In what circumstances shall I say that a tribe has a chief? And the chief must surely have consciousness. Surely we can’t have a chief without consciousness!
But can’t I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack consciousness, even though they behave in the same way as usual?--If I imagine it now—alone in my room—I see people with fixed looks (as in a trance) going about their business—the idea is perhaps a little uncanny. But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of your ordinary intercourse with others, in the street, say! Say to yourself, for example: “The children over there are mere automata; all their liveliness is mere automatism.” And you will either find these words becoming quite meaningless; or you will produce in yourself some kind of uncanny feeling, or something of the sort.
Seeing a living human being as an automaton is analogous to seeing one figure as a limiting case or variant of another; the cross-pieces of a window as a swastika, for example.
--Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations) hinting at the true nature of the concept ‘consciousness vs zombiehood’.
--Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations) hinting at the true nature of the concept ‘consciousness vs zombiehood’.