9 ms·

P-zombies don't exist, so they are not a counterexample to anything. In fact, they cannot possibly exist, so they don't even point to the possibility of anythin

by Retra 12y ago

P-zombies don't exist, so they are not a counterexample to anything. In fact, they cannot possibly exist, so they don't even point to the possibility of anything interesting. >There's no reason to believe that consciousness is a necessary feature for an organism to respond to its environment in a survival-enhancing way. The reason to believe this is that systems with "consiousness" are a strict superset of systems with "responding to the environment." They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior. I have never heard anyone try to defend P-zomies unless they were simply unaware of what the word 'meaning' means, or how our words acquire meaning. If you know how this works, you should be able to easily see why P-zombies are a meaningless idea -- an incongruous hypothetical. (Like "what would we be talking about if I didn't exist?") Same goes for Searle's Chinese Room argument. If you assume something that is impossible, it is easy to conclude any ridiculous thing you like. P-zombies are impossible. They are not anymore useful than any other self-contained contradiction.

ForHackernews 12y ago
> In fact, they cannot possibly exist I don't understand how you can be so confident of this. How are you defining consciousness? How are you measuring it? What makes you believe with such emphatic certainty that I am a conscious being and not a p-zombie? (or, if you prefer, a bot that easily passes the Turing test) > They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior. That's what I'm saying, consciousness is not a "kind of behavior". There is nothing behavioral about your inner experience as a conscious entity.
- Retra 12y ago
  >I don't understand how you can be so confident of this. [...] How are you measuring it? What makes you believe with such emphatic certainty that I am a conscious being and not a p-zombie? Because p-zombies are self-contradictory. The definition of a p-zombie is a contradiction. It's like saying "suppose 1 = 2 and 1 != 2. Call this a p-zombie quality." When you suppose that the behavior of a thing is separate from the reality of a thing, you are failing to account for how the words 'behavior' and 'reality' acquire meaning -- through observation. They cannot be different because the processes that establish their meaning are identical. To suppose that a p-zombie could be different from a person, yet measurably identical in all aspects is a contradiction. >How are you defining consciousness? There is a big difference between meaning and definition. I don't have to define consciousness, I only need to know what it means. I only need to identify the use-cases where it is appropriate. >There is nothing behavioral about your inner experience as a conscious entity. Yes there is: behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity.
  - ForHackernews 12y ago
    > yet measurably identical in all aspects > behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity. You've shifted your definition of "behavior" now. I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. For purposes of the thought experiment, I certainly don't care if the p-zombie has a slightly different brain-wave. Let's say they're permanently sleepwalking, then. I really feel like you're hand-waving at supposed contradictions here, rather than engaging with why this is a difficult problem. If you firmly reject the idea of a p-zombie, let's leave that aside for now. Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity?
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Does this unit have a soul? I answer, yes.
    - nicklaf 12y ago
      Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/
    - deciplex 12y ago
      > Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity? I don't even know that other humans are conscious entities. At least not with the level of rigor you seem to be demanding I apply to this hypothetical robot. However, if you and I were to agree upon a series of test that, if passed by a human, we would assume for the sake of argument that that human was a conscious entity, and if we then subjected your robot to those same tests and it also passed, then I would also assume the robot was also conscious. You might have noticed I made a hidden assumption in the tests though, which is that in establishing the consciousness or not-consciousness of a human they do not rely on the observable fact that the subject is a human. Is that reasonable?
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I think the TL;DR of the argument against p-zombies goes like this: if you have two things that are by definition indistinguishable by any possible measurement even in principle, they are by this very definition the same. Since there is, by definition, no way to tell if someone is a p-zombie or not, the introduction of the term "p-zombie" doesn't make any sense at all, and therefore why would you ever do that? The people who argue p-zombies often do this because they want to keep consciousness as something fundamentally different than the material world, something inaccessible to science. But it's wrong. Even magic is accessible to science. By the very definition and idea of science, anything that has any causal influence on the observable universe can be studied and is in the domain of science.
  - foldr 12y ago
    That's a very bad argument. Indistinguishability doesn't entail identity. One obvious way to show this is to note that only the latter is a transitive relation. In other words, if A = B and B = C, then A = C; but if A is indistinguishable from B and B is indistinguishable from C, it doesn't follow that A is indistinguishable from C.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      It doesn't? Why? We're talking about indistinguishability in principle, by any possible form of measurement/observation.
      - foldr 12y ago
        Yes, I know. Indistinguishability in that sense is not a transitive relation. Imagine e.g. that we have detectors which can distinguish As from Cs, but no detectors which can distinguish As from Bs or Bs from Cs. There is no contradiction in that scenario. In contrast, there is no consistent scenario in which A = B and B = C but A != C.
        TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Imagine that we have bunch of As, Bs and Cs in one place. Start testing every one against another. You'll quickly discover two groups - An A tests positive with other As and Bs, but tests negative with Cs. A C tests negative with As, but tests positive with Bs and other Cs. B is the one that tests positive with everything. Here, I distinguished them all. Doesn't that contradict your argument about indistinguishability not being transitive in general?

by Retra 12y ago

ForHackernews 12y ago

> In fact, they cannot possibly exist I don't understand how you can be so confident of this. How are you defining consciousness? How are you measuring it? What makes you believe with such emphatic certainty that I am a conscious being and not a p-zombie? (or, if you prefer, a bot that easily passes the Turing test) > They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior. That's what I'm saying, consciousness is not a "kind of behavior". There is nothing behavioral about your inner experience as a conscious entity.

Retra 12y ago
>I don't understand how you can be so confident of this. [...] How are you measuring it? What makes you believe with such emphatic certainty that I am a conscious being and not a p-zombie? Because p-zombies are self-contradictory. The definition of a p-zombie is a contradiction. It's like saying "suppose 1 = 2 and 1 != 2. Call this a p-zombie quality." When you suppose that the behavior of a thing is separate from the reality of a thing, you are failing to account for how the words 'behavior' and 'reality' acquire meaning -- through observation. They cannot be different because the processes that establish their meaning are identical. To suppose that a p-zombie could be different from a person, yet measurably identical in all aspects is a contradiction. >How are you defining consciousness? There is a big difference between meaning and definition. I don't have to define consciousness, I only need to know what it means. I only need to identify the use-cases where it is appropriate. >There is nothing behavioral about your inner experience as a conscious entity. Yes there is: behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  > yet measurably identical in all aspects > behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity. You've shifted your definition of "behavior" now. I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. For purposes of the thought experiment, I certainly don't care if the p-zombie has a slightly different brain-wave. Let's say they're permanently sleepwalking, then. I really feel like you're hand-waving at supposed contradictions here, rather than engaging with why this is a difficult problem. If you firmly reject the idea of a p-zombie, let's leave that aside for now. Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Does this unit have a soul? I answer, yes.
  - nicklaf 12y ago
    Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/
  - deciplex 12y ago
    > Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity? I don't even know that other humans are conscious entities. At least not with the level of rigor you seem to be demanding I apply to this hypothetical robot. However, if you and I were to agree upon a series of test that, if passed by a human, we would assume for the sake of argument that that human was a conscious entity, and if we then subjected your robot to those same tests and it also passed, then I would also assume the robot was also conscious. You might have noticed I made a hidden assumption in the tests though, which is that in establishing the consciousness or not-consciousness of a human they do not rely on the observable fact that the subject is a human. Is that reasonable?
TeMPOraL 12y ago
I think the TL;DR of the argument against p-zombies goes like this: if you have two things that are by definition indistinguishable by any possible measurement even in principle, they are by this very definition the same. Since there is, by definition, no way to tell if someone is a p-zombie or not, the introduction of the term "p-zombie" doesn't make any sense at all, and therefore why would you ever do that? The people who argue p-zombies often do this because they want to keep consciousness as something fundamentally different than the material world, something inaccessible to science. But it's wrong. Even magic is accessible to science. By the very definition and idea of science, anything that has any causal influence on the observable universe can be studied and is in the domain of science.
- foldr 12y ago
  That's a very bad argument. Indistinguishability doesn't entail identity. One obvious way to show this is to note that only the latter is a transitive relation. In other words, if A = B and B = C, then A = C; but if A is indistinguishable from B and B is indistinguishable from C, it doesn't follow that A is indistinguishable from C.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    It doesn't? Why? We're talking about indistinguishability in principle, by any possible form of measurement/observation.
    - foldr 12y ago
      Yes, I know. Indistinguishability in that sense is not a transitive relation. Imagine e.g. that we have detectors which can distinguish As from Cs, but no detectors which can distinguish As from Bs or Bs from Cs. There is no contradiction in that scenario. In contrast, there is no consistent scenario in which A = B and B = C but A != C.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Imagine that we have bunch of As, Bs and Cs in one place. Start testing every one against another. You'll quickly discover two groups - An A tests positive with other As and Bs, but tests negative with Cs. A C tests negative with As, but tests positive with Bs and other Cs. B is the one that tests positive with everything. Here, I distinguished them all. Doesn't that contradict your argument about indistinguishability not being transitive in general?