I have no idea what it means to exist in an illusory fashion. I have an intuition concerning consciousness. That intuition may be correct or it may be garbage. Only careful investigation and definitions will tell.
Don't you subscribe to determinism? Are you suggesting that freewill exists unequivocally because we perceive a degree of control?
It means it is believed but it may not have an objective existence independent of my subjective interpretation. But even if this is the case, the subjective existence, that is even an illusory one, would suffice for the p zombie. Think of an optical illusion. We can say that the appearance of movement is something that exists, when no movement actually exists.
Now for the p zombie, we do not need an actual experiencing to account for what we are subtracting we only need the subjective experiencing. Either way, no one is arguing that we subjectively experience.
I'm saying that temperature isn't a fundamental thing. It comes about in systems large enough that the statistical behavior is important. I see no reason why consciousness can't be the same: something that comes about when the physical system is complex enough in its information processing abilities.
And I agree. There is no reason, of which I am aware, that consciousness cannot be precisely this. But if consciousness is this, is it material or byproduct of material. I suggested the latter, you disagreed. But by all means, show me how it is material. Unless you realize that, as I already told you, there is no argument here and you are creating one where none exist.
It seems to go deeper. There seems to be disagreement about exactly when consciousness happens, even when it is 'clear', the parties disagree.
Nevertheless, no parties disagree that consciousness is at least the subjective experiencing of something.
Any test we would have for consciousness would be a physical test, so anything physically identical would pass or fail that test equally. So a zombie cannot exist. Anything identical to a conscious human would be conscious.
Firstly this begs the question. Again this doesn't mean that it is wrong, but inot this instance it is. If I have two paintings one done by Picasso and one an elaborate forgery that is physically indistinguishable from the original Picasso, does this mean they are not different?
Secondly, I don't think it correct. Let us imagine we hypothetically can network brains. The idea is that one brain experiences through another. If we hook up to another person we see what they see, we smell what they smell, and we think what they think and we create memories in our own mind from this perspective
However if we network to a dead brain it is just nothingness. If we hook up to a p zombie experience the processing, that is we think what it thinks, but there is no subjective experience. No senses just awareness of input and processing output. Given our hypothetical network, we would have good reason to assume that p zombie was not experiencing something. That the human was.
Of course such a thing may be impossible to create, but the point is that since consciousness exists it is possible to test. Normally we would test this by individuals reactions. P zombie proposes that all those reactions are indistinguishable. That doesn't mean any testing is impossible.