>The logical reason is that there is another universe exactly like this one which means the zombies are exactly like humans but lack qualia. This means they believe they have qualia and say that they have qualia when you ask them.

I suppose that's fair enough, but personally I'd say there's a tacit assumption in any thought experiment that causality is 'reset' and the hypothetical world plays out according to whatever has been changed in the thought experiment to begin with. In which case these p-zombies wouldn't believe they have qualia.

>Of course it can. We can literally record you experiencing the redness of red.

>I have. He makes no sense. Like you he keeps making insane and completely unsubstantiated claims like "qualia can't be detected" when we can clearly detect you experiencing qualia.

What magical machine is this that records my qualia? You can measure my brain activity all you want but that's not the same thing. Neural correlates of consciousness are not consciousness.

The insanity here is the inability to understand what I'm talking about when I refer to the most fundamental aspect of human existence. My only options are to believe that physicalism has resulted in some sort of collective self-denying delusion (a la Daniel Dennett) or that philosophical zombies actually exist, are among us, and are debating philosophy of mind with us. I can't tell which one I prefer.

>Given all of that how can you be sure I am not experiencing the qualia of echolocation?

Because I'm sure you would've told me by now if you were lmao

>Arguing about the definition of words nobody can agree with. That's philosophy in a nutshell.

Truer words have never been spoken. Anyway it's far past my bedtime, gotta call it a night/morning. Have a good one 🤙

>Because a zombie has no qualia and I know I do have qualia because I'm currently and constantly directly experiencing qualia.

The zombie believes he has qualia.

>According to whom?

According to the premise of the experiment.

>? That's not part of the thought experiment and I see no logical reason to assume that.

The logical reason is that there is another universe exactly like this one which means the zombies are exactly like humans but lack qualia. This means they believe they have qualia and say that they have qualia when you ask them.

>Then I'm afraid I must conclude you yourself are a p-zombie :)

Go right ahead. I am sure it fits in your worldview already.

>Neural correlates of consciousness are physical and can be measured but consciousness (qualia) itself is not and cannot.

Of course it can. We can literally record you experiencing the redness of red.

>But this is a whole argument by itself. I'd recommend reading Chalmer's The Conscious Mind for a better understanding.

I have. He makes no sense. Like you he keeps making insane and completely unsubstantiated claims like "qualia can't be detected" when we can clearly detect you experiencing qualia.

>The article in the post we're arguing in the comments section of should answer this question.

It doesn't. An answer isn't just something somebody says. There has to be some sort of evidence.

>What these things do is convert that information into a form we can access.

Exactly.

>But we can never experience the quale of bat echolocation, or bird magnetoreception, or shark electroreception, et cetera.

why are you so sure of that. According to you qualia is unmeasurable, undetectable, completely subjective, and is not material. Given all of that how can you be sure I am not experiencing the qualia of echolocation?

>'Philosophy' has never been properly defined either, but here we are.

Arguing about the definition of words nobody can agree with. That's philosophy in a nutshell.

>And why was his argument faulty in your opinion?

He claims the materialist position is that conscious activity is directly correlated to the amount of neural activity. I don't think any actually says or believes that, so it's a strawman.

A great deal of brain activity is repressive/controlling. So it's no surprise that if LSD reduces the overall level of neural activity that the conscious experience of a person might be greater(whatever that means).

Also it's not just a reduction in neural activity it's a change in neural activity with there being an increase level of activity around signals moving between different regions of the brain.

>How?

Because a zombie has no qualia and I know I do have qualia because I'm currently and constantly directly experiencing qualia.

>The zombie thinks they have qualia.

>No you wouldn't. You'd talk about it just as much because you would think you have qualia.

According to whom? That's not part of the thought experiment and I see no logical reason to assume that. I've spent this entire discussion establishing exactly why that wouldn't be the case. The zombie would only think it has qualia (assuming it understands the correct definition of qualia and hasn't been lied to) if it actually does have qualia and thus it wouldn't be a zombie.

>Honestly it makes no sense to me.

Then I'm afraid I must conclude you yourself are a p-zombie :)

>But they are physical. Your perceptions are physical. Your feelings about your perceptions are also physical.

>But it's physical. Your subjective experience can be measured in a machine by examining your brain activity.

>Subjective experience is physical and there is no need for a special word to talk about it.

Neural correlates of consciousness are physical and can be measured but consciousness (qualia) itself is not and cannot. But this is a whole argument by itself. I'd recommend reading Chalmer's The Conscious Mind for a better understanding.

>Why? Why is this definition of creation only limited to fundamental ontological properties (whatever that means).

The article in the post we're arguing in the comments section of should answer this question.

>We can guess. We can theorize. We can simulate. We can mathematically model. We can build machines to mimic it. That's what humans do to understand things beyond our perception.

What these things do is convert that information into a form we can access. But we can never experience the quale of bat echolocation, or bird magnetoreception, or shark electroreception, et cetera. At this point we've just arrived at the Mary the color scientist thought experiment.

>Do you know why? It's because nobody can define the word metaphysical consistently.

'Philosophy' has never been properly defined either, but here we are.

>Someone who isn't a zombie would know they themselves aren't a zombie though.

How?

>Someone who possesses qualia would be able to recognize that fact.

The zombie thinks they have qualia.

> The point of the thought experiment is for those qualia-having people to imagine the existence of physically-functional humans who have no qualia and to consider the philosophical/metaphysical/epistemological implications. It makes perfect sense to me.

Honestly it makes no sense to me.

>It would be almost entirely physically identical. Qualia are non-physical by definition.

But they are physical. Your perceptions are physical. Your feelings about your perceptions are also physical.

> I know that if I were a p-zombie I'd probably talk about qualia a lot less!

No you wouldn't. You'd talk about it just as much because you would think you have qualia.

> subjective color experience itself is a quale, and that's what the whole example is about.

But it's physical. Your subjective experience can be measured in a machine by examining your brain activity.

>The argument doesn't work for everything that can be conceived of, only fundamental ontological properties.

Why? Why is this definition of creation only limited to fundamental ontological properties (whatever that means).

>If humans were all blind we wouldn't discuss sight experience, but most of us can see and thus we can discuss sight experience.

Yes because photons are hitting our physical eyes and creating physical electrical signals which travel on physical nerves and get processed in your physical brain.

>On the other hand, we know bats echolocate and we know the physics and the biology behind it, but most of us can't personally echolocate - and thus we don't talk about the quale of echolocation.

Some people do. Come to think of it it's no different than talking about qualia of hearing.

>We don't even know what it's like, so how would we talk about it?

We can guess. We can theorize. We can simulate. We can mathematically model. We can build machines to mimic it. That's what humans do to understand things beyond our perception.

>Every definition I've seen of qualia strikes at a very particular feature of human existence - subjective conscious experience. It's always seemed like a pretty straightforward concept to me.

No you forgot to add "non physical" or "non material" or "supernatural" into that definition. Subjective experience is physical and there is no need for a special word to talk about it.

> These kinds of metaphysical debates usually don't result in any form of mutual understanding lol. But figured I'd try anyway.

Do you know why? It's because nobody can define the word metaphysical consistently.

>The point is the neither the observer or the zombie itself can know whether or not they are a zombie.

Someone who isn't a zombie would know they themselves aren't a zombie though. Someone who possesses qualia would be able to recognize that fact. The point of the thought experiment is for those qualia-having people to imagine the existence of physically-functional humans who have no qualia and to consider the philosophical/metaphysical/epistemological implications. It makes perfect sense to me.

>Can we though? This is the whole problem You can't conceive of such a world because that world would be exactly like this one.

It would be almost entirely physically identical. Qualia are non-physical by definition. They're the result of physical processes, yes, but qualia are not physical themselves. And I can easily conceive of such a world existing. I know that if I were a p-zombie I'd probably talk about qualia a lot less!

>Your question is saying there is a physical eye seeing physical wavelengths of photons and a brain is undergoing physical processes. So if you are perceiving anything it's due to physicalism. There is nothing metaphysical about perceiving colors.

You got me here. I know there are no idealists on reddit so I still made that example for physicalists really, haha. But I still think it works - subjective color experience itself is a quale, and that's what the whole example is about.

>This argument boils down to "anything anybody can conceive of is real and exists using the words real and exist in the ways we are familiar with".

Hence why I put 'crude'. The argument doesn't work for everything that can be conceived of, only fundamental ontological properties. If humans were all blind we wouldn't discuss sight experience, but most of us can see and thus we can discuss sight experience. The discussion of sight experience itself is one thing that tells me that others can see, and when I apply this logic to qualia this is how I overcome solipsism.

On the other hand, we know bats echolocate and we know the physics and the biology behind it, but most of us can't personally echolocate - and thus we don't talk about the quale of echolocation. We don't even know what it's like, so how would we talk about it? I don't have a nice fancy polished argument for this line of thought but I'm sure you can at least see what I'm aiming at here.

>Most likely this is true because the word itself carries no defined meaning and was created purposefully to be vague and malleable so as to prove a point".

I'm not sure about that. Every definition I've seen of qualia strikes at a very particular feature of human existence - subjective conscious experience. It's always seemed like a pretty straightforward concept to me.

>But they would. The experiment says they could talk about it.

Er, can you clarify?

>I understand what you are saying, your arguments don't make sense to me and I don't accept your premises or conclusions.

That's fine. These kinds of metaphysical debates usually don't result in any form of mutual understanding lol. But figured I'd try anyway.

The point is the neither the observer or the zombie itself can know whether or not they are a zombie. So this makes the whole thought experiment moot.

You can't tell, the zombie can't tell.

It's just the problem with solipsism restated.

>Chalmers argues that we can conceive being outside of a world physically indistinguishable from our world but in which there is no consciousness (a zombie world). From this (so Chalmers argues) it follows that such a world is metaphysically possible.

Can we though? This is the whole problem You can't conceive of such a world because that world would be exactly like this one.

>For idealists: look at a color wheel and memorize all the colors. Imagine that the spectrum of visible light we can see is expanded by 50 nm in one direction. That new light we'll be able to detect will have colors that are not a part of the current color wheel, but are an addition to it. What do those new colors look like? I personally can't envision any colors existing that aren't ROYGBIV or pink. Perhaps such a color is metaphysically impossible?

Do you see how you are begging the question. Your question is saying there is a physical eye seeing physical wavelengths of photons and a brain is undergoing physical processes. So if you are perceiving anything it's due to physicalism. There is nothing metaphysical about perceiving colors.

>The other side of this is that, to put it very crudely, if we are able to comprehend and discuss an ontological property then it can reasonably be said to exist, even if its relation to other properties is uncertain.

Again I pointed out that you can't conceive of it but let's presume you can. This argument boils down to "anything anybody can conceive of is real and exists using the words real and exist in the ways we are familiar with".

Surely you can see the flaw in this premise.

>I'd say that if I asked a p-zombie if they experience qualia they'd say "what's that?"

Most likely this is true because the word itself carries no defined meaning and was created purposefully to be vague and malleable so as to prove a point".

>They would not be able to understand my explanation because they don't have the metaphysical capacity to understand the ontological properties that I experience and talk about.

But they would. The experiment says they could talk about it.

>I hope at least some of this made sense.

I understand what you are saying, your arguments don't make sense to me and I don't accept your premises or conclusions.

But those sub-systems operate on the same logic as the rest of the computer. It's all computer code. Taking 'conciousness' to essentially mean 'qualia' as in the Chalmers tradition, consciousness is fundamentally ontologically different from the brain itself, despite their correlation.

To keep with the computer analogy, the brain is like the CPU and consciousness is like the light coming from the monitor. Totally separate things. The light has nothing to do with how the CPU operates, and the CPU is actually responsible for the light in first place via instructions given to the monitor. But you can, in a way, make the CPU acknowledge the light that it's creating by hooking up a webcam and pointing it at the monitor. Sort of a computer self-awareness, the same way I'm aware of my own qualia/conscious experience.

The p-zombie thought experiment isn't about whether a p-zombie could actually be identified in reality, it's about whether the concept is simply coherent; could a human that doesn't experience qualia exist and act functionally identically to a human that does experience qualia? It's just an attempt to clarify what the term 'qualia' refers to and, based on whether one finds the p-zombie idea to be coherent or not, establish whether qualia are an ontologically real, non-physical property of the universe.

To borrow from Wikipedia (Consciousness is being used here in the sense of 'experiencing qualia'):

> 1. According to physicalism, all that exists in our world (including consciousness) is physical. > 2. Thus, if physicalism is true, a metaphysically possible world in which all physical facts are the same as those of the actual world must contain everything that exists in our actual world. In particular, conscious experience must exist in such a possible world. > 3. Chalmers argues that we can conceive being outside of a world physically indistinguishable from our world but in which there is no consciousness (a zombie world). From this (so Chalmers argues) it follows that such a world is metaphysically possible. > 4. Therefore, physicalism is false. (The conclusion follows from 2. and 3. by modus tollens.)

This article is pondering whether we'd ever be able to 'know' a metaphysical property that we bear no relation to. I'll give some examples to clarify the problem. For physicalists: imagine dark matter didn't have the property of mass and thus had no gravitational effects. We would never know dark matter exists because we'd have no other way to interact with it or recognize its existence; in fact, there very well could be a form of physical 'matter' like this out there already, but we have no way of knowing it. We couldn't even really speculate on the nature of such matter beyond whether it exists.

For idealists: look at a color wheel and memorize all the colors. Imagine that the spectrum of visible light we can see is expanded by 50 nm in one direction. That new light we'll be able to detect will have colors that are not a part of the current color wheel, but are an addition to it. What do those new colors look like? I personally can't envision any colors existing that aren't ROYGBIV or pink. Perhaps such a color is metaphysically impossible?

For dualists: the universe consists entirely of mental and physical properties. Invent a new fantasy property that doesn't exist and explain it to me in a way I can understand. I'd bet this is also impossible, but perhaps I'm just not very creative!

I would personally consider it impossible for anyone to comprehend or effectively discuss an ontological property that we have no way of recognizing or being impacted by. Because a p-zombie does not have the metaphysical capacity to experience qualia it would not be able to comprehend or discuss it; as you said, a p-zombie would not know it's a p-zombie, because it wouldn't know what it was lacking. The other side of this is that, to put it very crudely, if we are able to comprehend and discuss an ontological property then it can reasonably be said to exist, even if its relation to other properties is uncertain. We possess qualia and are able to discuss it, hence why the p-zombie idea and the term 'qualia' exists in the first place. This is probably what OP means when he says "you can't know of consciousness without being conscious." In this case it really does take one to know one.

>As an observer you also don't know whether or not the subject you are talking to is a zombie. They act as if they are not, and if you ask them they say they are not.

I'd say that if I asked a p-zombie if they experience qualia they'd say "what's that?" They would not be able to understand my explanation because they don't have the metaphysical capacity to understand the ontological properties that I experience and talk about. I wouldn't be able to prove it but I'd have a reasonable suspicion that they were philosophical zombies (provided my explanation was any good). Other than discussing qualia itself though, they'd otherwise be indistinguishable from a normal human, provided that qualia aren't strictly necessary for engaging in usual human behaviors.

I hope at least some of this made sense.

Also there's the idea that the particles are conscious without the system of AI being conscious. And again, what kind of "consciousness" are we talking about? Panpsychism assumes that sentience is ubiquitous, but sapience is still emergent.

>This includes various mechanical and computational devices.

It also includes rocks. It also includes electrons and neutrons and photons which never experience state change.

I would say it's a crazy theory but honestly it's so far away from being able to called a theory we need to make up a new word to describe it.

> Is it really worth arguing with people like Kastrup who referred to the effects of LSD in his dissertation to prove materialism wrong.

And why was his argument faulty in your opinion?

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I guess it depends on what version.

In most versions you have the physical, whether it is created by the mind or whatever.

This physical including the brain acts solely due to the laws of physics. The brain which we can control and manipulate gives rise to changes in what people think, feel and experience.

Basically the mind reality can't actually change anything in the brain or anything physical beyond the laws of physics. This then leaves this mental layer as effectively an epiphenomena.

Anyway the main argument against idealism is just the absurdity of it's supporter, you have people bringing up how studies on LSD and past lives support idealism. Is it really worth arguing with people like Kastrup who referred to the effects of LSD in his dissertation to prove materialism wrong.

How do you rule out idealism?

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Saying that AI can be conscious when you can't explain how consciousness originates is basically just saying that you're willing to decide that it has achieved consciousness at a certain point of sophistication.

Technically, it requires a level of faith to believe that other people are conscious and this would be similar with the main difference being that there is no obvious physical comparison between you and the AI (like there is with other people).

The issue of how to explain consciousness is importantly different than whether an AI can be or is conscious. An explanation of consciousness will identify features of systems that determine their level of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness places a limit on the kinds of explanations we can expect from just physical dynamics alone. But some theories of consciousness allow that physical or computational systems intrinsically carry the basic properties to support consciousness. For example, panpsychism says that the fundamental properties that support consciousness are found in all matter. This includes various mechanical and computational devices. And so there is no immediate contradiction in being anti-physicalist and also believing that certain computational systems will be conscious.

I find this very odd considering the fact that he coined the term, "the hard problem of consciousness."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

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Nice succinct statement of the issue. There's a lot boiled down into those two paragraphs. Thank you.

We can always imagine the behavioral/functional phenomena occurring without any corresponding phenomenal consciousness. So this question can never be settled by experiment. But we can develop a theory of consciousness and observe how well the system in question corresponds to the features our theory says correspond with consciousness. Barring any specific theory, we can ask in what ways are the system similar and different from systems we know that are conscious and whether the similarities or differences bear on the credibility of attributing conscious to the system.

Theory is all well and good, but in the end it will have little practical significance. People tend to be quick to attribute intention or minds to inanimate or random occurrences. Eventually the behavior of these systems will be so similar to humans that most people's sentience-attribution machinery will fire and we'll be forced to confront all the moral questions we have been putting off.

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