“a being that is exactly like you in every respect—identical behavior, identical speech, identical brain; every atom and quark in exactly the same position, moving according to the same causal laws of motion—except that your zombie is not conscious.”
As someone with a medical background, I find it very hard to believe this is possible. Not unless Consciousness is reduced to something so abstract and disconnected from what we consider our “Selves” as to render it almost meaningless. After all, traumatic brain injury can alter every aspect of your personality, capacity to reason, and ability to perceive. And if “consciousness” isn’t bound up in any of these things, if it exists as some sort of super disconnected “Thinking thing” like Descartes seemed to think, I really can’t see the value of it. It’s like the Greek interpretation of the afterlife where your soul exists as a senseless shadow, lacking any concept of self or any memory of your past life. What good is an existence that lacks all the things which make it unique?
Then again, as a somewhat brutal pragmatist, I cease to see the meaning in having an argument when it seems to devolve beyond any connection to observable reality.
I agree with your point in general, and it does speak against an immaterial soul surviving death, but I don’t think it necessarily apply to p-zombies. The p-zombie hypothesis is that the consciousness “property” has no causality over the physical world, but it doesn’t say that there is no causality the other way around: that the state of the physical brain can’t affect the consciousness. So a traumatic brain injury would (under some unexplained mysterious mechanism) reflect into that immaterial consciousness.
@Piecewise You don’t appear to be discussing p-zombies at all
traumatic brain injury can alter every aspect of your personality, capacity to reason, and ability to perceive.
Significant damage to the lenses in one’s eyeglasses significantly impacts one’s ability to see. Doesn’t mean I can’t see perfectly when I whip them off.
And I have no idea why a disembodied consciousness would have no concept of self and no memories. Consciousness and memories are properties of the self. Our recollections are impeded due to the brain, that obviously doesn’t apply in a disembodied state.
“a being that is exactly like you in every respect—identical behavior, identical speech, identical brain; every atom and quark in exactly the same position, moving according to the same causal laws of motion—except that your zombie is not conscious.”
As someone with a medical background, I find it very hard to believe this is possible. Not unless Consciousness is reduced to something so abstract and disconnected from what we consider our “Selves” as to render it almost meaningless. After all, traumatic brain injury can alter every aspect of your personality, capacity to reason, and ability to perceive. And if “consciousness” isn’t bound up in any of these things, if it exists as some sort of super disconnected “Thinking thing” like Descartes seemed to think, I really can’t see the value of it. It’s like the Greek interpretation of the afterlife where your soul exists as a senseless shadow, lacking any concept of self or any memory of your past life. What good is an existence that lacks all the things which make it unique?
Then again, as a somewhat brutal pragmatist, I cease to see the meaning in having an argument when it seems to devolve beyond any connection to observable reality.
I agree with your point in general, and it does speak against an immaterial soul surviving death, but I don’t think it necessarily apply to p-zombies. The p-zombie hypothesis is that the consciousness “property” has no causality over the physical world, but it doesn’t say that there is no causality the other way around: that the state of the physical brain can’t affect the consciousness. So a traumatic brain injury would (under some unexplained mysterious mechanism) reflect into that immaterial consciousness.
But sure, it’s yet more epicycles.
You’re watching a POV movie of a meat bag living out it’s life. When the meat bag falls apart, the movie gets crapped up.
@Piecewise You don’t appear to be discussing p-zombies at all
Significant damage to the lenses in one’s eyeglasses significantly impacts one’s ability to see. Doesn’t mean I can’t see perfectly when I whip them off.
And I have no idea why a disembodied consciousness would have no concept of self and no memories. Consciousness and memories are properties of the self. Our recollections are impeded due to the brain, that obviously doesn’t apply in a disembodied state.