If so, the p-zombie is not what we think it is then... :scream:

I thought the usual definition of the p-zombie is that it has no self-awareness, or actually any awareness at all. The man in the example who had parts of the prefrontal cortex removed said that the pains were the same (which he could not know unless he felt them). He also said "I feel fine now".

I get the distinction between being able to feel pain and being bothered by feeling the pain. Mine was a difficult birth: my mother was thirty seven hours in labour, and I was yanked out with forceps in the end. She told me the pain was extreme and they gave her morphine. She said she still felt the pain when under the influence of the morphine, but that it didn't bother her at all.

:ok:

Thanks gmba, I'll have a look and see if I can muster a comment or two when time permits.

An interesting case! It doesn't seem to me to support the idea of a p-zombie. The man was still aware of the neuralgic pain, which a p-zombie, by definition, could not be.

P-zombies would seem to be logically possible in the sense that the idea that a robot, for example could be programmed to talk about all the same things we do, without any of the kinds of experiences which prompt us to talk about what we do. On the other hand the idea that an entity could be just like us, and talk about all the same experiences we do, without experiencing any of them, and ,without being programmed to do so, seems illogical. Also it seems physically impossible that an entity could be physically and behaviorally identical to a human in every respect and yet not experience any of the things we do, in fact not experience anything at all.

Aren't the presuppositions of science (which go into making such a statement) comprised of metaphysical positions - e.g., that reality is a state of affairs which can be understood and accurately described? And wouldn't physicalism be the metaphysical foundation of science? — Tom Storm

I think science can just study and speculate about nature as it presents itself to us, make predictions and see what works, without presupposing or concluding anything, other than provisionally to serve the abductive process; a kind of pragmatic phenomenology.

Since then, various areas of investigation that were traditionally part of philosophy have become separate academic disciplines, and namely the social sciences such as psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics." — Artemis

That's a nice historical story; so what is left for philosophy then, or in other words, what does philosophy consist in today?

And bottle-washing. Lots of bottle washing. — Banno

Depends on the branch of science.

Debatable, but if true, then we agree that the difference between science and philosophy is content, not method. — Banno

It seems the principles of valid reasoning should be central to both philosophy and science, as they should be to all aspects of everyday life, if that is what you mean by method. Too broad a brush, perhaps?

...by empirical observations. They are certainly testable. — Banno

Are they definitively testable as empirically testable observations are? Can you give an example?

Sounds precisely like philosophy. — Artemis

Not to me. I have no idea why you would say that. Perhaps another difference between philosophy and science is that everyone seems to have a much clearer idea of what science is than they do of what philosophy is.

That's why scientists have PhDs to this day! — Artemis

You can get a PhD in literature, and many other disciplines. So all these disciplines originated in philosophy? And theology?

If anything, hypothesizing and theorizing are THE moments in which scientists attempt to do philosophy. — Artemis

Hypothesis and prediction seem to consist in imagining, given the empirical observations that have been made. what forces or mechanisms could have been involved in producing the phenomena that have been observed, and then, when some hypothetical system has been conceived and explicated, predicting what other phenomena would likely be observed if the hypothesis were correct.If the predicted phenomena are observed then we have a theory, which remains falsifiable by further possible observations.

That doesn't seem to be significantly analogous to philosophical reasoning as far as I can see.

Science consists in empirical observations, hypotheses and theories. Empirical observations are either true or false, hypotheses and theories are testable.

Philosophy does not deal with empirical observations. and its hypotheses and theories (if philosophical speculations are to be counted as such) are not testable, so it is, in both these respects, different from science.

I'm merely suggesting that what prompts a person to ask "What is a human being?" isn't any confusion on the part of the person. The person has no doubt the person, and other persons, are human beings. That person doesn't have any problem distinguishing a human being from an owl, or an ant. — Ciceronianus

The question as to how to distinguish a human being from other animals, with its very obvious answers is not at all the same question as "what does it mean to be a human being", though. You may want to say the latter question is a misguided one, but it's tied up with the ethical question regarding the good life.

I said that the actual existence of unicorns is irrelevant because you could just as well have used 'pink invisible dog'. Anyway, it's a trivial point, so please carry on regardless,

Seems irrelevant. We don't know that they don't exist somewhere; they may or may not. There's a difference between not existing and not possibly existing. in any case.

Pink, invisible unicorns — Artemis

How can something be both pink and invisible?

The "REAL truth" isn't at issue. Your point as I recall was that we humans ask ourselves (among other things) "what we are" (I paraphrase). My contention is we know what we are, but enjoy thinking otherwise; in fact prefer to think otherwise--usually, that we're more than we are or appear to be. I think that's what we're doing when we ask ourselves: What is a human being? — Ciceronianus

It seems likely that hunter/ gatherers would have known what they were, or had no existentially angsty questions about it as we moderns do.. The more elaborate societies become, the more specialization, the more possibilities of vocation available, the more the question of identity and purpose becomes an existential issue.

Add to that the basic mystery of the Real, of existence itself; questions that have had more and more elaborate stories, and more and more questioning of the stories themselves, spun around them over millennia and the modern situation doesn't seem so strange.

Many people seem to be incapable of shaking the illusion that apart from some insight, some clarity and (hopefully) some joy, there is something else to be had by wandering the many paths of philosophy.

Sense data? I don't know. — Manuel

Right, beyond our considerations we have no idea.

What we consider galaxies and stars and planets do depend, in part, by how we categorize these things. — Manuel

I'd say our considerations do (obviously) depend on us, but that which gives rise to the considerations does not.

I think this is largely a matter of personal taste. — Tom Storm

Yep, I agree philosophy is, like the arts, a matter of taste. Why do it if there's no joy in it for you? (I don't mean you, the 'you' there is generic).

is an exercise in tail-chasing. — Wayfarer

Sounds like at least one definition of philosophy. :joke: — Tom Storm

Only if you expect answers from it. I see philosophy as consisting in the discovery of questions (in it's dimension as history of ideas) and descriptions of our practices, and the dissolution of artificial language-generated puzzles.

Philosophy should help you to stop chasing your tail, otherwise it is a waste of time (unless like some dogs, you enjoy it).

LOL, I think that was all. Beyond that...beats me... I wish I could find a shrugging-my-shoulders emoji...

I give up; what am I missing? In what respect is something that is true, not true? — tim wood

I'm hesitant to interject ( :wink: ), but it seems to me that you and Banno are talking about two different situations. If the cat is on the mat at some time it is true that he is on the mat at that time. Once he moves it is no longer true that he is on the mat, but it does remain true that he was on the mat at the time that he was on the mat. So, perhaps you are not really disagreeing?

OK thanks, that's been helpful; you've altered my perspective re modal logic. :smile:

That's true; and I have to agree it is helpful to make explicit to ourselves what we are doing. Perhaps I have been looking for more in the ideas of rigid designation and possible worlds than I should have.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather did. Not screaming in terror like his passengers. — James Riley

:up: :lol:

What if Janus had a haircut yesterday? What if Janus had never developed an interest in modality? What if Janus had been born a woman? What if Janus were a rock? What if Janus were not identical with Janus?

Some of these are possible worlds, some impossible worlds, and for different reasons. The semantics helps us sort them out. — Banno

Sure we can try to imagine all those things and discover the special conditions we would need to posit to make them coherently imaginable (as opposed to merely saying them). But such things were done long before rigid designation ever became an explicit thing. Think about aboriginal myths, for example.

I understand that you can stipulate that, on account of having been named, an entity can be imagined to have been different than they are in actuality. So I could be imagined to have been born a woman, for example. And according to the idea that my identity is established by naming (rigid designation) my identity is thereby hermetically sealed from alteration despite any and all conceivable alternate forms I can be imagined to have taken in other possible worlds.

But the limits to this cannot be coherently established. It might seem coherent to say I could have been born a woman, but what about the idea that I could have been a stone, a tree or a mountain? I think the inconceivability of this (absent the idea of a unique individual soul or essence or something like that) shows that description plays an ineliminable part in establishing identity, if not in merely stipulating it..

If you read a little about Chalmers' p-zombie argument it will become clear to you why your objections are irrelevant.

I have no interest in explaining it to you just to have you repeat your nonsense. — frank

When someone has enough interest to make a comment they claim they don't have enough interest to explain; I smell something distinctly rotten.

Just a fact! :rofl: You know nothing about me. As I thought; you can't come up with the goods. It's a little sad that you feel a need to resort to such tactics, Frank. what are you trying to defend?

It's kind of blatantly obvious that you're resorting to ad hominem because you can't mount a decent rebuttal. If you think Chalmers invokes conscious programmers, then cite the relevant text. On the other hand if you think there is a plausible explanation, other than being deliberately programmed, for purported zombies to be speaking about experiences that they, by definition, do not have, then present it.

My memory tells me we probably have had a conversation, not identical, but roughly along similar lines as this one before.

As I pointed out before the idea of a programmer is no part of Chalmer's philosophy. If you wanted to posit that there could be p-zombies among us, or we could even all be p-zombies, because we are living in a consciously programmed simulation, then that would not be incoherent, but just a silly idea we could have no reason to believe.

Only if someone conscious programs it to.

Nuh. Jack - a rigid designator - might have been ginger. That sentence makes sense. It's exactly the sort of thing modal logic is intended to deal with.

Jack's identity is maintained across possible worlds. — Banno

It's nothing but a fantasy. If it gives you pleasure to imagine you are thinking something coherent when you say that your cat could have been different than he is,. I suppose there's little harm in it.

:up:

There is a possible world in which my cat is ginger.

In the actual world, he is black. — Banno

That whole idea is incoherent. Your cat could not be ginger in any possible world, because it would not be the same cat. All you're saying is that there could be a ginger cat in some possible world, which is trivially true. Modal logic is garbage.

The problem with this argument is that the idea of God is not that he could exist in some possible world, but that insofar as he could be said to exist in any world then he necessarily exists in every possible world. But that, being a mere idea, doesn't tell us anything about God actually existing. This argument fails in the same way as the Ontological Argument.

The argument is just about conceivability. Your question shows you've gone beyond conceiving of the P-zombie to asking why it's like that.

That's all that's needed to drive the wedge in. — frank

Not really. I'm saying that the absurdity of the idea that the p(urported) zombies could say things about their experience, even though they have no experience, is the central point that establishes the inconceivability of such a being.

I don't find anything to disagree with in that; which is not so good for discussion.

Do we see light and dark? We see light and dark things. We don't see light itself; we see by means of light.