Philosophical zombies

[polymath257]

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?

Yes, if you copies even the spins of all the atoms, I would be 100% certain the copy is conscious. How could it NOT be?

Yes, we detect correlates of consciousness. And that is quite sufficient. When we see those correlates, we know the object is conscious.

if we can't make that leap, then it is impossible for me to know my wife is conscious. It is *possible* that I am the only 'conscious' being and everyone else is a zombie. For me, that is a redutio ad absurdum.

When do we know a copy is good enough to be sentient? When it shows the correlates of sentience, clearly.