On 2/11/2015 7:20 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
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.
Those don't seem compatible to me. 2 implies that there is some outward behavior that the
conscious being exhibits which cannot be exhibited by a zombie. So the presence of that
behavior is a test to determine whether a being is conscious. The test is essentially
what Turing proposed.
So I don't understand how you maintain the compatibility? Is it because we cannot
identify the crucial outward behavior? I would agree that we an never be certain we've
identified it; a Turning test could go on for a long time and still reach the wrong
conclusion. But I don't think we need to achieve certainty.
Brent
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