Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Look. Suppose I made a copy of you who was a zombie. He acted like
you
> in every way, but he had no experiences, no qualia, etc.
>
> Would he believe he was a zombie? No. He'd be just like you: he'd
insist
> that qualia are real, that he is having an undeniable internal
experience
> right now, etc. If I asked that zombie "how do you know you're not a
> zombie?" what would he tell me?
>
I love the zombie meme. It is great fun to kick around. Here are some
places
to go play:
General Web Collections:
"Zombies on the web" http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/zombies.html
"Zombies Invade Philosophy!"
http://members.aol.com/lshauser/zomboid.html
Symposium on "Conversations with zombies"
http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_2_4.html
Pro:
Thomas W. Polger, "ZOMBIES EXPLAINED"
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~dennconf/ThomasWPolger'sPaper.html
David Chalmers, "The possibility of zombies"
http://www.ai.sri.com/~connolly/psyche-list-archive/1995/0283.html
David Chalmers, "Self-ascription without qualia: A case-study"
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/goldman.html
Con:
Daniel C. Dennett, "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies"
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/unzombie.htm
Nigel J.T. Thomas, "Zombie Killer"
http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/nthomas/zom-abs.htm
Brent E. Silby, "On the Conceivability of Zombies"
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/7551/silby010.html
Given that most of you know that I am fond of Dan Dennett, and have read
my
comments about the 'q' word, you will be expecting me to declare
something
like, "a false premise implies any conclusion" or the short form I use
for my
kids, "if four were five, pigs could fly." However, I am going to come
out,
right here on the extro list, and state that I believe in zombies, 100%.
Having made this declaration of faith, I am going to go on into new (I
think)
philosophical ground by stating that the 100% means everybody. Yes, I
believe
that you, me, everyone else, and everything else are zombies. The
sneaky
thing about this zombieism is that it is relative, such that, you do not
see
that you are a zombie, but you do see that creatures that are
sufficiently
simpler than you (to the point that you can simulate them) are zombies.
So it
is easy to see that a rock is a zombie, because you can simulate its
thought
process without much trouble, and see that it is not conscious. A
bacterium
is a bit more difficult, and an ant is still quite a task, but you can
see
that they are zombies. This goes for all the AI programs we have built
so
far.
Now when we get to people, it is just too difficult to run the
simulation at
this time to prove that they are zombies. However, in a few years I
expect to
be able to go to my neighborhood SI and start to ask about this. I
expect the
SI to stop me right there and tell me that it has run my life as a high
speed
simulation while I was approaching, and knows the question I am going to
ask,
and the answer is, "Yes, you are a zombie." Of course, it will think
that it is not.
So, there it is. I think you will find my theory of "Zombie Relativity"
to be
just as testable as any other zombie theory, and to have just as much
explanatory value.
-Ken