The p-zombie thought experiment is usually intended to prove that qualia is magical, yes. This is one of those unfortunate cases of philosophers reasoning from conceivability, apparently not realising that such reasoning usually only reveals stuff about their own mind.
I wouldn’t say “qualia is magic” is actually a premise, but the argument involves assuming “qualia could be magical” and then invalidly dropping a level of “could”.
In this case the “could” is an epistemic “could”—“I don’t know whether qualia is magical”. Presumably, iff qualia is magical, then p-zombies are possible (ie. exist in some possible world, modal-could), so we deduce that “it epistemic-could be the case that p-zombies modal-could exist”. Then I guess because epistemic-could and modal-could feel like the same thing¹, this gets squished down to “p-zombies modal-could exist” which implies qualia is magical.
Anyway, the above seems like a plausible explanation of the reasoning, although I haven’t actually talked to ay philosophers to ask them if this is how it went.
¹ And could actually be (partially or completely) the same thing, since unless modal realism is correct, “possible worlds” don’t actually exist anywhere. Or something. Regardless, this wouldn’t make the step taken above legal, anyway. (Note that the previous “could” there is an epistemic “could”! :p)
The p-zombie thought experiment is usually intended to prove that qualia is magical, yes. This is one of those unfortunate cases of philosophers reasoning from conceivability, apparently not realising that such reasoning usually only reveals stuff about their own mind.
I wouldn’t say “qualia is magic” is actually a premise, but the argument involves assuming “qualia could be magical” and then invalidly dropping a level of “could”.
In this case the “could” is an epistemic “could”—“I don’t know whether qualia is magical”. Presumably, iff qualia is magical, then p-zombies are possible (ie. exist in some possible world, modal-could), so we deduce that “it epistemic-could be the case that p-zombies modal-could exist”. Then I guess because epistemic-could and modal-could feel like the same thing¹, this gets squished down to “p-zombies modal-could exist” which implies qualia is magical.
Anyway, the above seems like a plausible explanation of the reasoning, although I haven’t actually talked to ay philosophers to ask them if this is how it went.
¹ And could actually be (partially or completely) the same thing, since unless modal realism is correct, “possible worlds” don’t actually exist anywhere. Or something. Regardless, this wouldn’t make the step taken above legal, anyway. (Note that the previous “could” there is an epistemic “could”! :p)