PhilGoetz comments on The Zombie Preacher of Somerset - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Yvain 28 March 2009 10:29PM

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Comment author: loqi 28 March 2009 11:39:15PM *  6 points [-]

If such a word existed, what use would it be? The assumptions underlying these two types of zombie seem very different to me. The dualistic explanation of consciousness creates a necessary "observational barrier" between the mind and the brain. If this barrier didn't exist, the proposition wouldn't really be dualism, it would be "some as-yet-undiscovered physical law". So a zombie under this interpretation can't act any differently due to their zombieness, because doing so would violate the duality assumption.

Treating Browne as a zombie, it's clear that his lack of qualia carries over into the observable, empirical world in a systematic way, which seems to imply that we could in theory trace the neurological origin of his behavior and arrive at a purely materialistic explanation of "zombiehood".

Comment author: PhilGoetz 29 March 2009 04:12:36AM 0 points [-]

Right.