alt Hacker NewsI find your position quite interesting but I feel like it still suffers the same issues I've seen in other "mind-first" arguments (I'm sorry for any ill-defined terms as I'm not a philosopher myself), such as p-zombies (how do you know other people are conscious as well?) and the origin of it.
I think both positions (physicalism vs mind-first) suffer from the same issue that is to reach the bottom of it all, except physicalism seems to have reached further. In the past we wondered what the world was made of and we observed it, coming to the idea of elements such as Aether, then later developed chemistry then physics, reaching layer below layer of rules that interact to the emergence of the layer above. Lots of rules that we can (apparently) reproduce and verify, cells emerging from molecules interacting emerging from atoms interacting emerging from quantum particles emeging from quantum fields... Maybe emerging from strings or a simulation? We don't know. It seems to me we also don't know how to tell we've finally reached the bottom of it, but what we have sounds pretty solid.
In a mind-first view it seems that this stack is upside-down, with a consciousness giving rise to a brain in a world with its objects which are made of molecules coming to existence upon observation (that is, chemistry would be a top layer after conscience further inspecting it), which are ruled by physics etc. Except this cause-and-consequence relation is not clear to me. Like you said:
> To me, it appears obvious to me that I am having a conscious experience from which the physical world and all its laws and processes, emerge.
How would this work if, from your perspective, I'm also conscious and not a p-zombie? Do I give rise to the world, or do you? Do we all collectively create a single world from our consciousness in a "Sandman's Dream of a Thousand Cats" way? And if we're all p-zombies except you, why bother arguing with us? (not throwing shade btw, I'm just interested in your point of view).
To me physicalism looks like a flame graph with physics at the bottom and minds at the tips of the flames, with less simpler things giving rise to multiple complex things, while mind-first looks like an icicle graph (assuming multiple consciousness) or an upside down triangle (assuming a single consciousness), with physics at the top (all "graphs" putting cause at the bottom and effect on top).
> I'm sorry for any ill-defined terms as I'm not a philosopher myself
Don't worry. You're in good company.
> How would this work if, from your perspective, I'm also conscious and not a p-zombie?
It's impossible for me to say that you are conscious. I only watch my own movie. In that movie, others appear to be watching their own movies. Their movies exist only as content in my movie. I cannot say for certain whether or not there really are conscious experiences like mine occurring. All I can say is that I am being given the impression that there are.
> Do I give rise to the world, or do you?
I do. Or at least, something impresses the world upon me. You are a feature of the world that is impressed upon me, and, disappointingly (for me at least), there's no way to confirm it through this movie that I am watching. I am left having to "make up my own mind" about whether or not I choose to believe you are anything but a p-zombie extra, in what is (as far as I can see of the conscious spectrum I am able to perceive), a single screen, single reel movie. But I'm just guessing, hoping, wishing, because that's all I can do from this limited vantage point.
> Do we all collectively create a single world from our consciousness in a "Sandman's Dream of a Thousand Cats" way?
It's a cute idea. Design by committee. Books/predictions of the future seem to have this annoying property of becoming true, lending to this idea. Who knows?
> And if we're all p-zombies except you, why bother arguing with us?
What else am I supposed to do? If you have unimaginable wealth, infinite time and the ability to conjure anything into existence, exactly what are you to do? Perhaps you might dream up what having the opposite of your existence might be, and set about convincing yourself that you are a time-ful, perishable human-being bound by physics and inevitably limited by the finite energy available in the universe, stumped by entropy. Perhaps you even role play as the puppets on the ends of your fingers, while convincing yourself that they're just as real as you are, so you can feel what it's like not to be the majesty of your own lonely empire. What else am I supposed to do, than to go along with it? If we destroy the illusion, we're back to square one - and then what?