I’m afraid none of this article is relevant. The whole point of the p-zombie argument is to refute materialism. Now, materialists are obliged to hold that the world is physically closed, meaning that everything that ever happens is purely due to chains of physical causes and effects.
So, are they saying that consciousness therefore doesn’t have any causal agency? That it is only the underlying correlated physical processes in the brain that have causal agency? No, because they claim that consciousness is the very same thing as the underlying physical processes.
Now, even if we accept this somehow makes sense i.e that consciousness is actually one and the very same thing as physical processes, the point here is that it remains the case that the interactions of molecules as mathematically described by the laws of physics are sufficient in and of themselves to account for all change in the world, including everything we human beings do, say and even think.
In other words, even if consciousness is identical to physical processes, we still only need appeal to physical processes to account for all change in the world, including everything we human beings do, say and even think. Any causal efficacy of consciousness is redundant. It is superfluous. We do not need this causal agency as well as physical causation.But, this being so, then a world of p-zombies is at least metaphysically possible.
Your arguments against p-zombies (which I’m sympathetic towards), cannot rescue materialism since your arguments appear to be directed against physical causal closure. But physical causal closure is precisely that which materialists cannot deny!
I’m afraid none of this article is relevant. The whole point of the p-zombie argument is to refute materialism. Now, materialists are obliged to hold that the world is physically closed, meaning that everything that ever happens is purely due to chains of physical causes and effects.
So, are they saying that consciousness therefore doesn’t have any causal agency? That it is only the underlying correlated physical processes in the brain that have causal agency? No, because they claim that consciousness is the very same thing as the underlying physical processes.
Now, even if we accept this somehow makes sense i.e that consciousness is actually one and the very same thing as physical processes, the point here is that it remains the case that the interactions of molecules as mathematically described by the laws of physics are sufficient in and of themselves to account for all change in the world, including everything we human beings do, say and even think.
In other words, even if consciousness is identical to physical processes, we still only need appeal to physical processes to account for all change in the world, including everything we human beings do, say and even think. Any causal efficacy of consciousness is redundant. It is superfluous. We do not need this causal agency as well as physical causation. But, this being so, then a world of p-zombies is at least metaphysically possible.
Your arguments against p-zombies (which I’m sympathetic towards), cannot rescue materialism since your arguments appear to be directed against physical causal closure. But physical causal closure is precisely that which materialists cannot deny!