Philosophical zombie
Encyclopedia
A philosophical zombie
or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind
and perception
is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience
, qualia
, or sentience
. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain).
The notion of a philosophical zombie is used mainly in thought experiment
s intended to support argument
s (often called "zombie arguments") against forms of physicalism
such as materialism
, behaviorism
and functionalism
. Physicalism is the idea that all aspects of human nature can be explained by physical means: specifically, all aspects of human nature and perception can be explained from a neurobiological standpoint. Since a zombie is physiologically indistinguishable from human beings its hypothetical possibility would be an argument for a consciousness that is more than the sum of neurological pathways and brain states.
, according to which mental states exist solely as behavior: belief, desire, thought, consciousness, and so on, are simply certain kinds of behavior or tendencies towards behaviors. A p-zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a normal human being but lacks conscious experiences is therefore not logically possible according to the behaviorist, so an appeal to the logical possibility of a p-zombie furnishes an argument that behaviorism is false. Behaviorists tend to respond that a p-zombie is not possible.
The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in different thought experiments as follows:
- in this case the view that the world includes two kinds of substance (or perhaps two kinds of property); the mental and the physical. According to physicalism, physical facts determine all other facts. Since any fact other than that of consciousness may be held to be the same for a p-zombie and a normal conscious human, it follows that physicalism must hold that p-zombies are either not possible or are the same as normal humans.
The zombie argument is a version of general modal arguments against physicalism such as that of Saul Kripke
against that kind of physicalism known as type-identity theory. Further such arguments were notably advanced in the 1970s by Thomas Nagel
(1970; 1974) and Robert Kirk
(1974) but the general argument was most famously developed in detail by David Chalmers
in The Conscious Mind
(1996). According to Chalmers one can coherently conceive of an entire zombie world, a world physically indistinguishable from this world but entirely lacking conscious experience. The counterpart of every conscious being in our world would be a p-zombie. Since such a world is conceivable, Chalmers claims, it is logically possible, which is all the argument requires. Chalmers states: "Zombies are probably not naturally possible: they probably cannot exist in our world, with its laws of nature." The outline structure of Chalmers' version of the zombie argument is as follows;
: if its premises are true then the conclusion must be true. However, other philosophers dispute that its premises are true. For example, is such a world really possible? Chalmers states that "it certainly seems that a coherent situation is described; I can discern no contradiction in the description."
This leads to the questions of the relevant notion of "possibility": is the scenario described in premise 3 possible in the sense that is suggested in premise 2? Most physicalist responses deny that the premise of a zombie scenario is possible.
Many physicalist philosophers argued that this scenario eliminates itself by its description; the basis of physicalist argument is that the world is defined entirely by physicality, thus a world that was physically identical would necessarily contain consciousness, as consciousness would necessarily be generated from any set of physical circumstances identical to our own.
Some philosophers maintain that a possibility stronger than logical possibility
is required and that, while a zombie world is logically possible, such a weak notion is not relevant in the analysis of a metaphysical
thesis such as physicalism. Most agree that the relevant notion of possibility is some sort of metaphysical possibility. The zombie argument claims that one can tell by the power of reason that such a "zombie scenario" is metaphysically possible. Chalmers states; "From the conceivability of zombies, proponents of the argument infer their metaphysical possibility" and argues that this inference, while not generally legitimate, is legitimate for phenomenal concepts such as consciousness since we must adhere to "Kripke's insight that for phenomenal concepts, there is no gap between reference-fixers and reference (or between primary and secondary intentions)." That is, for phenomenal concepts, conceivability implies possibility. According to Chalmers, whatever is logically possible is also, in the sense relevant here, metaphysically possible.
Another response is denial of the idea that qualia and related phenomenal notions of the mind are in the first place coherent concepts. Daniel Dennett
and others argue that while consciousness and subjective experience
exist in some sense, they are not as the zombie argument proponent claims. The experience of pain, for example, is not something that can be stripped off a person's mental life without bringing about any behavioral or physiological differences. Dennett believes that consciousness is a complex series of functions and ideas. If we all can have these experiences the idea of the p-zombie is meaningless.
Dennett argues that "when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition". He coined the term zimboes (p-zombies that have second-order beliefs
) to argue that the idea of a p-zombie is incoherent; "Zimboes thinkZ they are conscious, thinkZ they have qualia, thinkZ they suffer pains – they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could ever discover!". As p-zombies in an observed world would be indistinguishable from the observer (and therefore non-existent as a class) one must either believe that anyone, including oneself, might be a zombie or else that no one may be a zombie. One's own conviction about being (or not being) a zombie is a product of the physical world and is no different from anyone else's. Furthermore, when concept of self is deemed to correspond to physical reality alone (reductive physicalism), philosophical zombies are denied by definition. When a distinction is made in one's mind between a hypothetical zombie and oneself (assumed not to be a zombie), the hypothetical zombie, being a subset of the concept of oneself, must entail a deficit in observables (cognitive systems), a "seductive error" contradicting the original definition of a zombie.
Verificationism states that, for words to have meaning, their use must be open to public verification. Since it is assumed that we can talk about our qualia, the existence of zombies is impossible. A related argument is that of "zombie-utterance". If someone were to say they love the smell of some food, a zombie producing the same reaction would be perceived as a person having complex thoughts and ideas in their head indicated by the ability to vocalize it. If zombies were without awareness of their perceptions the idea of uttering words could not occur to them. Therefore, if a zombie has the ability to speak, it is not a zombie. Nigel Thomas argues that the zombie concept is self-contradictory in that, since zombies ex hypothesi behave just like regular humans, they will claim to be conscious, which, whether this claim is taken to be true, false, or neither true nor false, inevitably entails either a contradiction or a manifest absurdity.
Artificial intelligence
researcher Marvin Minsky
sees the argument as circular
. The proposition of the possibility of something physically identical to a human but without subjective experience assumes that the physical characteristics of humans are not what produces those experiences, which is exactly what the argument was claiming to prove. Stephen Yablo
's (1998) response is to provide an error theory to account for the intuition that zombies are possible. Notions of what counts as physical and as physically possible change over time so conceptual analysis is not reliable here. Yablo says he is "braced for the information that is going to make zombies inconceivable, even though I have no real idea what form the information is going to take."
The zombie argument is difficult to assess because it brings to light fundamental disagreements about the method and scope of philosophy itself and the nature and abilities of conceptual analysis. Proponents of the zombie argument may think that conceptual analysis is a central part of (if not the only part of) philosophy and that it certainly can do a great deal of philosophical work. However others, such as Dennett, Paul Churchland
and W.V.O. Quine, have fundamentally different views. For this reason, discussion of the zombie argument remains vigorous in philosophy.
Another way to construe the zombie hypothesis, however, is epistemically -- as a problem of causal explanation, rather than as a problem of logical or metaphysical possibility. The "Explanatory gap
" -- also called the "Hard problem of consciousness
" -- is the fact that (to date) no one has provided a convincing causal explanation of how and why we are conscious
. It is a manifestation of the very same gap that (to date) no one has provided a convincing causal explanation of how and why we are not zombies.
argument is based around a hypothetical scientist, Mary, who is forced to view the world through a black-and-white television screen in a black and white room. Mary is a brilliant scientist who knows everything about the neurobiology of vision. Even though Mary knows everything about color and its perception (e.g. what combination of wavelengths makes the sky seem blue) she has never seen color. If Mary is released from this room and experiences color for the first time, will she learn anything new?
Swampman
is an imaginary character introduced by Donald Davidson
. If Davidson goes hiking in a swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt while nearby another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules so that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death then this being, 'Swampman', has a brain structurally identical to that which Davidson had and will thus presumably behave exactly like Davidson. He will return to Davidson's office and write the same essays he would have written, recognise all of his friends and family and so forth.
John Searle
's Chinese Room
argument deals with the nature of artificial intelligence
: it imagines a room in which a conversation is held by means of written Chinese characters that the subject cannot actually read, but is able to manipulate meaningfully using a set of algorithm
s. Searle holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave.
Zombie
Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
and perception
Philosophy of perception
The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of perceptual experience and the status of perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world. Any explicit account of perception requires a commitment to one of a variety of ontological or...
is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, qualia
Qualia
Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...
, or sentience
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain).
The notion of a philosophical zombie is used mainly in thought experiment
Thought experiment
A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...
s intended to support argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
s (often called "zombie arguments") against forms of physicalism
Physicalism
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...
such as materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, behaviorism
Behaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
and functionalism
Functionalism (philosophy of mind)
Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...
. Physicalism is the idea that all aspects of human nature can be explained by physical means: specifically, all aspects of human nature and perception can be explained from a neurobiological standpoint. Since a zombie is physiologically indistinguishable from human beings its hypothetical possibility would be an argument for a consciousness that is more than the sum of neurological pathways and brain states.
Types of zombie
Though philosophical zombies are widely used in thought experiments, the detailed articulation of the concept is not always the same. P-zombies were introduced primarily to argue against specific types of physicalism such as behaviorismBehaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
, according to which mental states exist solely as behavior: belief, desire, thought, consciousness, and so on, are simply certain kinds of behavior or tendencies towards behaviors. A p-zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a normal human being but lacks conscious experiences is therefore not logically possible according to the behaviorist, so an appeal to the logical possibility of a p-zombie furnishes an argument that behaviorism is false. Behaviorists tend to respond that a p-zombie is not possible.
The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in different thought experiments as follows:
- A behavioral zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human.
- A neurological zombie that has a human brain and is generally physiologically indistinguishable from a human.
- A soulless zombie that lacks a "soul."
Zombie arguments
Zombie arguments often support lines of reasoning that aim to show that zombies are logically possible in order to support some form of dualismDualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
- in this case the view that the world includes two kinds of substance (or perhaps two kinds of property); the mental and the physical. According to physicalism, physical facts determine all other facts. Since any fact other than that of consciousness may be held to be the same for a p-zombie and a normal conscious human, it follows that physicalism must hold that p-zombies are either not possible or are the same as normal humans.
The zombie argument is a version of general modal arguments against physicalism such as that of Saul Kripke
Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
against that kind of physicalism known as type-identity theory. Further such arguments were notably advanced in the 1970s by Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...
(1970; 1974) and Robert Kirk
Robert Kirk
Robert Kirk is a professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Kirk is known for his work on philosophical zombies—putative unconscious beings physically and behaviorally identical to human beings...
(1974) but the general argument was most famously developed in detail by David Chalmers
David Chalmers
David John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, whose recent work concerns verbal disputes. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University...
in The Conscious Mind
The Conscious Mind
The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory is a 1996 book by David Chalmers, an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind...
(1996). According to Chalmers one can coherently conceive of an entire zombie world, a world physically indistinguishable from this world but entirely lacking conscious experience. The counterpart of every conscious being in our world would be a p-zombie. Since such a world is conceivable, Chalmers claims, it is logically possible, which is all the argument requires. Chalmers states: "Zombies are probably not naturally possible: they probably cannot exist in our world, with its laws of nature." The outline structure of Chalmers' version of the zombie argument is as follows;
- According to physicalism all that exists in our world (including consciousness) is physical.
- Thus, if physicalism is true, a logically-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.
- In fact we can conceive of a world physically indistinguishable from our world but in which there is no consciousness (a zombie world) and we can not see why it is not logically possible.
- Therefore, physicalism is false. (The conclusion follows from 2. and 3. by modus tollensModus tollensIn classical logic, modus tollens has the following argument form:- Formal notation :...
.)
Responses
Chalmers' argument is logically validValidity
In logic, argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is entailed by its premises, a formula is valid if and only if it is true under every interpretation, and an argument form is valid if and only if every argument of that logical form is valid....
: if its premises are true then the conclusion must be true. However, other philosophers dispute that its premises are true. For example, is such a world really possible? Chalmers states that "it certainly seems that a coherent situation is described; I can discern no contradiction in the description."
This leads to the questions of the relevant notion of "possibility": is the scenario described in premise 3 possible in the sense that is suggested in premise 2? Most physicalist responses deny that the premise of a zombie scenario is possible.
Many physicalist philosophers argued that this scenario eliminates itself by its description; the basis of physicalist argument is that the world is defined entirely by physicality, thus a world that was physically identical would necessarily contain consciousness, as consciousness would necessarily be generated from any set of physical circumstances identical to our own.
Some philosophers maintain that a possibility stronger than logical possibility
Logical possibility
A logically possible proposition is one that can be asserted without implying a logical contradiction. This is to say that a proposition is logically possible if there is some coherent way for the world to be, under which the proposition would be true...
is required and that, while a zombie world is logically possible, such a weak notion is not relevant in the analysis of a metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
thesis such as physicalism. Most agree that the relevant notion of possibility is some sort of metaphysical possibility. The zombie argument claims that one can tell by the power of reason that such a "zombie scenario" is metaphysically possible. Chalmers states; "From the conceivability of zombies, proponents of the argument infer their metaphysical possibility" and argues that this inference, while not generally legitimate, is legitimate for phenomenal concepts such as consciousness since we must adhere to "Kripke's insight that for phenomenal concepts, there is no gap between reference-fixers and reference (or between primary and secondary intentions)." That is, for phenomenal concepts, conceivability implies possibility. According to Chalmers, whatever is logically possible is also, in the sense relevant here, metaphysically possible.
Another response is denial of the idea that qualia and related phenomenal notions of the mind are in the first place coherent concepts. Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...
and others argue that while consciousness and subjective experience
Subjective character of experience
The subjective character of experience is a term in psychology and the philosophy of mind denoting that all subjective phenomena are associated with a single point of view...
exist in some sense, they are not as the zombie argument proponent claims. The experience of pain, for example, is not something that can be stripped off a person's mental life without bringing about any behavioral or physiological differences. Dennett believes that consciousness is a complex series of functions and ideas. If we all can have these experiences the idea of the p-zombie is meaningless.
Dennett argues that "when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition". He coined the term zimboes (p-zombies that have second-order beliefs
Second-order logic
In logic and mathematics second-order logic is an extension of first-order logic, which itself is an extension of propositional logic. Second-order logic is in turn extended by higher-order logic and type theory....
) to argue that the idea of a p-zombie is incoherent; "Zimboes thinkZ they are conscious, thinkZ they have qualia, thinkZ they suffer pains – they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could ever discover!". As p-zombies in an observed world would be indistinguishable from the observer (and therefore non-existent as a class) one must either believe that anyone, including oneself, might be a zombie or else that no one may be a zombie. One's own conviction about being (or not being) a zombie is a product of the physical world and is no different from anyone else's. Furthermore, when concept of self is deemed to correspond to physical reality alone (reductive physicalism), philosophical zombies are denied by definition. When a distinction is made in one's mind between a hypothetical zombie and oneself (assumed not to be a zombie), the hypothetical zombie, being a subset of the concept of oneself, must entail a deficit in observables (cognitive systems), a "seductive error" contradicting the original definition of a zombie.
Verificationism states that, for words to have meaning, their use must be open to public verification. Since it is assumed that we can talk about our qualia, the existence of zombies is impossible. A related argument is that of "zombie-utterance". If someone were to say they love the smell of some food, a zombie producing the same reaction would be perceived as a person having complex thoughts and ideas in their head indicated by the ability to vocalize it. If zombies were without awareness of their perceptions the idea of uttering words could not occur to them. Therefore, if a zombie has the ability to speak, it is not a zombie. Nigel Thomas argues that the zombie concept is self-contradictory in that, since zombies ex hypothesi behave just like regular humans, they will claim to be conscious, which, whether this claim is taken to be true, false, or neither true nor false, inevitably entails either a contradiction or a manifest absurdity.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
researcher Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
sees the argument as circular
Circular reasoning
Circular reasoning, or in other words, paradoxical thinking, is a type of formal logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. For example:"Only an untrustworthy person would run for office...
. The proposition of the possibility of something physically identical to a human but without subjective experience assumes that the physical characteristics of humans are not what produces those experiences, which is exactly what the argument was claiming to prove. Stephen Yablo
Stephen Yablo
Stephen Yablo is a philosopher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He specializes in the philosophy of logic, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language....
's (1998) response is to provide an error theory to account for the intuition that zombies are possible. Notions of what counts as physical and as physically possible change over time so conceptual analysis is not reliable here. Yablo says he is "braced for the information that is going to make zombies inconceivable, even though I have no real idea what form the information is going to take."
The zombie argument is difficult to assess because it brings to light fundamental disagreements about the method and scope of philosophy itself and the nature and abilities of conceptual analysis. Proponents of the zombie argument may think that conceptual analysis is a central part of (if not the only part of) philosophy and that it certainly can do a great deal of philosophical work. However others, such as Dennett, Paul Churchland
Paul Churchland
Paul Churchland is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. He is currently a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he holds the Valtz Chair of Philosophy. Churchland holds a joint appointment with the Cognitive Science Faculty and...
and W.V.O. Quine, have fundamentally different views. For this reason, discussion of the zombie argument remains vigorous in philosophy.
Another way to construe the zombie hypothesis, however, is epistemically -- as a problem of causal explanation, rather than as a problem of logical or metaphysical possibility. The "Explanatory gap
Explanatory gap
The explanatory gap is the claim that consciousness and human experiences such as qualia cannot be fully explained just by identifying the corresponding physical processes. Bridging this gap is known as "the hard problem"...
" -- also called the "Hard problem of consciousness
Hard problem of consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. David Chalmers contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc...
" -- is the fact that (to date) no one has provided a convincing causal explanation of how and why we are conscious
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
. It is a manifestation of the very same gap that (to date) no one has provided a convincing causal explanation of how and why we are not zombies.
Related thought-experiments
Frank Jackson's Mary's roomMary's room
Mary's room is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know"...
argument is based around a hypothetical scientist, Mary, who is forced to view the world through a black-and-white television screen in a black and white room. Mary is a brilliant scientist who knows everything about the neurobiology of vision. Even though Mary knows everything about color and its perception (e.g. what combination of wavelengths makes the sky seem blue) she has never seen color. If Mary is released from this room and experiences color for the first time, will she learn anything new?
Swampman
Swampman
Swampman is the subject of a philosophical thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson, in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind". The experiment runs as follows:...
is an imaginary character introduced by Donald Davidson
Donald Davidson (philosopher)
Donald Herbert Davidson was an American philosopher born in Springfield, Massachusetts, who served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton...
. If Davidson goes hiking in a swamp and is struck and killed by a lightning bolt while nearby another lightning bolt spontaneously rearranges a bunch of molecules so that, entirely by coincidence, they take on exactly the same form that Davidson's body had at the moment of his untimely death then this being, 'Swampman', has a brain structurally identical to that which Davidson had and will thus presumably behave exactly like Davidson. He will return to Davidson's office and write the same essays he would have written, recognise all of his friends and family and so forth.
John Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
's Chinese Room
Chinese room
The Chinese room is a thought experiment by John Searle, which first appeared in his paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 1980...
argument deals with the nature of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
: it imagines a room in which a conversation is held by means of written Chinese characters that the subject cannot actually read, but is able to manipulate meaningfully using a set of algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
s. Searle holds that a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave.
See also
- BlindsightBlindsightBlindsight is a phenomenon in which people who are perceptually blind in a certain area of their visual field demonstrate some response to visual stimuli...
- CausalityCausalityCausality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
- ConsciousnessConsciousnessConsciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
- Explanatory gapExplanatory gapThe explanatory gap is the claim that consciousness and human experiences such as qualia cannot be fully explained just by identifying the corresponding physical processes. Bridging this gap is known as "the hard problem"...
- Functionalism (philosophy of mind)Functionalism (philosophy of mind)Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental...
- Hard problem of consciousnessHard problem of consciousnessThe hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. David Chalmers contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc...
- Inverted spectrumInverted spectrumInverted spectrum is the apparent possibility of two people sharing their color vocabulary and discriminations, although the colours one sees — their qualia — are systematically different from the colours the other person sees....
- Map–territory relationMap–territory relationThe map–territory relation describes the relationship between an object and a representation of that object, as in the relation between a geographical territory and a map of it...
- MindMindThe concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
- Mind-body problem
- Philosophy of mindPhilosophy of mindPhilosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
- Problem of other mindsProblem of other mindsThe problem of other minds has traditionally been regarded as an epistemological challenge raised by the skeptic. The challenge may be expressed as follows: given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds? The thought behind the question is that no matter...
- Reverse engineeringReverse engineeringReverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
- SentienceSentienceSentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
- SolipsismSolipsismSolipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. The term comes from Latin solus and ipse . Solipsism as an epistemological position holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not...
- Turing testTuring testThe Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
External links
- Online papers on philosophical zombies, by various authors, compiled by David Chalmers.
- Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind
- Skepdic entry on p-zombies
- A Qwantz comic on the subject of philosophical zombies
- On The Conceivability of Zombies Paper argues that Philosophical Zombies are not conceivable