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I agree with you that epiphenominalism is weird — not self-evidently false, but weird. I don’t accept it. As for zombies, I’m agnostic on whether they’re metaphysically possible, but I don’t think that their being metaphysically possible is as problematic as you suggest:

Similarly for zombies, zombies don’t know whether they are a zombie or not. They believe just as firmly that they have conscious states and will describe them in fine detail.

Zombies do not have beliefs. Beliefs require consciousness. Perhaps zombies have cog-psy-beliefs (i.e., “functionalist” beliefs), but those are not beliefs. Words come out of their mouth that sound like descriptions, but they are not descriptions because descriptions require intentionality, which zombies do not have.

So how do you know you’re not a zombie

I introspect and see experience. That’s how I know I’m not a zombie.

If you wanted to get absurd results from the possibility of zombies, questioning how I can know that others aren’t zombies strikes me as a more promising route to go.

Here’s the basic argument:
1. We have mental states with properties x, y, z, where x, y, and z are properties characteristic of what we typically call “conscious states”.
2. Only mental states that are epiphenomenal can have properties x, y, and z.
3. We cannot have knowledge of epiphenomenal mental states.

Clearly you can’t hold all three of these propositions at once.

Well, you could — deny that we have knowledge of our mental states. But if you insert “knowledge of” between “have” and “mental” in (1), then this does look like a formal trilemma.

Either you can try to clarify the properties that conscious states posses to avoid epiphenomenalism or you can attack the arguments that claim properties x, y, and z lead to epiphenomenalism

I would probably attack the latter claim. Naturally it depends on the properties x, y, and z, but I don’t know of any persuasive arguments to epiphenomenalism from qualia, or the claim that Mary doesn’t know what red looks like, or anything like that. If you know of some you find persuasive I’m happy to tell you which premises I deny. (I suspect that such an argument would move from qualia –> some kind of dualism and some kind of dualism –> epiphenomenalism. I would question both steps; I’m not convinced that some kind of neutral monism can’t accommodate the data of consciousness, and if we accept dualism I see little reason to accept the causal closure of the physical.)

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(If I find an answer via a different avenue, I hope I’ll remember to comment the answer here.)

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You can accept epiphenomenalism and zombies, but to do so means you have to accept a pretty weird epistemology whereby you can have knowledge of non-abstract objects without having any causal interaction with them. Your assertion that you have conscious states is, presumably, done via typing on a computer or some other physical mechanism. But if your conscious states can only be caused but not cause anything, how could they eventually lead to your typing behavior? Similarly for zombies, zombies don’t know whether they are a zombie or not. They believe just as firmly that they have conscious states and will describe them in fine detail. So how do you know you’re not a zombie and people with conscious states actually have some type of experience much more rich and radically different than yours? Again, your epistemology has to be very strange if you are to assert that you are conscious if you either accept epiphenomenalism or the metaphysical possibility of zombies. If you want to have a strange epistemology to maintain that you have conscious states in some yet-to-be-clarified sense, then sure, go ahead, but I’ll accept the other horn of the dilemma.

Your “I exist” argument is not analogous because it does not have similar epistemological consequences.

Here’s the basic argument:
1. We have mental states with properties x, y, z, where x, y, and z are properties characteristic of what we typically call “conscious states”.
2. Only mental states that are epiphenomenal can have properties x, y, and z.
3. We cannot have knowledge of epiphenomenal mental states.

Clearly you can’t hold all three of these propositions at once. (3) seems to me to be the most obviously correct. Thus, (1) and (2) are where the work needs to be done. Either you can try to clarify the properties that conscious states posses to avoid epiphenomenalism or you can attack the arguments that claim properties x, y, and z lead to epiphenomenalism. I think attempts at the latter have not been very successful, so I favor the first approach.

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Let’s suppose that cognitive psychologists really are using the concept of perception you describe. (I don’t deny that they say they do, but I suspect that their actual use of the concept conflicts with their theoretical views.)

In that case, that concept just doesn’t have anything to do with consciousness. Consciousness is not cog-psy-perception+. Cog-psy-perception isn’t even a necessary condition for consciousness. I can be completely disabled, incapable of moving a muscle and so incapable of physically responding in any way to information coming in, and yet still be conscious. So I think this is just the completely wrong route to be starting down in the first place.

but when spelling out these properties, one must absolutely make sure to avoid any sort of properties that entail epiphenomenalism (or zombies, etc.).

First, I know of no valid argument with otherwise uncontroversial premises that takes us from consciousness that is not of the cog-psy-perception variety (or qualia, or whatever) to epiphenomenalism or zombies (by “zombies” I presume you mean the metaphysical possibility of zombies). Second, if there were such an argument the thing to do would be to accept epiphenomenalism or zombies, because those conclusions are not self-evidently false, whereas any thesis that tells me that I’m just a cog-psy-perceiver and there’s nothing else to my mind is self-evidently false.

Suppose I were to consider this argument:

(1) I exist.
(2) If I exist, something must have caused me to exist.
(3) But the same goes for that thing, etc.
(4) Therefore, there is an infinite sequence of causes.

Your reaction to “spelling out the properties of consciousness” strikes me as analogous to me reacting to the above argument by denying its first premise, on the grounds that its conclusion seems crazy (perhaps for Hilbert Hotel type reasons). There are no doubt many things wrong with the above argument, but its first premise is not one of them!

The failure to do so seems to have two possible explanations: either we just haven’t got the properties nailed down quite yet (which would seem odd given the millions of manhours dedicated to introspecting on one’s own experience) or that, as Dennett and others propose, there is a cognitive mechanism that generates in us such beliefs that there are such properties.

I deny that Dennett or anyone of his ilk can explain how we could get beliefs in such properties, because Dennett and his ilk cannot even explain beliefs. All they can explain are cog-psy-beliefs, which I do not think = beliefs for the same reasons I don’t think cog-psy perception = perception.

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Well, I’ll continue to use that definition of “perception” because it’s the one cognitive psychologists use (either explicitly or implicitly) when studying abilities such as vision, hearing, etc. It’s well within your conceptual rights to use the term “perception” to designate something else, and that’s fine as long as we keep the two concepts separate. My main point is that consciousness seems to have properties over and above those possessed by the cognitive psychologist’s concept of perception, that much is obvious, but when spelling out these properties, one must absolutely make sure to avoid any sort of properties that entail epiphenomenalism (or zombies, etc.). The failure to do so seems to have two possible explanations: either we just haven’t got the properties nailed down quite yet (which would seem odd given the millions of manhours dedicated to introspecting on one’s own experience) or that, as Dennett and others propose, there is a cognitive mechanism that generates in us such beliefs that there are such properties.

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As for perception, I mean perception cognitively defined: information gathered via transducers that is used to navigate the environment. Flies perceive, your Roomba perceives, and your grandmother perceives. That all mobile organisms perceive is uncontroversial.

I reject this functionalist definition of perception (and information gathering, for that matter). I don’t think my Roomba perceives. You might worry that we’re just talking past each other and using technical terms differently then, but I am actually even more dogmatic than that. I think ‘perceive’ is a pre-theoretical term that we get from our ordinary experience, and that we then extend it to things like machines, we are either anthropomorphizing them or speaking metaphorically. Metaphorical language can be useful, of course, and perhaps it’s useful for scientists to define a technical, functional sense of ‘perception.’ But then we need to be very clear that this is not the same sense of ‘perception’ as in ordinary speech and thought. I get my concept ‘perception’ from introspecting on my own experience; I perceive myself perceiving things, and thus get my concept ‘perception’ by perception just like I get my concept ‘red’ by perceiving red things. And when I introspect, what I introspect is not this functionalist thing; it’s something else (as evidenced by the fact that I can, e.g., imagine myself perceiving X without acting or being disposed to act in any of the ways a functionalist definition appeals to).

Citizensearth, you say, anticipating this kind of response,

I’m not saying that’s true (or false), because perhaps you object to that definition, but I simply want to draw attention to how the words and their definitions are actually hiding philosophically partisan assumptions.

I agree with this, in a sense. I think that our basic experience of the world is philosophically loaded; and I don’t think that most interesting conversations can take place from a philosophically neutral standpoint. I just think the proper response to this is a reason to accept the “philosophically partisan assumptions” given to us by our experience!

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