An illusion? Well, a convenient fiction at least. It turns out the these is no distinct redness in the material world. There is in fact a seemless array of available wavelengths across very wide spectrum (most of which is quite invisible to us but still real). We perceive a distinct redness after our red colour cones are triggered by a certain range wavelengths. — Kym
I have to admit it used to stick in my throat though — Kym
the apparent nihlism of it all seems so terrifying. — Kym
This speaks of a very important disjuncture between 'academic' and 'lived' understandings — Kym
I don't think the zombie argument has ever been expressed to my satisfaction ... — JupiterJess
Hi Jess. Do you mean to imply there are actually women on this forum? I was wondering. — Kym
At first sight, consciousness seems redundant. Seemingly a person or animal could react to the world 'normally', without the intervening step of internal consciousness. Kind of like a machine following an algorithm, or the Behaviourists’ black-box model of stimulus-in / response-out. — Kym
At first sight, consciousness seems redundant. Seemingly a person or animal could react to the world 'normally', without the intervening step of internal consciousness. Kind of like a machine following an algorithm, or the Behaviourists’ black-box model of stimulus-in / response-out. But dead inside, like a Zombie. This notion raises the question of "why do we need consciousness?" — Kym
I have never quite understood arguments that end up with the conclusion that Consciousness is an Illusion. In my way of thinking an Illusion is something that doesn't really exist. The Red Experience certainly Exists. So how do Physicalists understand the meaning of the word Illusion? — SteveKlinko
I'm not sure I've done enough reading of the Physicalist boffins to answer for them. But years back asked a big-time Zen teacher why Buddhists said we all live in the 'Maya' world of illusion - when there was so obviously correspondences beween the world and my experiences of it. He said, yes a material world does exist but it's SO different from how we perceive it that we more accurately should say we're living in an illusion. — Kym
Wouldn't this suggest that the bottom-up model is missing something? — Marchesk
Okay so to subscribe to the logical possibility of zombies you have to subscribe to strong anthropic mechanism first? As in it's all bottom up cognition and you can have a complete mechanistic description like billiard balls colliding with each other.
I've always suspected the zombie argument is really an argument against reductionism where if the argument was rephrased to allow for top-down causation the problem would vanish. That's really why Descartes mental substance exists because he had already decided that mechanism was sufficient to describe everything else, including the other animals. — JupiterJess
As I remember it the pZombie was a discussion tool for asking the question: What would be the difference if Consciousness was removed from the Human Mind? The question was asked because people were really wondering what the purpose of Consciousness was. There were people that thought that there would be no noticeable difference because they thought Consciousness was just an Illusion and had no real purpose. It was Insane denial of the purpose of Consciousness. If you take away the Visual Conscious experience you would be Blind. We could not move around in the world with just Neural Processing. Removing the Conscious Visual experience removes the final stage in the Visual process that lets us See. People who think that the pZombie would be undetectable deny the Primacy of Consciousness in our existence.Okay so to subscribe to the logical possibility of zombies you have to subscribe to strong anthropic mechanism first? As in it's all bottom up cognition and you can have a complete mechanistic description like billiard balls colliding with each other.
I've always suspected the zombie argument is really an argument against reductionism where if the argument was rephrased to allow for top-down causation the problem would vanish. That's really why Descartes mental substance exists because he had already decided that mechanism was sufficient to describe everything else, including the other animals. — JupiterJess
This is awkward for me since I'm secretly a determinist with a predilection for bottom-up explanation wherever possible (Occam's razor etc.). Yet, no Zombies for me!
Weird, hey? — Kym
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