PhilGoetz comments on The Zombie Preacher of Somerset - Less Wrong
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Comments (31)
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".
Right.