The guy didn't behave the same afterwards, whereas the zombie behaves indistinguishably from a 'human' in the same situation, so it doesn't really fit the definition. — noAxioms

Right, so I guess it highlights the problem with the p-zombie hypothesis: is it plausible that a p-zombie could accurately report on phenomenal experiences without actually having them? It seems like a p-zombie would actually be in this boat....

Maybe the P-zombie is just really stoical.....

This case may be being "aware of the phenomenological experience" without having the experience though....

The two are closely linked. For metaphysical possibility, you can just posit a god that makes it happen.

Physical possibility is trickier. That's whether it's possible in our world. — frank

Yes, the example I give happened in our world. That was what I was thinking. Chalmers calls them logical, metaphysical and natural possibility.

Damasio's Error and Descartes' Truth: An Inquiry into Consciousness, Metaphysics, and Epistemology
by Andrew Gluck

Now for the other side of the coin.....

P-zombies it could be argued are logically possible, but not metaphysically possible, it is an example that tends to ring hollow for a lot of people.

Last week @180 Proof recommended the book Descartes' Error in the thread on emotional intelligence (thanks!) I just finished it, and right at the end Damasio describes an interesting case of a pre-frontal leucotomy (where portions of the pre-frontal cortex are removed) which was performed in the attempt to alleviate debilitating neuralgia:

Two days after the operation, when Lima and I visited on rounds, he was a different person. He looked relaxed, like anyone else, and was happily absorbed in a game of cards with a companion in his hospital room. Lima asked him about the pain. The man looked up and said cheerfully: "Oh, the pains are the same, but I feel fine now, thank you." Clearly, what the operation seemed to have done, then, was abolish the emotional reaction that is part of what we call pain. It had ended the man's suffering. His facial expression, his voice, and his deportment were those one associates with pleasant states, not pain.

Does this example support the notion of a p-zombie? Or the opposite?

The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber & David Wengrow — 180 Proof

:cool:

TPF - the place where theories of everything come to be born.

Definitely going on the short list.

I know that interpretation of what other people say is context- and situation-dependent. But do you still need some common sense in order to correctly interpret what others say or write? — Cidat

Common-sense would suggest yes......

:up:

The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding
by Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela

Gadamer's writings deal extensively with symbolicity, aesthetics, and hermeneutics, which seems related to your interests. Truth and Method is an excellent read.

I was just watching Leonard Cohen and his friends sing a spontaneous round of "Do Lord" in some home movies from a documentary, and the feeling was moving. I think that, even if God does not exist, the belief that people have in something, to the extent it is sincere, works towards bring that something into existence. So even if it is just people aspiring to the divine, I think you have to give the idea of God some credence.

Taking the 200,000 number as an exact date for behaviorally modern humans' emergence (for the sake of simplicity), and then reminding ourselves that writing wasn't invented until roughly 5,000 years ago (3,200 BC), it leads to a question: what was happening during those 195 thousand years of our existence? What were we thinking? — Xtrix

I would extend that even further. Chalmers leans towards defining consciousness as a fundamental property of reality. He says "It would be odd for a fundamental property to be instantiated for the first time only relatively late in the history of the universe." I agree. If consciousness "is" at all, it has been around for a very long time....

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio

Purchased a few more books along with this to take me well into 2022...

Damasio's Error and Descartes' Truth: An Inquiry into Consciousness, Metaphysics, and Epistemology by Andrew Gluck

The Tree of Knowledge: the Biological Roots of Human Understanding by Humberto Maturana

Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud by Herbert Marcuse

The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault

Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber by Anthony Giddens

The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget

The Piaget I am most looking forward to. Reading is a privilege and a blessing.

Yeah, that's the real problem here. If qualia are epiphenomenal, how can we talk about them? — InPitzotl

:up:

Godel's theorems apply to systems that fulfil specific criteria of translatability into facts about natural numbers, as I understand. Without specifying the system - i.e. looking only at the sentence itself - the sentence would not have the same force. So Godel's sentence is true just in case it is true - i.e. it applies to the specific set of systems in which it is true.

edit: Alternatively, you could consider the sentence itself to be an axiom. E.g. "This is true" has to be taken axiomatically. Likewise, "This is false". If "This is false" is axiomatic, then, axiomatically, it must be pointing to something other than itself, otherwise it is nonsense (unsinn). To claim a different version of the statement "This axiom is false" is true is to deny its status as an axiom. Likewise for provable/unprovable.

Check out Descartes' Error by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio for a better account for the role emotion plays in human intelligence than you will get here or from most philosophers (except Spinoza and a few others). — 180 Proof

Excellent, I will. I've been wanting to read this for some time and I just started my last new book, so it's buying time again.

edit: Have you read Damasio's Error by Gluck? Thinking about getting both....

Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke

In which case the claims would be 'caused' by something familiar with the experience presumably....

Yes, this isn't in scope for Chalmers' theses, but is metaphysical speculation, as I said. I don't know that he disagrees specifically though - it is an extension of his dual-aspect approach but may suggest an overarching monism (of information). He is amenable to such notions.

In keeping with Chalmers approach, I'll offer some metaphysical speculations at this point.

Chalmers eventually examines how information can plausibly link the physical and the phenomenal, since it presents aspects of both (the well-known issue of the two entropies). What I would like to consider is, extending Chalmers approach of supervenience, if consciousness, while not supervenient on the physical, is in fact supervenient on the informational, then consciousness could be translated from one medium to another, exactly as information can be. The only question is, when I am thinking this thought now, is that exhaustively represented by the informational content, or is there something more? Is the thing which is producing or creating information itself a form of information? I'm inclined to think it is...some form of globally coherent informational history maybe. And so, yes, theoretically translatable between mediums.

hence I conclude that I'm one of the zombies and that I'm missing out on the full inexplicable-by-physics experience. — noAxioms

:up:

If the zombie is the clone of a liar, ill educated, or mad person — bert1

I'm more of the opinion that consciousness in this scenario constitutes a nescio quid, such that for a zombie to make a true qualia-claim it would be referring to something to which it in principle does not have access.

In essence p-zombies are using words (meaning is use) and if Wittgenstein in right, we're also doing the same — TheMadFool

Yes, as I mentioned earliler, I think this is the sense in which Chalmers suggests that consciousness determines the intension of its own concept.....

Yes, the question philosophy assigns to itself in making sense of ideas is important. It could be asked to what extent are philosophers to be regarded as the 'experts'? — Jack Cummins

I think philosophy breaks down at the point where it becomes an "appeal to authority." So if a philosopher is an expert, it should be the kind of expertise that manifests as and through cogent discussion (similar to Habermas' ideas on communicative rationality I guess).

I guess if you use the term philosophy in its most generic sense, as in "He has a certain philosophy of life", then anyone who self-consciously constructs and maintains a set of beliefs about the world and his place in it is a philosopher.

However philosophy also has the equally common meaning of designating a vast collection of historical texts about beliefs and the world. So I think people who consciously construct and maintain systems of beliefs about life and the world are philosophers (while not necessarily claiming to be) in the former sense. And people who embrace written tradition can legitimately claim to be philosophers in the latter sense.

The embedded cognition solution is very consistent with a systems-theoretical approach to reality - i.e. recasting our understanding of the nature reality in terms of embedded-embedding systems which conform to certain features like autopoeisis, and modelling of behaviours using fractal/chaotic mathematics. For me, it is an excellent approach to recasting the mind-body problem in a way that attempts to reconcile and not reduce one to the other.

:up:

Actually Chalmers touches on this because, if his zombie-twin has an "inverted spectrum" of any conscious experience, for example, (sees blue where the other sees red i.e.) then there necessarily will be different "causal histories" of that type of experience, even if the experiences themselves are the same. So isomorphic mapping of history can be problematic.


:up:

I like Chalmers description of consciousness as something which determines the intension of its own concept.

Chalmers’ zombie twin is not “logically coherent”, to me. He can only assume, and not prove, that “conscious experience” is missing from the zombie. — NOS4A2

But if he assumes it then that is the case he is examining. A conscious zombie would contradict his example.

If a machine with no ghost thinks it has a ghost, it is wrong. — bongo fury

Does this mean you equate the 'experience of consciousness' as that of 'having a ghost'? That is interesting.....

I think my mental states supervene on physics, making me sort of materialist of sorts, hardly a radical position to take. — noAxioms

Chalmers does discuss this. One position he explores and admires involves ascribing phenomenal (or proto-phenomenal) states to physical entities. And also monism, not of the mental, but of an over-arching variety. I have strong affinities for both these directions also. Both of them are consistent with a systems-philosophical approach.

How does this work? Acquaintance of the head with an immaterial picture inside it? — bongo fury

Well, axiomatically, if the zombie thinks it is not a zombie it is wrong, if a conscious being thinks it is not a zombie it is correct.

I've always claimed to be the zombie, without lying about it. I don't think I'm conscious, at least not by Chalmers' definition, so no, they don't necessarily lie about it. Sure, I can detect red, but so can the simple mechanical device. — noAxioms

But anyone who takes this view will likely be an eliminativist (or a reductive functionalist) about consciousness from the start. If one accepts that our immediate evidence does not rule out the possibility that we are zombies, then one should embrace the conclusion that we are zombies: it leads to a much simpler view of the world, for a start. But the reason there is a problem about consciousness is that our immediate evidence does rule out that possibility.
Chalmers on the "Irreducibility of Consciousness"

Continuing on, Chalmers does pursue this fine line of division between the phenomenal and the psychological by way of refuting Dennett, who says that his materialistic theory can explain why things 'seem' the way they do. Chalmers says that Dennett is exploiting an ambiguity (equivocating) between two senses of seem, one of which (the phenomenal) is not captured by the other (why we say the things we do). Balancing on the "knife-edge between the phenomenal and the psychological realms" is how Chalmers puts it. I feel that is where this question lies.

Any number of ways. Perhaps the zombie argument can yield the correct result if the conclusion-begging premise is better analyzed. This is the direction that Chalmers travels when he examines the 'paradox of phenomenal judgements'. I'm curious to see exactly how much consciousness he has to allot to the physical.

For example, if knowledge that one is conscious is the phenomenal judgement sine qua non, then when the zombie effects this judgement, it can either judge correctly "I am not conscious"; or it can judge incorrectly "I am conscious". What this says is that the judgement of/about consciousness (conscious judgement) does not supervene on the physical since, if it did, it would be self-contradictory. Which explicitly contradicts Chalmers' second premise.

However convenient would might be for him to built his case on, still can never be right. — dimosthenis9

But it is still possible to come to the right conclusion for the wrong reason.

Are we to exclude deliberate deception? If so, how about innocent confusion? — bongo fury

I've been thinking along these lines. One difference must be that the actually conscious being can know that it is conscious (in the strong sense); while the zombie that knows it is conscious is wrong. So could you say that this is the exact dividing line between a reductionist and an emergent consciousness?

Or, am I wrong in trying to frame philosophy as an alternative to religion? — Jack Cummins

Is this a role that philosophy assigns to itself? Many social philosophers explicitly state that, for various reasons, modern culture has evolved away from traditional value-paradigms, which were mostly religion-centric, and that our society is suffering many problems as a result. Some of these would absolutely assign philosophy this role.

Alternately, is this a role that philosophy assumes in a practical sense, in the population at large? This is the more important question, because it seems to me this is exactly the context in which religion is most important. Not its ostensible self-definition through the conflicting claims of different sects, but through the actual influence it exerts and the potentials it confers on and through the minds of believers.

In this latter sense, I think philosophy should aspire to to this role, perhaps not as an alternative so much as a complement.

Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding

Today on this auspicious 42nd anniversary of its publication, I'm re-reading

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams — 180 Proof

:up:
Love me some Doug Adams.

Re-reading The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers

I see it has a chapter on naturalistic dualism, which came up in a thread recently and relates to the A.N. Whitehead books I just finished.