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Suppose a universe absolutely identical to ours. Suppose then a Earth-like world inhabited by zombie-like creaures (they can be depicted as conceived by Chalmers), but having a one-minute-long “flash” of consciousness. So, each day and for one minute they are absolutely conscious of all the things of the universe. For the the rest of the day they behave like us but conceivably not be conscious of nothing they do (they (in zombie modality as in conscious modality) eat, sleep, work, read, run, etc.). To be more clear: they are consciuos from 12.00 to 12.01 then zombified from 12.01 to 12.02 of the day after then conscious from 12.02 to 12.03 etc. Suppose now that they perceive the one-minute after one minute consciousness as a continue flows of sketch:

1) Can they manage a kind of cause-effect mechanism underlying the one-minute sketches each attached to others in a stream-like flows of imagines?

2) Can they after some observations set-up an idea of the world they inhabit?

3) What kind of laws they can possibly conceive?

4) Can they discover the actual laws of the universe (the laws of Nature that we know)?

5) If so, we have to think some kind of “Invariance of the laws of Nature”?

Giorgio Castriota Scanderbeg
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    I'm pretty sure that, if we're to take the conception of zombies absolutely seriously, in that one minute of consciousness they would have the same experiences the zombies "look like they have". That is, there is no process of a sudden "bursting into existence" after which the experience is disoriented and has a minute to figure everything out. Rather, if zombie Newton is conscious one minute a day, for that minute he'll be thinking whatever it was that our Newton thought. I'm not sure how this relates to invariance of laws, though. (Welcome to Philosophy.SE, by the way) – commando Oct 08 '16 at 17:41
  • Many of us sleep for 8 hours a day and then have a 16 hour long “flash of consciousness". Other than the fanciful frequency how are your zombies different from us? – Conifold Oct 09 '16 at 00:45
  • Yes, I thought of it, but I find very hard to imagine a world as a continous flows of imagines absolutely incoherent (from my "total human" point of view) – Giorgio Castriota Scanderbeg Oct 11 '16 at 10:30
  • This question: http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/6979/does-anyone-assert-the-real-existence-of-p-zombies is motivated by the opposite consideration. We, non-zombies, pretty regularly go through phases of not being conscious. – Dave Oct 25 '16 at 13:24
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    @GiorgioCastriotaScanderbeg It sounds like you're under the impression consciousness does something beyond "an awareness of one's circumstance". What is it you mean by Consciousness? – NationWidePants Dec 14 '16 at 11:47

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The claim that we can conceive of zombies (Chalmers stakes a great deal on this claim) has problems. In the "zombified" state the zombies are acting normally, that is, as conscious humans would. They are functionally indistinguishable from conscious humans at all times. That is the whole point: it is an elaborate evocation of the "problem of other minds." So the zombies do not then have any problems with developing culture, philosophy, science and so on while "zombified." If they did (shuffling around like Frankenstein's monster, say) then the counterfactual would not do the work it is supposed to do.

Anderson Brown
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