Comment by otikik
6 days ago
A philosophical zombie [1] is essentially a mobile, autonomous human body devoid of consciousness. Critically, still giving all of the external cues that it has in fact consciousness. It is supposed to prove that physicalism doesn't work. "The sense of consciousness" is used like a "soul, with extra steps".
In my humble opinion, which I have no way to prove or disprove, consciousness ("as a soul with extra steps") does not exist, and we are all philosophical zombies. Consciousness "as an amalgamation of complex biological signals and neural interactions that has evolved through millions of years as a successful survival strategy" does exist, and that is all that is needed.
I know I'm not a philosophical zombie based on
>For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object, it would not feel any pain, but it would react exactly the way any conscious human would.
in the Wikipedia article because I don't get on well with the sharp poking. On the basis of Occam's razor I assume all other humans and higher animals are similar. It would be odd if evolution had made me different from all the others.
I am not denying the fact that you feel pain.
What I am denying is that there's anything metaphysical about the whole process.
The opponents of physicalism like Chalmers start from the axiom that consciousness is, in fact, separated from the physical world. Then they use the zombie to "demonstrate" (using circular logic, in my opinion) that physicalism is not possible.
I do believe that your (our) feelings, emotions, and our sense of self all emanate from the physical world. So in that sense "we are all the zombies that Chalmers talks about".
I think we're looking at different definitions of philosophical zombie. I was going with the Wikipedia article's
>For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object, it would not feel any pain
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Serves me well for answering a comment before reading the article. This is basically what the author says, even pointing to the Philosophical zombie and all. Shame on me.