In order for a mental state, or perception, to emerge in a physical organism, the perception likely has to benefit the organism in dealing with the physical world.
And for that perception to continue, as it will cost the organism in energy, it has to be of continued such benefit (or the perception will be lost).
So... any organism that has a mental state, or perception, needs this perception to be reliably matching up with the physical world it necessarily exists in and interacts with. And this must continue along the evolutionary path of any organism.
If not, we would never have evolved past.. whatever the first sentient creature was.
In other words, our mental state is a function of our physical state, entirely conditional on the physical, and it appears that they must match up more often than not.
I enjoyed this post! I like philosophical dialogs, and yours was a very good contribution the genre. I subscribed, and I'm looking forward to reading more of your writing. :)
Thanks for the article, I hadn't heard of this argument before! This was fun.
I'm not sure I really buy this as a strong argument for theism -- it seems to be the same argument as the fine-tuning argument but with much more questionable assumptions about the nature of "psychophysical laws" as opposed to the more universally accepted laws of physics.
Any reasonable physicalist view of consciousness is going to implicitly address this concern about psychophysical harmony. For example, identity theory would say mental states just are brain states. Then there's no need for psychophysical laws mapping one to the other. Saying the laws could have been set up differently is like saying H2O could have been anything and it's an incredible coincidence that it's water.
Good article. Very funny. A few worries.
1) "Theists have lives too, you know." This was false.
2) Aubergine is not a real thing.
3) I'm mostly curious about the juggling thing, so I think that part 2 should be exclusively about the juggling.
In order for a mental state, or perception, to emerge in a physical organism, the perception likely has to benefit the organism in dealing with the physical world.
And for that perception to continue, as it will cost the organism in energy, it has to be of continued such benefit (or the perception will be lost).
So... any organism that has a mental state, or perception, needs this perception to be reliably matching up with the physical world it necessarily exists in and interacts with. And this must continue along the evolutionary path of any organism.
If not, we would never have evolved past.. whatever the first sentient creature was.
In other words, our mental state is a function of our physical state, entirely conditional on the physical, and it appears that they must match up more often than not.
Thanks for this - I discuss the evolutionary objection in part 2. My view is that it fails to address the problem.
Found this article after my good friend Matthew Adelstein retweeted it, it's a super good post! I think you ought keep on writing! :D
I enjoyed this post! I like philosophical dialogs, and yours was a very good contribution the genre. I subscribed, and I'm looking forward to reading more of your writing. :)
Thanks Greg!!
Thanks for the article, I hadn't heard of this argument before! This was fun.
I'm not sure I really buy this as a strong argument for theism -- it seems to be the same argument as the fine-tuning argument but with much more questionable assumptions about the nature of "psychophysical laws" as opposed to the more universally accepted laws of physics.
Any reasonable physicalist view of consciousness is going to implicitly address this concern about psychophysical harmony. For example, identity theory would say mental states just are brain states. Then there's no need for psychophysical laws mapping one to the other. Saying the laws could have been set up differently is like saying H2O could have been anything and it's an incredible coincidence that it's water.
Quite a boring uneventful read, learnt essentially nothing
Haha, thanks G :)