The psychophysical argument seems intuitively wrong to me due to physicalist priors, and so the example of a physically identical world where all conscious experience is replaced by buzzing parses as an inherent contradiction. Doubt I have good reasoning for those priors though.
Whether intuitions are justified depends on the definition of justified? And intuitions? Actually, a lot of philosophical questions feel like that.
My impression was that it contradicted physicalism itself. Realizing that was why I didn't make further arguments and just added the statement about priors, as I'm not up to date on specifically physicalism/nonphysicalism and have generally not really done a deep examination of my beliefs from first principles.
EDIT: Though from my point of view, contradicting itself and contradicting physicalism are functionally equivalent statements. Or more precisely, "physically identical arguments" for non-physicalism parse to me as an argument that "A and not A is true" seems like a plausible existence.
Quick clarification: I don't think that the goblins have any justification to "retain". My point is just that learning about the *origins* of their belief doesn't change anything. They're reasonable to ignore origins-based debunking arguments. But it doesn't follow that their belief is justified. It's unjustified for independent reasons.
Similarly with your believing that "100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ends in a 9." What else do you know about that number? Do you know enough to be able to work out what its final digit (in decimal representation) is? If not, you obviously shouldn't think it ends in a 9. Whether the belief is a result of hypnosis is strictly irrelevant, and doesn't change what you ought to believe. But that's precisely because you shouldn't have believed it even *before* learning about the causal origins.
The big thing that jumps out at me is that I can't see how you (or Dustin) could *possibly* think philosophical beliefs have a generally reliable source. That just seems decisively refuted by the existence of philosophical disagreement. (Unless the idea is that God just likes utilitarians more than he likes the Kantians, so he didn't bother giving *them* reliable truth-seeking faculties, only us?)
You literally *have* to think that you're lucky, because other humans believe differently from you (presumably falsely, from your point of view), and it's just luck that you're not in their position.
Consider the class P of disputed philosophical topics. Since people have diverse views about any question in P, we know that P-beliefs *as such* aren't reliable. There will be a comparative causal explanation of why you believe P1 rather than P2, while others do the reverse, and it can't be "because P1 is true" -- because that doesn't differentiate you from the P2-believers. The distinguishing causal factor will instead have to be something "truth-irrelevant": some mix of facts about your specific subculture, intellectual influences, personality, etc.
So if you accept as a general principle that you cannot rationally maintain any belief whilst simultaneously believing that its causal explanation primarily depends upon "truth-irrelevant" factors, then it seems you cannot rationally maintain *any* beliefs in P whatsoever. Including in that very epistemic principle.
//The distinguishing causal factor will instead have to be something "truth-irrelevant"//
I don't agree with this. Think of this the way you'd think of someone who was making a mathematical error. You'd think that your view was correct. Some third party who couldn't investigate the dispute might not, but on account of having direct access to your own reasoning, you can see that your reasoning is right and there's isn't. You could be wrong, just as you could with a mathematical dispute, but this gives you some justification in lots of cases for trusting your beliefs. You can also think that there are some topics on which there are special reasons your beliefs won't go awry, like if you're less subject to social desirability bias than others.
It seems sort of irrational and dogmatic to reject someone else's views just because they're not yours if you don't have any reason to think your views are especially reliable.
There's subjective parity: they too think that they "can see that [their] reasoning is right and [yours] isn't." Maybe you're *actually* correct, and on *my* view that makes all the difference. But I don't see how *you* can appeal to such an objective consideration without undermining your case against my view.
"It seems sort of irrational and dogmatic to reject someone else's views just because they're not yours if you don't have any reason to think your views are especially reliable."
Our views are no different in this respect. I think my views are especially reliable because I'm starting from the right place while others aren't. You think your views are especially reliable because "you can see that your reasoning is right and [theirs] isn't". Either assumption is equally question-begging to the person who disagrees with us. This leaves us with two options. Either:
(1) this situation -- having no non-question-begging way to establish that we're in the right, and so regarding ourselves as "lucky" to be the ones who are *actually* right -- is a defeater for our beliefs, in which case your view is defeated too; or
(2) it is not a defeater, in which case my view escapes your fundamental objection.
In neither case does it seem that your view has any epistemic advantage over mine (despite being more metaphysically costly).
Nice read. I really enjoyed the א, ב, ג (though I didn’t understand if there was some joke that was particular to this piece).
Nope!
The psychophysical argument seems intuitively wrong to me due to physicalist priors, and so the example of a physically identical world where all conscious experience is replaced by buzzing parses as an inherent contradiction. Doubt I have good reasoning for those priors though.
Whether intuitions are justified depends on the definition of justified? And intuitions? Actually, a lot of philosophical questions feel like that.
Does the scenario contradict itself, contradict a plausible additional assumption (besides physicalism), or contradict physicalism?
My impression was that it contradicted physicalism itself. Realizing that was why I didn't make further arguments and just added the statement about priors, as I'm not up to date on specifically physicalism/nonphysicalism and have generally not really done a deep examination of my beliefs from first principles.
EDIT: Though from my point of view, contradicting itself and contradicting physicalism are functionally equivalent statements. Or more precisely, "physically identical arguments" for non-physicalism parse to me as an argument that "A and not A is true" seems like a plausible existence.
Quick clarification: I don't think that the goblins have any justification to "retain". My point is just that learning about the *origins* of their belief doesn't change anything. They're reasonable to ignore origins-based debunking arguments. But it doesn't follow that their belief is justified. It's unjustified for independent reasons.
Similarly with your believing that "100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ends in a 9." What else do you know about that number? Do you know enough to be able to work out what its final digit (in decimal representation) is? If not, you obviously shouldn't think it ends in a 9. Whether the belief is a result of hypnosis is strictly irrelevant, and doesn't change what you ought to believe. But that's precisely because you shouldn't have believed it even *before* learning about the causal origins.
Sorry, will fix!
Okay fixed, sorry! I'd be curious to hear what you think about the other points I raise in the article.
The big thing that jumps out at me is that I can't see how you (or Dustin) could *possibly* think philosophical beliefs have a generally reliable source. That just seems decisively refuted by the existence of philosophical disagreement. (Unless the idea is that God just likes utilitarians more than he likes the Kantians, so he didn't bother giving *them* reliable truth-seeking faculties, only us?)
You literally *have* to think that you're lucky, because other humans believe differently from you (presumably falsely, from your point of view), and it's just luck that you're not in their position.
I think I’m missing the objection--can’t we say that most intuitions are right but some are wrong?
Consider the class P of disputed philosophical topics. Since people have diverse views about any question in P, we know that P-beliefs *as such* aren't reliable. There will be a comparative causal explanation of why you believe P1 rather than P2, while others do the reverse, and it can't be "because P1 is true" -- because that doesn't differentiate you from the P2-believers. The distinguishing causal factor will instead have to be something "truth-irrelevant": some mix of facts about your specific subculture, intellectual influences, personality, etc.
So if you accept as a general principle that you cannot rationally maintain any belief whilst simultaneously believing that its causal explanation primarily depends upon "truth-irrelevant" factors, then it seems you cannot rationally maintain *any* beliefs in P whatsoever. Including in that very epistemic principle.
//The distinguishing causal factor will instead have to be something "truth-irrelevant"//
I don't agree with this. Think of this the way you'd think of someone who was making a mathematical error. You'd think that your view was correct. Some third party who couldn't investigate the dispute might not, but on account of having direct access to your own reasoning, you can see that your reasoning is right and there's isn't. You could be wrong, just as you could with a mathematical dispute, but this gives you some justification in lots of cases for trusting your beliefs. You can also think that there are some topics on which there are special reasons your beliefs won't go awry, like if you're less subject to social desirability bias than others.
It seems sort of irrational and dogmatic to reject someone else's views just because they're not yours if you don't have any reason to think your views are especially reliable.
There's subjective parity: they too think that they "can see that [their] reasoning is right and [yours] isn't." Maybe you're *actually* correct, and on *my* view that makes all the difference. But I don't see how *you* can appeal to such an objective consideration without undermining your case against my view.
"It seems sort of irrational and dogmatic to reject someone else's views just because they're not yours if you don't have any reason to think your views are especially reliable."
Our views are no different in this respect. I think my views are especially reliable because I'm starting from the right place while others aren't. You think your views are especially reliable because "you can see that your reasoning is right and [theirs] isn't". Either assumption is equally question-begging to the person who disagrees with us. This leaves us with two options. Either:
(1) this situation -- having no non-question-begging way to establish that we're in the right, and so regarding ourselves as "lucky" to be the ones who are *actually* right -- is a defeater for our beliefs, in which case your view is defeated too; or
(2) it is not a defeater, in which case my view escapes your fundamental objection.
In neither case does it seem that your view has any epistemic advantage over mine (despite being more metaphysically costly).