Philosophical zombies

[Edwardo Piet]

Consciousness is the the awareness of information, so information processing is ALL of it.

That's like saying that because all dogs are animals all animals are dogs.

Yes, consciousness is the awareness of information... but that does NOT imply that all information is aware any more than all dogs being animals implies that all animals are dogs.

Physics is relevant because in the real world (as opposed to one where, say, pressure is not the result of atoms bouncing off of each other), and in any world similar to ours, consciousness is a product of the physical world.

Everything is the product of the physical world..... you have done the equivalent of saying "love is just a word". So is cheeseburger.

Physics is no more relevant to consciousness than it is to anything else. How is physics especially relevant? How does the subject of physics address consciousness? Physics doesn't say anything about consciousness any more than it does about cheeseburgers. The fact that the physical world produces both cheeseburgers and consciousness is irrelevant. If you call that relevant just because everything is physical, then that's a laughably tenuous use of the word "relevant".

Whether something is possible 'in theory' is a silly criterion. I can imagine all sorts of possible worlds where the rules are so different that consciousness isn't the result of physical processes. But such worlds are so far away from ours that this possibility isn't relevant to us.

When we're talking about logical possibility, logic is relevant. Which type of possibility are you talking about?

There's no reason to believe that we can't just apply the anthropic principle to our own consciousness and consciousness might actually be incredibly rare for intelligent creatures just as life might be incredibly rare for the universe, and the fact we're here/conscious doesn't make it common.

Once again, how would it be possible for something physically identical to NOT be conscious?

Because we're not talking about physically identical. We're talking about the brain being identical in every way as far as the intelligence and every other part of the brain goes, apart from the parts that produce the epiphenomenon of consciousness... which may be irrelevant and a useless by product of evolution just like a moth that suicides itself on a lightbulb is a useless by product of evolution.

The first person aspect is produced from the information processing in the brain. So anything physically identical will have that same processing and thereby the same internal experiences.

If the parts of the brain that produced consciousness didn't exist they wouldn't exist to produce consciousness. Bravo, duh, clap clap. That's not the point. The point is that the parts that evolved that produce consciousness may be utterly useless by products that have nothing to do with all the useful parts of the brain including intelligence. In this case, intelligence and the rest of the brain lead to the useless side effect of consciousness.... but given enough evolutionary path it might not have. And when applying the anthropic principle it may be very rare just like life is and the fact we're here and conscious and know it doesn't make consciousness any more common than the fact we're alive makes life any more common.

As for being confused, a supposed zombie would say they have internal feelings and all of that. They would certainly *believe* they are conscious and be quite adamant about that fact. Isn't that quite sufficient evidence that they are, in fact, conscious?

I'm the one saying that we know we're conscious and we're definitely not zombies. You're the one asking how we know we're conscious. The fact that we can experience ourselves asking the question means we know we're conscious.

You think it's possible that it can seem that things seem to us but they don't really seem to us... but that is confused and logically incoherent.... because seeming to seem implies seeming.