On 05.04.2012 20:39 David Nyman said the following:
On 5 April 2012 17:37, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>  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

In this sense, his conclusion is in agreement with philosophers. In his book, Jeffery Gray shows that "consciousness display" cannot be explained by the current science. According to him, a new science is required.

Yet, this does not change his hypothesis about why "consciousness display" could be advantageous for evolution. We do not know what it is, but if is there, it certainly can help to organize servomechanisms in the body.

Evgenii

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