The defining difference between a physical-world zombie (the 'Normal Zombie') as opposed to a mere mental image of a zombie - the 'P-Zombie') is...

(ready?)

A real-world zombie can physically annihilate you.

I use this phrase when people wonder if 'reality' is 'really out there', where I respond with, "Reality is that which will annihilate you, whether you believe it is out there or not."

By 'culture wars' I'm referring to the perceived conflict, widespread since the Enlightenment, between science and religion, and the sense that science has undermined the traditional basis of spiritual values in Western cultulre. — Wayfarer

That's a more enduring tension than the war I had in mind.

A lot depends on how we unpack the term "traditional basis". If the basis was religious doctrine and practice, need religious doctrine and practice be theistic? If the basis was a conception of deity, what was the basis of that conception of deity? The more flexibly we conceive the traditional basis, the longer we will say it persists.

Religion and spiritual life may seem to conflict with science if one clings to traditional doctrines rigidly conceived. I don't see any necessary problem here. Say there's tension between competing forms of "explanation": Religion traditionally did, but need not, involve a sort of explanation that conflicts with scientific explanation.

The way remains open to reform spiritual life to suit a scientific age. Perhaps this task was taken more seriously by mainstream philosophers and theologians in the West around a century ago than it is today. We might say Kant and his contemporaries thought of themselves as engaged in that same task.

Pinker's essay on this topic sparked a long debate (in which he was supported by Dennett) with Leon Wieseltier, who had previously writen an incendiary review of one of Dennett's previous books in the New York Times. Suffice to say, I side with Wieseltier (and that review conveys what I think is the gist of the debate). — Wayfarer

I haven't read the relevant bits of Dennett and can't quite make out what Wieseltier is taking issue with. I see nothing objectionable in the thought that our capacity "to have creeds" is a fact open to biological investigation. On the other hand, I don't know that it's this capacity that enables us to "transcend our genetic imperatives". I'm not sure what it means to speak of human action, or animal action in general, as guided by "genetic" (as opposed to "biological") imperatives.

So, to the extent that traditional (or pre-modern) philosophy was in some fundamental way linked to the Greek-Judeo-Christian theistic tradition (and granted that this link is multi-valent), then the rejection of theistic religions, and the attempt to ground human nature in a purely naturalistic account of the world, constitutes what I see as the fundamental divide underlying the 'culture wars' (or at any rate, that is the conflict that I am generally commenting on.) — Wayfarer

My impression is that theism was already controversial in Hellenic culture before the Christian era, thanks in part to the open-ended philosophical activity that flourished in the Hellenic world. I'd say the traditional link between philosophy and theism in the Hellenic and Western traditions does not exclude atheism as a philosophical alternative. To deny this is practically to beg the question of theism in philosophical conversation: As if one cannot conceivably philosophize -- or philosophize "in the Western manner" -- while being an atheist or agnostic.

From your comments on the meaning of this term, it's clear that we understand it very differently. I have been criticized over my use of the word 'ontology' but I do base it on the dictionary definition, which says that the word 'ontology' is based on the first-person participle of the Greek word for 'to be' - the first person participle of which is 'I am': — Wayfarer

I am, you are, it is.

Doesn't the grammar support my sentience-neutral use of the term "being"? It's not only sentient beings that be. Not in English, not in Greek.

For that matter: Wasn't it the utter generality of the concept of "being" that fascinated the ancients?

So 'ontology' was originally intended as 'the study of the meaning of being', but even more specifically, the meaning of being in the first person. That distinguishes it from the characteristically 'third-person' view that is fundamental to naturalism. — Wayfarer

I believe Greek verbs are typically given in the first-person singular, and that's the only reason the first-person appears in that definition.

In any case, I'm not sure the etymology of the word "ontology" is enough to inform us what sort of logos ontology was originally intended to be. And I'm not sure that "what a thing was originally intended for" is an enduring standard of what a thing is or can be used for. Moreover, it seems the logos of being and beings -- accounts of existence, talk of what exists and what does not exist -- go back much farther in history than use of the word "ontology".

Where does the word come from? Etymonline traces use of the word back to the 1600s. According to this article by Jose Mora, it was popularized by the rationalist Wolff.

If many of the first self-styled "ontologists" were pre-Kantian rationalists, what's left of ontology when it's removed from the context of pre-Kantian rationalism? Who decides?

How did Wolff and his predecessors conceive of ontology? Did they intend it as a study of being, like the word says, or rather of "the meaning of being", as the word doesn't say? Wasn't this distinction introduced long after them? Aren't there other ways of speaking about being and beings, existence and entities, ontology and ontologies?

(Heidegger differentiated the study of the meaning of being from the domain of the natural sciences. It's a fundamental distinction, because ontology is not concerned with 'what exists' - that is the role of the sciences - but the 'meaning of being' as a philosophical question and in the context of the human condition. It is precisely that understanding which he says has been generally forgotten or obscured by a fundamental error in Western metaphysics.) — Wayfarer

Heidegger's interpretations are controversial and I suspect rather creative.

What is "meaning"? Isn't meaning a product of culture that changes over time? Is there some component of meaning that is immutable? What component is that?

What is the "meaning of being"? How is it different from, and how is it related to, the "being of being"? Is it anything other than the meaning of whatever exists? Is there only one single meaning for all existence, or are there a great variety of meanings? One meaning per existing thing? Meaning for whom, and according to whom….

If science, according to you and Heidegger, is distinguished by its concern with what exists, then what is the study of the meaning of being concerned with? Is it concerned with what does not exist? Or is it concerned in a special, unscientific way with what exists -- not concerned to say what does or doesn't exist, but only to say what existence "means" or what the things that exist "mean"?

What does it mean to say that existence or being or beings "mean" something? What does existence "mean", and what is the standard or method by which we assess the "meaning of being"? How do we adjudicate disagreements about "meanings" and about the "meaning of being"?

You see, that is why I am saying that 'being' is fundamentally different to 'entity' or 'thing'. Entities or things are disclosed to, or appear to, or for, beings. — Wayfarer

It's a fair distinction you use the term "being" to express, but I don't feel the same need to restrict my use of the term this way, as yet another indicator of sentience. One reason I'm not inclined to speak that way is that the verb "to be" is primarily associated with all our talk about existence. So unless one plans to overhaul this basic feature of the English language, there's arguably inconsistency in the attempt to restrict the language of "being" by applying it exclusively to sentient creatures.

Everyone makes his own usage. It's one thing to define your own terms in an extraordinary way, and another to object to statements other speakers make when they use the same vocabulary in the ordinary way, as if those speakers mean what they do not.

To adopt extraordinary usage in speaking is to assign oneself a special burden in communication.

Being is the primary ground or reality, being is what truly is. — Wayfarer

I thought you said it was the concern of science to speak about "what exists", while ontology is concerned with "meaning".

Is there a distinction between "what exists" and "what is"?

Is there a difference between "being" and "truly being"?

What does "primary ground" or "primary reality" mean?

It sounds as though you've shifted from speaking about "beings", qua sentient things, to "Being", qua ultimate ground of reality. How do you account for this shift?

What is the difference between beings and Being? How are they related to each other? How are all the "things" and "entities" that appear to beings related to beings and to Being? Do these things also appear to Being, or only to beings? Is Being sentient, like a being? Do beings appear to Being?

Are beings also entities? Is Being an entity? Does anything that is not an entity appear to beings or to Being, or is it only entities that appear? Do beings appear to each other? Do they appear to each other only as entities? Does Being appear to beings, and only as an entity?

On what grounds does one answer such questions? On what grounds does one adjudicate disputes in such matters?

Without some sense of how to proceed in answering such questions, it's not even clear what conversation we're having here, what theme we suppose we are addressing.

But being is never an object of perception, it is invisible to us, in a manner analogous to the blind spot caused by the optic nerve. — Wayfarer

To say something is never an object of perception is not necessarily the same as to say it never appears to us in any way. For instance, I'll say I do not "perceive" my own imagining and dreaming -- not if "perceive" entails sense-perception -- but I am often aware of my own imagining and dreaming, and I say it appears to me. Likewise, I might say that, though I do not perceive my own consciousness, I am aware of it, and it too appears to me.

There's a sense in which we don't "perceive" magnetic force in normal circumstances, but once we know there's such a thing, we can observe it through its cooperation in what we do perceive.

So even though 'the meaning of being' seems obvious to us, in fact it's obscured or misapprehended by a kind of cultural 'blind spot' which we tend to look through, rather than at. — Wayfarer

I don't think the "meaning of being" seems obvious at all. I'm still not sure the phrase makes sense at all, or what sense you think it has.

Arguably Heidegger's opaque concept-poetry does far more to obscure the meaning of being than any scientific habits could.

Why write poems about a blind spot when you can turn around to look? It seems to me the metaphor of "blind spot" would be ill-applied in cases in which there is in principle "no way to look". But I would deny that "consciousness" is such a case.

For each of us is aware of his own awareness.

You know that you can actually detect your blind spot by holding a piece of paper with a dot on it at a certain distance from your eye, at which point the dot becomes invisible. Well, the human blindness to the 'real nature of being' is analogous to that, although it's a lot more far-reaching. That is the import of the argument from the 'unseen seer, the unknown knower'. That is pointing out that 'being' which is the ground of all existence, is not actually disclosed by analysis of phenomena. (This is an ancient idea in philosophy.) — Wayfarer

The history of philosophy is full of bad ideas, ancient and modern. Pedigree establishes nothing.

You keep saying we're blind to being, to the real nature of being, to what really is, to the primary ground of reality…. But you've said very little about what it is you suppose you're speaking about when you speak this way.

Here: the unseen seer, the unknown knower. The fact of sentience. Isn't this the fact you reserve the word "being" to name? Consciousness, mind, awareness.

Who is blind to the fact of consciousness?

Is the phrase "meaning of being" supposed to be roughly equivalent with the phrase "meaning of sentience"? If not, how is it different?

Again, you flatly state that "Being" -- a concept you have vaguely associated with "beings" and hence with consciousness -- is the "ground of all existence". But it's not clear on what ground you make this claim, and it's not clear why or how you associate Being, the ground of existence, with beings, the sentient existents.

And it's not clear how you reconcile your talk about Being as ground of existence, and about "what truly is", with your previous remarks about the distinction between science and ontology -- that "what exists" is the concern of science, while "the meaning of being" is the concern of ontology. Do you depart from Heidegger in this respect, or does he likewise encroach on the lot he assigns to the scientist?

And that is also why dogmatic materialists such as Dennett are obliged to deny that the first-person perspective has any particular significance, and to insist it is something can be completely accounted for by science (which he claims to do in books such as Consciousness Explained. Materialists are generally obliged to deny the existence of the unconscious on the same grounds.) — Wayfarer

Is it materialists, or only some materialists, who are obliged to deny the significance of the first-person perspective and the existence of the unconscious? I can see that perhaps eliminative materialists like Dennett might be so obliged, but not every materialist is an eliminative materialist.

Moreover, Dennett's "heterophenomenology" in Consciousness Explained arguably takes for granted the significance of the first-person perspective. Even so, Dennett takes a rather hard line on consciousness, which is not representative of the full range of materialist and naturalist views on the subject. It's not like Dennett and Heidegger are the only two options, and it's not like we have to choose between eliminative materialism and theism.

I'm not sure what you or Dennett might mean by "completely accounting" for something. What makes an account "complete"?

I suppose a scientist aims to provide an account of what an observable thing is composed of, how it interacts with other observable things, how the parts work, how the whole works. A poet or a painter or a salesman gives another sort of account for another sort of reason.

Do we say the poet's account is "less complete" if it's uninformed by the scientist's account? Do we say the scientist's account is "less complete" if it's uninformed by the poet's account? I don't speak that way. These are two different sorts of account given for two different purposes.

What sort of account does the ontologist aim to provide, and in what sense is it "complete"? Does it add anything to the sort of account the scientist aims to provide, or does it add merely another sort of account alongside that of the scientist, without disrupting the scientist's account any more than the poet's discourse might disrupt the scientist's account?

For instance, scientists develop an account of visual perception by correlating information about light; about objects that emit or that reflect, absorb, or otherwise transform light; about sense-receptors, nervous systems, and perceptual processes in cognition.

Does the ontologist's story about Being, beings, and entities that appear to beings conflict with the scientist's story in any way? Does it add anything to the scientist's account? Or is it just another sort of story, told for an entirely different sort of purpose, that doesn't even come into contact with the discourse of the scientist?

Why should we suppose it's any different in the case of consciousness? To all appearances, there is a scientific account to pursue concerning animal consciousness on the basis of empirical investigation. Is there any reason to suppose that the ontologist's story about Being, beings, and entities that appear to beings will have anything more to do with this scientific story, than it has to do with the scientific story about perception?

In contrast, Dennett's opponents insist that the 'first person perspective', the 'experience of being', is of a different order to what is disclosed in third-person terms (as per Chalmer's essay Facing Up to the Hard Problem). That is where the ontological distinction between 'things' and 'beings' shows up in the contemporary debate. (Dennett's response basically amounts to dismissal, which I am saying is another manifestation of the 'blind spot'. Have a look at the abstract, and Table of Contents entries, for William Byers, The Blind Spot.) — Wayfarer

There's plenty of room for the first-person perspective in a materialist or naturalist discourse. The fact that some philosophers have neglected the first-person perspective, or have sought to diminish the role of introspection as a source of observational judgments, is not a strike against materialism, naturalism, or scientific method.

I'm not sure what contemporary philosophers of mind mean by the term "ontology"; I'm not sure what Heidegger or Wolff meant by the term; I'm not sure how all the uses of "ontology" in history are correlated; and I'm not sure how all those ontologies are correlated with ordinary talk about being and beings, existence and entities, what is and what is not.

I have a hunch that in contemporary academic discussions, talk about "ontology" is often talk about how to set up terms in a logician's notebook: Which phenomena shall we identify as the "objects", as opposed to the predicates that we apply to objects, in a language structured according to conventions of predicate logic. If this is what the professors have in mind, I'd encourage them to make it clear up front, to avoid so much confusion among their readers.

It seems natural scientists often speak in an analogous way about the "ontology" of computational models of things like ecosystems and solar systems. I suppose the logic of the computational models is structured in keeping with the conventions reflected in the logician's notebook.

So far as I can tell, questions about what to count as a logical object in such an "ontology" are not questions about what "exists" and what "doesn't exist", but only questions about the most efficient way to construct formal models about phenomena that do exist.

It's in this spirit that I take the line from Rorty: There is no privileged ontology.

That's an extremely well-chosen passage from Plato. — Wayfarer

It marks an important turn. A confused turn in a confused dialogue the purpose of which, it seems, is not to present finished doctrine but to stimulate thinking on a difficult subject.

I suggest it also marks an important turn in ancient thought and culture, involving creative responses to intellectual confusion brought on by attempts to reconcile thoughts about concepts with thoughts about perception.

Socrates is asking, what is it that 'sees reason'? What is it that discerns sameness and difference? You see, I think whenever you make a truth statement -that 'such and such is the case', or 'such and such is not the case', then you're straight away in a domain that is only visible to the rational intelligence, namely, the domain of reason. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure what this talk about "seeing" reason and "perceiving" logos is supposed to mean. If these are metaphors, they are metaphors I consider misleading and prefer to avoid. It seems there is a single, unified awareness in each of us, the same awareness in seeing as in hearing, the same awareness in perceiving as in imagining, thinking, remembering, intending. I suggest that our traditional discourse about consciousness has been greatly disfigured by unwarranted reliance on sense-perception, and especially visual perception, as the paradigm of consciousness.

Clearly anything that involves "making statements", that involves explicit assertions and denials, depends on language. But the capacity for language is not the same thing as the "rational intelligence" we have in common with other animals. I would distinguish animal rationality from the peculiar practice of giving and taking reasons. If we can understand the power of "reason" in terms of that practice of "reasoning", we might say it's a special form of the puzzling and problem-solving we have in common with nonhuman rational animals.

What is it that gives this form of rationality, called reasoning, its special character?

It is because the faculty of reason that humans can see and abstract likeness and unlikeness, or similarity, or equals - an ability that is intrinsic to the nature of rational intelligence. What is the origin of 'rationality' if not the ability to perceive 'ratio'? And it was the ability to perceive 'ratio' and 'logos' that was at the origin of the Greek conception of rationality (and indeed science). — Wayfarer

It seems that many nonhuman animals have the capacity to act on the basis of recognition of generic likeness and unlikeness. Recall the experiments by Shigeru Watanabe, demonstrating that pigeons can learn to distinguish paintings by Matisse from paintings by Picasso.

Isn't it obvious that animals perceive and act on the basis of generic concepts? That they react -- and learn to react, and react intelligently -- in similar ways to similar things, and in different ways to different things? Can't we train them to sort or select on the basis of generic similarities and differences? It seems to me that the capacity to grasp generic similarity and difference is about the worst possible place to start developing an account of how human cognition is different from nonhuman animal cognition, and among the best places to begin developing an account of how human cognition is similar to nonhuman animal cognition.

Accordingly, while I agree that the capacity to understand generic sameness and difference is crucial to "rational intelligence", I deny that this capacity belongs to humans alone among animals, and I deny that rational intelligence belongs to humans alone among animals.

One thing that seems to belong perhaps uniquely to us, among all animals extant on this planet, is the capacity to think about our thoughts, and thus, for instance, to think about the principles of likeness or unlikeness that apply in each case in which we recognize a similarity or dissimilarity. This capacity to think about thoughts, or to reason about reasons, seems to be essential to the practice of "giving and taking reasons", seems to be essential to reasoning and to "reason".

What is the source of this special capacity in us? My best guess is that it's not so much to do with a special power of introspection, but rather an especially refined power of conceptualization -- which allows us to pick out and to coordinate various features of our experience more flexibly and creatively than any other animal on Earth.

We are not alone among animals in being rational and conceptual creatures. But our subtle power of conceptualization opens the way to a practice of reasoning that cultivates the character of human rationality and freedom.

Thank you, that is very kind. I know I've gotten into deep waters here, and I've made many contentious statements. That's my problem, I tackle these issues from too general a level instead of picking one or two aspects of a problem and working on them, and I tend to go in 'guns blazing'. But regardless, I hope I have made the point about the distinct meaning of 'ontology' and the distinction of beings and objects a bit more clear. — Wayfarer

I'm happy to paddle through these deep waters with you. There's no fear of drowning, and the tide always carries us back to shore. Meanwhile, we move back and forth through many of the same currents over the years; the repetition is good exercise and makes a sort of progress.

Perhaps we've got a bit closer to understanding our thoughts about "ontology". I'm still far from sure I understand what you mean in this region of our discourse, and I've left a fresh trail of questions and remarks on the subject today.

So far as I can make sense of it, your distinction between "beings" and "objects" is just another way to express a distinction between "sentient things" and "nonsentient things". But I suspect you mean to suggest something more than this by speaking that way.

We might say Kant and his contemporaries thought of themselves as engaged in that same task. — Cabbage Farmer

Indeed he was, and I am one who thinks that he succeeded to a large extent - more so than generally acknowledged, and certainly more so than usually understood.

If science, according to you and Heidegger, is distinguished by its concern with what exists, then what is the study of the meaning of being concerned with? — Cabbage Farmer

Caveat: I am not at all expert in Heidegger, having read only abstracts, summaries and essays.

However I think in regards to this particular question I am on reasonably safe ground.

From SEP entry on Heidegger:

Consider some philosophical problems that will be familiar from introductory metaphysics classes: Does the table that I think I see before me exist? Does God exist? Does mind, conceived as an entity distinct from body, exist? These questions have the following form: does x (where x = some particular kind of thing) exist? Questions of this form presuppose that we already know what ‘to exist’ means. We typically don't even notice this presupposition. But Heidegger does, which is why he raises the more fundamental question: what does ‘to exist’ mean? This is one way of asking what Heidegger calls the question of the meaning of Being, and Being and Time is an investigation into that question. ...

According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being, and thus Being as such, has been forgotten by ‘the tradition’ (roughly, Western philosophy from Plato onwards). Heidegger means by this that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. In this way Being as such has been forgotten. So Heidegger sets himself the task of recovering the question of the meaning of Being. In this context he draws two distinctions between different kinds of inquiry. The first, which is just another way of expressing the ontological difference, is between the ontical and the ontological, where the former is concerned with facts about entities and the latter is concerned with the meaning of Being, with how entities are intelligible as entities. Using this technical language, we can put the point about the forgetting of Being as such by saying that the history of Western thought is characterized by an ‘onticization’ of Being (by the practice of treating Being as a being).

Let me ask you this: is any science concerned with the question of 'what it means to exist'? I would say that science qua natural philosophy, as distinct from metaphysics, doesn't ask that question; it starts with what exists, and 'what exists' can be defined in terms of something you can have an encounter with, something you can either see, or infer the existence of, on the basis of what you can see (where 'seeing' includes the use of instruments.)

(One notable exception to this - a case where scientists really did have to grapple with the question of 'what it means to exist' - was in the field of quantum physics in the 1920's and 30's and the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation'. I don't want to sidetrack the conversation into that intractable issue, other than to note it.)

So far as I can make sense of it, your distinction between "beings" and "objects" is just another way to express a distinction between "sentient things" and "nonsentient things" — Cabbage Farmer

According to materialism, only non-sentient things are real and sentient beings are supervenient on them. Whereas none of the traditional philosophies - theistic or Buddhistic - are materialist. So none of them accept that insentient things are fundamental.

I would distinguish animal rationality from the peculiar practice of giving and taking reasons. If we can understand the power of "reason" in terms of that practice of "reasoning", we might say it's a special form of the puzzling and problem-solving we have in common with nonhuman rational animals. — Cabbage Farmer

And I would say that is one of the misconceptions that arises from naturalising the human and thereby seeing them as continuous with other species; whereas, I would say that at the moment early h. sapiens was able to speak, reason, and grasp abstract ideas, then they crossed a chasm which separates them from their simian forbears.

Furthermore much of the 'furniture of reason' - the law of the excluded middle, non-contradiction, and so on -aren't a product of that process of evolution. The mind evolves to the point where it can discover them; it develops the capacity for higher forms of consciousness. But that is the kind of thing that Alfred Russel Wallace said; Darwin would never accept that. So now the dogma is, that language, rational thought, and so on, are no different in essence to 'peacock tails' (and that, from the very man who charges money to belong to an Institute for Science and Reason.)

Isn't it obvious that animals perceive and act on the basis of generic concepts? That they react -- and learn to react, and react intelligently -- in similar ways to similar things, and in different ways to different things? — Cabbage Farmer

No, they react to stimuli. Intelligent animals react intelligently - there is some ability at problem-solving and generalisation. But try and explain a prime, or multiplication.

Can't we train [animals] to sort or select on the basis of generic similarities and differences? — Cabbage Farmer

You should read about the touching story of Nim Chimpsky.

I think chimp studies come closest - but it's not that close.

Incidentally same day I wrote the above, a published philosopher, Roger Scruton, penned an OP on the theme of human exceptionalism in the NY Times.

I am fairly confident that the picture painted by the evolutionary psychologists is true. But I am also confident that it is not the whole truth, and that it leaves out of account precisely the most important thing, which is the human subject.

Reader comments are mainly against him, from what I can discern.