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lolophilo77's avatar

Is the psychophysical harmony argument somewhat like Leibniz's preestablished harmony ?

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QImmortal's avatar

"Given that these could be swapped out while keeping the physical states the same, evolution can’t explain it—for if B was replaced by D, the world would be physically the same, so there would be selection for disharmony."

I'm not sure why there should be any selection for disharmony. Our brains' function is information processing. It would be inefficient and therefore evolution would disfavor developing information processors that run superfluous processes all the time with no impact on fitness - one process managing all our inputs and outputs in the physical world (that is a zombie), and a second completely separate process unrelated to what is happening in the physical world that makes up our actual experience.

We can actually learn a lot about neuroscience from the exceptions where evolution doesn't select for psychophysical harmony. Sometimes it takes good enough shortcuts that result in our experiences of things like optical illusions where what we perceive really is different from physical reality.

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