If you genuinely find this hard to imagine, I recommend that you read the book. I suspect you are in for a big update if you do. Despite being ultimately wrong (in my opinion), Chalmers’ treatment of consciousness is the most sophisticated and careful that I have seen.
He is aware of all the obvious (and many of the non-obvious) criticisms of the whole zombie thing, and addresses them in the book.
Even if you end up disagreeing with his conclusions (as you probably will), I’m fairly sure the book will significantly reconfigure how you think about the problem.
OK, given the strong reaction to my comment I will check it out. I’d love to be in for a big update, but the whole zombie thing is so generally perplexing how anyone can take that seriously without being outright dualistic that it’ll really be a huge update for me.
Well, Chalmers is outright dualistic, so that’s not the update I was talking about. What I think you will find unexpected is that someone who identifies as a dualist can still have a deeply intelligent take on consciousness that is both scientifically-minded and fully cognizant of the standard physicalist arguments.
Alright. I’ve read the first few page or so of the first link “Consciousness and its Place in Nature”, and it seems to boil down to “We can think of zombies without our current minds seeing any major issue (a priori!), therefore consciousness isn’t physical.”
If you genuinely find this hard to imagine, I recommend that you read the book. I suspect you are in for a big update if you do. Despite being ultimately wrong (in my opinion), Chalmers’ treatment of consciousness is the most sophisticated and careful that I have seen.
He is aware of all the obvious (and many of the non-obvious) criticisms of the whole zombie thing, and addresses them in the book.
Even if you end up disagreeing with his conclusions (as you probably will), I’m fairly sure the book will significantly reconfigure how you think about the problem.
OK, given the strong reaction to my comment I will check it out. I’d love to be in for a big update, but the whole zombie thing is so generally perplexing how anyone can take that seriously without being outright dualistic that it’ll really be a huge update for me.
Well, Chalmers is outright dualistic, so that’s not the update I was talking about. What I think you will find unexpected is that someone who identifies as a dualist can still have a deeply intelligent take on consciousness that is both scientifically-minded and fully cognizant of the standard physicalist arguments.
Alright. I’ve read the first few page or so of the first link “Consciousness and its Place in Nature”, and it seems to boil down to “We can think of zombies without our current minds seeing any major issue (a priori!), therefore consciousness isn’t physical.”