Disagreeable Me

Maybe we can all agree to that?

Maybe this disagreement is more about degree of certainty? If Philip had said "I doubt science is going to resolve it because I think the problem is of another category" then we might all agree this is fair? Sure, science *might* resolve it. But it's OK to articulate reasons for doubt.

I wouldn't want to foreclose on those research programmes. Let them go ahead and see what they come up with. But I'm going to claim that they are not going to solve it, because I think Dennett is right. And I think Philip is doing something similar. I think it's a fair claim to make.

If you are right about consciousness, then I don't think science is going to resolve it. The conceptual work needed was already done by Dennett. If Philip is right, then science isn't going to do it either. Science is going to succeed only if someone like Anil Seth is right.

I don't think that's analogous to what Philip is asking for, though. As I understand it, Paley just didn't see a way for nature to produce what looked like design -- he thought it was preposterous. But not a category mistake.

You've sort of lost me here, Keith. Design seems to me to be more a hypothesis about the origin of life rather than a conceptualisation of what life is. Though I'm open to the idea that Paley would have perceived some sort of category mistake in trying to explain life with physical science.

Reading one bit more, I think this ties into phenomenal concepts. And responses to the KA. I, an illusionist, think Mary learns something (ability hypothesis). So there is, kinda, something irreducibly subjective about seeing red. But in an illusionism compatible way.

Fair enough, I think I'm probably wrong then. I'm mostly just going by the abstract of that Papineau paper. He at least seems to think there is no fact of the matter. Perhaps he has a different kind of a posteriori physicalist in mind? Are you familiar with the paper?

Which is not to say that I disagree with you. Because how we conceptualise consciousness is a choice. And that choice aligns with one rhetorical approach or another.

I did, and it's good. But I think I still stand by my own response too. The two views seem to agree on states of affairs but choose to describe them differently. This is partly a tactical rhetorical decision. But I have more sympathy with illusionism just because it seems more coherent.

This seems right: www.davidpapineau.co.uk/uploads/1/8/.... I would elaborate that illusionism is specifically a rhetorical approach to answering or explaining the meta question and need not disagree with a posteriori physicalism on the science.

(Devil's advocacy) Phenomenal conservatism. We've got to start somewhere, and fundamentally, it all boils down to intuitions, and the intuition that there is more to it than functionalism is harder to doubt (for some) than almost any other.

(Devil's advocacy continues). You are begging the question by assuming that beliefs are purely functional. Science can explain the easy problems around how such beliefs behave. But not that there are genuine beliefs in the first place.

Doesn't Chalmers agree that the meta problem is one of the easy ones? I don't think even solving all the easy problems will convince all people, even scientists, that there is nothing left to explain. Namely, the solution not to why there appears to be a Hard Problem but to the HP itself.

I think maybe what Philip means, or if not then a related point, is that it seems unlikely that science is going to settle the debate. At least I don't think it will. I think illusionism is true, but I don't hold out much hope that it will be established as true by science.

Right, but I think that's fair enough because it is a metaphysical claim. Some scientists will want to push back and some will not, because metaphysical views vary among scientists. The claim itself is not anti-science.

Panpsychism will only appeal to non-physicalists (or non-functionalists), people who think that Mary and p-zombies etc give reason to doubt physicalism. For people who find such arguments unpersuasive, panpsychism is solving a non-problem.

I followed up with something on that side of it too. But this is intended in the spirit of answering your question about why people may not find the panpsychist explanation to be very plausible. I'm an illlusionist, true, but there are also non-illusionist physicalists.

By which I mean: even assuming that the physical stuff has to have some essence or nature (which I don't believe), then why should it's nature be anything we are familiar with at a high level? Why not just let it be sui generis? The nature of physical stuff is to be physical stuff.

I think there is also another issue that @pekka.bsky.social is gesturing at: saying that the nature of the fundamental stuff is "consciousness" is no more an explanation than the default, unexamined assumption of most people that the nature is "physical".

It all depends on whether you buy the premise that consciousness is inexplicable in terms of physical reality. If you don't buy that premise, then consciousness is just another emergent phenomenon. So it's like saying we're going to explain physical reality in terms of chocolate. It seems daft.

The Italian Job Interview

Paul Bettany as Darwin in Creation (2009)

Ah well, he got there in the end.

New YouTube short story: The Face of the King by Adrian Tchaikovsky The latest in our YouTube short story project is a reading of legendary sci-fi and fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Face of the King.

The latest in our YouTube short story project is a reading of legendary sci-fi and fantasy author @aptshadow.bsky.social ’s The Face of the King. Al Barclay (Slow Horses, Deep Cover, The Crown) breathes new creative life into this brilliant dark fantasy story.

Deeply horrifying and almost certain to escalate. Insane we’ve let this go this far.

From the Minneapolis community on Reddit: Another ICE murder in front of Glam Doll Donuts Explore this post and more from the Minneapolis community

There appears to have been another ICE murder in Minneapolis this morning.

[CW: graphic video]

www.reddit.com/r/Minneapoli...

For example, it is not very unlikely that somebody wins the lottery today. But it is very unlikely that I win the lottery today. The latter is put indexically, but we can just rewrite it. For any given player, it is very unlikely that that player wins the lottery today.

The only cases where it matters if indexical evidence is admissible is in just these sorts of controversial anthropic cases. In other cases, we can replace indexical evidence with qualitative evidence.

Dr Kareem Carr man: i wish to publish @kareem_carr Jan 21 reviewer 2: your paper is no good man: i'll do anything to improve reviewer 2: it's simple. you must read the work of the great scientist Pagliarini man: *bursts into tears* but i am Pagliarini Andre Pagliarini @apagliar Jan 21 a first: in rejecting an article I submitted to a journal, reviewer 2 noted I failed to engage the work of one Andre Pagliarini Jan 21, 2026 • 3:47 PM UTC

I just thought everyone should see this

Absolutely. But it would be a mistake to think that it's reasoning done in a void with no regard to any sort of bias or inherited preferences. It's very flexible and adaptable and capable, but that doesn't mean it isn't tuned in various ways by selection.