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I've identified a Philosophical Zombie. Someone contact the nobel committee, for I have refuted Physicalism. I knew your kind would finally let it slip. I jest

I've identified a Philosophical Zombie. Someone contact the nobel committee, for I have refuted Physicalism. I knew your kind would finally let it slip. I jest! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

StavrosK 10y ago
Huh?
eivarv 10y ago
What does inner voices have to do consciousness or sentience?
- StavrosK 10y ago
  I wonder if deaf-mute people have them.
  - n0us 10y ago
    not sure about deaf-mute people but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia is an area of interest for people who study philosophy of mind
  - grownseed 10y ago
    Perhaps not quite the answer you're after, but I was deaf as a child, though I was able to hear as a toddler and had therefore been exposed to spoken language before going deaf. I absolutely had inner voices while I was deaf, to a practically debilitating degree. The isolation inherent to deafness caused me to have strong inner dialogues, to develop a full world inside my head. I would often "go away" in my head, to the point that I was completely detached from and unresponsive to the physical world. It's apparently very unsettling to people standing right by you. My grandfather used to be fascinated by it, he'd say that I'd gone to my secret garden and that it was ok to leave me alone. Even after recovering my hearing years later, I kept this habit (whether it's good or bad is debatable). Over the years I developed a better hang of it and I can now trigger it mostly at will. The level of introspection that came with all this is rather hard to explain, though for all my quirks, I don't regret it one bit.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      Hmm, that's interesting. Was it voice as we know it, i.e. sounds? Inner voices are usually "sounds" instead of, say, images, but if you were deaf, what sounds did you know? Or was it because you could hear as a toddler?
armitron 10y ago
Rather than getting into dualism or non-intuitive philosophy/metaphysics, it's better to view humans as philosophical zombies from the get-go. Consciousness is not something we possess from birth, but a self-model that gradually emerges as the organism's cybernetic interactions with the environment increase. It then follows that any process that could disrupt this would lead to people with a not fully-developed sense of self or in other words partial PZombies.
- projektir 10y ago
  I strongly disagree that it's better since that's effectively implying solipsism and that there are no ethical considerations for doing bad things to people since they, well, don't really exist as agents-that-can-feel-things. Regardless of how hard it is to describe philosophically, and what kind of terms one tries to use, the fact that we process things we feel is the reality of our existence and it drastically modifies how we act.
  - voxic11 10y ago
    Why do you think entities without consciousness are not worthy of ethical consideration? Most animals and even human babies don't have it but most people still make a big deal about their ethical treatment.
    - projektir 10y ago
      I don't. I think there's a conflation where "zombie" is interpreted as "lacking consciousness". But the description I'm seeing in the Encyclopedia, as well as LW's definition and my own definition is closer to "entity that doesn't process what they feel" (doesn't feel what they process? Sees blindly? Blargh). > by definition there is ‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie Non-conscious animals are still often perceived as processing feelings and therefore capable of the concept of suffering. You could try imagining being a simple animal, even if it's as simple as a single signal that goes 1 and 0. Zombies don't process any feelings and ethical consideration in their address wouldn't make much sense, it's like being concerned with the ethics relating to a sun or a hydroelectric dam.

StavrosK 10y ago

Huh?

eivarv 10y ago

What does inner voices have to do consciousness or sentience?

StavrosK 10y ago
I wonder if deaf-mute people have them.
- n0us 10y ago
  not sure about deaf-mute people but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia is an area of interest for people who study philosophy of mind
- grownseed 10y ago
  Perhaps not quite the answer you're after, but I was deaf as a child, though I was able to hear as a toddler and had therefore been exposed to spoken language before going deaf. I absolutely had inner voices while I was deaf, to a practically debilitating degree. The isolation inherent to deafness caused me to have strong inner dialogues, to develop a full world inside my head. I would often "go away" in my head, to the point that I was completely detached from and unresponsive to the physical world. It's apparently very unsettling to people standing right by you. My grandfather used to be fascinated by it, he'd say that I'd gone to my secret garden and that it was ok to leave me alone. Even after recovering my hearing years later, I kept this habit (whether it's good or bad is debatable). Over the years I developed a better hang of it and I can now trigger it mostly at will. The level of introspection that came with all this is rather hard to explain, though for all my quirks, I don't regret it one bit.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Hmm, that's interesting. Was it voice as we know it, i.e. sounds? Inner voices are usually "sounds" instead of, say, images, but if you were deaf, what sounds did you know? Or was it because you could hear as a toddler?

armitron 10y ago

Rather than getting into dualism or non-intuitive philosophy/metaphysics, it's better to view humans as philosophical zombies from the get-go. Consciousness is not something we possess from birth, but a self-model that gradually emerges as the organism's cybernetic interactions with the environment increase. It then follows that any process that could disrupt this would lead to people with a not fully-developed sense of self or in other words partial PZombies.

projektir 10y ago
I strongly disagree that it's better since that's effectively implying solipsism and that there are no ethical considerations for doing bad things to people since they, well, don't really exist as agents-that-can-feel-things. Regardless of how hard it is to describe philosophically, and what kind of terms one tries to use, the fact that we process things we feel is the reality of our existence and it drastically modifies how we act.
- voxic11 10y ago
  Why do you think entities without consciousness are not worthy of ethical consideration? Most animals and even human babies don't have it but most people still make a big deal about their ethical treatment.
  - projektir 10y ago
    I don't. I think there's a conflation where "zombie" is interpreted as "lacking consciousness". But the description I'm seeing in the Encyclopedia, as well as LW's definition and my own definition is closer to "entity that doesn't process what they feel" (doesn't feel what they process? Sees blindly? Blargh). > by definition there is ‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie Non-conscious animals are still often perceived as processing feelings and therefore capable of the concept of suffering. You could try imagining being a simple animal, even if it's as simple as a single signal that goes 1 and 0. Zombies don't process any feelings and ethical consideration in their address wouldn't make much sense, it's like being concerned with the ethics relating to a sun or a hydroelectric dam.