If you could push a button and simply cease to exist, would you press it?

i'm really hoping death is not just having your consciousness suspended in a wooden box for all eternity.

So mind and subjective experience are two different things? Then what is mind, if not subjective experience?

If mind has nothing to do with subjective experience then why even take the pill at all?

Not to spoil the fun, but if the experience of annihilating one's soul was supposed to be fully detectable by the one who took the drug, why would the dualist, upon waking, not have noticed the effect of the drug injected during the night? And if the effect was not supposed to be detectable, why would the dualist have been disappointed in not detecting any effect?

The point is that it doesn't make sense, it's a reductio ad absurdum, but of a pretty absurd characterisation of dualism from the start. Will bow to lukas on who Smullyan's actual target is, but if it's epiphenomenalism why not say so?

Not to spoil the fun, but if the experience of annihilating one's soul was supposed to be fully detectable by the one who took the drug, why would the dualist, upon waking, not have noticed the effect of the drug injected during the night? And if the effect was not supposed to be detectable, why would the dualist have been disappointed in not detecting any effect?

The stated effect of the pill is that it leaves the body acting just as if it still had a soul, as though nothing had changed. So despite there being no mind/soul/consciousness there anymore, the soulless body acts out the same disappointment as the dualist naturally would have had the pill not had an effect.

Is there really a philosophical point to this story? It reads to me more like a joke than a parable. It isn't really a reductio against dualism, just a demonstration of a funny scenario that's consistent with dualism.

Version I found ends with "doesn't that make you think there's something wrong with dualism?"

Scratches chin, raises eyebrow

Dude was probably doing pretty good that one day after the injection but before the pilltake, maybe he just didnt notice

So mind and subjective experience are two different things? Then what is mind, if not subjective experience?

Imagine a sleepwalker in a totally dreamless sleep. Some sleepwalkers just get up and wander, but some can talk, listen, respond, etc. If you imagine a dreamless sleepwalker that can do everything a normal person can, you have a philosophical zombie - mind but no subjective experience.

if it's epiphenomenalism why not say so?

Well, I guess I'm inferring that it's epiphenomenalism that he's complaining about, because that's the version of dualism that operates the way he describes. If the story didn't happen in an epiphenomenal world, after taking the potion the body would act differently.

fwiw I earnestly recommend that entire book, it is a delight

Idk he sounds like a guy who is convinced he's found the secret of the universe and is just shaking his head with a wry grin at all the folk who have actually spent a lot more time thinking about this stuff.

dude he is a pretty badass logician and philosopher, he's not a philosopher of mind per se but he's definitely spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff

also he's like 92

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeeaya7/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/raymond4.jpg

so he's probably necessarily spent more time thinking about this than you have

Yah i didn't want to say he's a lazy thinker but that piece above is a pretty glib dismissal imo.

Otoh all anyone can offer in this area is OPINIONS 4 U and he seems happy to have found the secret to the universe so good on him.

that's kind of a glib dismissal of the viability of studying the mind-body problem

which like I'm not trying to say that this parable in a book for a lay audience is a serious examination of said problem but I mean c'mon

If anyone finds this stuff interesting, I can recommend http://www.consciousentities.com/ as well. Recommend against getting interested, this is a frustrating area.

Xp Ok maybe the quality of arguments improves but I don't think anyone is convincing anyone else, just shoring up their own position.

Aye that's a good blog.

he looks like david lo pan

xxxp

Presumably, since many others had taken this drug and it was widely available, the fact that it had no felt effects would have been common knowledge, therefore the lack of detectable effects would not have persuaded the dualist that his soul was intact.

So he took it and then waited the time interval in which it was supposed to work. At the end of the interval he angrily exclaimed: "Damn it, this stuff hasn't helped at all! I still obviously have a soul..."

This part of the story clearly postulates that, at the "end of the interval in which it was supposed to work" the user of the drug was known to experience some change. It conveniently elides what this experience of change might be, so that the story does not need to explain why the dualist was unable to notice that his soul was already obliterated when he woke up after "the interval" had passed. If he had noticed at that time, it may have been puzzling to him, for he would not understand the genesis of this change, but he would have known that his desire to obliterate his soul had been mysteriously fullfilled and his "release" accomplished.

Because the dualist was obviously unaware of the effect of the drug upon waking, then it is equally obvious that the drug's effects could not be felt, which makes his assertion of disappointment and continued suffering illogical. This is a serious flaw in the story and invalidates any point it might otherwise have demonstrated.

So, let's try to fix it.

Let's add that the felt effect of the drug was brief, perhaps a few seconds of vertigo which occur at the end of the interval, but which having passed, no further effects were ever felt. In that case, we encounter another flaw. This sympathetic "friend" who injects the drug, by knowingly depriving the dualist of this one brief but unmistakable confirmation of his desires, proves himself to be the exact opposite of a friend. Instead, his plot to inject the drug becomes diabolical and intended to inflict harm.

At least that patches the biggest hole in the story. What it doesn't do is explain why, when the dualist 'knows' the drug works and knows he has taken it, he falls so rapidly into despair. Why would he not presume the results, while not explicitly confirmed, remain indefinite until a proper explanantion of his lack of vertigo can be discovered? Why not readminister the drug? Why would his "friend" not inform him of his actions and put an end to his doubts?

Really, as a thought experiment, this one ends far short of completeness.

huh

How do we know he still felt need to obliterate soul in that one day ?

I'm not sure I understand the question, but on that one day the dualist takes the drug, which would seem to establish how he felt about the matter.

I don't think you can say the effect of the drug was felt at all, cos dude took it while he was asleep and the whole point of that part of the story is that he wasn't aware of it at all in any capacity.

What is the point of this parable? Cos i can't get past the logical inconsistencies. There's a drug that eliminate mind-soul and mind-soul is unrelated to subjective experience so even where he completely awake the first time he would register no difference and he takes it a second time knowingly and is upset that there is no noticeable change despite the fact that there would be no noticeable change even if it worked. Sounds more like a joke about nihilism or something.

the thing turns on this imo: But he was sure they were quite separate substances.

granted my understanding of the soul comes from theology, which may not have much overlap with how it is understood in the philosophical tradition this story comes from.

the separateness of the substances of material and soul doesn't really cover it; the substance-ness of the soul is absolutely and forever out of reach of the material/any effort of will. even its verification. believe it or don't, but it's there, inhering to you (or not.) the point is that the drug is snake oil.

I have to read this line (in bold) as being a wry joke: The next morning the body of the dualist awoke-without any soul indeed-and the first thing it did was to go to the drugstore to get the drug.

the second and related joke is that the man thinks his "suffering" is somehow attached to his soul and not his material self. clearly he fears the accounting for his suffering and response to suffering will be levied on his soul, but why would that make him feel any better now, should he manage to get rid of it?

There's a drug that eliminate mind-soul and mind-soul is unrelated to subjective experience so even where he completely awake the first time he would register no difference

"He" would register a difference in that his subjective experience would end.

From the story: Its effect on the taker was to annihilate the soul or mind entirely but to leave the body functioning exactly as before.

I've been using "subjective experience" for what he's calling "mind/soul". So the drug eliminates subjective experience but leaves the body alone.

So: the body - somehow - gives rise to subjective experience, but subjective experience doesn't affect the body. For you to believe that, though, you have to admit that his complaining about subjective experience isn't caused by subjective experience, because him complaining is an action of the body, and we've just said the body is unaffected by subjective experience.

So he takes the drug, it works - subjective experience goes away - but the body is still the same as before, and he keeps complaining.

I'm not sure I understand the question, but on that one day the dualist takes the drug, which would seem to establish how he felt about the matter.

― Aimless, Friday, 11 January 2013

does it?

i thought his body was supposed to carry on regardless? wouldnt his soul-less out of torment body also taken the drug the second time? where does it presume he felt anything about it on that particular day?

that line is a wry joke yes. xps

So mind/subjective experience has nothing to do with bodily self-awareness? What exactly is it then?

contemporary epiphenomenalism isn't really dualist, is it? the likes of davidson or dennett are really monists who just think that even though it's in some sense possible to reduce conscious processes to mere physical processes, it doesn't really make sense to talk about them in that way. (i'm guessing he's not really picking on anyone, cuz today no one but the hardcore religious type is a dualist in the old fashioned sense.)

This story is like an attempt to rescue people from drowning in ankle deep water.

there are a lot of hippies and art students who are dualists in a pretty old-fashioned sense

some people get really angry about physicalism! we had a student write "PHYSICALISM IS BULLSHIT!!!" on their course evaluation for a class I TAed.

xp hardcore religious types of all varieties imo.

notxp ha. I'm kinda disappointed that all of the students I've TAed so far have been wimps, OH YOU LIKED EVERYTHING HOW INTERESTING.

Sorta feels like Epiphenomenalism is BS. Just say "I don't agree with the standard definition of mind" and be done w it.

I don't know that simple physicalism is really the standard definition any more though, over the last ten years the neuroscience-philosophy crossover stuff on consciousness and subjectivity and the like as somehow abstracted from the brain has become pretty prominent.

Yes, there are materialist and dualist ways of using the word epiphenomenalism, depending on what kind of phenomenon you're trying to describe (mental activity, qualia.)

no one but the hardcore religious type is a dualist in the old fashioned sense

Chalmers certainly is, right? Isn't this the main disagreement between him and say Dennett?

As far as the current state of the field, I'll have to trust you - that's very interesting.

http://loymachedo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/What-The-Bleep-Do-We-Know.jpg

oh come on

As far as the current state of the field, I'll have to trust you

I don't know it that well (one of those things where I get it second hand from people I know working on it more than my own research), but I think Jeannerod been one of the major players from the neuroscience side, Metzinger and people involved in his school from the philosophy side (even if Metzinger's own enquiries into the self end with him saying that it basically doesn't exist).

I realise that I'm probably using epiphenomenalism in a slightly fuzzy and dodgy way that's encompassing a more general physicalist-but-not-physicalist relation between mind and brain, but maybe I can dubiously claim that this different understanding of it corresponds to the orientation of current research.

don't know anything about Chalmers tbh, but looking him up I see that he needs to join the list of philosophers who don't look like philosophers, alongside James Ladyman

http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/storage/images/guests/jamesLadyman.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1347149650078

I got it, it's a moral argument against magical non-consenting soul euthanasia.

oh, Chambers is yer zombies man. Not something I've bothered to engage with beyond the dumb-sounding premises rly.

(sputters) well if you can't accept a simple intuition about non-verifiable subjective experience i just don't know

all the interesting work is happening in science afaict, dualism is a total dead end.

but i do believe that subjective experience is logically separable from an objective description of the brain (ie i think the zombie thought experiment is interesting) so it puts me in a tough spot.

The interesting science work is happening in science, sure. Don't think that's taking us one jot closer to a mind/body solution though.