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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 55m

Sorry, to be clear, this is addressed at both @keithfrankish.com and @petemandik.bsky.social , since you more or less agreed with each other.

Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 57m

This virtual person, who may have different beliefs, goals, attitudes, memories etc than Searle himself, is the person that understands Chinese. Searle still doesn't. We could pass messages to this person in Chinese and Searle himself would not know what was said.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 59m

I think there is *something* that understands Chinese, but it's still the system, not Searle himself. I think he has created a virtual person, like a virtual machine, which takes as its substrate not Searle's Brain but Searle's mind's operation of the rules.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 1h

I think, in short, your position is that if he learns off a system that also has sensory information and everything else, then it is dualistic to suppose that he doesn't understand Chinese. So you want to say he really does understand Chinese in those circumstances. I don't think that's right.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 1h

Bit late to this--I'm in China at the moment. I enjoyed the conversation and I'm looking forward to the volume you and @petemandik.bsky.social will put together of the most boringly obvious philosophical theses. I wasn't all that persuaded by your analysis of internalised Chinese Room, though.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 6d

Some discussion and link to preprint here: bsky.app/profile/disa...

Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 23d

I’m officially no longer just a crank who just argues about philosophy on the Internet. I’m now a crank who has had a paper accepted to Synthese! Here’s a post about it.
open.substack.com/pub/disagree...

My first publication: Quantum Immortality

Notes on a paper accepted to Synthese

open.substack.com

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks for encouraging me and indulging me to all those real philosphers who took me seriously, especially to @keithfrankish.com, @philipgoff.bsky.social, @lanceindependent.bsky.social, @petemandik.bsky.social and @qruy.bsky.social.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 6d

Now officially published: what I think @seanmcarroll.bsky.social, @davidpapineau.bsky.social and David Wallace get wrong about quantum immortality. link.springer.com/10.1007/s112...

The costs of rejecting quantum immortality - Synthese

Proponents of the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics are divided in their attitudes to the idea of quantum immortality. Some, e.g. Max Tegmark (immortalists), believe one should alw...

link.springer.com

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 9d

Now to weaken theism: the fact that this specific universe is life-permitting is not part of our evidence, because haecceities are controversial and in any case unobservable. If you analyse "this" in the way I think it should be analysed, then "this universe" is just "some life-permitting universe".

Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 9d

The specificity principle favours multiverse over single-universe theism. First, boost multiverse: there's an infinite variety of possible constants that support life. If there's an infinite number of universes, then one will have the specific values we observe, not just some life-permitting values.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 21d

Huzzah!

Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · 23d

I’m officially no longer just a crank who just argues about philosophy on the Internet. I’m now a crank who has had a paper accepted to Synthese! Here’s a post about it.
open.substack.com/pub/disagree...

My first publication: Quantum Immortality

Notes on a paper accepted to Synthese

open.substack.com

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Sep 22

If physics really were substrate independent, and we're embedded in the physics, then we wouldn't have any evidence about the substrate. But panpsychists think we do have evidence about the substrate. So I think that the analogy to hardware/software is misleading.

Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Sep 22

Eh, kinda. But I think that's misleading. Core to the idea of hardware/software is the idea that software is substrate independent. You can run any software on any (Turing-complete) substrate, within time/memory constraints. I don't think that really fits well with panpsychism.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Sep 11

I would answer "meaningless" to both.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Sep 4

I am a fan. After much deliberation I have decided it should come back.

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Reposted by Disagreeable Me

Philip Goff @philipgoff.bsky.social · Aug 29

I've just submitted a complete book manuscript to the publisher. A liberal and mystical reimagining of the traditional religions of the West. Hardest thing I've ever done. I shouldn't complain, though, because it's going to be a bestseller.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 28

pinky and the brain are in a cage and pinky says try to take over the world .

ALT: pinky and the brain are in a cage and pinky says try to take over the world .

media.tenor.com

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 26

I reckon illusionists have got to be on the list somewhere. That's why I post anonymously!

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 26

Saying that the term "consciousness" is not useful is not quite the same as saying that consciousness does not exist.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 25

People talk about free will and experience in non-philosophical contexts, and the patterns identified by this usage are real, so for me that justifies keeping them around. Lance Bush argues also that it's not so clear that ordinary people have the metaphysical commitments you assume.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 25

It isn't either. Or it's both. It's not a question with a determinate answer. I've come around to thinking that the best way of thinking about what words mean is by looking at usage rather than metaphysics, and there is a phenomenon that is picked out by usage in both cases.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 25

I used to feel that way about free will but I've come around to compatibilism. There is a lot more to free will and experience than a particular metaphysical story about what it is. But I respect where you're coming from too.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 25

I think it's also distracting to say that experience doesn't exist. It seems absurd and impossible to accept, so you get dismissed as crazy. Better, I think, to affirm the explanandum but to say it isn't what you think it is.

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Disagreeable Me @disagreeableme.bsky.social · Aug 25

Me too. But can you not just identify whatever is happening when we think we've genuinely experienced the smell of a rose with genuinely experiencing the scent of a rose? Like, telling yourself that story just is what genuine experience is.

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