Comment by IsTom
19 hours ago
This way of thinking can only explain externally-visible parts of consciousness. It does nothing to address internal experience of being conscious and qualia. I don't think the internal experience has any bearing on physical reality (P-zombies would act the same externally) which makes this something outside of the realm of currently understood physics.
The internal experience has bearing on physical reality right here, because without it you wouldn’t have written about it and caused these words to appear on my screen in physical reality. It affects your thinking, and hence your actions and utterances in the physical word.
For reasons like that, I don’t think that P-zombies are possible.
Internal experience affects movement of physical molecules in what way?
Having internal mental experiences causes my brain to send physical signals to my fingers in order to type the words "I have internal mental experiences". A philosophical zombie would type those same words, but they would be caused by something else since by definition it lacks those experiences. That would be rather surprising, and it would be even more surprising that the words that the zombie emits coincidentally correspond exactly to the experiences that the non-zombie has.
(See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fdEWWr8St59bXLbQr/zombies-zo... for a much longer version of this argument)
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Internal experience is an input to your mind (that’s how you know about it), and what your mind perceives affects what it does. The better question is: how can what you experience possibly not affect your actions?
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Qualia are the inside view of sensory data and reward signals.
Think about it from an evolutionary perspective:
Animals that step into a lava flow or forest fire don't reproduce. Eventually some evolve the ability to detect intense heat from a distance, and pain as soon as tissue destruction is imminent. They do not have nor need a general understanding of the dangers of heat, or even conscious awareness that they've stepped on a hot coal.
The pain signal compels them, but that is very low level machinery. It had to continue compelling beings that developed larger and more sophisticated brains that are capable of abstract thought and reasoning. Feeling pain is one of the lowest level parts of the brain telling the higher parts exactly what its going to do in terms that permit no disagreement.
Internal to what? The brain is not a monolithic thing, it is different parts communicating and interconnecting. When the connection between the halves is cut, the person objectively becomes two people, but still experiences and presents themselves as one. Observing ourselves is just one part of the brain responding to another, or theorizing on past behavior. There is probably no actual introspection going on inside of the human brain, only the perception of one.
Internal as in that which is feeling things. In this context the physical brain is what is responsible for what you do and feel, but it is not physically different from other matter and it requires no "internal observer" do do its thing.
There are some evolutionary theories why did qualia("phenomenal awareness") evolved. I don't know much about those, so i can't write about that.