this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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philosophy
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Other philosophy communities have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. [ x ]
"I thunk it so I dunk it." - Descartes
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I'll admit it's possible I just haven't heard a good argument yet, but philosophical zombies, qualia, and Mary's room all fall under the umbrella of "category errors that are fun to talk about at parties but easy to pick apart". It also opens up an entire new can of worms that we can't even test, which is always off-putting to me If the universe was capable of consciousness why wasn't it already agential? If complexity is necessary for the consciousness to actual manifest into anything meaningful does the consciousness matter?
It's funny because I find it impossible to live as anything but a skeptic... If I believed what I was told I'd be fucking homeless lol
ah i should clarify, i meant "epistemic skepticism" rather than the general way we use the term skepticism, which is to say "there's nothing (or very little) we can Truly Know" (i.e. i came to the conclusion that, while philosophy is often fun and enriching, these questions are by and large unanswerable). living as more general skeptics is i'm sure how a lot of us became socialists.
but the language around things being untestable as a way to dismiss them is kind of what i'm getting at, it seems you're operating with "scientific method = direct path to philosophical knowledge" as an a priori truth, which i think misunderstands a lot of what philosophy is about and the distinctions between the two fields. tons of philosophical questions are untestable by scientific standards, and the benchmark of testability already rests on a lot of interesting assumptions about the nature of & trustworthiness of consciousness (since scientific experiments rely on observations through the mechanisms of consciousness).
tbf, the impression i get is that a lot of modern analytic philosophers do the same thing (taking certain presuppositions of science as a priori truths in philosophy), casting philosophy as a "handmaiden of science" as they say. my cynical theory is that this has at least as much to do with inter-academic politics as it does genuinely felt positions, given how much capitalism favors STEM over the humanities.
I see what you mean now with the skepticism. We are at an impasse. Either consciousness is emergent from the brain, and science can explain it. Or it's foundational, and our complete lack of other higher consciousness beings leaves us wholly unable to further understand the foundational nature of it, which basically falls into solipsism.
Though I will say having an a priori assumption that the scientific method will pan out has paid off so far. Not sure that's true for the a priori assumption that all a priori assumptions are shaky though :^)
If you think that, then you straight up do not understand the be arguments being made, and frankly you should reflect on the arrogance of assuming that all the intelligent people who take these argument's seriously are just dimwits who lack your galaxy brain. It's one thing to disagree with these argument's, but you're not actually taking them seriously at all.
Tough luck. "The possible implications of this being true make me uncomfortable" is not an argument for it being false.
I don't just think that, I express that. As I have said previously in this thread, I don't see how Mary's Room is anything different than arguing whether a hotdog is a sandwich. Either she possesses the knowledge that the individual positing the question considers red, or she doesn't. If she possesses that knowledge, she gains nothing by seeing red "for the first time".
And to think I've argued with intelligent people on this is very loaded... I've argued with REDDITORS about this. Probs not even real people!