As other people have said, this is a known argument; specifically, it’s in The Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle in the Physicalism 201 series. From the very early days of LessWrong
Albert: “Suppose I replaced all the neurons in your head with tiny robotic artificial neurons that had the same connections, the same local input-output behavior, and analogous internal state and learning rules.”
I think this proof relies on three assumptions. The first (which you address in the post) is that consciousness must happen within physics. (The opposing view would be substance dualism where consciousness causally acts on physics from the outside.) The second (which you also address in the post) is that consciousness and reports about consciousness aren’t aligned by chance. (The opposing view would be epiphenomenalism, which is also what Eliezer trashes extensively in this sequence.) physical duplicate might do the same, although. that would imply the original’s consciousness is epiphenomenal. Which is itself a reason to disbelieve in p-zombies , although not an impossibility proof.
This of course contradicts the Generalised Anti Zombie Principle announced by Eliezer Yudowsky. The original idea was that in a zombie world, it would be incredibly unlikely for an entity’s claims of consciousness to be caused by something other than consciousness. ”
Excluding coincidence doesn’t proved that an entity’s reports of consciousness are directly caused by its own consciousness. Robo-Chalmers will claim to be conscious because Chalmers does. It might actually be conscious, as an additional reason, or it might not. The fact that the claim is made does not distinguish the two cases. Yudkowsky makes much of the fact that Robo-Chalmers claim.would be caused indirectly by consciousness—Chalmers has to be conscious in order to make a computational duplicate of his consciousness—but at best that refutes the possibility of a zombie world, where entities claim to be conscious, although consciousness has never existed. Robo-Chalmers would still be possible in this world for reasons Yudkowsky accepts. So there is one possible kind of zombie, even given physicalism so the Generalised Anti Zombie Principle is false
(Note that I am talking about computational zombies, or c-zombies, not p-zombies
Computationalism isn’t a direct consequence of physicalism.
Physicalism has it that an exact atom-by-atom duplicate of a person will be a person and not a zombie, because there is no nonphysical element to go missing. That’s the argument against p-zombies. But if actually takes an atom-by-atom duplication to achieve human functioning, then the computational theory of mind will be false, because there CTM implies that the same algorithm running on different hardware will be sufficient. Physicalism doesn’t imply computationalism, and arguments against p-zombies don’t imply the non existence of c-zombies-duplicates that are identical computationally, but not physically).
Excluding coincidence doesn’t proved that an entity’s reports of consciousness are directly caused by its own consciousness. Robo-Chalmers will claim to be conscious because Chalmers does. It might actually be conscious, as an additional reason, or it might not. The fact that the claim is made does not distinguish the two cases. Yudkowsky makes much of the fact that Robo-Chalmers claim.would be caused indirectly by consciousness—Chalmers has to be conscious in order to make a computational duplicate of his consciousness—but at best that refutes the possibility of a zombie world, where entities claim to be conscious, although consciousness has never existed. Robo-Chalmers would still be possible in this world for reasons Yudkowsky accepts. So there is one possible kind of zombie, even given physicalism so the Generalised Anti Zombie Principle is false
(Note that I am talking about computational zombies, or c-zombies, not p-zombies
Computationalism isn’t a direct consequence of physicalism. Physicalism has it that an exact atom-by-atom duplicate of a person will be a person and not a zombie, because there is no nonphysical element to go missing. That’s the argument against p-zombies. But if actually takes an atom-by-atom duplication to achieve human functioning, then the computational theory of mind will be false, because there CTM implies that the same algorithm running on different hardware will be sufficient. Physicalism doesn’t imply computationalism, and arguments against p-zombies don’t imply the non existence of c-zombies-duplicates that are identical computationally, but not physically).
@Richard_Kennaway
That sounds like a Chalmers paper. https://consc.net/papers/qualia.html