There are some specialized terms here that you're unlikely to encounter outside of an academic philosophy paper, but there's nothing complex about the meanings of any of the individual terms. Once you know what the words mean, it all makes sense.

>eliminativist

Eliminativist claims in philosophy are claims that deny the existence of some class of entities. You can be eliminativist about all sorts of things - numbers, objective morals, countries, tables and chairs, etc.

>qualia

First-person conscious experiences. Pain is a qualia. The way the color blue looks, as opposed to say the color red or green, is a qualia. The sensation of hot or cold is a qualia.

When someone stubs their toe and says "ow", you can infer that they're in pain based on their behavior and your knowledge of how pain works, but you can't actually feel or directly observe their pain. That's the "first-person" part.

>phenomenal consciousness

A synonym for "qualia", because some philosophers started to feel like the word "qualia" had too much historical baggage, so they needed to come up with a new term.

>introspective illusion

Exactly what it says on the tin. An illusion (meaning, an impression that something is real, when it is in fact not) generated by introspection.

So, putting it all together:

>illusionism

Illusionism about consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is not real. So, to give a specific example, an illusionist would be committed to the thesis that pain is not real. As a corollary, no one has ever felt pain before, because there is no such thing as pain. People have been under the illusion that they feel pain, but they actually don't.

In philosophy there is also the saying:

The modus ponens of one side is the modus tollens of the other side.

Meaning that when one side in philosophy says: from A (their body of arguments) follows B, and A holds, thus B must hold. A&B, A => B is called modus ponens.

Then the other side will say: from A follows B, and B does clearly not hold, thus A does not (or cannot) hold. A&B, ~B => ~A is called modus tollens.

Just wanted to add this here because that's how in my experience the discussion of such topics close to one's self tend to unfold.

> First-person conscious experiences. Pain is a qualia. The way the color blue looks, as opposed to say the color red or green, is a qualia. The sensation of hot or cold is a qualia. When someone stubs their toe and says "ow", you can infer that they're in pain based on their behavior and your knowledge of how pain works, but you can't actually feel or directly observe their pain. That's the "first-person" part.

So cool! I’ve always felt there was something really interesting about the idea that someone might internalize the color blue as I see the color red. I know we can define the colors mathematically, but I never knew the term for that subjective interpretive difference—qualia.

>I’ve always felt there was something really interesting about the idea that someone might internalize the color blue as I see the color red.

Yes! In fact, philosophers have spent a lot of time thinking about this exact problem:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-inverted/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

It's a fascinating rabbit-hole, here's one jumping in point...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

Nice breakdown/demystification, thanks!

And if two people agree a wall is blocking their path does that elevate the sensation of wall from a quale into a reality?

I know that some members of this community (the “we live in a simulation”-ists) would posit that one person sensing the presence of another is as fabricated as the color “red”!

(Or have I misinterpreted my end of the stick?)

Same as two people blocked from continuing down the hallway of a house they agree feels haunted?

I'm not a philosophy major, so the jargon is tough, but I can kind of read it. It's not nonsense.

What helps me make sense of it is that I recognise the first sentence to be similar to my own position on consciousness:

    Consciousness is those parts of the workings of the brain that are available to introspection.

I dislike the use of the word "illusion", though. Just because consciousness doesn't have a separate material presence, doesn't mean it's not real.

The article seems to boil down to this: If you take this view on consciousness, then other kinds of intelligences, such as a post-biological AI, will also be conscious, because why not. So whatever ETI is out there is also conscious.

And then, weirdly, the author decides that this post-biological AI is going to have some other kind of ethics, because reasons, and that means something for SETI and the Fermi paradox. That part doesn't seem very convincing. I wonder what it means to "surpass someone in moral philosophy". I'm not sure it means anything.

Maybe it ties back to the word "illusion". If you believe that consciousness is an illusion, then it follows that someone could be capable of looking past the illusion and seeing only the reality behind it, and that would have consequences for their moral posture. Since I don't believe the word "illusion" is used properly, I don't buy this conclusion either.

I don't think consciousness is an illusion, but our way of experiencing it is. It appears unified because of consistent semantic space across experiences, and serial action bottleneck. But the brain is massively parallel.

I think this illusion of unity in consciousness led to so many people postulating some kind of essence. The way we apprehend ourselves is seriously biased, we have a blind spot.

Apparently there's an inverse correlation between the amount of jargon in a paper and the prestige of the university of the writer. Ie, people in worse universities tend to write more complicated language. This paper seems to be in line with that finding.

Have you ever actually written a research paper? Some things are impossible to flesh out without jargon.

E.g., a musicologist once wrote a paper disproving a previous paper that claimed to show similarities between the proportions of sections in a musical piece and the proportions of architectural sections of a basilica.

How the hell are you going to discuss those measurements and proportions without using the jargon from both Renaissance music and architecture?

Furthermore, what does the necessity of that jargon have to do with the "prestige" of the university of either scholar?

Edit: take down the temperature by changing the word "fuck" to "hell" :)

Excessive use of opaque jargon is typical of wannabes trying to climb a ladder of authority and credibility. But jargon is also a useful tool for competent people within a discipline. Very hard to tell the difference between the two from outside.

I read the comment as linking non-prestigious universities with the first case.

I personally do not have the same faith in prestigious institutions that OP has.

> Have you ever actually written a research paper? Some things are impossible to flesh out without jargon.

I have, yes. I have gotten some compliments from reviewers for clarity as well, if that's worth anything.

As pointed out already by others, some jargon is necessary, and using difficult language can be seen as a way to prop up credibility.

As a personal anecdote, I've known someone (from an unknown institute) who deliberately didn't want to make his results sound as simple and accessible as they could have been. However, most top people whose papers I've read are written with clarity and unnecessary jargon.

One person’s jargon is another person’s vernacular.

These are all very basic concepts from philosophy of mind, you are complaining about using words such as "linked list" when talking about CS topics.

Translated the quote says: "Illusionism is a position in which there is nothing happening in the brain except the physical process as known via modern day physics, or a future physics very similar to modern day physics, that position (illusionism) is the position that other things the mind is claimed to be able to do such as vivid experiences of colours or pain (qualia)are in fact nothing more than an illusion that happens then the brain queries its own systems. The attention schema theory (AST) relates this philosophical stance to a large body of experimental data and states that consciousness of experiences (qualia again, collars, pain, sound etc) arises from a model the brain generates of control what it gives attention to.

> complaining

I was in awe, enjoying it, actually.

But if you take the sour interpretation, sure, I can see how you'd construe my remark as such. No sourness intended though.

Indeed. I thought to say the same but you’ve phrased the problem with most in academia very nicely.

Every field has jargon and specialized terminology. Do you expect to be able to read any random physics or math paper outside your area of expertise and understand every word?

This has nothing to do with academia. Just grab a comment about anything tech-related in your own personal comment history and send it to a friend with zero tech background. They will be equally confused.

Jargon exists to simplify communication between people with specialized knowledge in a field. People without that specialized knowledge aren’t going to be able to follow as easily. News at 11.