Zombies!

[David T]

David Chalmers introduced the notion of a philosophical zombie. This is an entity that is physically identical to a human person, but lacks consciousness. His goal was to refute materialism, by showing that physical information alone isn't enough to explain consciousness.

In this formulation, a zombie looks and acts identical to a regular conscious human: if you talk to it, it replies as a person would. If you poke at it, it will *say* that it feels pain, even though in reality it experiences no pain (because it lacks internal experiences at all). It will look at a painting and exclaim about its beauty while actually having no consciousness or experience of beauty at all.

Others, such as Daniel Dennett, have challenged this notion, claiming it is internally inconsistent and assumes its conclusion. They argue that anything *physically* the same as a person would necessarily have the same consciousness as a person. Dennett claims that the fact that a zombie reacts *in all situations* exactly as a conscious person would is enough to say that zombie is, in fact, conscious.

Here is a wikipedia article:
Philosophical zombie - Wikipedia

What do you think? Are philosophical zombies a coherent concept? Are they a good argument for dualism?

in Christianity Chalmers would say that trees go to heaven after they die. Dennett would say that only man goes to heaven after they die.. Dennett is the strict orthodox while, challmers is challenging orthodoxy.

It's the identical conversation without the religious clothing. For a normal person what I just said probably will make no sense because for most clothing is reality.

An easier way to understand the conversation for some is to say Chalmers claims music determines theory, Dennett Claims that without music theory we wouldn't have music just noise. Dennett is totally nuts, but very very intelligent. I have zero idea how he functions but aspergers is a curiosity that dominates religious orthodoxy..

I tend to be in the chalmers camp. Trees go to heaven. Or if they are bad are killed in a forest fire by Satan. That's at least was the literal theory of one lunatic William greeley who became the Head of the national parks service. Lunacy existed before i was born, but we Continue to work hard on perfecting it.

 

[james bond]

First, there are no zombies in the Bible even though people would like to point to zombie Jesus. Zombies are fictional people who died and their decomposing bodies were reanimated. They still decompose while still experiencing living. I suppose this is where the consciousness philosophy comes in as in do we still have consciousness even after death? The Bible doesn't talk about consciousness, but does refer to conscience. This is the moral conscience between right and wrong and the mental anguish and guilt we feel if we do something wrong and the feeling of pleasure and goodness when we do something that conforms to our value systems such as expressing kindness. I think this is a key part of human consciousness and what people seem to forget when they discuss consciousness. It encompasses more than being aware of their surroundings. If the zombie consciousness is to beat the materialism or physicalism argument, then I'd go along with it. In the overall scheme of things, it is the physical or material world that is not real. After all, there are people who can have all the materials they want, but can't take it with them after death.

How are zombies related to religion? Maybe in voodoo practiced in Haiti. These people believe that sorcerers control the reanimated creatures or zombies.

 

[blü 2]

In his book 'The Conscious Mind', he seems to think it to be an obvious concept. it is the *feeling* we have, our *experience* of seeing red, for example. Philosophers talk of qualia: the experience of sensation, as opposed to sensation itself.

I never worked out what the sensation itself was if not the feeling of it. I'd say it's simply the evolved biological mechanism for being aware of sensory input. It reminds me of the old question, How can I know that my experience of perceiving green is the same as yours?

And Chalmers has no answer to that question, any more than he can test for the presence or absence of consciousness.

As for the 'deadness', Chalmers would say more that there is no 'light on inside'. For his argument (he claims), he only needs the metaphysical possibility of zombies to show that consciousness and physical properties are different. If an entity physically identical to a conscious being can even *conceivably* be non-conscious, that is (for Chalmers) enough to show that consciousness isn't based on the physical.

And of course in this context his metaphysical possibility of (his particular version of) zombies is meaningless without a definition of consciousness that allows its presence to be detected.

This, by the way, interacts with phenomena such as blindsight. Here, a pers0on is blind (usually in one area of the visual field), but can still react to visual stimuli (blinking or guessing shapes correctly). They don't have the experience of sight, but they clearly do 'see' to some extent. of course, for such people, there *is* a physical difference: brain damage in the visual centers of the cortex.

I recall an experiment with pre-language babies that showed they could already work out the visual shape of something by its feel. Some were given rough dummies, and some smooth, without their seeing them. Afterwards when shown the two, they had a distinct tendency to look at the one they'd had in their mouth. Our sensory input processing seems to be better integrated than we think.

None of which helps Chalmers.

 

[Ponder This]

David Chalmers introduced the notion of a philosophical zombie. This is an entity that is physically identical to a human person, but lacks consciousness. His goal was to refute materialism, by showing that physical information alone isn't enough to explain consciousness.

In this formulation, a zombie looks and acts identical to a regular conscious human: if you talk to it, it replies as a person would. If you poke at it, it will *say* that it feels pain, even though in reality it experiences no pain (because it lacks internal experiences at all). It will look at a painting and exclaim about its beauty while actually having no consciousness or experience of beauty at all.

Others, such as Daniel Dennett, have challenged this notion, claiming it is internally inconsistent and assumes its conclusion. They argue that anything *physically* the same as a person would necessarily have the same consciousness as a person. Dennett claims that the fact that a zombie reacts *in all situations* exactly as a conscious person would is enough to say that zombie is, in fact, conscious.

Here is a wikipedia article:
Philosophical zombie - Wikipedia

What do you think? Are philosophical zombies a coherent concept? Are they a good argument for dualism?

I think the key part is when it says, "from the outside is indistinguishable" because that suggests that the internal mechanisms are not under examination.

The concept of a behavioral zombie is coherent, but it is not at all clear that it is logically possible. And in the absence of a means to verify something as "physiologically indistinguishable from a human", the notion of a "neurological zombie" is no different than a "behavioral zombie", which makes that notion completely meaningless to us for any practical purpose.

That "we can conceive of a world physically indistinguishable from our world but in which there is no consciousness" does not make it logically possible. To be very clear, there is a burden of proof to show that it is logically possible that cannot be ignored. As far as I can tell, Chalmers did not satisfy that burden.

 

[Curious George]

I don't think the concept holds up. As an example of one of humanity's higher functions - part of consciousness gives us the ability to react "on the fly" and improvise. The zombie may be "programmed" or set to react to particular stimuli "in the same way" a human might, however if the zombie also had the improvisation ability (and every other human ability - as seems to be posited), then isn't it just really "the same" as a human? Why make a distinction? Whatever we define consciousness as, that's what it is... regardless what thing is exhibiting "consciousness" - even if we feel uncomfortable granting it the attribute "conscious" because it isn't exactly like us. Though, ridiculously enough, in this case it is even being argued that the "zombie" IS (for all intents and purposes) exactly like us.

It would be like someone handing you a Pop-tart and informing you that it looks, feels, tastes, reacts and has the same exact nutrients as a real Pop-tart. However this one was assembled in a Star Trek food replicator - an exact scan and copy of a real Pop-tart. But they go on to say the one in your hand does not have the "soul" of a real Pop-tart. Well what the heck does that mean? If the person making such a claim could define "soul" as something we can test for, then maybe we can actually tell some quantifiable difference. If not, then what ends up being the real difference? Is it wrong to still call it a Pop-tart?

I think that you have missed the point. The idea is that there is some aspect of the zombie which is missing part our definition of human.

If we were to take your Pop-tart analogy: we could say that first it is erroneous because we are not talking about a duplication we are talking about an imitation.

Is there a difference between a Picasso and a forgery? The answer is yes. This difference is testable and therefore does not exactly hold. However, Pop-tarts do not feel pain, so the analogy is off from the start.

In other words, the zombie does not have every other ability. In fact, the zombie lacks some very specific abilities. Those abilities however are subjective. The only means we have to test that such subjective abilities exist is based on objective reactions. Those objective reactions, in theory, can be mimicked without preserving the subjective abilities.

 

[atanu]

...

But many folk, including materialists, define "truth" as correspondence with reality, reality being the same thing as nature, the realm of the physical sciences.

Does that mean correspondence with mind-sense perceptual-empirical data?

 

[atanu]

I don't think the concept holds up. As an example of one of humanity's higher functions - part of consciousness gives us the ability to react "on the fly" and improvise. The zombie may be "programmed" or set to react to particular stimuli "in the same way" a human might, however if the zombie also had the improvisation ability (and every other human ability - as seems to be posited), then isn't it just really "the same" as a human? Why make a distinction? Whatever we define consciousness as, that's what it is... regardless what thing is exhibiting "consciousness" - even if we feel uncomfortable granting it the attribute "conscious" because it isn't exactly like us. Though, ridiculously enough, in this case it is even being argued that the "zombie" IS (for all intents and purposes) exactly like us.

It would be like someone handing you a Pop-tart and informing you that it looks, feels, tastes, reacts and has the same exact nutrients as a real Pop-tart. However this one was assembled in a Star Trek food replicator - an exact scan and copy of a real Pop-tart. But they go on to say the one in your hand does not have the "soul" of a real Pop-tart. Well what the heck does that mean? If the person making such a claim could define "soul" as something we can test for, then maybe we can actually tell some quantifiable difference. If not, then what ends up being the real difference? Is it wrong to still call it a Pop-tart?

I think the key part is when it says, "from the outside is indistinguishable" because that suggests that the internal mechanisms are not under examination.

The concept of a behavioral zombie is coherent, but it is not at all clear that it is logically possible. And in the absence of a means to verify something as "physiologically indistinguishable from a human", the notion of a "neurological zombie" is no different than a "behavioral zombie", which makes that notion completely meaningless to us for any practical purpose.

That "we can conceive of a world physically indistinguishable from our world but in which there is no consciousness" does not make it logically possible. To be very clear, there is a burden of proof to show that it is logically possible that cannot be ignored. As far as I can tell, Chalmers did not satisfy that burden.

Chalmer does not say that concept of a Zombie holds up. He has highlighted that a mechanical being may mimic a man exactly yet lack the subjective qualia.

For example a machine chess player knows all moves but it has no joy in winning or no sadness after a loss. His main argument is that qualia is the hard problem of consciousness that mechanistic paradigms cannot/do not explain.

 

[blü 2]

Does that mean correspondence with mind-sense perceptual-empirical data?

It means correspondence between the statement being judged for truth, and objective reality as we understand it. That understanding will be based on sensory perception, interpreted via instinct, experience and learning.

What definition of truth would you prefer to use, and what test for truth would result from it?

 

[Curious George]

Chalmer does not say that concept of a Zombie holds up. He has highlighted that a mechanical being may mimic a man exactly yet lack the subjective qualia.

For example a machine chess player knows all moves but it has no joy in winning or no sadness after a loss. His main argument is that qualia is the hard problem of consciousness that mechanistic paradigms cannot/do not explain.

But it would be a logical jump to go from do not explain to cannot explain. Still more, cannot explain does not necessarily mean there is more.

Let me try to explain (pun intended).

That we lack the ability to fully explain or define consciousness does not mean we will always lack such an ability.

And even if, for some reason, we could never fully explain consciousness to conclude that it could not exist but for something more than physical would be erroneous.

 

[atanu]

It means correspondence between the statement being judged for truth, and objective reality as we understand it. That understanding will be based on sensory perception, interpreted via instinct, experience and learning.

What definition of truth would you prefer to use, and what test for truth would result from it?

What exactly do you mean by 'interpreted via instinct'? Other 'sources': sensory perception, experience, learning are okay.

 

[atanu]

But it would be a logical jump to go from do not explain to cannot explain. Still more, cannot explain does not necessarily mean there is more.

Let me try to explain (pun intended).

That we lack the ability to fully explain or define consciousness does not mean we will always lack such an ability.

And even if, for some reason, we could never fully explain consciousness to conclude that it could not exist but for something more than physical would be erroneous.

Surely (if I understand you correctly). If my source of knowledge is perception alone, then to conclude absence of 'x', because 'x' is not perceived is fallacious.

IOW, lack of a perception cannot be a proof for me (as a materialist) since perception is my source of knowledge. Materialist has no basis for rejecting something that is not within perception. But that is what most do.

 

[blü 2]

What exactly do mean by 'interpreted via instinct'? Other 'sources': sensory perception, experience, learning are okay.

We're born with a whole kit of interpretive software built in. Look at what children already know about language, for instance, without being told; that when people vocalize sounds, it's something that should be paid attention; that such sounds divide into syllables; that combinations of sounds can attach to things; that such things (objects, situatlons, phenomena) are what the carer is indicating by look or gesture or both, and so on. Note the consequent implications for the hearing mechanism in this, and its coordination with looking (very usually with a background of touch). And so on and so on.

What definition of truth would you prefer to use, and what test for truth would result from it?

 

[atanu]

We're born with a whole kit of interpretive software built in. Look at what children already know about language, for instance, without being told; that when people vocalize sounds, it's something that should be paid attention; that such sounds divide into syllables; that combinations of sounds can attach to things; that such things (objects, situatlons, phenomena) are what the carer is indicating by look or gesture or both, and so on. Note the consequent implications for the hearing mechanism in this, and its coordination with looking (very usually with a background of touch). And so on and so on.

What definition of truth would you prefer to use, and what test for truth would result from it?

Thank you.

Although I am more interested to know about the materialistic stand, I will for the purpose of setting up a comparative basis, note a little about the last para above.

I follow the advaita (non dual) vedanta school of Shankara, which more or less follows the Nyaya and Mimansa Vedic schools of philosophy and epistemology. The tenet of non dualism is the truth is that which is not sublatable and which is foundational. The knowledge sources of determining the truth are six:

(1) Perception (pratyaksha) (2) Inference (anumana) (3) Testimony (shabda) (4) Comparison (upamana) (5) Postulation (arthapatti) (6) Non-cognition (anupalabdhi).

You can read more at leisure:

Pramana - Wikipedia
Nyaya | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Vedanta, Advaita | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Vedanta Article : Six Pramanas

Although it may be a demanding and unpleasant task, I will urge you to read about Adhyasa (Superposition) concept of Advaita Vedanta. This concept is the foundation of this theory and explains the concept of error of perception, on one hand, and also establishes the reality of a substratum, without which an error cannot arise.
...

Can you now help me to align the knowledge sources that you noted: sensory perception, interpreted via instinct, experience and learning, to the six knowledge sources of Eastern epistemological system? Particularly, where will you place intuition within the above six categories?

 

[blü 2]

The tenet of non dualism is the truth is that which is not sublatable and which is foundational.

What are the two elements of the dualism in 'non-dualism'?

By 'not sublatable' you mean undeniable, uncontradictable, I take it? What test tells us whether something is undeniable or uncontradictable?

The knowledge sources of determining the truth are six:

(1) Perception (pratyaksha) (2) Inference (anumana) (3) Testimony (shabda) (4) Comparison (upamana) (5) Postulation (arthapatti) (6) Non-cognition (anupalabdhi).

That's not quite on the point. I dare say (1) to (5) may be sources of true statements (I don't see how (6) could be), but since they can also be sources of errors, tales, jokes, lies and much more, we're going to need a test for truth so we can sort them out. My test is, Are they accurate statements about objective reality? To the extent that they are, they're true.

So I'm still curious as to what test for truth you use.

Although it may be a demanding and unpleasant task, I will urge you to read about Adhyasa (Superposition) concept of Advaita Vedanta. This concept is the foundation of this theory and explains the concept of error of perception, on one hand, and also establishes the reality of a substratum, without which an error cannot arise.

I reply to that with a definite 'maybe'.

Can you now help me to align the knowledge sources that you noted: sensory perception, interpreted via instinct, experience and learning, to the six knowledge sources of Eastern epistemological system? Particularly, where will you place intuition within the above six categories?

Intuition (at least as I use it) is decision-making by the nonconscious brain, using information and processes of which the conscious brain is not aware. The brain has several processes for deciding, but the basic process appears to be (a) the setting out of options, whether two or two hundred (b) assessment of each option as better or worse / more net reward or less net reward (c) emphasis on only the leading options (d) till all but one are eliminated. This is true of intuition / nonconscious decision-making as well as conscious, eg when you're driving, buying a present for someone you know only vaguely, &c. It's also true of sleeping on a problem, flashes of insight and aha! moments, and so on.

Is that the sort of thing that can be fitted into your 'six sources'? If so, I'm not sure where.

 

[atanu]

..
Is that the sort of thing that can be fitted into your 'six sources'? If so, I'm not sure where.

I will request that you align as far as possible your 'sources' with my 'sources', if feasible.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I think that you have missed the point. The idea is that there is some aspect of the zombie which is missing part our definition of human.

If we were to take your Pop-tart analogy: we could say that first it is erroneous because we are not talking about a duplication we are talking about an imitation.

Is there a difference between a Picasso and a forgery? The answer is yes. This difference is testable and therefore does not exactly hold. However, Pop-tarts do not feel pain, so the analogy is off from the start.

In other words, the zombie does not have every other ability. In fact, the zombie lacks some very specific abilities. Those abilities however are subjective. The only means we have to test that such subjective abilities exist is based on objective reactions. Those objective reactions, in theory, can be mimicked without preserving the subjective abilities.

The idea experiment assumes the zombie is physically identical to a human being but lacks "consciousness" - which you said yourself, is currently a completely subjective quality.

Think on this - ever see the movie "Short Circuit"? Or how about "Bicentennial Man"? In either of those movies, you find the audience sympathizing which something that is not a human, and yet acts and reacts like one. Why would we do this? Wouldn't this object, this robot, be missing some specific quality that humans possess that we believe is SO VERY SPECIAL? Are we absolutely sure that the quality IS missing? How would we know?

Or consider the single celled organism. It lives, just as we do. Does it have mind/soul? It has this "spark of life", whatever that is. Perhaps it isn't "conscious?" Okay, then what do we call the mechanisms that drive it? A program? Once we make that distinction, how do we know our mind isn't simply a more complex program? One complex enough to improvise in leaps and bounds beyond a single-celled creature, sure, but built of nothing more than many multiple copies of living cells much like that single-celled creature whose main difference from us being that it lives alone.

In the end, I would point back to something I hinted at in my previous post - a comment about trying to keep "consciousness" exclusive to ourselves being merely a front for our discomfort in admitting that some other beings that we consider "lowly" display an awful lot of the characteristics we hope are what "make us special." The truth could very well be that we aren't so special. And I strongly feel that the only reason to find fear in that rests in the lap of conceit.

 

[Curious George]

The idea experiment assumes the zombie is physically identical to a human being but lacks "consciousness" - which you said yourself, is currently a completely subjective quality.

Think on this - ever see the movie "Short Circuit"? Or how about "Bicentennial Man"? In either of those movies, you find the audience sympathizing which something that is not a human, and yet acts and reacts like one. Why would we do this? Wouldn't this object, this robot, be missing some specific quality that humans possess that we believe is SO VERY SPECIAL? Are we absolutely sure that the quality IS missing? How would we know?

Or consider the single celled organism. It lives, just as we do. Does it have mind/soul? It has this "spark of life", whatever that is. Perhaps it isn't "conscious?" Okay, then what do we call the mechanisms that drive it? A program? Once we make that distinction, how do we know our mind isn't simply a more complex program? One complex enough to improvise in leaps and bounds beyond a single-celled creature, sure, but built of nothing more than many multiple copies of living cells much like that single-celled creature whose main difference from us being that it lives alone.

In the end, I would point back to something I hinted at in my previous post - a comment about trying to keep "consciousness" exclusive to ourselves being merely a front for our discomfort in admitting that some other beings that we consider "lowly" display an awful lot of the characteristics we hope are what "make us special." The truth could very well be that we aren't so special. And I strongly feel that the only reason to find fear in that rests in the lap of conceit.

First and foremost, Johnny 5 is ALIVE. And if you or anyone else has anything contrary to say Los locos will have something to say about it.

Joking aside, we sympathize with these characters because we assume they have this experiential part of them. You ask how we know the zombie does not. Well it is given. That is the point. Certainly we can then introduce the argument that if such was not a given then we could never know the difference, or we can talk about the fact that the idea that such is the case is incoherent in reality. That does not change that it is given in the hypothetical.

You want to assert that people are trying to keep humans unique. While this may be the case for some, I have no such bias. I am only looking at what is given and noting the how that contradicts what you wrote.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Chalmer does not say that concept of a Zombie holds up. He has highlighted that a mechanical being may mimic a man exactly yet lack the subjective qualia.

For example a machine chess player knows all moves but it has no joy in winning or no sadness after a loss. His main argument is that qualia is the hard problem of consciousness that mechanistic paradigms cannot/do not explain.

The chess program was built with specific goals in mind. A human being is built on the shoulders of giants - honed and changed over the course of who knows how many millennia on top of millennia. Of course, I am hinting at evolution here - and if subscribing to the ideas behind evolutionary principles, human being's "goals" have also evolved thusly - and our mind became an object capable of seeking out and meeting any number of those goals using any number of procedural adaptations of which we are capable. Such as learning and information retention. That ability alone blows any man-made computer of this day out of the water... hell... out of the atmosphere. The "qualia" could be no more than the accretion of ability to act and react in the body/mind's best interest using a mountainous slew of tools developed age upon age within our forebears. It could all be an elaborate program, so complex and intricate that it appears (or is) wide-open, and infinitely adaptable.

Consider your example - winning a game of chess resulting in "joy" and losing resulting in "sadness." These two emotions as responses to competitive endeavors could very well be reactions that developed as a way to gauge social acceptance, or course-correct onto the path of becoming alpha or leader. In that light, "joy" at success becomes a programmatic response to encourage the same types of behavior from the organism (human in this case) going forward. "Sadness" felt at the hands of a failure reinforces the exact same desire for behavioral outcome, just from the negative side. The human "program" may just be so open and adaptable that we are able to choose those things we want our successes to be gained in. We can't know for sure. To assume anything I just wrote would be premature... just as to assume "soul" or "eternal mind" or that we humans belong to some other exclusive "club" like that is also entirely premature.

 

[Polymath257]

Chalmer does not say that concept of a Zombie holds up. He has highlighted that a mechanical being may mimic a man exactly yet lack the subjective qualia.

For example a machine chess player knows all moves but it has no joy in winning or no sadness after a loss. His main argument is that qualia is the hard problem of consciousness that mechanistic paradigms cannot/do not explain.

I have never quite understood the difference between qualia and sensations. if I am looking at something red and my brain responds to it, how is that *not* having a qualia for red?

I really don't see a hard problem for consciousness. I see a rather difficult experimental question concerning how the brain produces consciousness, but I also know that isn't the 'hard problem'.

So, a philosophical zombie is physically *identical* to a 'regular' human and yet does not have conscious experiences. The question Chalmers asks is whether such is even a coherent concept (he thinks it is). I really don't see how it is anywhere close to being coherent. I don't see how something physically identical could NOT have consciousness.

 

[Polymath257]

The idea experiment assumes the zombie is physically identical to a human being but lacks "consciousness" - which you said yourself, is currently a completely subjective quality.

Think on this - ever see the movie "Short Circuit"? Or how about "Bicentennial Man"? In either of those movies, you find the audience sympathizing which something that is not a human, and yet acts and reacts like one. Why would we do this? Wouldn't this object, this robot, be missing some specific quality that humans possess that we believe is SO VERY SPECIAL? Are we absolutely sure that the quality IS missing? How would we know?

Or consider the single celled organism. It lives, just as we do. Does it have mind/soul? It has this "spark of life", whatever that is. Perhaps it isn't "conscious?" Okay, then what do we call the mechanisms that drive it? A program? Once we make that distinction, how do we know our mind isn't simply a more complex program? One complex enough to improvise in leaps and bounds beyond a single-celled creature, sure, but built of nothing more than many multiple copies of living cells much like that single-celled creature whose main difference from us being that it lives alone.

In the end, I would point back to something I hinted at in my previous post - a comment about trying to keep "consciousness" exclusive to ourselves being merely a front for our discomfort in admitting that some other beings that we consider "lowly" display an awful lot of the characteristics we hope are what "make us special." The truth could very well be that we aren't so special. And I strongly feel that the only reason to find fear in that rests in the lap of conceit.

For me, I just think there is something different between, say, my cat, and a bacterium. My cat is conscious-it clearly (to me) has internal experiences and a bacterium doesn't.

Yes, there are borderline cases. For example, I am not at all sure that a frog has internal experiences. I'd be willing to go either way, depending on how we define that notion of consciousness.

And that is one of the problems: we simply don't have a good, working definition of what it means to be conscious. So we simply have no way to determine if the person sitting next to us is a zombie or whether frogs are conscious. Until we have a working definition, the question is rather silly, yes?