RE: Philosophical zombies
March 7, 2018 at 8:38 am
(This post was last modified: March 7, 2018 at 8:46 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(March 6, 2018 at 5:38 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(March 6, 2018 at 2:11 am)Khemikal Wrote: P-zeds are designed specifically to have no physical difference between anyone else in comparison. Not that we're unaware of what it is, that there literally isn't one. Identification and classification are soft problems. The objection they're meant to express (whether used to argue against physicalism or not) doesn't work otherwise...and it's useful to remember that it exists only by fiat in the thought experiment.
Well, whatever you did in order to exactly copy a human function, how would you know there wasn't still an additional variable? What if you could use some kind of energetic transdimensional interferometer to clone me, right down to the spin of every subatomic particle? Could you, even then, have 100% confidence that I was truly sentient?
Right now, the answer is no. We simply do not know at all what allows any physical system, including the brain, to have subjective experience of itself. Yeah, we can talk about this or that brain part, fMRI results when you think about chocolate, and so on. But we're always back down to the problem that you cannot really see mind-- only (supposed) correlates of mind.
How, scientifically, am I supposed to say that someone else is sufficiently a copy of me in order to actually have real feelings? I can't. First, I have to make the philosophical jump, and then and only then can I start to observe correlates and tell myself I am doing science of the mind. But any position which requires accepting the axiom being researched must instantly be discarded as circular, no?
-"but I/we/you could always be wrong". Haven't we already covered all possible ground in this?
If someone else is a copy of you, they are a copy of you. If you handed me a piece of paper and asked me to make a copy, you would expect the copy to be a copy. The p-zombie prop is that a perfect copy of you can be made that would..somehow, still not be a copy. At least in regards to one specific thing. Scientifically, you can say any of those things. From your position in the rejection of all knowledge..you cannot say anything, not even the things you just used as an objection. You may be wrong about those too.
Now, why on earth would you say that we can't see mind? We can't see electricity either..but when we read a voltimeter we say that we have observed it. How this is supposed to be different from mind and brain function..or whether or not you have equally compelling reservations against observations of electricity, I'll leave to you.
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