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Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Chalmers in action live at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He didn’t talk about zombies, telling us instead his thoughts about the so-called Singularity, the alleged moment when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, resulting in either all hell breaking loose or the next glorious stage in human evolution — depending on whether you typically see the glass as half empty or half full. The talk made clear to me what Chalmers’ problem is (other than his really bad hair cut): he reads too much science fiction, and is apparently unable to snap out of the necessary suspension of disbelief when he comes back to the real world. Let me explain.

singularity chalmers philosophy mind zombies

David Chalmers is a famous philosopher of mind. His fame rests in great part on his 1996 book, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. It’s too bad that the crucial idea behind the book, dualism, is hopelessly flawed, and -- more surprising yet -- that Chalmers got away with one of the most idiotic thought experiments ever, which a lot of people inexplicably seem to think is oh so very clever. This all came back to (my) mind because of a recent article in Philosophy Now by Rebecca Hanrahan (an assistant professor of philosophy at Whitman College in Washington state), who’s finally got the chutzpah to point out the obvious, telling it like it is about Chalmers’ famous “zombie argument.”

philosophy mind zombies

"The zombist fails to prove that materialism is untenable."

zombies conceivability consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"I have argued that Kirk's efforts do not succeed, but perhaps there are other ways to show that zombies are no more possible than square circles, or colourless green ideas."

zombies AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"I shall argue that, when certain implications of the zombie concept are carefully examined, zombies are revealed as either failing to support the zombiphile argument, or as simply impossible, conceptually contradictory. "

zombies consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"I have a plan. Other zombies -- good (qualia eating) zombies -- can battle their evil (behavior eating) cousins to a standoff. Perhaps even defeat them. Familiar zombies and supersmart zombies resist disqualefication, making the world safe, again, for materialism. Behavioristic materialism. Alas for functionalism, good zombies still eat programs. Alas for identity theory, all zombies -- every B movie fan knows -- eat brains."

zombies consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"A robot that is functionally indistinguishable from us may or may not be a mindless Zombie. There will never be any way to know, yet its functional principles will be as close as we can ever get to explaining the mind."

zombies consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"The problem of `conscious inessentialism' is examined in the literature, and an argument is presented that the presence of consciousness is indeed marked by a behavioural difference, but that this should be looked for at the _cultural_ level of speech communities." Published in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1 (2), 1994, pp. 196-200.

zombies consciousness qualia AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"Zombies are hypothetical creatures of the sort that philosophers have been known to cherish. A zombie is physically identical to a normal human being, but completely lacks conscious experience. Zombies look and behave like the conscious beings that we know and love, but 'all is dark inside.' There is nothing it is like to be a zombie."

zombies consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"The time honoured star of the B grade horror flick – the Zombie, the brain-eating living dead, a body without a soul - has entered the world of philosophy. The Zombie sits at the centre of a charged debate about the mystery of human consciousness. Whilst you can be confident that you’re not a Zombie, how can you be sure about the next person? Your mother, neighbour or boss? Join two of the world’s great philosophers of the mind, Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers, and a B grade movie maker...it's zombie mania."

zombies consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"Must we talk about zombies? Apparently we must. There is a powerful and ubiquitous intuition that computational, mechanistic models of consciousness, of the sort we naturalists favor, must leave something out–something important. Just what must they leave out? The critics have found that it’s hard to say, exactly: qualia, feelings, emotions, the what-it’s-likeness (Nagel) or the ontological subjectivity (Searle) of consciousness."

zombies consciousness qualia Dennett AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"Zombies are exactly like us in all physical respects but have no conscious experiences: by definition there is ënothing it is likeí to be a zombie. Yet zombies behave like us, and some even spend a lot of time discussing consciousness. This disconcerting fantasy helps to make the problem of phenomenal consciousness vivid, especially as a problem for physicalism."

zombies consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

"Zombies are stipulated to be creatures that are in some way identical to human beings-and thus, in some sense, indistinguishable from human beings-but which lack consciousness. Zombies are at least behaviorally identical to human beings or other conscious creatures, and they may also be like us in other ways."

zombies consciousness AZB

in list: Androids, Zombies and Brains

A fun movie script from Overcoming Bias about philosophical zombies. "SCIENTIST: The zombie disease eliminates consciousness without changing the brain in any way. We've been trying to understand how the disease is transmitted. Our conclusion is that, since the disease attacks dual properties of ordinary matter, it must, itself, operate outside our universe. We're dealing with an epiphenomenal virus." Okay, remember, it's just a movie.

zombies consciousness qualia philosophy grue

Bring out your [un]dead! After all my narrowly focused posts on the topic, it's time for a "big picture" review of the zombie argument against physicalism. (Philosophy, et cetera)

mind qualia philosophy zombies materialism grue