You appear to be making an unfortunate assumption that what Chalmers and Peterdjones are talking about is crazy-assed unnecessary XML tags, as opposed to, y’know, regular old consciousness.
I’m not sure where my conception of p-zombies went wrong, then. P-zombies are assumed by the premise, if my understanding is correct, to behave physically exactly the same, down to the quantum level (and beyond if any exists), but to simply not have something being referred to as “qualia”. This seems to directly imply that the “qualia” is generated neither by the physical matter, nor by the manner in which it interacts.
Like Eliezer, I believe physics and logic are sufficient to describe eventually everything, and so qualia and consciousness must be made of this physical matter and the way it interacts. Therefore, since the p-zombies have the same matter and the same interactions, they have qualia and consciousness.
What, then, is a non-p-zombie? Well, something that has “something more” (implied: Than physics or logic) added into it. Since it’s something exceptional that isn’t part of anything else so far in the universe to my knowledge, calling it a “crazy-ass unnecessary XML tag” feels very worthy of its plausibility and comparative algorithmic complexity.
The point being that, under this conception of p-zombies and with my current (very strong) priors on the universe, non-p-zombies are either a silly mysterious question with no possible answer, or something supernatural on the same level of silly as atom-fiddling tiny green goblins and white-winged angels of Pure Mercy.
But anyway, EY’s zombies sequences was all about saying that if physics and math is everything, then p-zombies are a silly mysterious question. Because a p-zombie was supposed to be like a normal human to the atomic level, but without qualia. Which is absurd if, as we expect, qualia are within physics and math. Hence there are no p-zombies.
I guess the point is that saying there are no non-p-zombies as a result of this is totally confusing, because it totally looks like saying no-one has consciousness.
(Tangentially, it probably doesn’t help that apparently half of the philosophical world use “qualia” to mean some supernatural XML tags, while the other half use the word to mean just the-way-things-feel, aka. consciousness. You seem to get a lot of arguments between those in each of those groups, with the former group arguing that qualia are nonsense, and the latter group rebutting that “obviously we have qualia, or are you all p-zombies?!” resulting in a generally unproductive debate.)
I guess the point is that saying there are no non-p-zombies as a result of this is totally confusing, because it totally looks like saying no-one has consciousness.
Hah, yes. That seems to be partly a result of my inconsistent way of handling thought experiments that are broken or dissolved in the premises, as opposed to being rejected due to a later contradiction or nonexistent solution.
You appear to be making an unfortunate assumption that what Chalmers and Peterdjones are talking about is crazy-assed unnecessary XML tags, as opposed to, y’know, regular old consciousness.
I’m not sure where my conception of p-zombies went wrong, then. P-zombies are assumed by the premise, if my understanding is correct, to behave physically exactly the same, down to the quantum level (and beyond if any exists), but to simply not have something being referred to as “qualia”. This seems to directly imply that the “qualia” is generated neither by the physical matter, nor by the manner in which it interacts.
Like Eliezer, I believe physics and logic are sufficient to describe eventually everything, and so qualia and consciousness must be made of this physical matter and the way it interacts. Therefore, since the p-zombies have the same matter and the same interactions, they have qualia and consciousness.
What, then, is a non-p-zombie? Well, something that has “something more” (implied: Than physics or logic) added into it. Since it’s something exceptional that isn’t part of anything else so far in the universe to my knowledge, calling it a “crazy-ass unnecessary XML tag” feels very worthy of its plausibility and comparative algorithmic complexity.
The point being that, under this conception of p-zombies and with my current (very strong) priors on the universe, non-p-zombies are either a silly mysterious question with no possible answer, or something supernatural on the same level of silly as atom-fiddling tiny green goblins and white-winged angels of Pure Mercy.
Huh...
That’s a funny way of thinking about it.
But anyway, EY’s zombies sequences was all about saying that if physics and math is everything, then p-zombies are a silly mysterious question. Because a p-zombie was supposed to be like a normal human to the atomic level, but without qualia. Which is absurd if, as we expect, qualia are within physics and math. Hence there are no p-zombies.
I guess the point is that saying there are no non-p-zombies as a result of this is totally confusing, because it totally looks like saying no-one has consciousness.
(Tangentially, it probably doesn’t help that apparently half of the philosophical world use “qualia” to mean some supernatural XML tags, while the other half use the word to mean just the-way-things-feel, aka. consciousness. You seem to get a lot of arguments between those in each of those groups, with the former group arguing that qualia are nonsense, and the latter group rebutting that “obviously we have qualia, or are you all p-zombies?!” resulting in a generally unproductive debate.)
Hah, yes. That seems to be partly a result of my inconsistent way of handling thought experiments that are broken or dissolved in the premises, as opposed to being rejected due to a later contradiction or nonexistent solution.