Philosophical zombie.

[robybar]

Hello everyone. 
For those who don't know what a Philosophical zombie is, here is how wiki defines it

"A philosophical zombie [...] is a hypothetical being that from the outside is indistinguishable from a normal human being but lacks conscious experience, qualia, or . For example, if a philosophical zombie was poked with a sharp object it would not feel any pain sensation, yet could behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch", recoil from the stimulus, and say that it is feeling pain)"
 
Now: i was wondering if, virtually, could a p.zombie really exist. I see it as a nonsense,  and here is why

I am atheist. I'm a rational person and don't believe in phantoms, ghosts and souls. I think that the consciousness is a result of a connected net of cells integrating and coworking with each others, by elaborating external stimuli. No such thing as a soul could exist, because it should be a non-physical and supernatural force, that means that:
1)something that is not made of energy and matter could not interact with energy and matter, thus we can't be driven by this force. We are,  instead, conditioned by our brain, and every damage or malfunction in this organ will affect our consciousness and functionality. Also, if a soul interacted with our material brain there would have to be some kind of energy transfer/creation and so we would be able to detect it.
2)a soul, if real, by definition could do well without a "bodily shell", so our matter-energy world would be useless in order for a soul to exist.

I think most of you could easily agree with my thoughts about soul (at least the part "soul does not exist!"). 
Now, assumed that we are just a connection between cells that simply elaborate stimuli, let's come back to the main topic.
A philosophical zombie would, by definition, be without a real consciousness. But if consciousness rose from complexity, and a pz HAS to be complex enough in order to produce human-like responses,  then, it necessairily HAS to have a consciousness. It must have a net of wired "cells" or whatevers, just like a real human being.
So how could a philosophical zombie be real? If it is capable of elaborating responses, answers and argue about philosophy, just like us, and it has to do so in order to behave as a human, how could it not have a self-consciousness?

Some of you could argue that it wouldn't have any emotion or feeling, but if WE have them (and we are just a bunch of cells) why should a pz not be able to fall in love, get angry etc...? Afterall, it (he?she?) displays feelings and we could be sure that they are genuine just as we do when relating with a human!

What do you think?

[Angrboda]

But if consciousness rose from complexity, and a pz HAS to be complex enough in order to produce human-like responses,  then, it necessairily HAS to have a consciousness.

That's a big 'if'. I don't believe that consciousness results from surpassing a certain threshhold of complexity alone. That doesn't seem to provide anything like a real explanation for consciousness. Just: complexity -> boom, consciousness!

[The Grand Nudger]

Some people would go the other way with that, and ask whether or not -we- are the p-zombies.  I also wonder whether there's some threshold in which a system "wakes up" as it were, to consciousness..whereas before it was just complex processing, for example. It does seem as though complexity must play a part in some individual example of consciousness (I don't expect a cat to have quite as rich a consiousness as my own - but who knows, right?)..but it's fairly easy to suggest that the idea of a hard dividing line is bound up more in our language and how we think about this than in any evidence or data to support that conclusion.

Consciousness may be a sliding scale, but even then..I don't see how complexity, itself, makes it happen. Bridges are complex too. Plants are so complex our consciousness cannot fully comprehend or explain how they do what they do (and, to sweeten the pot, they demonstrably exhibit the recognizable behaviors of conscious creatures). Neither seems to be concious, at least, not in the way that we are - if we are, if there's a specific way. The whole subject is kind-of a rat's nest of tangled propositions.

But, for agreement! I think that there; something incoherent about the p-zombie proposition myself. An entity that is not only equally complex, but equally complex in a host of specified ways? A creature, for example, with a brain just like ours (or it's equivalent)...with behaviors just like ours (or their equivalents)..and yet, not like us? That's like picking up two identical toasters..except that one of them is, mysteriously, a HAM radio.....

[bennyboy]

Yeah, I'm not sure that in order to mimic human behaviors accurately, you'd have to be as complex as a human anyway. Surely, things like reproduction and organic redundancy for survival don't really matter, since we're really just talking about a mind in a vehicle.