

~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.

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...