On 2/12/2015 10:23 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Friday, February 13, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 2/11/2015 10:39 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 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. But that asserts no being is conscious. The definition of "zombie equivalent" is a being that acts the same and is NOT conscious. So the conclusion "its zombie equivalent will be conscious" is a direct contradiction and always false. So it is of the form "If X then FALSE." which is false whenever X is true, i.e. whenever "a being is conscious." So the statement can only be true if "a being is conscious" is always false. But I know at least one being that is conscious. So it's empirically false.OK, it was clumsy phrasing on my part. I meant that IF a being is conscious THEN its zombie equivalent would be impossible, because it would also be conscious and hence not a zombie.
You mean a conscious being cannot have a zombie equivalent, i.e. a being that behaves the same but is not conscious. In other words the philosophical zombie is impossible: if a being is conscious then there can be no other being that behaves the same but is not conscious. Consciousness (nomologically?) entails some difference in behavior. Right?
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