Zombies

Since I touched on the subject of consciousness a bit in the last post, I thought a brief discussion of philosophical zombies (p-zombies for short) might be in order. The term is usually identified with the philosopher of consciousness David Chalmers, and is used as a defense of the notion that there is more to consciousness than just the sum of the brain's processing.

The argument goes something like this: It is possible to imagine a zombie that is an exact replica of a human being, EXCEPT that in the case of the zombie, there is no inner sense of personal experience i.e. consciousness. Therefore, since it is logically possible to imagine that such a zombie could actually exist, it follows there must be something more to consciousness which makes people qualitatively different from p-zombies. More precisely, it must be either non-physical, or perhaps it is the case that matter itself has a hidden aspect which explains the nature and existence of qualia (mind stuff), a concept known generally as 'matter dualism'.

Now, it might just be me, but right off the bat this argument smells an awful lot like the ontological argument for the existence of God, which comes down to necessitating His existence solely via the process of rhetoric. It also seems to beg the question, since it adds a mysterious aspect to a human being that isn't present in the p-zombie. But that conclusion is based solely on the unsupported presumption that mere brain processes aren't sufficient to achieve that inner state of awareness, which was the assertion under fire in the first place. It's circular, through and through.

Maybe the problem lies in granting the imagination powers it doesn't actually have. Sure, we can imagine what a zombie might be like on the surface; we've seen enough of them on television, after all. But it's another thing to say that we can fully imagine it, including all the trillions of biological processes involved in the complete replication of a human being, even sans that inner, invisible quality which is the subject under analysis.

For the physicalist, the answer is straightforwardly clear. There's simply no such thing as a p-zombie, and furthermore, within the parameters of the argument, there never will be. Why? Because an exact replica of a human being IS a human being, 'mind' and all. Frankly, this is one of those philosophical arguments that goes absolutely nowhere. Perhaps it should be called a p-argument, something that seemingly gets up and walks around, but contains no inner substance. What do you think?