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It is hard to know for dogs since they lack the language necessary to ponder. But if we have an intelligence with the necessary language to ponder, and we see t

It is hard to know for dogs since they lack the language necessary to ponder. But if we have an intelligence with the necessary language to ponder, and we see that it doesn't, then I think it is reasonable to assume that it doesn't. There's an interesting book that uses this argument to advance the idea that consciousness as we understand it now emerged 3000 years ago, as it was only then that humans started to make artworks about pondering on consciousness. (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind)

asfasgasg 8y ago
P-zombies do appear to ponder, though. They are in every way externally indistinguishable from normal people. That's the whole point of the thought experiment.
- fvdessen 8y ago
  P-Zombies are a logical impossibility; For p-zombies to be indistinguishable, you would need consciousness to have no effect on behaviour, which is clearly contradicted by the discussion we are having.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Exactly my thinking. I have no problem with intelligent, thinking, reasoning beings that aren't conscious and don't have qualia. But it's highly contrived that such beings would go around talking about consciousness and qualia.
  - asfasgasg 8y ago
    If it were actually as simple as that, don't you think this would have occurred to the greatest philosophical minds of our generation, and don't you think therefore that P-zombies would not be discussed? I'm all for bagging on philosophy as navel-gazing and generally unproductive, but you've taken it a step too far.
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      That is a reasonable response to fdvessen's one-sentence rebuttal, but with regard to the significance of p-zombies in general, an appeal to authority is much more effective when all the authorities agree, but this is not the case here, with Dennett being just the most visible counter-example. From popular articles on the issue of consciousness, you might think that most philosophers are opposed to physicalism or anything like it, but that is apparently not the case. It does not help that these same popular articles exaggerate and simplify - they make claims about the philosophical arguments that cannot be sustained by the arguments themselves. As I mentioned above, it is a misrepresentation to state that Chalmers' highly conditioned claim about the plausibility of p-zombies proves that no machine can have consciousness.
- dahauns 8y ago
  But that's where we end up at Dennett's zimboes (or even the Systems reply to the Chinese room, if you wanna go there :) ) - if they are completely indistinguishable, isn't our postulate "they don't have consciousness" completely meaningless and the conclusion simply begging the question?
  - mcguire 8y ago
    The fundamental problem is that I know I'm conscious because I feel conscious, but I have, by definition, no way of being sure you are conscious.
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      That line of thinking is essentially just solipsism. The only way to move on in knowing anything about the world is to make the methodological assumption that solipsism is false, without demanding proof. Faced with a computer program giving every appearance of self-aware consciousness, a neuroscientist can reasonably make the methodological assumption known as Occam's Razor to assume it is not somehow faking it until there is some evidence that it is. Note that the claim that it might somehow be faking it is not even a well-formed scientific hypothesis, and Chalmers offers no insight into how such a hypothesis might be formed.

asfasgasg 8y ago

P-zombies do appear to ponder, though. They are in every way externally indistinguishable from normal people. That's the whole point of the thought experiment.

fvdessen 8y ago
P-Zombies are a logical impossibility; For p-zombies to be indistinguishable, you would need consciousness to have no effect on behaviour, which is clearly contradicted by the discussion we are having.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Exactly my thinking. I have no problem with intelligent, thinking, reasoning beings that aren't conscious and don't have qualia. But it's highly contrived that such beings would go around talking about consciousness and qualia.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  If it were actually as simple as that, don't you think this would have occurred to the greatest philosophical minds of our generation, and don't you think therefore that P-zombies would not be discussed? I'm all for bagging on philosophy as navel-gazing and generally unproductive, but you've taken it a step too far.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    That is a reasonable response to fdvessen's one-sentence rebuttal, but with regard to the significance of p-zombies in general, an appeal to authority is much more effective when all the authorities agree, but this is not the case here, with Dennett being just the most visible counter-example. From popular articles on the issue of consciousness, you might think that most philosophers are opposed to physicalism or anything like it, but that is apparently not the case. It does not help that these same popular articles exaggerate and simplify - they make claims about the philosophical arguments that cannot be sustained by the arguments themselves. As I mentioned above, it is a misrepresentation to state that Chalmers' highly conditioned claim about the plausibility of p-zombies proves that no machine can have consciousness.
dahauns 8y ago
But that's where we end up at Dennett's zimboes (or even the Systems reply to the Chinese room, if you wanna go there :) ) - if they are completely indistinguishable, isn't our postulate "they don't have consciousness" completely meaningless and the conclusion simply begging the question?
- mcguire 8y ago
  The fundamental problem is that I know I'm conscious because I feel conscious, but I have, by definition, no way of being sure you are conscious.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    That line of thinking is essentially just solipsism. The only way to move on in knowing anything about the world is to make the methodological assumption that solipsism is false, without demanding proof. Faced with a computer program giving every appearance of self-aware consciousness, a neuroscientist can reasonably make the methodological assumption known as Occam's Razor to assume it is not somehow faking it until there is some evidence that it is. Note that the claim that it might somehow be faking it is not even a well-formed scientific hypothesis, and Chalmers offers no insight into how such a hypothesis might be formed.