Stephen comments on Zombies! Zombies? - Less Wrong

47 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2008 09:55AM

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Comment author: Stephen 04 April 2008 11:41:00PM 1 point [-]

While I don't necessarily endorse epiphenomenalism, I think there may exist an argument in favor of it that has not yet been discussed in this thread. Namely, if we don't understand consciousness and consciousness affects behavior then we should not be able to predict behavior. So it seems like we're forced to choose between:

a) consciousness has no effect on behavior (epiphenomenalism)

or

b) a completely detailed simulation of a person based on currently known physics would fail to behave the same as the actual person

Both seem at least somewhat surprising. (b would seem impossible rather than merely surprising to a person who thinks physics is completely known and makes deterministic predictions. In the nineteenth century, most people believed the latter, and some the former. Perhaps this explains how epiphenomenalism originally arose as a popular belief.)