Philosophical zombies

[robvalue]

@Atlas: I think you're misunderstanding this question. You're assuming you will see different results because of this lack of consciousness, because the brain isn't working properly or something. It is working absolutely fine, the person is not brain-dead. It will successfully mimic any and all actions and decisions that a "conscious" person would make.

It sounds to me like you'd diagnose half the people you meet as being zombies. I'm not being flippant, it's just an observantion. I expect you would decide that I am one.

It's also important to note that a brain could go badly wrong, a person could go "crazy", and yet still be conscious. So examining their decision making for any sort of rationality isn't going to work here.

I'm having an objectively fantastic day today because I had a wisdom tooth removed that was causing me agony every day so I've gone from agony to zero pain. And I feel huge amounts of physical relief.

And I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to Khem and Jor for being a rude and condescending jerkass to them in this thread. And I also apologize to Polymath for being a little condescending towards him. I also ended putting Khem on ignore which was intensely pathetic of me to do. I'll take him off ignore now.

This is a very interesting topic and hence I'm sorry for shitting up your thread, Rob.

To end this post with something on topic... if the only possible definition of a philosophical zombie that is considered acceptable is a insentient person with a brain physically identical to a sentient person... then I do indeed think philosophical zombies are impossible.

However my question to put to those who hold that opinion is the following question: If you have two people with different brains and one of them is sentient and one of them is not... but despite having different brains... science is unable to tell who is sentient and who isn't... what would you call the person who isn't sentient? And if you have no name for such a person... do you agree with me that such a person would be just as interesting as a philosophical zombie if a philosophical zombie were possible for exactly the same reasons? And if you do agree with that... can you understand why I am tempted to call that sort of person a kind of philosophical zombie?

No worries I'm glad you're feeling better!

Sure, I understand what you're saying. I think the problem is again defining what "sentient" really means. Informally, we all understand what a zombie would be; but scientifically, trying to state what this difference is seems pretty much impossible. This makes me suspect that our idea of what this supposed difference is may be is fundamentally flawed.

Trying to be objective about our own subjective "experiences" is an extremely difficult task.