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Paul_G comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong
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Koan 2:
"Does your rule there forbid epiphenomenalist theories of consciousness - that consciousness is caused by neurons, but doesn't affect those neurons in turn? The classic argument for epiphenomenal consciousness has always been that we can imagine a universe in which all the atoms are in the same place and people behave exactly the same way, but there's nobody home - no awareness, no consciousness, inside the brain. The usual effect of the brain generating consciousness is missing, but consciousness doesn't cause anything else in turn - it's just a passive awareness - and so from the outside the universe looks the same. Now, I'm not so much interested in whether you think epiphenomenal theories of consciousness are true or false - rather, I want to know if you think they're impossible or meaningless a priori based on your rules."
How would you reply?
"We can imagine any number of universes, that does not always lead to a good argument. In this case, the main issue with the argument is that while we can imagine that universe, it doesn't look like ours. There's no talk of consciousness, there's no self-reflection. Those are things in reality clearly caused by a link between our thoughts and our brains, one that goes in both directions.
Imagining a world in which people act exactly like people do now, but without a consciousness, strays so clearly outside the bounds of Occam's Razor that there doesn't seem to be any point in thinking about it. Adding in a mysterious 'zombie master' to make the zombies act as though they had consciousness... Well at this point, we're not talking about anything remotely resembling reality. This entire thought experiment in no way gives us any truths about reality whatsoever. It is completely meaningless."