[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.
[00:00:17] Human beings, it turns out, are weird and I will never truly understand what it's like to be one. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, we're doing an episode about consciousness today.
[00:01:22] Do you think we can get through it without mentioning zombies? I thought, maybe yes. But the only class on the philosophy of mind I ever took ended up being an entire class
[00:01:37] on zombies and so I feel like the only real philosophy of mind I know is just like versions of zombie arguments. But I dropped out of that class. I always do wonder how philosophers come up with the examples that they come up with
[00:01:55] and I feel like there is this just general kind of sub game, like a little side game that philosophers have amongst themselves to see who can come up with the dumbest examples or cleverest or weirdest. Like no other field uses that. It's true.
[00:02:12] Someone said about Daniel Danett that he told his grad student, tough just come up with the craziest few you can think of and then just defend that for your whole career. It'll give you a career right there. And I think that's like the thought experiment.
[00:02:27] If you can figure out like land on a thought experiment, then you have a career. Like a getter. Yeah, like a getter. That is his career. It seems like if that's true of Danett's views, then it would undermine the truth value of that.
[00:02:46] I know that those arguments ought to stand on their own, but if I found out that Danett actually secretly didn't believe them, then I'd be like, oh fuck. Well, I mean, I think isn't this the way it works?
[00:02:57] Like you maybe you start out for disingenuous reasons believing something that you think is actually crazy, but then you start really believing it as you defend it like over and over. Is this autobiographical? Are you giving us a road map to future town?
[00:03:13] I publicly state it so that if anyone sees it happening, they can just snap me out of it. No, but you know that there is some truth to that. That's that's that's how I feel about the morality of the moral acceptability of bestiality.
[00:03:30] You started out being a joke, right? It was just trolling my students to be logic, you know, like goading them to be logically coherent. And then finally I'm like, no, I guess there's nothing wrong with it. I actually never thought bestiality was wrong or at least with dogs.
[00:03:43] All right, we're not that kind of show. All right, what are we going to do? What are we going to do before we're going to do so? Teaser, we're going to talk about Nagels. What is it like to be a bat?
[00:03:53] We have not talked about a Thomas Nagel essay in a while. Perhaps the most famous, the most famous one, would you say? I mean, not for me, for me moral luck is, but that's just because I come from the free field.
[00:04:07] Not if fame isn't about whether you know it. Fame is about how many people know it. I'm talking about the subjective character of fame. Not the not the objective character of fame. Yeah, no, I think it's polled everybody in the world.
[00:04:27] This would be the one that most people have heard of. The point, the point three percent who didn't click show me the results on the Twitter poll. We could. Yeah. But before that, we are going to revisit a show that we championed from the beginning.
[00:04:47] I think you even recommended it before it had even aired on USA. Yeah, right? Like it was I have a vivid experience. Yeah, I was on a long layover in the airport and on on YouTube. I heard about this show and I sat there
[00:05:05] and watched the YouTube version before it aired on USA. And I was like fucking mind blown. It may be mind blown not so much, but just in love from the get go. Then mind blown a little bit later, maybe.
[00:05:18] Yeah, so this is Mr. Robot, in case you haven't guessed right now. And I think we both we talked a lot about it in the first season and we loved the first season. But it was one of the best
[00:05:31] seasons of television that we'd seen in a long time. It took like a turn to definitely not mediocrity. It had awesome moments. Sam Esmail is always just a fun director and he directed all the episodes in season two and three.
[00:05:51] But it just lost its specialness a little bit and it got bogged down in certain things that I don't know. We stopped being obsessed with it. It was yeah, I think we talked about a few episodes in season two. And then just silently stopped
[00:06:08] and some people have asked us to pick it up. I think it got significantly better in season three, but we didn't pick it up again in discussion, right? We did. I think we talked about the whole season and we said that it was better than season two,
[00:06:19] which had some real low moments like the chess and game in the woods and stuff. But it was also we kind of said, I think at the time, it's time to wrap this up, you know? And I think they were thinking that too. And so season four,
[00:06:36] it was like there's no fanfare about it. I texted you. I don't think you even knew that it was going on, right? I had no idea. And like there was no there was barely any articles about it. It was it was weird. And I don't know.
[00:06:51] I felt like I owed it to the show to give it a benefit of the doubt and watch the first episode, which I thought was phenomenal. And then the second episode, which I also thought was phenomenal and also drops a big mystery.
[00:07:06] So let's I figured we should talk about it. And but before we do, let everybody know that this is spoiler territory and that they should watch it. Yeah, for the first episode. What I think these first two episodes have just sort of reminded me why
[00:07:23] I was more obsessed with it. Not that they have no flaws, but yeah. I can't I'm not skilled yet or perhaps I don't know enough yet about the season to know why I'm getting the feeling that something is back. Some some sort of magic quality is back.
[00:07:41] But I agree. So spoilers up to episode two, episode three is out, but we haven't watched it. I watched the cold open, the very long. But that's it. You told me not to watch it. Fucker. Please go watch the show.
[00:07:58] If you're like us and you kind of just let it go for a little bit. And also, it's been two years in season three. Then watch the first two episodes and then come back to this segment. Skip to the nagle. Skip to the nagle.
[00:08:11] Yeah, that's like a song. Leah. Skip to the nagle. This is a good opportunity to let me remind people that we put chapter markers if you have a podcast client that that actually supports them. All right. First big thing that happens in episode one is
[00:08:28] it's a very cool way that it opens. It does a previous Leon, which I don't know about you. I desperately need it because I didn't remember as practically anything from season three. Absolutely. Yeah, there's a there's even a special on iTunes.
[00:08:44] If you buy it, there's like a Leon's recap. Oh, God, that's all I didn't see that. I would love that. Joey Badass. So, yeah. So like and then the end of the previously on is Angela talking to Philip Price. This was one thing I did remember
[00:09:02] and Philip Price saying I'm your father. And then it just continues with that scene. And Angela is killed by the Dark Army shot by the Dark Army. Here's the pop. And we assume she's dead, like really dead. There is a Darlene in a cooked up kind of
[00:09:24] mind frame says that she saw her. But that as far as I can tell, that's the only indication that something funky is happening. Right. You know, you start you start from the get go wondering what's up with what the director is trying to do to us.
[00:09:41] Because on the one hand, the scene of Price walking away and her getting shot in the distance is perhaps just there as an emotional tool. On the other hand, he didn't show us her, you know, the bloody corpse. I think maybe you're supposed to certainly
[00:09:58] the way that the actress Portia Double Day has talked about it. It was like, that's it. I'm not on the show anymore. That was the first big bombshell. And then at the end of episode two, there is a huge bombshell. And we'll talk about what happens in between.
[00:10:15] But we might as well just say it right now that Elliot has a third personality that there is Elliot, there's Mr. Robot. And those two now seem pretty cool with each other. But then there's a third that we've seen, but that neither Elliot nor Mr. Robot know about.
[00:10:38] So yeah. And this is where you told me you got to watch these two episodes because this is a mystery just in the style of the old Mr. Robot mystery, right? Like we've had I think the problem with season two
[00:10:49] was that they kind of tried for a mystery and it wasn't a very good one. It didn't it didn't seem to have like the depth of the mysteries that we had in season one. And and this this has posed something truly, truly perplexing.
[00:11:05] And I'll say it right now. This will determine whether this show goes down as a good show or not because what Esmael does with this reveal, if it is in any way smells of foulness, like unfairness or or I don't know, cheapness, it's going to be bad.
[00:11:27] It's going to be bad. And he's put all his cards in. He said like this is a big reveal that the show has been leading up to. There have been clues from the beginning. He does these interviews after each episode with Hollywood Reporter.
[00:11:40] He said I go on the reddit boards and stuff. And I haven't seen this theory tossed around that much. Now, this is before everyone started theorizing about who the third Elliot is. But I think you could love these episodes
[00:11:56] without that just because there's so many just awesome scenes in them. The scene where they go into the honey pot in the hotel. That kind of totally very lynch influenced scene with the guy speaking Polynesian. Or I guess I don't know if it's a hotel or an apartment,
[00:12:13] like an old apartment building. But right. And that's where it looks like at the end of episode one, Elliot is going to be killed or he maybe he is killed and by Sam Esmael at Sam Esmael plays the guy who injects him with
[00:12:28] what I guess is supposed to be like a hot shot, right? Like some sort of. Yeah, I take it that it was heroin. Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that I didn't know Esmael was going to make an appearance, but he does it and he says goodbye friend. Yeah.
[00:12:43] And then the episode ends, it goes to credits, but then it immediately comes back and he wakes up and it's Philip Price who saves his life, life presumably because he's he they killed his daughter. And so he wants Elliot to help get revenge.
[00:12:59] Right. So so just as a bit of a recap, the big the big bad right now is White Rose, who is we have known all along that she is pulling all of the strings. We don't know exactly for what, although we know it involves a big
[00:13:15] operation that has moved to the Congo now. Or it hasn't quite yet, right? Like that's the problem. It's delayed. The move is delayed. Yeah. Yeah. And so this is the thing that's frustrating my White Rose. Right. Price and White Rose didn't see eye to eye.
[00:13:33] White Rose has Angela, his daughter killed. So Price wants revenge. They've always been sort of antagonistic with each other. But he thinks Elliot can get him a piece skeptical, but he thinks Elliot might be able to help him get revenge.
[00:13:46] Yeah, that seems a little clunky as he saves his life, then gives this whole backstory of White Rose and about that he's he created this deus group, which is like this Illuminati. That montage of all of history sort of in the last 40 years is great.
[00:14:05] It was very cool the way they did that. They put with a young B.D. Wong in there. Yeah, they just put a young B.D. Wong and like, you know, with Dick Cheney and with the Berlin Wall coming down and with and he's always there.
[00:14:19] And then you find out that he was building this machine in this Washington Township plant, the one that killed Angela's mom and Elliot's dad gave them cancer. And it was all for that. The deus group thought, no, this is for us to control the world.
[00:14:37] But a minute, but White Rose was just doing using them to build this machine. We don't know yet what the big machine is. And that was the cause of rampant speculation. Angela seemed to believe that it was a time machine that could bring back her mother.
[00:14:54] But there has been really no discussion of what that machine is so far. Angela said she saw it for what that's worth and that even at the end before she died, she still believed it would allow her to see her mother, even though she also kind of understood
[00:15:13] that White Rose had kind of conned her. So that like that fueled much of my thinking about Mr. Robot so far, like this mystery about what this machine is, is he creating parallel universes? And then we had the whole plot that we didn't mention about,
[00:15:27] you know, the first season involved this elaborate hack into essentially encrypting all of the world's all of the biggest banks, financial documents. They undo the hack at the end of last season and the world goes back to presumably normal. People have the world had gone to shit
[00:15:45] because that hack, even though it was intended by Elliot and F Society to be good like this panacea that would make the world a better place, it ended up making everybody miserable and nobody had access to resources. And so they undo the hack.
[00:16:00] That's the end of the season. Things are seeming to get back to normal. None of that is very convincing, by the way. Like the idea that, you know, everything's just going to suddenly get back to normal after all the credit was destroyed
[00:16:14] and all the banks, you know, like, and now it just kind of undid it. But it's part of this theme of changing the past, right? Like undoing what was done, a bad thing that was done. And that relates to the machine too.
[00:16:29] Something about this machine seems to relate to this idea of undoing the past. But the one I think the one one of the key takeaways now is that as because the economy has come back and they have more power than ever as a result of the hack.
[00:16:49] And they did also after the hack, like pre the hack, the E-core always has the most power regardless of what the economy is doing. And so they have more power than ever as a result of the hack in the end.
[00:17:04] And they did also after the hack, like pre the hack. The E-core always has the most power regardless of whether anybody hacks or not. You know, and that's been one of the one of the very cut, you know, the very cynical pessimistic takes of the show
[00:17:20] is that like you can do these things, but they'll always win the big money. It's the inevitability of capitalism right now. Yeah. You want to talk about first who what you think the machine is? Yeah, I don't think they've given us anything new in this
[00:17:36] in this these companies. These couple of episodes about the machine and we speculated before, you know, my theory with little endorsement was I think it's in a Ted Chang kind of way accesses parallel streams, parallel universes so that you can access sort of a nearby
[00:17:57] parallel universe where something might be slightly different. I don't know, you know, to this point, Esmail has done nothing but tease us with sci-fi premises and kept everything realistic. So like, you know, there is nothing there is there is nothing so far to indicate that anything weird
[00:18:19] has gone on in the in the supernatural or in the magical or in the sci-fi kind of sense. Aside from like like you said, the teases, like he has that scene scientist at the beginning of season two was talking about parallel universes,
[00:18:34] like giving a tour of a facility and talking about parallel universes. There's this just relentless obsession with time travel, you know, that started with Angela and Elliot's favorite movie being Back to the Future 2. Right. And then all sorts of, you know,
[00:18:52] White Rose obsessed with time and talking about never meeting anybody more than once and timing every conversation that she had. And so time has been this running thing, but you're right. In terms of anything in the show, it's more like that mental breakdown psychosis
[00:19:17] is part of this world, but not any indication that this stuff, science fiction-y stuff is. Right. To the extent that Angela believed in the possibility of the real technology, you know, she was treated as having lost her mind.
[00:19:35] And so there is a thing I can see a big reveal having a lot to do with some sci-fi aspect. But I suspect that Esmail has been really guarded in this because he's just using the possibility of sci-fi worlds as sort of metaphorically, like to talk about time,
[00:19:59] talk about Back to the Future and talk about people believing in time machines. And regret and wanting to change the past. I know that people probably want to, like I want to believe that they White Rose really is building something like a parallel universe machine.
[00:20:13] Perhaps White Rose believes that she's building a parallel universe machine. But if Esmail shows us some sort of actual sci-fi device I'm not sure I wouldn't feel a little betrayed, you know, like in the rules of this world haven't hinted at anything that sophisticated.
[00:20:36] So you want it to not be a science fiction-y outcome? I wanted it to be originally. But I think that with three seasons of never even throwing us a bone about about any actual sci-fi stuff that I think it would be a little unfair now.
[00:20:55] Well, what if they what if they in retrospect it turns out that they have thrown us bones? Yeah, there's where. Yeah, yeah. You know, are you familiar with I don't for the life of me would never remember who wrote these or when.
[00:21:10] But there are these rules for mystery writers that were sort of that that somebody put down a long time ago. And like one of them is essentially like you have to give the reader enough information to like plausibly arrive at the solution or else it's just unfair.
[00:21:30] So if it turns out that there were hints all over the place that in yet another one I remember is in that it should be hard to solve, but in retrospect the solution should be almost like inevitable. Right, which is how he's talked about
[00:21:48] not the reveal of the time machine or whatever it is, but the reveal of the third. So he's clearly aware of that rule and he hopes that he's done it. He believes that he's done it, but Sam asked me, I mean, but yeah, we'll see.
[00:22:05] Yeah, he's respected his audience so far. So he knows that we're thinking this and he doesn't want to disappoint us. He doesn't want to do like a lost thing. I think that it's very possible that there the what we'll get is two ways of interpreting it.
[00:22:24] You can go more science fictiony or you can go more psychological and he'll leave that up to us. So like, you know, the show is always kind of from somebody's perspective, usually Elliot's we think. And so crazy things can happen. There can be talking fish. There can be
[00:22:45] child characters talking to themselves at a when they're adults and all that. But cut that's OK because it's like a hallucination. My guess is we won't be told which way to interpret. I think I'll be OK with. But, you know, that's because David Lynch has
[00:23:03] beaten me down when it comes to things. I mean, I see the parallels that you're drawing, but like Lynch is so mysterious about it that you're not sure whether there's 18 ways of interpreting it or no ways of interpreting it. Like Esme will give us two. Right? Yeah.
[00:23:19] Right. And he and and Lynch also just almost never talks about it. And right. Sam Esme was on Reddit, like. Yeah, that's which is like, you know, normally I would say that's just a terrible idea for somebody who's trying to do creative work, you know.
[00:23:35] But I like that he just decided, no, I'm going to be that's going to be kind of part of the show. It's not going to be a big part of the show. But like this gets into my theory about what's going on. OK.
[00:23:45] All right. Should we talk about that then? The third. Yeah, let's let's let's talk about it. So so at the end, at the very end of episode two, we see a scene where young Elliot is in the big corporate room that we've seen before from E Corp.
[00:24:04] A couple of times we've seen Tyrell in there. We saw Elliot being offered a job there by Tyrell. Yeah. By Tyrell. But before that, we are told immediately before that we see this perplexed Mr. Robot and Elliot who are trying to figure out who
[00:24:24] Darlene talked to because Darlene claims that she talked to them. Darlene says she talks told Elliot that Vera Vera from season one was back in in town and Elliot didn't know that. And then he gets mad at Mr.
[00:24:39] Robot for not for not telling him because they're supposed to be communicating now. And Mr. Robots, I swear to God, it wasn't me. Right. And then my language was clunky because from Darlene's perspective, it is the same bag of bones that she's talking to.
[00:24:56] So she wouldn't be able to distinguish. And so yeah, so they they're like, well, who did she tell? So clearly this has to be another identity because, you know, it can't be like, she told so and so because she obviously believes that it was the same,
[00:25:12] you know, bag of meat and bones that is Elliot and Mr. Robot and she has no idea why they would, you know, she would have no idea why they wouldn't know and their perplexed. So we know boom, there's another identity.
[00:25:24] And then we go to that scene and we see Elliot's mom. And Elliot's a kid. He's sitting in Tyrell's chair. He's child Elliot. Yeah. And he's spinning around, waiting for something. I've been looking all over for you. You shouldn't be sitting there. That's not your seat.
[00:25:57] Why they're not ready yet. We need to wait for what? For him. You mean Mr. Robot? No. Elliot. No, the other one. That's sort of surreal scene. You don't know if it's obviously not a flashback. You don't know who's imagining it.
[00:26:40] Like what where is this scene taking place? Is this a scene? Is it does it exist in it or is it in someone's mind? Whose mind would it be in? And I guess Elliot's mind, right? Like that would be, I think, the most natural assumption.
[00:26:56] I'm not saying it's right, but it's just as Elliot's kind of way of manifesting his confusion. I suppose it could be Mr. Robot's mind. I don't know how to talk about this anymore because Mr. Robot's mind is Elliot's mind, but then they leave the room.
[00:27:13] And who is the third? So who is the third man? There was a third man. You we talked briefly. You told me that Esmael said that there's a hint to the identity. Yeah, I didn't see it in the interview, but I saw and read it
[00:27:34] that somebody said that that season one episode four, that hallucin- the withdrawal hallucination has hints to it. Right. So if what I think is right, then it's going to take a very skillful Esmael to pull it off. So tell me what you think. Yes. Yeah. OK, so
[00:27:55] I think the appropriate hint in that episode, season one, episode four comes not from any of the hallucinations, but comes from the beginning of the episode where Elliot very clearly states when he's speaking to us, Elliot's always been speaking to the audience, at least so we thought.
[00:28:17] Elliot says, it's why I created you. Right. And I think we've all just taken it as a conceit that this character is one that breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience. Right. I think that Esmael has hidden in plain sight. A third person.
[00:28:38] Now, that third person is somebody who would normally not make themselves known as I think the second hint in that opening of season one, episode four, that's titled Damon when Elliot goes on to describe what a Damon is. Right. A Damon in computer programming is a sub routine
[00:29:04] that's running behind the scenes and it's just doing a bunch of work. And it's sort of just not at the surface at all. It's just let loose. A Damon is sort of an independent sub process that is going on in your computer.
[00:29:18] I think that the person he's talking to is the Damon. The Damon gets the dirty work done. The Damon has only appeared during the blackouts where we don't have any idea what happened or neither Mr. Robot nor Elliot can be
[00:29:36] accounted for like when the four days when that are missing at the end of season one at the end of season one. And I think that it's plausible that that's who Elliot has been talking to the whole time. He's not been breaking the fourth wall at all.
[00:29:55] Now, it could be that that and this is why I said it reminded me of this when you said S mail is somebody who reads Reddit a lot. It could be that he is. It's a real radical breaking of the fourth wall where he is treating
[00:30:10] the viewership of Mr. Robot as that character. Yeah, that's certainly a thought that I had, which is yes, is that we are the third. Right. And that all along we've been third. I don't know how you would weave that in narratively, but it would be sort of cool
[00:30:26] given how much he seems to listen to the audience. It'd be sort of cool if within the show Elliot has created like in some sense, the armies of Reddit are like doing a lot of this work behind the scenes.
[00:30:41] You know, I'm probably giving him some ideas about where to go. The problem with that is like Darlene says she told this third that Vera was back. She doesn't speak to us and say, I saw Vera, right? Like no, no, no, no.
[00:30:57] Yeah, I mean, I think that this for this to work, it has to be somebody inside like it has to be a consciousness inside the meat and bones of Elliot's body. So so when I say it's the audience, I mean only that it's a consciousness
[00:31:10] that would be sort of composed of the multitude audience that but but again, like he could it could be something that he means sort of only metaphorically, but is actually a separate personality that represents the audience or something or it could be not
[00:31:27] it could be that he was never talking to the audience. So then in the hallucination, in your view, the month, you know, this this idea of a monster, I found my monster, who's my monster keeps coming up. I take it that could be this kind of third personality,
[00:31:44] the one that does the dirty work and gets shit done. Like Elliot is the nice fucked up anxiety written version. Mr. Robot is the, you know, more all cut corners to get things done. But I'm fundamentally good, maybe like, you know, how he sees his dad.
[00:32:04] And then this third one is just a bad guy that will do. Really bad things to achieve his ends. That's right. And who might be responsible for for who knows communications with White Rose that led directly to some extra bad shit happening?
[00:32:24] Somebody on Reddit put a screenshot of the offices at the also all safe. The the security company from season one, where Elliot used to work now defunct. He's taken over their offices as his makeshift headquarters. So we put a screenshot of three monitors.
[00:32:41] So two monitors on the desk, one monitor in the middle with a bunch of code, only just a terminal window taking up the whole screen is just a bunch of computer code. On the left of that, there was like social media stuff pictures of Elliot.
[00:32:57] And then on the right, there's no monitor at all. It's just a monitor stand. So there's clearly a third monitor missing. And, you know, like that's I'm not saying that this isn't reading far too much into it,
[00:33:09] but it wouldn't be weird to think that that's representing the activities on the monitors represent the personalities of the people. And he's just not revealed to us what would be on that third screen. So wait, here's my question about that theory, though.
[00:33:24] Why doesn't Elliot, if he's talking to him and says that's why I created you, then why does he not know this person exists or that this third entity exists? And that's a really good question that I had not thought anything about.
[00:33:43] So it could be that when Elliot does talk to us, he is in a complete few state of some sort, but I don't think so. Like like he does it too often. Yeah. Yeah. So now the only now he doesn't anymore.
[00:33:59] Actually, Mr. Robot, that's one of the twists. That's right. In this season now narrating to us. Right. So it could be that he's always known about this third personality has repressed it completely at the beginning of this, right?
[00:34:13] So one of the things that we are told about Elliot is that he is suppressing so much of his emotion that it's bad for him. So he could have repressed that third personality and now claims to be completely unaware or perhaps is unaware of any communication.
[00:34:28] So I rewatched a couple of these episodes. I like that theory. I think it's most plausible. I don't know how much I like it. Like I think it's a very plausible theory based on what we know. The demons and the details, right?
[00:34:41] Yeah. It will have to be well done. Yeah. And like part of me thinks is that really a third identity or is that like, how do you know whether that's just Elliot in a bad emotional state or that's like the third personality?
[00:34:57] Like it doesn't even necessarily like we all like I like we all get angry and pissed off and do that. Like we all have a bad side of us. It's not another personality in the way that like Mr. Robot is another personality
[00:35:10] in a way that so I don't know how like you said, it'll be it'll like I believe that it could be done well. Should we go through a couple other alternatives? So, you know, I was looking at it today
[00:35:25] and when he's dying, there's Elliot as a kid and his mother and father. And Elliot, young Elliot says so like he's all of a sudden like in his old kitchen and he's there with his parents. And then someone says the other sorry, young Elliot says what happens now?
[00:35:48] And the mother says, well, we all go away. Yeah. And so so is it the mother? Yeah, I don't get that though. Like I don't that would be hard given the last scene. But the reason that I like it is is because it might give us
[00:36:09] an evil character who does bad shit too. Right. And it might be consistent with the. Yeah. And she's a very bad person. Yeah. And she's all we've heard all we've heard in these last two episodes is what a bitch their mom was. And we've seen it before.
[00:36:23] Like we've seen it. You even see it in the hallucination where she's like forcing him to eat the fish. And yeah, that would make sense if in that scene where they're in the boardroom, little Elliot is Elliot, you know, Mr. Robot's not there.
[00:36:41] And the mom is the third personality. She wouldn't say, you know, then we would expect for Mr. Robot to be walking in. Yeah, exactly. So that doesn't. Although he says Elliot. Does he say Elliot as well? So indicating that the little boy is not even Elliot.
[00:36:55] Right. So one of the ones that I thought from the beginning and then was persuaded, otherwise, just by the show was Tyrell. Like I always thought that Elliot was Tyrell in early on in the season after I'd kind of figured out that he and Mr.
[00:37:11] Robot, that was barely hidden, that he was Mr. Robot. I mean, I guess some people were surprised at the reveal, but it was like it was kind of obvious. And if you see Fight Club 2, it's like
[00:37:23] it's unbelievable how how much of a somewhere between a homage and just a ripoff of Fight Club it was in terms of just how that stuff shot. But anyway, like I remember thinking, but the real surprise is that it's Tyrell
[00:37:41] too and the way they were shooting the Tyrell scenes just seemed really bizarre. But it just that doesn't make sense. Like it just does now. It doesn't make there's too. There's too much the rides. I think we talked about this at some point. There's there's too much
[00:37:57] that rides on the fact that Tyrell has interacted with the body of yeah, Elliot slash Mr. Robot. And it would take I don't know that you could undo that like, you know, there's no plausible way in which you could magically make
[00:38:12] unlike the Fight Club shots where he's pushing himself up against the wall. Right. Like there's nothing that could like account for that. And Tyrell has always just not been, I don't know. He's always been Joanna Wellick's husband to me.
[00:38:25] There was that there was that scene at the end of season one where he runs into Joanna Wellick who clearly recognizes him and talks to him in Norwegian. And that's a very strange scene. And she and Tyrell gave off kind of vibes.
[00:38:45] Like she gave off a vibe that's very much like his mother. And so there's there could there's there definitely could be something weird about that, but it doesn't totally fit. Angela, I don't see it at all. But they do have that shared history and the shared experience
[00:39:04] of losing a parent to the Washington Township. But it doesn't work. I've heard Darlene as a theory, like a serious theory. It is weird that he tried to kiss her and didn't remember that she was his sister because that is not something that is consists like the fact
[00:39:22] that he wouldn't know that he had a sister is weird. But I don't maybe it was the maybe it was the daemon. Yeah, who tried to do it. It could have been right because we would see it from that perspective.
[00:39:33] People on Reddit have pointed out that there are times where Mr. Robot isn't present when he seems to get angry. You know, in favor of your theory. And so when he's there, Mr. Robot wouldn't know that he was there and that explains why at least Mr.
[00:39:50] Robot doesn't know about this third personality. That's right. Does does does Elliot ever talk to the audience when Mr. Robot is in the room? I believe so. Yeah. And certainly Mr. Robot has been talking to the audience. Mr. Ray, that's right.
[00:40:09] That's right. The one I think is kind of interesting and I need to know more about is that that the new the third personality is like the original Elliot, Sam Sepio. So he's been using Sam Sepio is this alias that he was using
[00:40:25] to break into Steel Mountain and that that that is actually a real guy in the show, although we don't know very much about him other than Elliot sometimes impersonates him and that that is the real Elliot who and Elliot is just one of his forms.
[00:40:43] The Elliot that we see is one of his forms as well as Mr. Robot, but that there is this true kind of numinal self and that numinal self is Sam Sepio. I don't know what to make of that. It's kind of interesting that we've always assumed that
[00:40:59] Elliot is the core person and that Mr. Robot is the manifestation, but it could be that Elliot is just like Mr. Robot. He has no greater metaphysical reality than him. It would be weird because of the shared history with Darlene
[00:41:16] and Angela, like that, you know, they call it a real conspiracy. Yeah. Unless there was a real conspiracy in which they all changed their names. Right. I agree. Yeah. And then there's the idea that going very meta that it's Sam Esmael, but I hope that's
[00:41:36] not true. I was just reading that Sam Sepio is a combo of the names Sam Esmael and USA Development Chief Alex Sepio. Yeah, I mean, there's I mean, there's so like there's a lot to everything and we're given so little and
[00:41:50] we have no real grasp on what reality in the show, you know, because it's told from us from a perspective kind of a first person perspective and a very unreliable narrator like it's very hard to get your bearings. I think it's an interesting kind of unreliable narrator too,
[00:42:11] because it's not as if the characters when they're talking, you don't believe, you know, he split their psyche so that you just don't know which they all like have separate sequestered areas of knowledge. So you just don't know. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:42:31] So it's an unreliable narrator where you don't distrust any of the characters who are speaking, right? Just know that they don't have access to all of the truth. And the way they're doing now that Elliot and Mr. Robot are kind of on the same team
[00:42:48] and working together, the way they're shooting that is kind of interesting because you have to remind yourself constantly that the person they're talking to is only seeing one of them. And we presume Elliot, you know, but every once in a while,
[00:43:04] Elliot will get sick of trying to convince Darlene of something and then and so Mr. Robot will step in. Right. Right. They switch. They like tag team wrestle with the same body. Yeah. It's it's good. Like I really like I'm super glad that that there is
[00:43:24] a mystery worthy of the first season. Yeah. You know, that it was unclear to me that you could go anywhere with this identity thing. And if you had told me in the first season, the end of the first season, oh, there's a third at any, I would have
[00:43:37] been like, really? After you just revealed it as a second. Yeah. In some sense, it would be a better mystery because the first mystery, like we just knew it. Like I don't think I think by episode four, we were all 100 percent convinced that.
[00:43:50] I mean, it was almost pitched as sort of a hacker fight club, you know, like. Yeah, exactly. So maybe what we'll do is some Patreon bonus episodes after like a couple of episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go let's go watch it if you haven't.
[00:44:10] I hope you have before you listen to this, but it's it's it's really good. I'm so glad that it's good too. Like it makes me happy. Should we take a break? Yeah. Talk about something way less fun. So much fun. We'll be right back.
[00:45:22] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. At this time, we like to take a moment to thank all of our listeners for all the different ways they get in touch with us and participate in the community. I mean, it's like we've built some sort of
[00:45:36] community with this podcast, which is one of my favorite things about it. And it's really exciting and really rewarding to see what's going on there. If you would like to get in touch with us, you can email us at Very Bad Wizards at gmail.com.
[00:45:57] You can tweet us at P's at Tamler or at Very Bad Wizards. You can follow us on Instagram. You can rate us on iTunes and give us reviews. We love that. And you can join the conversation on the Very Bad Wizards subreddit, which we will
[00:46:21] sometimes participate in every so often. Discussions of the episodes and various other weird things that some of our listeners do. Like there have been a couple of mini stories where I've been... Who's writing fan fiction of Tamler? Yeah, it's very uncomfortable because it's not flattering stories.
[00:46:45] They're more like I'm scratching my balls and I don't even know how they know that I do that in those kinds of situations. And so... And also how a two-year-old solves a trolley problem. Did you see that? Oh, yeah. Please post your two-year-old trolley problem solving things.
[00:47:07] You just can't get enough of that. I you know, there's always new people joining the community, so they haven't seen it. That's fine. But we don't have to like it. We don't have to... We're not we're not going to comment on...
[00:47:19] I see like I don't even think that's an excuse anymore. Like at this point, at this point, they should already know that the trolley problem is they should intuitively know that it's a priori at this point. It's a priori. Platonic knowledge.
[00:47:36] So anyway, all joking aside, we really appreciate it. We love it. Even the stupid fucking trolley problem videos that we've seen a million times. So thank you. Yeah. And thank you. And if you want to support us in more tangible ways,
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[00:48:15] And you'll get some bonus material. So what's up next for bonus? Well, we keep saying dark now. We just threw Mr. Robot into the mix and the dead wood and the dead wood character. We're going to do let's we have to do that. Our favorite characters in that.
[00:48:33] I think that's that's something we just have to do. We just have to do one. We just have to do like now. I'm mad that you've sort of given up on dark, but maybe we'll push that back to right before the new season. Yeah.
[00:48:46] And I feel like I have to like now I have to read recaps and shit. You just have to watch the whole thing again. It's really good in a very much of a Mr. Robotty way like it. It it also has a creator that likes to participate
[00:49:01] with the online community. And like he's posting Instagrams of filming the third and final season right now. And if you can follow him on Instagram and you just get little hints of what's to come. And it's it's very cool.
[00:49:16] I am a fan, I'll say right now, of shows that know to keep their number of seasons down to whatever they need to tell the story. So outline your story. Another one that we've talked about talking about is the leftovers.
[00:49:32] That's another one where it's just three seasons and done. But anyway, back to the topic at hand. Thank you very much for your support. You can also go to our very bad wizards support page on our website and give us a one time or recurring PayPal donation.
[00:49:49] We appreciate that. And I know some of you can't be on Patreon and can do that. So thank you very much for all the ways in which you support us. We really appreciate it. And it's what keeps us going. Yes, thank you.
[00:50:04] So Thomas Nagel, what is it like to be a bat? This is a paper from 1974. One of a series of papers that Thomas Nagel did it and we've now done a bunch of them. The absurd is one. Mora Luck is one. The fragmentation of value.
[00:50:27] And is there another one that we've done? What did you say? We did death. Did you say death? We did do death. Yes, we did death. OK, so must have been that. And we did ruthlessness in public life. That's the one that I'm thinking of.
[00:50:42] All of those papers are on very different topics. You know, there's the free will problem. There's the problem of meaning and life. There's the problem of moral, like moral value, like the different kinds of moral value. And now with what is it like to be a bat?
[00:50:59] You have a really foundational paper. I don't know about foundational, but a foundational for the new contemporary consciousness debate about the hard problem of how consciousness can be explained in physical scientific terms. And all of these papers, even though they're on vastly different
[00:51:26] subfields of philosophy, they all have this character of a subjective perspective and an objective perspective, giving rise to a seemingly insoluble problem. In the case of the absurd, it was from the inside. It just feels like our choices and the things that we do
[00:51:51] and our behavior matters in some deep sense. But when we look at it from the outside, it seems like nothing can matter. Nothing can have this ultimate justification. And in the case of moral luck, it feels like
[00:52:09] when we make choices that we can be responsible for those choices. And then when you look at it from the outside, that will that we feel like we have seems to shrink to an extension less point, as he said, that Kantian will and down the line.
[00:52:27] And in this paper, he says that this is the real problem with consciousness is that it has this subjective character that what is it like to have conscious experiences? What is it like to listen to a trumpet or to see these curtains
[00:52:50] that I'm staring at right now or to listen to you? Or that that has a character that it's really hard to understand how that could be explained in objective terms, the objective language of science. There is this disconnect between how we approach scientific theories
[00:53:11] and in particular scientific explanations and what the subjective character of conscious experience is. And the way that he gets at it is to frame this question about what it would be like to be a bat. And he chooses a bat because a bat, we assume,
[00:53:34] has some sort of conscious experience, but it's a very different kind of conscious experience than ours because they use echolocation as their primary way of navigating the world. And we use our eyes and perception as a primary way of doing that.
[00:53:57] And so even though we can know how a bat is able to navigate around caves and dark bridges, and we can know the functional in functional terms what what the bat's perceptual apparatus is, how it functions, but and what its purpose is.
[00:54:19] But we still that doesn't tell us what it would be like for a bat to be a bat. And and so we have this as I understand Nagel's argument, this this real explanatory, like even though the term explanatory gap
[00:54:37] hasn't been coined yet, he is pointing to the explanatory gap that the tools of science, the tools of the concepts that science gives us, the method that science gives us at present, at least it's it's hard to even begin to understand how it would describe conscious experience. Right.
[00:55:00] So that's my best summary of the. Well done. Well done. I was reluctant to try to give a summary myself because I've asked late between thinking that this is a super deep and tracked point that's intractable in the study of the human mind and and something else.
[00:55:22] I'm not quite sure what else, but I wanted to say at this point, I know that we have a lot of listeners who may not have too much familiarity with the philosophy of mind, probably a whole bunch of them.
[00:55:34] And I think it's important to say that when Nagel is talking about consciousness, he is talking about it in the way that Tamler was describing the simple what is it like to be? Not at all anything that like self-awareness, right?
[00:55:49] You might doubt whether or not a bad self-aware. That's that's a term that sometimes used synonymously with consciousness, but here is just merely the subjective experience of being of being an organism and something that Nagel believes would probably be convinced that most mammals have,
[00:56:11] whether or not some of these other animals like oysters have it or not, is probably it's at least up for debate. And certainly bats of the baseball variety don't have them. And and so that how do you explain that that thing? Whatever that thing is.
[00:56:31] And and then, of course, it's a similar problem, maybe a little harder to identify how science could possibly explain our own subjective experience. We might believe, OK, yes, my conscious experience is the result how it feels to be me as the result of neurons and all the various
[00:56:53] molecules and and forces that are interplaying in my physical body and especially my brain. But how that could be true is is the problem here? How to try to explain to me how that works, how these neurons firing and activating,
[00:57:17] how that gives rise to me seeing red or me hearing thunder or me feeling pain. That seems to be a problem. So like if you tell me it's the result of like brain processes, I believe you, but it doesn't. But it's not explained to me how.
[00:57:37] How that can happen. Right, you're not given information about what it's like to echo locate when the physical processes are described to you. And I guess that we should start maybe where Nagle starts in this discussion, which is to say that perhaps that is why
[00:57:56] current discussions of the problem here of consciousness give it little attention or get it obviously wrong. The recent wave of reductionist euphoria. I love that phrase. Reductionist euphoria has produced several analyses of mental phenomena and mental concepts designed to explain the possibility
[00:58:12] of some variety of materialism, psychophysical identification or reduction. Here he means that everybody is so caught up in science and in the study of the material world and the physical world that they think it must be obvious that the solution to what consciousness is will come from just
[00:58:34] chugging away a little bit more at the physical world. Yeah, in the same way we discovered how water was composed of hydrogen oxygen molecules that that that we will do that with consciousness. Right, so I think that like part of the problem of getting to this
[00:58:55] and maybe maybe for some people it's obvious why this poses a problem. But it always takes me a little bit to shake the following thought. I don't know if it happens to you. The thought that, well, of course, your brain just causes consciousness
[00:59:12] and understanding how brains do that is what we will learn when we learn about consciousness. And I don't endorse that. I think that Nagel's right to point out to a deep problem. But I always have to kind of shake the like
[00:59:31] the view that at least my naive view coming into the philosophy of mind is that neurons make me feel a certain way and when they fire a certain way. Yeah, so why? Why isn't that the obvious answer?
[00:59:48] I actually think a lot of my neuroscientist colleagues have this view. They think this is a non problem. You know what do you mean? Well, because like all those kind of reductionist or functionalist explanations would hold even if we didn't have conscious experiences.
[01:00:07] And here's where we're dangerously close to talking about zombies. But but that's I think the the idea is that you're not exact. You're not actually explaining consciousness if you talk about the function of these neuronal processes and how it leads to perception,
[01:00:27] which causes certain behaviors or causes certain aversions. Or those just don't seem like their explanations because the very thing that it's trying to explain could not be there. And the explanations would wouldn't change.
[01:00:46] You could describe I think is this fair say you could describe all of the physical states of a brain and still have an extra question left over. Nago says the most important characteristic feature of conscious mental phenomenon is very poorly understood.
[01:01:04] Most reductionist theories do not even try to explain it. And careful examination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it. I do not deny the conscious mental states and events cause behavior, nor that they may be given functional characterizations.
[01:01:21] I deny only that this kind of thing exhausts their analysis. Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed.
[01:01:36] It is useless to base the defense of materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character. For there is no reason to suppose that a reduction which seems plausible
[01:01:50] with no attempt is made to account for consciousness can be extended to include consciousness. Without some idea, therefore, of what the subjective character of experience is, we cannot know what is required for a physical list theory. So it's the.
[01:02:08] So what do you think he means by this subjective character of experience? I mean, I take I take it that that phenomenology where you say, look, science is is concerned with the objective everything that we
[01:02:28] that we study and measure and come up with theories with our ones in which we inherently desire that other people share that knowledge or understand it in the same way. So you and I can both understand that H2O makes water
[01:02:46] and you can even have I think you would say to me, you can even have a theory that says that well, neurons create conscious experiences. But that does not provide us with any theory of what consciousness experience is and how we have it. So it's inherent.
[01:03:06] It's inherently subjective. It's only something that I have access to. You have access to only the things that you experience. And it's it's unclear what would even be required of a scientific theory to explain that feeling. That feeling of what it's like.
[01:03:29] So is it because we don't know what the explain and or the thing to be explained is because it's private that we can't imagine what it would be like to give a scientific or physicalist explanation of it? Or is it because of the actual character of that experience?
[01:03:54] In other words, if I could assume that everybody has every human has roughly the same it's the same character of experience. Could I then could I be more confident that there could be a good scientific explanation of it?
[01:04:09] So is it just that problem like a problem of other minds? I don't think so, right? I don't think I don't think so either. And this is I think when we were talking a bit earlier, you said something which was exactly what I was thinking throughout reading
[01:04:24] this article is is Nagel just pointing to an epistemological problem that of just getting access to your thought your your subjective experience. So like my question was also is this an epistemological problem or a metaphysical problem that he's talking about?
[01:04:41] Is he making any so one thing that I think he's not doing is coming out as a dualist, right? He's not saying that phenomenal subjective experience can't be explained in physical terms. Therefore, there are two kinds of substance. I think he thinks that it's possible that our subjective
[01:05:05] experience can be explained in material terms, but that we don't. We're so far from having any kind of theory to explain it that we can't even con our concepts right now aren't in any way suitable for that kind of explanation.
[01:05:24] And we can't conceive of what an explanation would look like. Right. So so it would need like some sort of paradigm shift, not just like a development in neuroscience and cognitive science. You're like a deep like a paradigm shift in like almost a deep shift
[01:05:42] in our our access to basic concepts. So, you know, you know, one of the things he says is that imagine a Martian wants to understand what it's like to be human. He is trying his best to to have an experience that a human would have,
[01:06:00] say vision or something like that. He is still experiencing what it's like to be human as a Martian in the same way that like we can use, you know, we can roughly try to close our eyes and echo locate. But we are still
[01:06:16] we're still experiencing that as in this case, David closing his eyes and echo locating how the hell can we ever get to a true understanding of somebody else's subjectivity in that subjectivity? We can't even write like what words.
[01:06:33] What words could there be that would that would let you have that feeling of what it's like to be me right now? Like we don't have those words. Yeah, we don't have those words. We don't have those concepts.
[01:06:43] We don't have science doesn't have the the the method that. So in other words, it would have to be some sort of like reformulation of how we understand science and the scientific method because the scientific method does try to understand the world from the outside. Right.
[01:07:07] With pretty much everything except conscious experience, you can do that. But with conscious experience, you can't. And so, you know, that's the hard problem. We don't all have the same kind of access. And in fact, the only person who has the full access is the person
[01:07:27] who's having that experience. And so how would science even begin to approach that? How would a Martian be even approach what it's like to be Tamler? So is the idea that we can be misled like David, David,
[01:07:41] you might be misled into thinking that you can understand what it's like to be Tamler. I think his I think Nagel thinks there's something deeper here. Right. And like it does turn on this, right? Like it's it's of course, like you're hungry, I'm hungry.
[01:07:57] We both have roughly the same, you know, internal organs and in roughly the same brain type and all that. So I know what it's like to be hungry. I can I wouldn't be completely off in saying that I know what it's like
[01:08:14] when you're hungry, because it's probably very much what it's like for me. I think they want to say I don't know what it's like to be you when you're hungry. I think that he is pointing to something just inherent about subjectivity,
[01:08:31] not about bodily states or even maybe some basic mental states like doing two plus two equals four. Like we both have the same content in our mind. I know that you are probably doing something similar in your brain when you're computing two plus equals four.
[01:08:49] But what I'll never have access to is what it feels like for you to be doing it. So I actually think, though, that that's I don't think that that's all he's saying because that really does boil down to the problem of other minds, right?
[01:09:06] Which I think is a problem in like a philosophical problem in one sense. But it doesn't seem to be the same as the problem of understanding conscious experience. I mean, what I'm saying is that other minds that that here he says
[01:09:22] that like I can understand a whole lot about your psychology by didn't have sharing a lot of the same brain kind body and experiences you like that's not the problem he's tackling. Right?
[01:09:37] Like I have I do have true knowledge about, you know, what you're likely to do and say when you're hungry. And I just will never have subjective access to it. But here's the question then.
[01:09:52] Will you have a understanding of why you feel hungry and why there is that character of David feeling hungry? Like so set aside the fact that you won't know what it's like for me to be hungry. Will you be given like a good physicalist explanation that
[01:10:12] that you feel satisfying satisfactorily explains how this perception that's in front of you right now appears to you and how that how that works because I feel like he's saying
[01:10:28] that's the thing like this other way of trying to understand other minds or a bat minds is just a more intuitive way of seeing the problem. But ultimately, this is a problem about science being inadequate to even explain to us our own experiences.
[01:10:43] Oh, I don't read it that way. I think that he thinks that you don't have a problem. That is something that you are given already by by as a result of being Tamler. You're given that knowledge of what it's like to be Tamler.
[01:10:58] Now, sure you could be given also knowledge about why the physical processes of your blood sugar dipping causing you to be crabby and you could be told that that's what's causing you to be crabby.
[01:11:11] But the thing that is trying to be explained here like what it's like to be Tamler is something you always have access to. No, I agree with that. But but what I don't have as an explanation for why like certain neurons fire in my brain
[01:11:25] gives me the experience of pain or certain neurons in my brain give gives me the experience of seeing red or whatever. Like that's the thing that I'm talking about. You're right. Like the one thing that I know is what it's like to be Tamler at this moment.
[01:11:40] Like that's a basic fact that I know. I have to know it. Yeah. It's thought it's arguably the only thing I know. Right. That's why I kind of think that it's really about just what it's like to be and therefore
[01:11:58] what it's like to be other people since we already know what it's like to be. I don't think he's trying to pose a particular like, I don't know, honestly I don't know. But you know, like problems like the inverted spectrum where suppose that you see the spectrum
[01:12:14] one way and I see it completely opposite. Like what I see is red, you see is violet or whatever. But we have the same words for it and we behave the same when presented with the similar stimuli.
[01:12:27] There's no way that I actually can have access to your conscious experience. And what I know just by stipulating it is that you are actually consciously experiencing something different than me but there's nothing in your behavior that might lead me to be able to know that.
[01:12:44] So you don't think that this problem then is the reduction of the mental to the physical. It's the reduction of other people's mental to the physical world besides my own. So yeah, kind of because you could have say a theory that like an identity theory.
[01:13:05] So this says that every time I think of the concept money, I have a particular brain state and that brain state is thinking of money as David. Like I think I could have a pretty complete theory of my own physical processes giving rise to
[01:13:30] my consciousness and understand it in a deeper way but yet have not gained any knowledge about how physical processes cause your consciousness because I have no idea whether you are in fact experiencing the same thing that I am when this particular brain state is activated.
[01:13:51] Wait though, because if I want to know why do I see why do I have these experiences that I have and you say well these neurons are firing in your brain and those are identical
[01:14:07] with your experience. It seems like they're wait no but that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking how that works because like my brain is just a bunch of cells and the world is the world like how does that work? Now I thought the explanatory gap is that problem.
[01:14:26] You're right. I think I got caught up so much in the subjective versus objective being you versus the rest of the world but it's true that it's not a satisfying theory that it's like when
[01:14:39] whatever these nerve cells are firing that makes red. Yeah, you've told me a fact but you're hiding how it makes red. Is it in this essay that he says it's like being told that energy and matter are the same thing?
[01:14:57] Yeah. Well unless you have a theory that tells me how they're the same thing like that statement like I can believe it but it doesn't actually explain anything we have that theory in physics.
[01:15:10] We don't have that theory for consciousness. Yeah, let me read that passage so he says for example people are now told that in early age that all matter is really energy but
[01:15:22] despite the fact that they know what is means most of them never form a conception of what makes this claim true because they lack the theoretical background and so like yeah if you tell me
[01:15:36] that matter is energy I like that doesn't that doesn't really help me. I like if I had the right theoretical background I could understand what that is but I don't and so
[01:15:47] telling me that isn't exactly giving me a ton of information so he says usually when we're told that X is Y we know how it is supposed to be true but that depends on the conceptual or
[01:15:59] theoretical background and is not conveyed by the is alone. We know how both X and Y refer and the kinds of things to which they refer and we have a rough idea how the two referential
[01:16:12] paths might converge on a single thing be it an object, a person, a process, an event or whatever but when the two terms of the identification are very disparate it may not be so clear how it
[01:16:26] could be true and a theoretical framework may have to be supplied to enable us to understand this without the framework an air of mysticism surrounds the identification. Right and I think that the temptation is to say something like you know well neuroscience well
[01:16:43] we're going to actually get down to the level of single nerves forming networks and we're going to be able to measure that in your brain and we're going to show you
[01:16:55] a picture of a dog and we'll be able to tell you exactly what is going on when you see a dog and what what Nagler is saying is that that last part is hand waving like that last part
[01:17:10] has just hand waved the most critical question which is a question that we don't have at all when I tell say a young child did you know that ice is just water that got really cold?
[01:17:23] When I say is just right I can then kind of explain to her that it means that well you know as Adam slowed down they enter this different state. There is not even a conceivable theory that would
[01:17:42] get us from the neurons to the what it feels like. Yeah experience doesn't seem like it has anything to do with neurons and it's like it leaves us out of it I mean and that's the problem
[01:17:57] and somehow that's getting represented and guiding the body's behavior I believe that but the actual phenomena isn't being explained with that kind of explanation although what is being explained is impressive which is how those things lead me to act in the ways that I act but it
[01:18:17] doesn't get at the phenomenology. That's right and that's what I was conflating before just the like powerful notion that you know what you are experiencing and you know the physical processes that are giving rise to that experience puts you in a unique position to know those two things
[01:18:33] but it does not put you in any position to bridge them and that's what Nagel thinks we need. Which is why I think it's an epistemological problem that he's ultimately landing on here.
[01:18:44] Right because I don't think like you said he's not arguing for dualism and he's also not saying anything like well you know brains don't cause consciousness. He's just saying that whatever the way in which we're talking about physical things causing consciousness like they fall
[01:19:01] under scrutiny and so when he says air of mysticism that's the part that I really like unlike anything else unlike most things I am left with an air of mysticism about this stuff too. Which part? Which side?
[01:19:21] Just an air of mysticism about how physical things could cause consciousness right. Yeah. The problem really is hard. I forget who said that maybe we'll just never have the concepts available to us like this. We'll call him again said that it's inaccessible to human beings to understand.
[01:19:43] He's the real mysterious right? Yeah a hardcore mysterious yeah. Yeah like dogs doing calculus right like they have brains and they can know things they'll just never know what we know and maybe there is a class of creatures that
[01:19:57] can know exactly what this bridge like what can bridge these two in terms of a scientific theory but they wouldn't even be able to explain it to us. Right and I think that this is a more modest claim which is currently not only do we not have
[01:20:15] the theory in place we don't even have we can't conceive of how a theory would explain it but maybe we'll have some sort of conceptual breakthrough that allows us to cross that bridge
[01:20:28] but we don't have it yet and the things that you know some combination of neuroscience and philosophers are throwing at us either denying that experience exists which is crazy or giving us functionalist or reductionist explanations for consciousness don't actually explain consciousness.
[01:20:52] Right and the appeal of reductionism like you could even have a very sophisticated sort of view of reductionism that is like well you sort of understand how atoms cause the property of liquids or solids and you understand how those solids come together to make cars
[01:21:16] and so you know that cars are made of atoms but a car is so much more complex than an atom but you would be a fool to deny that cars can't be explained by our understanding of atoms it
[01:21:30] would just be like a really really long story you'd need all of those bridge theories. It's easy to think that consciousness ought to be like how atoms cause cars right because everything else
[01:21:44] in the world is and he's saying like no we're in this weird position where like this is the one thing in the world that you know that that does not carry over.
[01:21:55] So what do you think of this response to Naego? So it's trying to walk the line between elimitivism which says there are no real conscious experiences and that's an illusion which I don't even understand and I think is disingenuous but then there's this idea no
[01:22:17] there's consciousness but it is the part of consciousness that seems like it couldn't be reduced or explained in physical physicalist terms that's an illusion. So yes I see a red curtain
[01:22:37] in front of me and I see the redness but the idea that the part of it that seems like wait there's no way that a you know neurophysiological explanation could capture what it's like to be red to see
[01:22:53] red that's an illusion. This is a view that I think my colleague Josh Weisberg holds in some better articulated form than what I just gave and also Keith Frankish like what I don't know what to
[01:23:07] make of that I don't totally get that but do you have you come across this? No I'd... The non-material character of consciousness is the illusion but the consciousness itself isn't. I mean it sounds like a limitivism of some sort. It's just specifying that we're eliminating the
[01:23:33] hard part or just denying that there is... I think people say of this Nagel essay that he introduced a problem that isn't really a problem. This heavy leaning on subjective
[01:23:49] experience isn't the problem he makes it out to be but like I've not read any satisfactory answer as to why it's not a problem right? They usually fall back on some sort of physicalism or materialism
[01:24:03] which I guess are used interchangeably nowadays. That is just as unsatisfying. I want to separate this from like those and here I'll talk about the zombie argument briefly and also the Mary
[01:24:16] argument. So let's talk the Mary argument which is that Mary knows all the physical facts about color. Yeah Mary the color scientist. But she's been kept in a black and white room her whole life
[01:24:31] and meanwhile has learned every possible physical fact there is to know about color and color perception and then she goes out into the world she's released and sees red for the first time she learned something new and therefore conscious experience can't be physical because
[01:24:48] she knew everything already about color perception and still learned something when she saw red. I take it that that's stronger than anything Nagel is saying right now. That is an argument for dualism it is saying that physicalism can't in principle explain our say perception of colors
[01:25:12] and what it feels like to see the colors and I think Nagel isn't saying that he's just saying that right now with the conceptual schemes that we have Mary couldn't know what it was like
[01:25:25] to see red maybe at some point in the future she could but not now. And similarly with the zombie argument he's not making any kind of conceivability claim here. Right so the Frank Jackson Mary the color scientist is interested you know
[01:25:43] I think that that in both cases what is highlighted is that Nagel isn't making up offering a positive claim here he's only saying how problematic it is that we can't reconcile like you said in the beginning this the objective and the subjective in particular in the case of
[01:26:02] consciousness. Yeah I was like the Mary the color scientist thing always amused me but it wasn't until I was reading preparing for this that I realized that Frank Jackson was making a dualistic argument for epiphenomenal dualism like the view that consciousness exists it
[01:26:27] just hasn't just doesn't interact causally with the world. Yeah which is so wonky. Yeah and again like depends on us really having intuitions about what it would mean to learn every physical fact about color perception you know like that's my problem with it as well as the
[01:26:49] zombie argument like and any conceivability argument like we can say we can we understand these things or can conceive of them but I don't know what that means and I certainly wouldn't draw any strong metaphysical conclusions from what I think or say I can conceive or in the
[01:27:10] Jackson case understand like what does it mean to learn every physical fact about. No I know and there's just like you know there's so many of these thought experiments have this sense to me of
[01:27:25] mock insight it seems so reasonable because you have an intuition like I have an intuition that Mary has something that she didn't have before right but the case has snuck in as you say the
[01:27:38] case has snuck in the word knows everything the devil's in the details like you could construct you could be malicious and construct a whole bunch of some of these thought puzzles that would
[01:27:49] lead to wild intuitions merely because you fucked with a way in which you asked them like like what and like and the and the arguments really depend on you really understanding what that means
[01:28:02] to know everything about and we don't and I think nagle he doesn't do any of those kinds of thought experiments like this is what so like I think they're getting at a similar problem Chalmers Jackson and nagle here about this disconnect between conscious experience and
[01:28:23] physicalist explanation or naturalistic explanation but nagle is is doing it in a way that doesn't rely on asking us to try to imagine something that we really can't imagine or conceive of
[01:28:41] and the only cost for that is being a little more modest about about the claims not going not making a positive claim as you said about you know physicalism being true or false or dualism
[01:28:55] or anything like that just pointing to this real explanatory problem that we have that seems at least for now inescapable like that it's not even clear how we would begin to approach solving it
[01:29:11] I like that characterization of nagle is is sort of just you know all all he's saying here is is wait like don't act like you've solved the problem right there is this sort of cross-disciplinary like attempts at solving the problem of consciousness by putting together
[01:29:31] teams of like neuroscientists and philosophers and that always strikes me as sort of weird because the problem of consciousness is is is one that we don't even we don't even know what the right
[01:29:46] things to put together would be it's sort of like let's just pretend that this isn't as intractable as it seems and like get some people to do MRIs and some people to write about you
[01:29:57] know limited diverse reductionism or whatever well I was going to say like that's the the things that he says at the end actually sort of point to at least trying to do this by trial you're right we
[01:30:09] don't even know who we would bring into it but that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try so he does give a kind of positive almost hopeful um so he says we we have to develop such a phenomenology
[01:30:24] to describe the sonar experiences of bats but it would be also possible to begin with humans so start there one might try to develop concepts that could be used to explain to a blind person
[01:30:36] blind from birth what it was like to see one would reach a blank wall eventually but it should be possible to divide a method of expressing in objective terms much more than we can at present with much greater precision the loose intermodal analogies for example red is like
[01:30:53] the sound of a trumpet which crops up in discussions of the subject or of literal use that should be clear to anyone who has both heard a trumpet and seen red but structural features of perception
[01:31:04] might be more accessible to objective description even though something would be left out and concepts alternative to those we learn in the first person may enable us to arrive at a kind of understanding even of our own experience which has denied us by the very ease of description
[01:31:20] and lack of distance that subjective concepts afford so he's thinking like he has this like positive idea of just at least trying to take baby steps to developing a conceptual framework
[01:31:36] that would allow us to get a sense of what it's like to be somebody that's very different from us like a deaf person or a blind person or a seeing person if you are a blind person
[01:31:49] right it reminds me a little bit of the aliens on arrival who speak a language that once taught to humans once that language is taught to humans allows them to see beyond time
[01:32:01] yes it feels like there's something like of that flavor to what nagle is saying but then as you were reading that I was thinking you know there there there is at least one example I can
[01:32:13] think of in psychophysiology one that I've I think talked about at least twice on this podcast which is the problem that we have of comparing the intensity of stimuli so this is work that's
[01:32:28] that has been done on taste and so the finding that some people have more papilla on their tongue that makes them taste things more strongly right leads to a real measurement problem so
[01:32:41] so you might say it's 10 out of 10 the hottest pepper I've ever eaten and I say 10 out of 10 the hottest you know the hottest thing I've ever put in my mouth and we just have actually have fundamentally
[01:32:53] different experiences you have less papilla so it's just nowhere near as strong as it is for me and the way that they've gotten or that you know this is like in the 50s the psychophysicist
[01:33:03] just discovered to get around it is to say well instead of saying like how hot in your mouth this is tell me how intense this is compared to the loudness of these tones that I'm going to play you
[01:33:18] and so they use loudness scales to say like it's as hot as this 90 decibel noise is and they found that when they did that you could actually compare across people in taste so they're creating a new language by giving them this tool of cross modality
[01:33:36] it's like the baby of steps to understanding how like it might feel for somebody to have a super intense flavor experience that you're never going to have you can say like oh it's like
[01:33:49] how when I hear a sound so loud that I have to cover my ears right I guess right so the idea isn't that we're like I can just imagine oh it's spicy but it's like way spicier than what
[01:34:03] I'm tasting right now because that's easy to imagine yeah you getting that it's more that I there's a level of spiciness that I don't even like there's no food that could give me
[01:34:17] and yet like I can sort of a little bit see what that might be like by just take like a noise that's so loud that it's different than any other kind of noise that I would normally
[01:34:32] experience right and you're like oh like there is at least one feature of your experience that has been communicated to me right yeah and that's that's like the babyist of steps like I don't
[01:34:44] you know I think nagle's optimism here is just optimism for the sake of of ending optimistically there's this kind of neuro phenomenology have you heard about this which is a marriage of continental philosophy and like neuroscience which I guess this guy volet not velero that's the gas
[01:35:05] station but something like velero I was reading a little bit about it today but and I downloaded the paper about it I like to imagine the papers entitled what it's like to be Juergen Habermas
[01:35:17] Varela Varela not velero yeah I mean if yeah what it's like to be uh you know what it's like to be high digger only one specific aspect like a super taster but I like this idea because you know continental philosophy and you know especially phenomenology
[01:35:39] that the field is very much about subjective experience and takes that as basic it's an interesting idea to marry that with this objective the objective third person methods of of science and see like what produces but again I can like you can tell me that that's
[01:36:02] happening but I don't know what that like I don't have a sense of what that could possibly produce precisely because of the problem that nagle has elaborated right right no yeah yeah it is I was
[01:36:15] also thinking about this this inter this subjectivity um being being fundamentally about our inability to understand anybody's experience again I don't think nagle is talking about that specifically but
[01:36:28] but uh but it's like that kind of idea of yeah of just going way off what we normally think of in terms of a scientific method we're gonna need something more radical than that and
[01:36:44] we're gonna need aliens to come whisper in our ear or at least who's early ends yeah that's the best thing you've said in a while it's like a european rick and morty episode
[01:36:57] who's early ends we were talking about how we went down this rabbit hole and it was like we felt like we knew less about it you know yeah I wanted to talk a little bit about that too
[01:37:14] there is no there is I don't think any you know there are some things that I you know like theoretical physics that I'm just not going to read because I know I won't understand it
[01:37:23] but this has all of the guys of like these are all words that I understand these are all like the process by which philosophers make arguments and think like I understand and I read this philosophy of mine stuff and like it literally sucks knowledge out of me
[01:37:39] but it's like not always right like there are times where you feel like you get it and you know where all the where the camps are in the different positions and you understand them
[01:37:51] and then it just goes away you know what I mean like it has this appearance of oh I think I get it because like you say we understand the words and we understand what it feels like to be a conscious
[01:38:02] being and yet it's hard to speak intelligently about it. Yeah and I find that I don't like it's one of those cases unlike ethics where all of my intuitions really do feel pumped like faked maybe that's maybe there's reason for that maybe ethical
[01:38:20] judgments are just straightforwardly obvious to us because there is some deep sense in which we have you know we've evolved to make these kinds of inter social judgments about others but there is no conceptual tool box that seems to allow me to have intuitions about these cases
[01:38:43] like I think I understood the conceivability argument once like I understood it once I remember I remember that day it was an interesting day and then I just never never got it again. The ontological argument you know for the existence of God is like that too.
[01:38:59] It's like I have it I have it no I lost it. Because I can imagine oh wait yeah all right maybe that's a good place to end I hope we're just as lost as the listener is if the listener feels lost.
[01:39:16] It's the one essay here that we've read where I really like I don't know how good an essay Nagler wrote. Part of it is I think this conflation of the subjective character like this is what led
[01:39:29] to a little bit to the confusion we had at the beginning there is a lot of talk about the problem being the subjective character of experience rather than the character of experience
[01:39:41] like what it is like what the experience is that we feel and he focuses a lot on the fact that it's feeling like that to me those two things get mushed together which there's the problem of not
[01:39:56] knowing what the thing is to be explained because I don't have access to to what that thing feels like and then there's a problem of how the thing itself is reduced to scientific naturalistic explanation and those two things are those are two different problems although I
[01:40:18] could see that they might have the same source but they seem like different problems and the essay I think I don't know maybe if you read it over and over again more carefully.
[01:40:31] Maybe I'll have one day where I right hey before before we end because I want to relate to you on a deeply subjective level what do you think it feels like to be Jose
[01:40:43] Altuve's bat? Oh man that was great my adopted step team made me very proud and they're playing the first game first game of the world series against the nationals tonight I am fully on
[01:40:59] the bandwagon. Are you rooting for the Astros? I hope you at least did. I will yeah uh when would I root for the Yankees? I mean I don't even care about baseball and I don't want to root for the Yankees.
[01:41:14] Altuve has like a hundred percent approval rating like nobody doesn't like Altuve except the biggest yeah I mean the asshole Yankee fans who are chanting fuck Altuve and Yankee stadium because they have zero class good that just must feel good though if you're Altuve like I would love
[01:41:29] for Yankees fans to chant fuck Pizarra. Well we'll see if we can make that happen. This is like only one or two I've done it. Fuck Pizarra. All right join us next time I'm very bad with you.
[01:42:29] Good man just a very bad wizard.