On 12 February 2015 at 13:44, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > So your saying the presence (or absence) of consciousness does result in >> > physicaly detectable differences in behavior? This is counter to the >> > belief >> > of epiphenominalism, where consciousness is take-it-or-leave-it without >> > resulting in any physical differences. >> >> If zombies are impossible then what can be shown is that IF a certain >> being is conscious THEN it is impossible to make a zombie equivalent. >> But this cannot be used to show that consciousness exists either >> generally or in a particular case. > > > Okay but I fail to see the connection of this statement to the one I made > above. The relevance is that I'm not saying that consciousness results in physically detectable differences in behaviour, even though I am saying that a certain type of behaviour may necessarily be associated with consciousness. It's a bit subtle - it might seem contradictory at first glance. >> >> I invoke Chalmers' >> >> fading qualia argument, which shows that if consciousness were >> >> contingent rather than necessary it would be possible to make partial >> >> zombies. Partial zombies are absurd; if they are not absurd then we >> >> may as well say consciousness does not exist. >> >> >> > >> > If partial zombies are absurd, then so are full zombies. >> > Epiphenominalism >> > makes full zombies logically (if not physically by your definition) >> > possible. Therefore I also find epihpenominalism absurd as the idea of >> > partial zombies. >> >> I agree that full zombies are also absurd. There is a potential >> problem here with the terms "absurd", "physically possible", >> "logically possible", "conceptually possible". I think zombies are >> conceptually possible, but I think they are logically impossible. I >> don't see why you say epiphenomenalism (as opposed to some other >> theory?) makes zombies logically possible. > > > Epihpenominalism makes zombies not only logically possible, but physically > undetectable (because consciousness is presumed to have no effects, so > whether it is present or not can never be ascertained). Under > epihpenominalism, no physical text, measurement, or experiment, could ever > detect the presence of consciousness is some presumably conscious entity. > Therefore, it could be a zombie, and no physical test, experiment, or > measurement could ever (not even in theory) separate a zombie from a > non-zombie. This all follows directly from the standard definition of > epihpenominalism. Maybe there is no proof of another being being conscious > or not, but that in itself is different from epiphenominalism, which further > supposes that the existence of consciousness has no physical consequences > nor yields any third-personal detectible differences in outcome or behavior. Nevertheless, these two statements are compatible: 1. There is no way to determine if a being is conscious or not. 2. Given that a particular being is conscious, there could be no zombie equivalent of that being. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
