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? — Janus

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.

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.

A computer can't tell you it's conscious? — frank

I'm a bit lost. This is what a zombie is according to Chalmers:

A zombie is physically identical to a normal human being, but completely lacks conscious experience. — Chalmers

http://consc.net/zombies-on-the-web/

...that doesn't sound like a computer. So what's the objection here?

That was a reply to Janus, who found it impossible to conceive of an entity that tells you it's conscious when it isn't.

Not if a mechanical device is forbidden from using the word. If a thermostat doesn't feel warmth, then neither do I. I admit to pain being a rare one, with few devices having sensors to provide it. — noAxioms

Is the thermostat biologically equivalent to you? But this isn't about what words you can and can't use if you subscribe to this or that. It's about the fact that you do feel warmth. Whether you want to grant or deny that to thermostats is a different matter. I tend to think they're incapable of feeling warmth, although I wouldn't rule some form of panpsychism completely out.

I simply don't believe you when you claim skepticism about feeling warmth just because you can't say the same for thermostats in this discussion.

Of course they are. This is why they tend to say we have these properties, but these things over here, they don't. — InPitzotl

Don't or can't? This seems awfully begging to me.

if you had your name scratched onto the toaster when I stole it, it will tend to still be scratched on there unless I scratched it off.

Would it make it not the same toaster if the name got scratched off, or was never there in the first place? Despite my calling it a 'legal identity' (an old habit), I'm not talking about being able to prove the fact to a court of law. I'm talking about it actually being the toaster in question or not.
Perhaps 'pragmatic identity' fits better.

We might could even say certain arrangements of physical objects have privileged status, raising them above other arrangements.

That's not the story being pushed:

A zombie is physically identical to a normal human being, but completely lacks conscious experience.
— consc.net/zombies-on-the-web — InPitzotl

Per this assertion, the lack of privilege does not come from a defect or other difference in the physical arrangement.

The "I" I accused you of having is simply a unit of theory of mind as it applies to the linguistic aspect of your posts.

Not how I'm using it when I make a distinction. The "I" refers to the non-physical experiencer, the thing that gives the privilege.

You, OTOH, meet the requirements to apply theory of mind to as humans above the age of five regularly do.

Age of five eh? Does that imply you were a zombie until some sufficient age? What do you experience before then?

A computer can't tell you it's conscious? — frank

Only if someone conscious programs it to. — Janus

While there are plenty of computers running fixed algorithms that just play pre-recorded messages (a typical phone tree for instance), a true AI isn't programmed to say any specific words. It learns them, same as you do. Its programming may have been done by another computer, probably better than would have said 'conscious programer'. Your assertions are rapidly going to be demonstrated false as capabilties improve.

Don't or can't? — noAxioms

Irrelevant. This is ostensive.

Would it make it not the same toaster if the name got scratched off — noAxioms

Yes.

I'm talking about it actually being the toaster in question or not. — noAxioms

If you say so, but all I can talk about is what I mean by "being the same".

That's not the story being pushed — noAxioms

That's David Chalmers' story. I'm not David.

Not how I'm using it when I make a distinction. — noAxioms

You said the toaster feels warm. It doesn't matter how you're using the word "I"... the toaster doesn't feel warm. It lacks the parts.

Age of five eh? — noAxioms

Yes; by that age, most humans learn theory of mind.

Does that imply you were a zombie until some sufficient age? — noAxioms

No, it implies that you can for example pass the Sally Anne test. Theory of Mind has nothing to do with p-zombies.

Is the thermostat biologically equivalent to you? — Marchesk

Most thermostats are not biological, and are thus not the biological equivalent of anything.
I am, however, presenting one as a crude mechanical equivalent of "processing data which could be interpreted as 'feeling warmth'", which is what I claim noAx does.
Sorry for the 3rd person reference, but some of the prior posts have been getting a bit undefined as to what exactly 'I' refers. noAx is the physical biological human.

But this isn't about what words you can and can't use if you subscribe to this or that.

Yes it is. Chalmers forbids the usage of 'feels warmth' for the zombie, and the thermostat is a zombie, lacking the added bit that is the difference between zombies and humans. So the word is forbidden, despite the fact that the thermostat measures (via physics!) temperature and reacts to it, exactly as the zombie does. The vocabulary is reserved (by proponents of the existence of the ';additional bit') for objects that have that additional supernatural bit, as evidenced by assertions of 'lies' when the zombie claims that he also feels warmth.
I chose the thermostat since it is the ultimate in trivial data processing. A sensor and a single mercury switch is enough, the opposite end of the complexity spectrum compared to noAx, but fundamentally doing the same thing.
A rock also reacts to warmth, possibly by breaking, but it lacks both explicit sensor and an information processor, at least of the sort with which we're typically familiar.

It's about the fact that you do feel warmth.

Chalmers claims that the feeling of warmth can only be had by some supernatural experiencer, and since noAx is not one of those, noAx no more can feel warmth than can the thermostat. I refuse to be placed in a privileged category over it, unearned.

I tend to think [thermostats] are incapable of feeling warmth, although I wouldn't rule some form of panpsychism completely out.

Oooh, magic sauce!

I simply don't believe you when you claim skepticism about feeling warmth just because you can't say the same for thermostats in this discussion.

I'm merely skeptical of this immaterial experiencer/possessor, or of the magic sauce, or however it's presented. Surely I'm not the first person on these forums skeptical of dualism.

I'm merely skeptical of this immaterial experiencer/possessor, or of the magic sauce, or however it's presented. Surely I'm not the first person on these forums skeptical of dualism. — noAxioms

User whatever terms you like, but your first person experiences of warmth, pain, color, etc. are not part of the physical descriptions of the world. Thus the motivation for p-zombies. I think it's a problem with the description of the world. As in it's leaving something out, not that p-zombies are actually possible.

I chose the thermostat since it is the ultimate in trivial data processing. A sensor and a single mercury switch is enough, the opposite end of the complexity spectrum compared to noAx, but fundamentally doing the same thing. — noAxioms

The mercury responds to thermal energy. Cold and warmth are relative to organisms that need to survive in a certain temperature range.

User whatever terms you like, but your first person experiences of warmth, pain, color, etc. are not part of the physical descriptions of the world. — Marchesk

Your opinion is noted, but it provides negligible evidence falsifying an alternate one.

I find the p-zombie description not only possible, but a more accurate description of what's going on. A biological being such as you describe (with agency) would have evolved differently than what we see. Everybody tends to selection-bias that away. I did an old thread on the subject on the defunct PF. Can't reference it anymore. :sad:

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?

P-zombies it could be argued are logically possible, but not metaphysically possible — Pantagruel

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Nice example though. Be interesting to have the dualists give their explanation of it. Somehow the surgery seems to have cut off the 'uplink' for 'mal-data' to wherever it gets 'processed' in a way that could be interpreted as pain. The data still gets through to say the rational area, but not to the area which causes distress. How might a dualist explain the 'mind' still getting the data for pain, but not feeling it? It's not like the mind was modified, only some connection in the brain.

Just for info, I do notice that there's multiple 'minds' in me. They hold different (contradictory even) beliefs, and one of the two is clearly in charge, but the other isn't epiphenomenal. But both of them seem physical. No funny external magic thingy.

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....