"The very concept of p-zombies illustrates this a priori refusal to admit any possible evidence whatsoever of consciousness. Another person could simply decide

"The very concept of p-zombies illustrates this a priori refusal to admit any possible evidence whatsoever of consciousness. Another person could simply decide that I am in fact a p-zombie and lock themselves in a closed system of thought out of which there is no path to demonstrating that I "experience" anything at all." This is a good point and makes the problem interesting in an additional way. We (I) assume something like p-zombies exist in non-human consciousness, dogs and cats for example. It's like something to be a dog. How far down do we want to go ? Frogs? I'll bite; it's like something to be a frog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8IY2eTBqd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8IY2eTBqd8 But here's a counter to the p-zombies argument, OK? The p-zombies argument is usually taken to mean there comes a point where what has been created is so indistinguishable from "real" people, ala Ex Machina, that arguing over it is a form of ideologically motivated perversion. Let me turn that round and say that the p-zombie argument is (accidentally) making the following strong claim- it is impossible to build a machine which in every way acts human but has no experience. That's a very very strong claim on this universe. I wouldn't take the bet, because someone's going to do it. But if someone is going to do it, how can we tell when they have or they haven't? The Turing Test is outdated (as I see it) and anyway already passed for some judges ( re: ELIZA). To me, this circles back to the original problem. We can't distinguish between the high probability that someone can eventually create an actual zombie and "real" experience-having artificial intelligence, and why is that ? The issue is just another form of the basic problem- we don't have the conceptual framework to get our minds around what experience is. Our basic assumptions may be off. Instead of quarks et.al. being the basic building blocks of matter and matter of brains and brains of consciouness, some people take experience to be the most basic building block of the universe. This was my conclusion and I thought it would just brand me as an eccentric so I never pushed it, but now I see it's being kicked around by people with careers. Another assumption is that experience/consciousness is comprehensible to the level of scientific causality/reality we're aiming at, (let's just shorthand it to "ultimate reality"), because there are separate, distinct things in the first place. But what if separate things is not a fact about ultimate reality? What if they're more like a hardwired perceptual compulsion we can't escape? Then we might very well find truly insoluable mysteries on the foundational tier of our conceptual scaffolding, because none of the "things" we think about are real in the first place. Things which don't exist, don't have to "add up". So this would mean our minds and ultimate reality are just not made for each other, even as that reality directly impinges on our personal daily lives in ways we can and do readily experience and talk about. It seems like the most far fetched and deflating hypothesis possible, but consider we'd merely be joining the rest of the animal kingdom in this regards.