RE: Philosophical zombies
March 2, 2018 at 12:26 pm
(This post was last modified: March 2, 2018 at 12:27 pm by polymath257.)
(March 2, 2018 at 11:54 am)Hammy Wrote:Quote:As I see it, consciousness is a phenomenon that automatically happens at a certain level of information processing complexity. Once you get to a certain stage, consciousness arises because you are processing information.
I've heard this but I don't see what information processing has got to do with it. I see it as things being arranged in a certain way, or some other detail we're unsure of. I see no reason to believe that a computer that had enough information processing would become conscious.
I think we don't know precisely what it is about intelligent brains in our case that happen to be conscious, and I think we should stop pretending to know. And I think there may indeed be beings out there that are more intelligent than us that didn't happen to evolve consciousness. Consciousness is utterly useless after all, it's just an epiphenomenon.
Quote:So, no, I don't think unconscious space aliens are possible either. If they have enough ability to process the information, they simply will be conscious.
I don't think information processing is relevant at all. You could have a rather unintelligent being that was conscious at some low level, and you could have a highly intelligent being that behaved conscious but wasn't conscious at all.
Quote:OK, so how do I determine if I am a zombie?
If you're conscious you know you're not one.
Quote: How do I know that what I *think* is feeling and experiencing is actually NOT what everyone else means by the terms?
Consciousness is just the fact that something can seem to be anything to you.
Quote:maybe I don't *really* feel and experience, but have instead some sort of vague shadow that is actually not conscious.
See this just makes no sense and demonstrates that you are confused. If you seem to experience something, then the seeming of that experience is an experience that seems a particular way to you.
The very notion of "It doesn't seem like I experience anything it just seems like I seem to experience something" is logically incoherent. Seeming to seem implies seeming.
Quote:How would I know?
Because that you are aware of yourself seeming to ask the question is absolute self-evidence to you that it seems that you are aware that you are asking that question.
Consciousness is the the awareness of information, so information processing is ALL of it.
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.
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.
Once again, how would it be possible for something physically identical to NOT be conscious? 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.
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?