I think the natural selection argument - which is the best one as it is obvious - is not well addressed. Basically if the laws of pp do not allow pp harmony, there is no zebra. Nothing evolves beyond plants. Doing stuff in the environment requires knowing about it.
Furthermore, the pp laws are not such an abstract thing, they are very concrete neural structures and organs, which started very simply, and I think biology has a pretty accurate idea of how the first animals came to be. I personally don't, but my guess is that the first animals had to be almost plants, they just had one very simple way to move and one a very. very simple organ and neuron structure that just made the e.g. move in the general direction of something. Once this extremely simple, say five neuron stuff was there, once it was possible to get the faintest clue about the environment and to interact with it in some very feeble basic way, of course this was a killer feature compared to being a vegetable and evolution optimized the living crap out of it.
I googled around a bit, these seem to be one of the first animals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctenophora it seems they have a small number of mental states, mental not being the right word here as there is no central brain, just a nerve ring, anyhow they have a small number of states of detecting something about their environment and a small number of reactions, one species can perform three kinds of movements. There had to be something simpler than this, but the point is, their pp laws and pp harmony are entirely mapped in clear biological terms, this sensor hits that neuron that pull this muscle and so on. Arguably they can be called mindless machines that react automatically, so at this point we cannot really talk about psychological states. What I am trying to say is that the sensor input - muscle output sequence that is the essence of animalhood does not even need to have initially psychological states. But it started somewhere like this and then evolved into brains and nervous systems and psychological states.
First off, I thought this was incredible entertaining. Nice job for that.
The second thing I'd like to say is I don't think the counterargument to evolution quite holds.
1) We can not know the other options when it comes to psychophysical harmony based on different laws of physics. In order to presume a low probability of such a thing, you would need to know all of the other possible options of any sort of psychophysical harmony, compare them to each other (which is better for knowing reality and which is worse, then say that the statistical odds given the time passed is so statistically significant that it would require either a very low probability event or god--perhaps defined as an external force of nature pushing to a specific cause that we as humans like).
2) You must also account for the time it takes for certain evolutionary adaptions to take. Perhaps if it were to go for a lot longer, the pressure may be able to select for a trait that we may find today to be egregious.
3) This also presumes other worlds interpretation --in which it is possible to conceive of other things given other circumstances--which I'm also not sure can be done.
TBH, I'm not fully convinced by even my counterarguments, but I'm curious to hear what you would say to these. Gonna think about it more.
Cheers! My reply is under review. My reply, in a nutshell, is that his “solution” to the conjoined twin problem commits him to accepting that it should be legal to rape certain types of conjoined twins, in circumstances when - under any plausible deontic theory - this would obviously be a violation of their rights. (Matthew gave my reply to Walter in a recent debate they just had, and Walter conceded that his response does, in fact, imply this. The relevant bit starts around 25:20: https://www.youtube.com/live/sSdoZChMfG8?feature=share ).
I think the natural selection argument - which is the best one as it is obvious - is not well addressed. Basically if the laws of pp do not allow pp harmony, there is no zebra. Nothing evolves beyond plants. Doing stuff in the environment requires knowing about it.
Furthermore, the pp laws are not such an abstract thing, they are very concrete neural structures and organs, which started very simply, and I think biology has a pretty accurate idea of how the first animals came to be. I personally don't, but my guess is that the first animals had to be almost plants, they just had one very simple way to move and one a very. very simple organ and neuron structure that just made the e.g. move in the general direction of something. Once this extremely simple, say five neuron stuff was there, once it was possible to get the faintest clue about the environment and to interact with it in some very feeble basic way, of course this was a killer feature compared to being a vegetable and evolution optimized the living crap out of it.
I googled around a bit, these seem to be one of the first animals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctenophora it seems they have a small number of mental states, mental not being the right word here as there is no central brain, just a nerve ring, anyhow they have a small number of states of detecting something about their environment and a small number of reactions, one species can perform three kinds of movements. There had to be something simpler than this, but the point is, their pp laws and pp harmony are entirely mapped in clear biological terms, this sensor hits that neuron that pull this muscle and so on. Arguably they can be called mindless machines that react automatically, so at this point we cannot really talk about psychological states. What I am trying to say is that the sensor input - muscle output sequence that is the essence of animalhood does not even need to have initially psychological states. But it started somewhere like this and then evolved into brains and nervous systems and psychological states.
First off, I thought this was incredible entertaining. Nice job for that.
The second thing I'd like to say is I don't think the counterargument to evolution quite holds.
1) We can not know the other options when it comes to psychophysical harmony based on different laws of physics. In order to presume a low probability of such a thing, you would need to know all of the other possible options of any sort of psychophysical harmony, compare them to each other (which is better for knowing reality and which is worse, then say that the statistical odds given the time passed is so statistically significant that it would require either a very low probability event or god--perhaps defined as an external force of nature pushing to a specific cause that we as humans like).
2) You must also account for the time it takes for certain evolutionary adaptions to take. Perhaps if it were to go for a lot longer, the pressure may be able to select for a trait that we may find today to be egregious.
3) This also presumes other worlds interpretation --in which it is possible to conceive of other things given other circumstances--which I'm also not sure can be done.
TBH, I'm not fully convinced by even my counterarguments, but I'm curious to hear what you would say to these. Gonna think about it more.
Cheers! My reply is under review. My reply, in a nutshell, is that his “solution” to the conjoined twin problem commits him to accepting that it should be legal to rape certain types of conjoined twins, in circumstances when - under any plausible deontic theory - this would obviously be a violation of their rights. (Matthew gave my reply to Walter in a recent debate they just had, and Walter conceded that his response does, in fact, imply this. The relevant bit starts around 25:20: https://www.youtube.com/live/sSdoZChMfG8?feature=share ).