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MatthewB comments on Outline of a lower bound for consciousness - Less Wrong
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I don't know why I didn't think of this the last time we discussed this claim you like to make, but it just occured to me that there are actually people who do make this claim and mean it: they have Cotard's delusion. (Funnier version here.)
I just thought of one additional point here.
When I make the claim that I am a Zombie, I am not really making the claim in the same sense that someone with Cotard's Delusion would make, but rather as a response to people like Searle who posit that there is some extra special stuff that human consciousness has, and to which Dennett (and others) have replied with the Zombie counter to this claim.
So, I maintain that I am a zombie in the Dennett sense of the word. I am just like a normal human with the extra special stuff, just I don't have that extra special stuff and thus, I am not really conscious, but just mimicking consciousness; thus, a Zombie.
Are you actually claiming to be unconscious and to not be aware of experiences? Or do you just mean you're denying that consciousness is anything metaphysically special?
I am not entirely sure what the claim would actually consist of.
Dennett claims that a human looking zombie, that acted exactly like a person, yet failed to have this special stuff that Searle claims is necessary for consciousness, would be unrecognizable from a person who really did have whatever it is that Searle claims is the Magic Ingredient to consciousness. Its really more just a claim to mock Searle's Chinese Room than anything else.
I guess though, that if I had to take a stance, it would be that there is nothing metaphysically special about consciousness. Now, this is just my naive assumption based on only a few years of reading, and none of it at the levels I will be forced to face in the coming years as I complete my degree. However, it is the sense that I get from what I have read and considered.
We can distinguish behavioral zombies, which just act like a person but are not conscious, from physical zombies, which are an exact physical duplicate of a conscious person but are not conscious.
For instance, people have reported doing all sorts of things while unconscious while taking the medication Ambien. They may be behavioral zombies, in the sense that they appear fully conscious but are not, but they aren't physical zombies, because their brain is physically different from a conscious person's (e.g., because of the Ambien).
The existence of physical zombies requires denying materialism: you need some sort of magic stuff that makes ordinary matter conscious. But even though materialism is true, it's entirely possible that you are a behavioral zombie. Once neuroscience is advanced to the point where we understand consciousness better, we'll be able to look at your brain and find out.
Something occurred to me while in a dream (and I nearly forgot to transition it to my waking consciousness).
In the post above, you seem to imply that consciousness is only to be applied to that part of our mind which is conscious, and not to that part of our mind of which we are not cognizant.
I would maintain that Consciousness still exists even without a conscious mind (at least as it seems to be applied above)... Case in point, my realization during a dream.
A person dreaming is still Conscious (meaning they have subjective experience). They aren't "conscious" (meaning awake). These are completely different meanings that unfortunately share a word.
Are you sure it was you who had the realization during the dream? Is it possible you just dreamed that you had one? Or that when you woke up, your mind reconstructed a narrative from the random fragments of your dream, and that narrative included having a realization?
Interesting questions... it's definitely possible for consciousness to flicker on and off. Marijuana and alcohol, for instance, can both have the effect of making time seem discrete instead of continuous, so you have flashes of awareness within an unconscious period.
The other problem is distinguishing consciousness from the capability of consciousness. Without a conscious mind, you may be capable of consciousness, but it's not clear to me that you are in fact conscious.
On the subject of dreams... Yesterday I was swapping emails with a famous science-fiction writer and he sent me this interesting document. Then I woke up and I was ruing that it wasn't real - but then I found a printout of the correspondence from the dream, and I was like, wow, what does this say about reality? Then I woke up again.
Then this morning I was thinking back on yesterday's "false awakening" (as such events are called), while I browsed a chapter in a book about the same writer. Then I woke up again.
Exactly. This is why I mock the argument from Searle. Eventually, science, not philosophy, will provide an answer to the problem.
Ya, a p-zombie. Wikipedia reports (with a [citation needed]) that sufferers of severe Cotard delusion deny that they exist at all. Presumably such individuals would claim to have no body, no mind, no consciousness, etc. So I agree, not a Zombie in Dennett's sense per se, since they claim to have/be nothing at all, never mind the extra special stuff.
In fact it may be worth stressing that, by definition, someone's claim to be a p-zombie would be zero evidence that they were a p-zombie.