Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

Well, I disagree with Chalmers on a number of points. For example, i don't see philosophical zombies as being coherent.

Can I hear the argument for that?

Well, let's consider what Chalmers proposed. Imagine a conscious person. Then imagine another being that is physically identical in every way with that conscious person. The question is whether it is coherent to say the construct is not conscious. I don't believe it is.

For example, if the conscious person waxes eloquent about their experience of the color red, so will the zombie. If the conscious person goes into a long discussion about their qualia, so will the zombie. if the conscious person acknowledges Mary might have learned something when she saw red, so would the zombie. In every single physical situation, the two will be *exactly* the same in how they respond.

And no, I don't think it is possible for that to occur without the 'zombie' actually being conscious. At some point in some way, there would be something where a non-conscious being would react differently than a conscious one and *that* would be a physical difference between the two.

But, I also don't think that there is any need to go beyond the correspondences between neural correlates and conscious states. Those correspondences *are* the explanation of conscious  states, And if there is a way of translating neural behavior and conscious states, that linkage is all that is required to explain consciousness.

Establishing correspondences alone doesn't provide the full picture. There's still something missing here. You may be personally satisfied with such an account, but it doesn't mean there's not something missing here that demands an answer.

I'm curious what you think is still missing.

I no more have to give a mechanism for the connection than I have to give a mechanism linking charged particles and electric fields. Having the correlation *is* the explanation.

Again, I disagree. Like I said earlier, correlation isn't the full explanation.

That said, maybe this isn't too much of a problem in this case since physicists can perhaps logically conceive of ways that particles cause fields, and they just haven't/can't establish this scientifically.

No, there is no 'logically conceiving how particles cause fields'. Whenever we have a certain type of particle, we have afield of a certain type. This is universal. There is no 'mechanism' proposed. There is nothing that isn't established scientifically. There is simply a universal correlation: particles and fields always appear together.
That is what can be tested and that is what the theories are based upon.

In the case of consciousness, because we're talking about a switch from the physical to something that seems to be not physical (it may still be physical but it nevertheless "feels" bizarre and funny), there is more demand for an explanation of how that switch works. In other words, there is concern that phenomenological consciousness may not be in line with strict physicalism/materialism.

And I'm saying that if we get to the point that we can read minds by looking at neural activity, where we can induce conscious states by stimulating neurons in the right way, and where we have a universal correlation between neural acitvities of certain types and conscious states, then we *have* the causal link. There is nothing more left to explain.

I suspect that the desire is for some sort of 'mechanism'. That, I believe, is a deep philosophical mistake. We cannot detect causality. What we can detect is correlation. And certain types of correlation we *call* causality. That is what it *means* to say X causes Y.