As this topic is touching on both philosophical zombies and deism, I recommend a reading of Bernardo Kastrup's essay, The parallels of Pandeism: http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2010/03/consciousness-and-pandeism.html -- wherein Kastrup observes "some intriguing parallels between the debate around the 'hard problem of consciousness' and the philosophy of Pandeism" which he finds "provides an intriguing, holistic view encompassing all sides of the debate."
Kastrup defines Pandeism thusly: "Pandeism is a school of thought that holds that the universe is identical to God, but also that God was initially an omni-conscious and omni-sentient force or entity. However, upon creating the universe, God became unconscious and non-sentient by the very act of becoming the universe itself." And so, Pandeism is (naturally) both a kind of Deism and a kind of Pantheism (and so we get from, Pantheist- Deism to Pan-Deism to PanDeism to Pandeism). On Apr 9, 9:42 pm, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 1:18 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > >> A zombie brain component is a component that replicates the function > >> of the tissue it replaces but does not replicate its contribution to > >> consciousness, such as it may be. The visual cortex is necessary for > >> visual perception since if we remove it we eliminate vision. A zombie > >> visual cortex replicates the I/O behaviour at the cut interface of the > >> removed tissue but does not contribute to consciousness. If whole > >> zombies are possible then it should be possible to make such a > >> component. If you say the brain as a whole would have normal > >> consciousness even though the component didn't > > > This is where I find your argument confusing. Consider an atom in the > > brain. Can you replace it with a zombie atom? It doesen't matter, so long > > as it acts like a normal atom it will contribute to consciousness. The > > brain as a whole will have normal consciousness even though the atom > > doesn't. But the consciousness never depended on the atom *having* > > consciousness - only on the atom *contributing* to consciousness (by having > > the same functional behavior). > > Yes, I agree with you; I don't believe it is possible to make a > zombie. If it were possible then we would either need components that > lack or don't contribute to intrinsic consciousness (if consciousness > is an intrinsic property of matter or if consciousness is added via an > immaterial soul) or components that lack or don't contribute to the > functional organisation that gives rise to consciousness while > possessing the functional organisation that gives rise to intelligent > behaviour. It's an argument against zombies and against the > substrate-dependence of consciousness. > > > > > > > > > > >> you could modify the > >> thought experiment to replace all of the brain except for one neuron. > >> In that case the replaced brain would be a full blown zombie, > > > No. I can replace all the atoms with zombie atoms and the brain is still a > > normal conscious brain. > > >> but > >> adding the single biological neuron would suddenly restore full > >> consciousness. This is absurd, but it should be possible if zombies > >> are possible. > > > I agree with your conclusion, but your argument seems to imply that since > > zombies are impossible, zombie components are impossible and so quarks must > > have an element of consciousness. It invites the fallacy of slipping from > > 'contributes to consciousness' to 'has consciousness'. > > No, I don't think quarks are either conscious or zombies. I think > consciousness arises necessarily from intelligent behaviour. > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
