On 4/3/2015 2:38 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 4 Apr 2015, at 7:32 am, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
On 4/2/2015 4:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I think the argument I present does not depend on any fact about the
world (although going from the general case of what I call
functionalism to what Putnam called machine-state functionalism and
you call comp does depend on the physical CT being true). It depends
on a very basic operational definition of consciouness: that you know
it if you are conscious and you realise if there is a large enough
change in your consciousness. If you don't accept this operational
definition then I can find no meaning in the word "consciousness".
I don't understand how that applies to someone who, for example, is red-green
colorblind. Aren't they partial-zombies by your definition? They may come to realize
that they don't distinguish the full spectrum, just as we realize we don't see
infrared. Supppose the colorblind person used to see colors but lost the ability (as
my mother did after cataract surgery)? She realized it by noticing that things that
used to be colorful weren't anymore. But like the person born colorblind, she didn't
directly experience a qualia of being colorblind.
She noticed a difference and there was also an objective change in her ability to
discriminate between a colours. A partial zombie would not notice a difference and there
would be no test that could find a difference.
But what does it mean to say she noticed a difference? Was the "noticing" a perception of
a difference, or was it just remembering that grass and roses aren't named by the same
color. The latter could be "noticed" by someone who had never had color vision (and was
in fact well known to my father who was red-green colorblind all his life). If the
"noticing" was just a fact learned in the way anyone might learn a 3p fact, then I think
that would still leave my mother a partial zombie by your definition.
Brent
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