A p-zombie is, by definition, physically identical to and physically indistinguishable from another individual who has conscious experiences, yet does not itself have those experiences. It's not clear to me that this makes more sense to physics, particularly when one considers the p-zombie and its conscious twin both being asked the same questions about their conscious experiences.
You don't have any experiences? Weird, I see a colored-in world, enjoy the aroma of fresh coffee, don't enjoy the wet cold in winter, don't like being awakened up from an engaging dream, and feel a mild sense of irritation by humans pretending not be conscious because of their materialistic commitments.
I have "experiences", they just don't really have the properties that a naive interpretation of sensory data would entail.
> mild sense of irritation by humans pretending not be conscious because of their materialistic commitments.
Funny, because I feel a mild sense of irritation by humans pretending that their flawed senses yields some kind of direct observation of fundamental reality.
Yet you observe them and don't put down their pretense to your flawed senses. Which suggests that something fundamental is impinging on your senses, however flawed your understanding of the underlying fundamentals may be.
> Yet you observe them and don't put down their pretense to your flawed senses.
I do actually. I think this internal sense of subjective awareness is just as if not more flawed than our other senses, and it has yielded all sorts of false conclusions because people consider it more reliable. I liken it to the illusion of multitasking on single CPU computers. I think Graziano is on the right track:
Having read the paper he's rapidly on his way to materialistic solipsism - which is fine as a circle of hell, but it doesn't have any bearing on reality.
Otherwise, he really isn't saying anything new from a philosophical perspective. Both Aristotle and St. Thomas long ago had a distinction between the act of sensing something and the act of naming (that is knowing) it. And noted that we can reflect on both of them.
As he says:
> Third, an attention schema cannot explain how a [non-empirically verifiable, non-material phenomena] emerges from the brain ... It explains how we believe, think, and claim to have such things, but it does not posit that we actually have [non-material phenomena] inside us.
Having limited himself to only material things, he is necessarily constrained to only talk about epiphenomena if there is a non-material formal cause for the material phenomena.
But empiricism is not all that is - there is no empirical proof for empiricism, it requires something outside of itself to support itself.
> I have "experiences", they just don't really have the properties that a naive interpretation of sensory data would entail.
You don't think your experiences have sensations?
> Funny, because I feel a mild sense of irritation by humans pretending that their flawed senses yields some kind of direct observation of fundamental reality.
I never said anything about fundamental reality. I don't understand saying we're literal p-zombies. You have to explain away your sensations, dreams, inner dialog etc., by appealing to some theoretical commitment.
I'm not claiming what consciousness is, only that we have it.
> You don't think your experiences have sensations?
I don't think sensations are what they appear to be either. Eliminative materialism is very misunderstood.
> I never said anything about fundamental reality
But you did, by claiming that we have consciousness. The only reason you think you have consciousness is an alleged direct perception of subjective qualities.
There are only two real paths to reconciliating this with some form of scientifically sound materialism: panspychism, where subjective qualities permeate all of reality and we are perceiving some of them, or concluding that our perceptions are flawed and untrustworthy and so the subjective qualities we think we're perceiving are not real/illusory (eliminative materialism). Given the demonstrable flaws in all other perceptions, the most parsimonious position seems clear.
Of course, you could try to resurrect idealism, but idealism is very problematic.
> I don't understand saying we're literal p-zombies.
P-zombies believe they have consciousness, say they have it, write whole screeds about how absurd it is to claim they don't have it, but they don't have the subjective qualities as we've defined them. Sounds like a bullseye to me.
> But you did, by claiming that we have consciousness. The only reason you think you have consciousness is an alleged direct perception of subjective qualities.
We don't perceive subjective qualities, subjective qualities constitute our perceptions, dreams, memories and other conscious mental states.
> There are only two real paths to reconciliating this with some form of scientifically sound materialism:
If you have a commitment to doing so. I don't particularly, since materialism is model of how the world is constituted, abstracted from our shared conscious experiences. A very useful one with scientific backing. But nature is more than what we think it is (map/territory distinction).
And there are other options you omitted such as identity theory, strong emergence, property dualism, neutral monism and cognitive closure. They all have their drawbacks, but so does every attempt to account for consciousness.
> P-zombies believe they have consciousness, say they have it, write whole screeds about how absurd it is to claim they don't have it, but they don't have the subjective qualities as we've defined them. Sounds like a bullseye to me.
Yes, but by definition, they lack the subjective qualities of our experiences. I believe Chalmers coined the term to demonstrate the problem with physicalism.
> We don't perceive subjective qualities, subjective qualities constitute our perceptions, dreams, memories and other conscious mental states
And I say the opposite, that our sensory perceptions, dreams, memories and other mental states drive processes that lead us to conclude that we've perceived subjective qualities in them.
> And there are other options you omitted such as identity theory, strong emergence, property dualism, neutral monism and cognitive closure.
To make a long story short: identity theory, neutral monism and panpsychism are basically the same on the property that everything has subjective qualities in some sense, strong emergence is a speculative concept at best that fundamentally amounts to dualism, dualism can itself be easily dismissed as any dualist theory will have a non-dualist equivalent that posits fewer entities and so dualism will never be preferred, and cognitive closure is not even a candidate as regardless of our ability to know consciousness, it still must logically fall into one of the categories I outlined.
>> P-zombies believe they have consciousness, say they have it...
> Yes, but by definition, they lack the subjective qualities of our experiences.
And, also by definition, each p-zombie has (at least in an accessible possible world) a physically identical, but conscious, doppelgänger. Speaking and writing are physical processes, so in any circumstance where the conscious doppelgänger writes about the reality of its consciousness, the physically-identical p_zombie will do the same.
In the case of the p-zombie, there was a causal process leading to the physical act of writing in which consciousness played no part - and, ex hypothesi, the same physical causality must have played out in the zombie's conscious doppelgänger. In general, whatever explains the zombie's observable characteristics is sufficient to explain the doppelgänger's observable characteristics, and that explanation cannot be dependent on consciousness. In particular, if one accepts the possibility of p-zombies, one must logically accept that no explanation of consciousness, regardless of how thorough and well-supported it seems to be, has any basis in any facts about consciousness.
A consistent belief in zombies seems to lead to epiphenomenalism, the notion that we have conscious experiences, but they play no part in what happens to our bodies. Frank Jackson, author of the well-known "Mary the neuroscientist" thought experiment, came to the same conclusion, which is why it appeared in a paper with the title "Epiphenomenal Qualia."
For more on zombies, see Dennett, "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies."
Right, so one can reject the possibility of p-zombies. Consciousness plays a role in why we think we're conscious.
> In particular, if one accepts the possibility of p-zombies, one must logically accept that no explanation of consciousness, regardless of how thorough and well-supported it seems to be, has any basis in any facts about consciousness.
Although I disagree somewhat here, because logical isn't the same thing as physical. All you can say is there is no physical explanation of consciousness. But you could logically come up with one. For example, Chalmers has proposed an additional natural law connecting consciousness to information rich processes. Natural doesn't necessitate physical, if the universe contains more than physical stuff.
Or if physicalism is the wrong ontology of nature. I take the p-zombie and Mary Room arguments to be critiques of physicalism.
I feel you may be overlooking the significance of the final clause in the sentence you quoted. Sure, one could come up with some hand-wavy outline of a non-physical explanation of consciousness which does not clearly stand in contradiction with a belief in the possibility of zombies - panpsychists do it all the time! - but that final clause is about verification. If zombies are possible, then consciousness is not doing anything observable that is not attributable to just the physical processes of the physical body.
I suppose zombiephiles could simply posit some sort of non-physical observable, but then they would be just piling on further unsubstantiated claims for the sake of preserving the zombie-possibility doctrine. They could adopt epiphenomenalism, but that means accepting that the apparent causal effectiveness of qualia is illusory. They might adopt a solipsistic stance and say that their conscious experiences are the only things they can be sure about, but that comes with a hefty dose of motte-and-baileyism: you doubt the external world, but you're sure about zombies?
On Chalmers' "additional natural law connecting consciousness to information rich processes": Firstly, proposing something is cheap; turning it into a verifiable hypothesis and then following through is hard, and Chalmers et. al. seem to have no interest or intention of doing that, preferring instead to endlessly repeat their anti-physicalism arguments. Secondly, there is an attempt to redefine what's meant by 'physical'. The physical was originally defined by what's tangible to our senses, and as additional phenomena having a causal connection to the physical world were discovered, they were naturally subsumed into an expanded concept of it (gravity, for example, despite Newton's unease over doing so.) Chalmers is free to propose causes that lie outside of our current concept of the physical (and he's even free to look for them!) but to insist, without any justification, that they would be non-physical, is at least tendentious and probably question-begging. To settle the question, we need more facts, not more speculation.
I'm not sure what to make of your last sentence: the p-zombie and Mary Room arguments are indeed intended to be critiques of physicalism, but as you have rejected the possibility of zombies, I assume you do not take them both to be successful arguments. One thing about Mary's Room is that you can make essentially the same argument, but with Mary's prior knowledge including Chalmers' additional natural laws.
I'm not saying that there are no non-physical things. I am saying that certain philosophers are making seemingly tendentious arguments for declaring that consciousness is not a physical phenomenon. Once they get around to saying with sufficient specificity what they have in mind, then we will be able to see whether those claims are justified.
> And, also by definition, each p-zombie has (at least in an accessible possible world) a physically identical, but conscious, doppelgänger.
I agree that epiphenomenalism entails absurdities, therefore either all people in any possible world are p-zombies or p-zombies cannot exist in any world.
