Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

The main paradox for me, and what really boggles my mind, is if phenomenal consciousness is basically a mirror (or emergent property or whatever) of let's call it 'neural consciousness' (ie the neural correlates of consciousness)... if both are identical but viewed from different perspectives... just two sides of the same coin... (which is how I see it, and it looks like you do similarly as well)... then it's curious if we would treat them differently depending on if they had or did not have phenomenal consciousness. And intuitively I think we would treat them differently because (ie a non-PZ or PZ interacting with a hypothetically confirmed PZ (even though there'd be no way to confirm it, but just for argument's sake say it was confirmed somehow)) we feel empathy and sympathy for others based on not wanting them to feel pain, but feeling pain we intuitively see (or at least I see) as a purely phenomenal aspect of consciousness... ie sure there are distributed physical and neural correlates of that consciousness, and thus that pain... our brain state that is mirrored (for want of a better term) in/by consciousness, but nonetheless, I cannot intuitively look at those distributed processes in isolation, which is what the concept of a pZ is about, and feel the same sort of emotional response to it, in the sense of empathy/sympathy, as I would for imagining a phenomenally conscious state.

This reminds me of an opinion of Descartes that the torture of animals was OK since animals only 'appear' to be in pain, but are not *actually* in pain because they are not conscious. It also parallels the question of the middle ages about whether women have souls. Somehow, cries of agony and desperate attempts to avoid the torture are not enough to recognize something is in pain.

And this is another aspect of the zombie question: a zombie that is crying out in pain *is* in pain. A zombie that obviously 'appears' deeply moved by a piece of music or poetry *is* deeply moved by the music or poetry. A zombie that appears to be overwhelmed by the beauty of a sunset *is* overwhelmed by the beauty of a sunset.

And this is one reason why zombies are simply incoherent. Whatever they have, we *should* identify as being conscious.

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 Like, I can imagine a rainbow-farting unicorn. How does it follow that because I can conceive of it, a unicorn that farts rainbows is logically possible? I don’t get it.

If I'm understanding right (always a big "if") something can be logically possible and still not at all something we ought to believe in.

Like, there's no LOGICAL contradiction in the idea of a one-horned horse-like creature whose anal glands spray a mist which, in the proper light, make rainbows.

So that's logically possible, but no sane person expects to get one for Christmas.

Something that's logically impossible is like a square triangle, or a married bachelor, or a thing that exists and doesn't exist simultaneously. Self-contradictory.

The way I like to say it is that logical consistency is a very weak filter on ideas. it is, in no way, sufficient to saying the idea is true.

I'd also be careful of the 'thing that both exists and does not exist simultaneously'. That assumes that 'existence' is a property that a thing either has or not. And, if that were the case, I would *expect* a quantum superposition of the two states to be possible, allowing for both existence and non-existence with a 50% probability in a single state. We have, for example, superpositions where an item can be in two different places simultaneously (look up quantum bomb detector).

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@emjay it wasn’t anything in response to your personal take on PZ’s; I just always hear the argument prefaced with that assumption and I’m not quite sure I entirely follow it, that’s all. 🙂 Like, I can imagine a rainbow-farting unicorn. How does it follow that because I can conceive of it, a unicorn that farts rainbows is logically possible? I don’t get it.

And this goes to the issue of what it means to 'imagine' something. Can you *really* imagine a rainbow-farting unicorn *in detail*, complete with all biological systems, the physics involved, etc?

In the same way, can we *really* imagine a philosophical zombie in detail? I'm not sure we can. The level of complexity to make something like that work *and* being able to distinguish it from an ordinary conscious person seems to be well beyond my ability to imagine.

But then, I can work with 11 dimensional spheres and not have an actual image of them.

Being able to imagine is a very poor filter for ideas. 

And simply because we *think* we can imagine something, does mean we can make metaphysical conclusions about it. THAT is something I think is a HUGE mistake that Chalmers made when discussing zombies.