(March 2, 2018 at 1:08 pm)Hammy Wrote:(March 2, 2018 at 1:03 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Would it really matter that this is not actually whats going on...any more than it doesn't matter that this is not actually whats going on in ourselves?
If you weren't conscious you wouldn't know it.... but thankfully you are conscious (if you like being alive that is, if you don't then I bet you wish you weren't conscious) and you do know it.
You can't even not know you're conscious if you're conscious, no matter how much you think you don't know it. You're just confused and calling something else "conscious" you know you're not unconscious. If you were unconscious you wouldn't be alive. You've be a biological organism that moved around and behaved alive.... but you wouldn't be alive. There would be no 'you' for your 'life' to matter to.
But there is clearly a sense in which a p-zombie *would* know a great deal. They would be able to recall facts. They would be able to relate 'experiences'. They would be able to go on and on about how beautiful a painting is. They would be able to talk coherently about consciousness, etc.
They would act *in every way* as if they were conscious, including long discussions about consciousness where they insist they are conscious!
So, it is clear (to me) that a physically identical zombie that acts in *every* way the same as a conscious person is, in fact, conscious. They have an internal state. They know and feel.
You are missing the point by allowing for the consciousness center of their brain to be removed. That is CERTAINLY not allowed for a p-zombie. The whole point is that they are physically identical in every way and they don't have consciousness. The question is whether *that* is possible.
