RE: Philosophical zombies
March 2, 2018 at 1:37 pm
(This post was last modified: March 2, 2018 at 1:38 pm by polymath257.)
(March 2, 2018 at 1:27 pm)Hammy Wrote:(March 2, 2018 at 1:18 pm)polymath257 Wrote: 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.
None of that is relevant. Again, whether they're conscious or not is whether they have a first person perspective. Whether they have qualia. The fact that they can behave like a conscious person from the third person perspective (from other people's perspectives) is wholly irrelevant.
Someone could act and behave exactly like a conscious person.... and not be conscious at all. And we'd have no way of telling the difference. If you don't think that's me saying that P-Zeds are possible then I don't know what you think I'm saying. Yes their brains would be slightly different, but no we would not be able to tell because all brains are slightly different and we don't have any way of testing who is and isn't conscious.
Yes, I get that. But what I am saying is if they can relate 'experiences' and 'feelings' with coherency, then it is clear they *do* have 'experiences' and 'feelings', otherwise what would elicit those responses?
If they are reacting *exactly* the same, that is sufficient evidence of an internal state. In fact, there is nothing that could elicit a consistently coherent set of responses to questions of consciousness except for consciousness itself. Without an internal state, they wouldn't respond as if they had one.
(March 2, 2018 at 1:35 pm)Hammy Wrote:(March 2, 2018 at 1:29 pm)Khemikal Wrote: -and yet that's how consciousness seems...to us.
No it isn't. That's the user illusion.
It seems to us that we are conscious... and we are.
Dennett seems to think that because we're mistaken about the nature of our consciousness we're mistaken about the fact we know we're conscious at all. And he can't seem to tell the difference.
You can say what you like about the workings of X, but how X works is different to if X is.
And it clearly seems to a zombie that it is conscious, so it is.
