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You would need some coordinating mechanism to ensure that all the p-zombies have the same hallucination. Including some detailed state machine that takes sense

You would need some coordinating mechanism to ensure that all the p-zombies have the same hallucination. Including some detailed state machine that takes sense inputs, and processes it to produce the qualia present in each waking moment, plus the valence attributed to each moment of qualia. Since a non-p-zombie can sit down and interrogate the details of their conscious experience, then write a book about it, which others read and agree upon the fine details - I find it hard to come up with a p-zombie substitute that wouldn’t just be consciousness by another name.

naasking 2y ago
> You would need some coordinating mechanism to ensure that all the p-zombies have the same hallucination You mean like talking and writing? As I said, how would p-zombies invent organized religion or other common spiritual beliefs that are false? > Since a non-p-zombie can sit down and interrogate the details of their conscious experience, then write a book about it, which others read and agree upon the fine details First, assuming you think that we're not p-zombies, not everybody agrees on the properties of consciousness even though we presumably have such an introspective ability. Therefore what you describe is a kind of fictional just-so story, and clearly doesn't actually happen in all cases. Second, when there is no fact of the matter as with p-zombies and consciousness, any argument about consciousness only has to be rhetorically persuasive, not factual. Why do so many people agree on the broad properties of ghosts, eg. translucency, pass through physical objects, etc. despite such things not existing? There is no fact of the matter being described, so people just need to like the story being told, or perhaps how it's told. In such a world, Chalmers and other philosophers of consciousness are just persuasive writers that spin a convincing just-so story connecting fictional internal states to real world observations, and people/p-zombies run with it thinking they learned something meaningful. Suffice it to say, I think this is uncomfortably close to our world.

naasking 2y ago

> You would need some coordinating mechanism to ensure that all the p-zombies have the same hallucination You mean like talking and writing? As I said, how would p-zombies invent organized religion or other common spiritual beliefs that are false? > Since a non-p-zombie can sit down and interrogate the details of their conscious experience, then write a book about it, which others read and agree upon the fine details First, assuming you think that we're not p-zombies, not everybody agrees on the properties of consciousness even though we presumably have such an introspective ability. Therefore what you describe is a kind of fictional just-so story, and clearly doesn't actually happen in all cases. Second, when there is no fact of the matter as with p-zombies and consciousness, any argument about consciousness only has to be rhetorically persuasive, not factual. Why do so many people agree on the broad properties of ghosts, eg. translucency, pass through physical objects, etc. despite such things not existing? There is no fact of the matter being described, so people just need to like the story being told, or perhaps how it's told. In such a world, Chalmers and other philosophers of consciousness are just persuasive writers that spin a convincing just-so story connecting fictional internal states to real world observations, and people/p-zombies run with it thinking they learned something meaningful. Suffice it to say, I think this is uncomfortably close to our world.