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A philosophical zombie is someone who strongly insists behaviorally they are conscious even though they don't actually have any conscious experiences at all. How likely is it that you, the reader, are actually a philosophical zombie?

Jason
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    This looks like a statement rather than a question. – tkruse Jul 18 '20 at 15:49
  • Very likely -- most people are. We are discouraged in our childhood from developing our humanity, our conscious, rational Self. The pressure is so intense, most kids relinquish control to their subconscious "animal" mind. They stop thinking for themselves. Instead, they begin experiencing thoughts as their subconsciousness is doing the thinking for them. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 18 '20 at 18:41
  • @YuriAlexandrovich you’re making an empirical claim which is not supported by any evidence as far as I know. Moreover P-zombies are not like animals, as it is widely acknowledged that many animals (especially mammals) have qualia. It’s got nothing to do with being self aware or rational. You even refer to these as “experiencing” something which by definition is not possible for P-zombies. – Era Jul 19 '20 at 19:29
  • @Era -- you are correct, having qualia does NOT make a human. What makes humans unique, and what p-Zombies is lacking, is having a conscious, rational Self. And it should be easy to tell whether you have it or not. When you have it, you *are* it, and you think for yourself (as in Descartes' "I think, therefore I am", or Socrates' "To find your Self, you must think yourself"). However, if the person ..... – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 19 '20 at 20:03
  • .... when the person is *experiencing* "thoughts", when they do not have 100% control of their thought process, deciding what to think and when... Well, that means it is *their subconsciousness* that is doing the thinking *for* them. And it is making all decisions *for* them. In that case, the person has a work to do -- they need to wrestle control back from their subconsciousness. And it might not give it up easily -- not because it wants it for itself (it never did in the first place). But it would probably want you to prove yourself worthy of the driver seat. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 19 '20 at 20:19
  • @Era -- as for the evidence, the examples of humans acting irrationally are too numerous to mention. Like why again we had to kill 50 million ppl during WWII? What crucial insight we had learned that we didn't know already? Or were you asking for the ***evidence to the opposite***, that humans haven't always been the blood-thirsty wetiko's? Well, there is actually plenty of evidence to that as well. For example, there is zero evidence of human on human violence for 200-300 thousands years of human history, until 8,000 to 12,000 BCE, when.... – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 19 '20 at 20:55
  • .... when the first mass graves started popping up out of nowhere, coinciding with the transitions to agriculture. But it wasn't the agriculture or living in a sedentary society that would trigger (a local, at first) p-Zombie apocalypse. As recently as 2000 BCE there were whole civilizations -- early Minoan and the Indus Valley civilization are two major ones -- where humans weren't turning p-Zombies due to, as I would suggest, just ONE vital social arrangement that their p-Zombie contemporaries -- in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia -- were lacking. Our current societies also do not have it. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 19 '20 at 21:20
  • Just to give you some idea of what human civilization looked like, Indus Valley civilization for example. A bronze age contemporary of Ancient Egypt and Sumer (peaked at 2600 to 1900 BCE), it was much larger than the other tho combined, in terms of population and territory. Remarkably well-planned cities and buildings, high-quality construction, sanitation, standardization (weights, bricks), personal IDs issued by a centralized authority. An excellent diet, skilled in crafts, trade, including maritime with Sumer... And yet -- they had no rulers. No kings or no emperors, NO wars or violence.... – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 19 '20 at 22:05
  • ... *they didn't even have weapons*! Nothing to kill or die for? And no religion too -- imagine NO social hierarchy and NO wealth concentration. No kings, but no democracy either -- NO government bureaucracy, NO courts, NO law enforcement, __*and no laws*__; and, quite possibly, no writing... That rather annoying aversion to writing is, apparently, a common trait of them lazy enlightened bums. Yes, we are looking at you, Jesus. And Socrates. And Mohammed, and Buddha to name a few.. You'd hope that a stray Sumerian would wander in the premises and compile an account of life in Indus Valley... – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 19 '20 at 22:36
  • I would just take the compatibilist stance. We are both completely determined 'zombies', and it is subjectively useful for us to create a mental model in which it provides functional subjective utility to consider ourselves deciding individuals, and given the limited information we have about others, for us to model them in that way too. – CriglCragl Jul 19 '20 at 23:14
  • ... I mean Sumerians did have writing, didn't they? And with the extensive maritime trade between ICV and Sumer, many ICV traders and craftsmen were living in Sumer as individuals and in ICV trade colonies in Mesopotamia. But no dice -- no evidence of Sumerian ever visiting the Indus Valley. Which could imply a "no p-Zombies allowed" policy of a sort, but that theory has many holes in it. More likely, a Sumerian ending up in ICV would not stay Sumerian for long. Just like in 17-18th century North America the European settlers have [noticed something rather peculiar](https://nyti.ms/2ZGtlFR). – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 19 '20 at 23:23
  • I mentioned one key social policy that ensures that children would fully develop their humanity, instead of turning p-Zombies. That social policy was to keep the tribal structure and tribal polyamory after moving into cities. A hunter-gatherer tribe was *one polyamorous family* (no more than 100 members, 50 on average). Growing up in a tribe a child would never be alone, having many dozens of parents, grandparents, and siblings around. This would ensure they __a__) feeling *safe and protected* and having the crucial guidance they need in order to develop their conscious, rational Self. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 20 '20 at 18:07
  • @YuriAlexandrovich You wrote a lot just to misunderstand P-zombies again. It’s got nothing to do with rationality or having conscious control over thoughts/actions. It’s purely about the presence or absence of qualia, i.e. any kind of subjective experience whatsoever. P-zombies are just part of a thought experiment and are not generally considered a real thing in the actual world. Consider reading Chalmers’ and Dennett’s very influential writings on this topic. – Era Jul 22 '20 at 02:10
  • @Era -- and can only repeat that you are wrong, again. Not having a subjective experience does not make a zombie, it makes them dead -- that's what they become when they are unable to react on stimuli anymore. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 22 '20 at 02:41
  • *__Qualia__ is an inherent property of __any__ neural net*. It's what Mary had when saw the color red for the first time. Seeing a color, however, does not make her human any more than it makes a butterfly or anything else than can perceive colors a human. It is what Mary was doing in the lab, explaining the nature of the color -- *__that__* is what makes her human. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 22 '20 at 02:43
  • As for a p-Zombie, it is someone who only pretends to be human. The human in them is asleep, the part that trying to pass as a human is raw neural net, deep learning AI. Or, simply put, a chatbot. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 22 '20 at 02:53
  • You’re making a judgment about the thing the P-zombie thought experiment is about rather than taking the thought experiment itself for what it is. Many people think P-zombies are impossible for reasons like the ones you stated, i.e. it’s not physiologically possible for an organism to be alive in that state. I’m not disagreeing with your philosophical stance, I’m just correcting you on terminology. Again, read Chalmers for the prime example of what P-zombies are and what motivates the thought experiment. – Era Jul 22 '20 at 08:49

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I am sure that I am not a philosophical zombie -- I have qualia, there is something it is like to be me. The problem is that that is exactly what a philosophical zombie would say, so it's not clear why my saying that should convince you that I am not a philosophical zombie. Unless you don't believe in philosophical zombies anyway. And the concept of a philosophical zombie does seem problematic, in that I appear to rely on my conscious experiences to make such statements as the above, and it seems unlikely that something without conscious experiences could consistently do the same. (Of course, the concept of a philosophical zombie was not introduced to argue that such things are out there, but rather to clarify some of the relevant concepts, for which it is really useful.)

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  • Again, it's not about qualia. Having qualia does NOT make a human. What makes humans unique, and what p-Zombies are lacking, is having a conscious, rational Self. More in my comments to the question. – Yuri Zavorotny Jul 20 '20 at 18:11