Philosophical zombies

[Edwardo Piet]

"Zombies in philosophy are imaginary creatures designed to illuminate problems about consciousness and its relation to the physical world. Unlike those in films or witchcraft, they are exactly like us in all physical respects but without conscious experiences: by definition there is ‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie. Yet zombies behave just like us, and some even spend a lot of time discussing consciousness."

Chalmers actually spends a lot of time on exactly this issue in his book.

Well that kind of P-zed is still logically possible because it's logically possible for dualism to be true. But of course, dualism is retarded and science has refuted it.

I'm much more interested in a non-retarded version of a P-zed. A person who seems conscious to everyone else, but isn't, and we have no way to tell, even with neurological tests.

The fact the creator of the definition has defined it in such a way that it has to be physically identical doesn't interest me. We already basically know non-physicalism is false.

But then again, you still have to ask what he means by non-physical. Does he mean mental as opposed to physical?

You see, if the physical parts of the brain that are conscious are deemed non-physical simply because they're mental.... then once again my point is, even though it really is a physical part of the brain, it is of course also mental, and it is possible that there are non-mental brains (brains without minds, or rather, without consciousness) and in that sense P-zeds are possible.

The creator, David Chalmers (who I am very familar with) is making a false dichotomy between physical and mental. As if non-physical=mental. The fact he makes a false dichotomy and thus created an overly narrow definition of a P-zed shouldn't stop us from debating P-Zeds. I'm pretty sure the P-zed debate has gone far beyond his mistakes.

I'm an epiphenomenalist, and Dennett doesn't think epiphenomenalism is possible either. But he has a very limited definition of that too, last I checked.