On 12 February 2015 at 16:16, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2/11/2015 7:20 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>>> 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. My claim is that IF a being is conscious THEN its zombie equivalent will also be conscious. This does not give us a test to determine if it is conscious. -- 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.
