Philosophical zombies

[Edwardo Piet]

No it isn't. That's the user illusion.

.......and -that's- exactly what dennet was referring to when he described the illusory nature of consciousness.  See how easy it is to clear that all up?

My point is the user illusion does NOT make consciousness itself an illusion. And he can't tell the difference.

Unless, ofc, the way you are using the term is to conform to some traditional view that asserts the accuracy of the user illusion.

No, unless NOTHING. It seems to us that we are conscious and we are because the seeming is consciousness.

Dennett can make up a new definition if he likes, but it doesn't magically erase the known truth of the original definition. The truth of our own consciousness is more certainly known to our conscious self than any fact in science could even come close to. You can't even have science studying anything without consciousness! Science studies phenomena!

  Then we aren't..by that description, but not because nothing's going on..because the description was wrong. 

You and Dennett are very very confused.

For the trillionth time, the fact that what appears to be the case to us is not how it is doesn't make the fact that something appears to us false! That's insane!

That's your misconception, it's a common one, read his footnote.  He thinks that we are not conscious in the way that we think we are, or the way that we have traditionally described ourselves to be. 

No, no NO. He never even fucking addresses consciousness and that's the problem. He makes the exact same mistake with free will, and he's already said he takes the same approach in both cases. And that approach is to try and deal with problems by not even bothering to address them.

His approach is to notice the nonexistence of free will and the inability of science to explain consciousness and to try and solve that by saying "free will exists it just isn't what you think it is" and "consciousness can be explained... because it isn't what you think it is."

And he's said he's made a career out of that. Yes he's made a career out of failing to address things.

If you still fail to see how silly his approach is notice how it's completely analagous with pantheism.

He's unable to explain consciousness, so he redefines it into something that science can test. That doesn't solve or achieve ANYTHING. He's just playing word games. It's like attempting to prove God exists by saying "God exists it's just that God is the universe." He's as silly as pantheism.

And how x works is also..often, different from how x seems.  He..again, is trying to explain how consciousness works.  That strongly implies that he thinks it's a thing that needs explaining..don't you think?

He CLAIMS to be explaining consciousness but by redefining X you are no longer addressing X and that's just a fact.

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@ The above...do you really think that your being an epiphenomenalist makes p-zeds possible, Ham...is that how that works, lol? 

No because that's not what I claimed now is it?

I'm starting to realize why Mathilda put you on ignore... it's because you strawman people so much.

And the fact you got voted the best debater is rather hilarious. You're one of the most illogical and unskilled debaters on AF.

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OK, I think we just disagree here. It seems clear to me that this level of complexity is the same as having an internal state that is conscious. They would have *seeming*.

That p-zombies would then be conscious is a proof of their impossibility.

And I don't see what information processing has got to do with it. Like I said, we don't know what it is that makes matter conscious. And we should stop pretending to know. We know we're conscious, and we can use inductive reasoning to believe that apes and primates and mammals that are closely related to us are perhaps conscious to a lesser and lesser extent the further we go back through our evolution, but we can't know what it is about us that makes us conscious or why. We know it lies somehwere in the brain, but there's no reason to believe it's "information processing" or that if you get a super computer that's super enough and can process enough information it suddenly has qualia lol.

P-zombies can't be conscious.

The only interesting sense of a P-Zed is a person who is unconscious but science has no way of telling.

Like I said, if you get two people who are identical twins except each of their brains are slightly different, and one of them has a conscious brain and the other doesn't... and science is unable to tell which is conscious and which isn't.... then you still have a hard problem of consciousness and you still have a P-zed in the way that P-zeds are actually interesting. They're unconscious beings that we are unable to tell are unconscious. If you want to go ahead and say they're not P-zeds just because their brains aren't physically identical, then fine they're not P-zeds. But I can then deem them pseudo-P-zeds and their pseudoness doesn't even matter because they're interesting for the exact same reason that a P-zed would be, except without the stupid dualism or non-physicalism. Obviously physicalism is true so obviously if you get a brain that is indentical to another brain physically either they're both conscious or both not. That is all obvious and uninteresting. The interesting part is that there's no reason to believe consciousness is anything more than an epiphenomenon and thus... it's very possible to conceive of two people who behave and act exactly the same way but one of their brains is only slightly different so as to remove them of consciousness.... and yet science is unable to tell which is which. Beings that behave exactly the same way despite no consciousness ARE possible, and if a being that looks and acts conscious but isn't and we can't tell they're not conscious isn't classified as a zombie... then I don't know what the hell you would classify them as. Consciousness doesn't appear to actually do anything or have any function, and that does make the possibility of zombies in the sense I described interesting.