On 5 April 2012 17:37, Evgenii Rudnyi <[email protected]> wrote: >> (a) It is impossible to make a philosophical zombie as consciousness >> is just a side-effect of intelligent behaviour; >> (b) It is possible to make a philosophical zombie but the mechanism >> for intelligent behaviour that nature chanced upon has the side-effect >> of consciousness. >> >> Though (b) is possible I don't think it's plausible. >> > > Jeffrey Gray considers consciousness from a viewpoint of empirical studies. > Philosophical zombies so far exist only in the minds of crazy philosophers, > so I am not sure if this is relevant.
I've always thought that the parable of the philosophical zombie was nothing more than a way of dramatising the fact that fundamental physical theory explicitly abjures any appeal to consciousness in pursuit of its explanatory goals. All such theories are built on the assumption (which I for one am in no position to dispute) that a complete physical account of human behaviour could be completed without reference to any putative conscious states The zombie metaphor isn't intended as a challenge to how things actually are, but rather to pump our intuition of explanatory gaps in our theories of how things are. Hence, in the case that either option a) or b) were true, it would still seem unsatisfactory that that neither conclusion is forced by any existing physical theory, given the unavoidable observational truth of consciousness. David > On 05.04.2012 01:59 Stathis Papaioannou said the following: > >> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 5:56 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi<[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> On 03.04.2012 02:06 Stathis Papaioannou said the following: >> >> >>>> Since there is no evolutionary advantage to consciousness it must be a >>>> side-effect of the sort of behaviour that conscious organisms display. >>>> Otherwise, why did we not evolve as zombies? >>>> >>> >>> The evolutionary advantage of consciousness, according to Jeffrey Gray, >>> is >>> late-error detection. >> >> >> But the late-error detection processing could be done in the same way >> by a philosophical zombie. Since, by definition, a philosophical >> zombie's behaviour is indistinguishable from that of a conscious being >> there is no way that nature could favour a conscious being over the >> equivalent philosophical zombie. You then have two options to explain >> why we are not zombies: >> >> (a) It is impossible to make a philosophical zombie as consciousness >> is just a side-effect of intelligent behaviour; >> (b) It is possible to make a philosophical zombie but the mechanism >> for intelligent behaviour that nature chanced upon has the side-effect >> of consciousness. >> >> Though (b) is possible I don't think it's plausible. >> > > Jeffrey Gray considers consciousness from a viewpoint of empirical studies. > Philosophical zombies so far exist only in the minds of crazy philosophers, > so I am not sure if this is relevant. > > As I have written, conscious experience offers unique capabilities to tune > all running servomechanisms to the brain that otherwise it has not. This is > what neuroscience says. When neuroscience will find zombies, then it would > be possible to consider this hypothesis as well. > > Clearly one can imagine that he/she is not zombie and others are zombies. > But then he/she must convince others that they are zombies. > > Evgenii > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
