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kilobug comments on Zombies Redacted - Less Wrong Discussion
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Another more directly worrying question, is why or if the p-zombie philosopher postulate that other persons have consciousness.
After all, if you can speak about consciousness exactly like we do and yet be a p-zombie, why doesn't Chalmer assume he's the only not being a zombie, and therefore letting go of all forms of caring for others and all morality ?
The fact that Chalmer and people like him still behave like they consider other people to be as conscious as they are probably points to the fact they have belief-in-belief, more than actual belief, in the possibility of zombieness.
A wonderful way to dehumanize.
The meat bag you ride will let go of caring, or not.
Under the theory, the observer chooses nothing in the physical world. The meatbag produces experiences of caring for you, or not, according to his meatbag reasons for action in the world.
Because consciousness supervenes upon physical states, and other brains have similar physical states.
But why, how ? If consciousness is not a direct product of physical states, if p-zombies are possible, how can you tell apart the hypothesis "every other human is conscious" from "only some humans are conscious" from "I'm the only one conscious by luck" from "everything including rocks are conscious" ?
Chalmers does believe that consciousness is a direct product of physical states. The dispute is about whether consciousness is identical to physical states.
Chalmers does not believe that p-zombies are possible in the sense that you could make one in the universe. He only believes it's possible that under a different set of psychophysical laws, they could exist.
I claim that it is "conceivable" for there to be a universe whose psychophysical laws are such that only the collection of physical states comprising my brainstates are conscious, and the rest of you are all p-zombies. Note that this argument is exactly as plausible as the standard Zombie World argument (which is to say, not very) since it relies on the exact same logic; as such, if you accept the standard Zombie World argument, you must accept mine as well. Now then: I claim that by sheer miraculous coincidence, this universe that we are living in possesses the exact psychophysical laws described above (even though there is no way for my body typing this right now to know that), and hence I am the only one in the universe who actually experiences qualia. Also, I would say this even if we didn't live in such a universe.
Prove me wrong.
Yes. I agree that it is conceivable.
Sure, and I claim that there is a teapot orbiting the sun. You're just being silly.
No one can prove you wrong. But your pretended belief is unreasonable, in the same way that it is unreasonable to believe that the sun will not rise tomorrow, even though no one can prove that it will.
It is also for the same reasons; the argument that the sun will rise tomorrow is inductive, and similarly the argument that others are conscious.
It may even be the case that infants originally believe your argument, and then come to the opposite conclusion through induction. I know someone who says that he clearly remembers that when he was three years old, he believed that he alone was conscious, because the behavior of others was too dissimilar to his own, e.g. his parents did not go and eat the ice cream in the freezer, even though there was no one to stop them.
In that case, the Zombie World argument is just as unreasonable--which is what I was getting at in the first place.
I don't know what you mean by the "Zombie World argument." No thinks that the real world is a zombie world.
Okay, here's the Zombie World argument, paraphrased:
And now here's my argument, paraphrased:
If you accept the Zombie World argument, you have to accept my argument; the two are exactly analogous. Of course, the contrapositive of the above statement is also true: if you reject my argument, you must reject the Zombie World argument. In effect, my argument is a reductio ad absurdum of the Zombie World argument; it shows that given the right motivation, you can twist the Zombie World argument to include/exclude anything you want as conscious. Just say [insert-universe-here] is "conceivable" (whatever that means), and the rest of the logic plays out identically.
P. S. One last thing--this part of your comment here?
If the Zombie World exists (which I don't believe it does--but if it did), all of the people in that universe (who don't think their world is a zombie world) are dead wrong.
While I disagree with Eliezer's post, I also disagree with the Zombie world argument as you have presented it. That said, it is not true that your argument is completely analogous with it. One difference is in number 7. In the first argument, we believe we are living in a world where everyone is conscious for inductive reasons. The fact that other human beings have similar bodies and actions with mine, gives me reason to think that others are conscious just as I am. In your argument, there is simply no reason to accept your #7, since there is no analogy that would lead you to that conclusion.
4 is not a correct summary because consciousness being extra physical doesn't imply epiphenominalism; the argument is specifically against physicalism, so it leaves other forms of dualism and panpsychism on the table.
5 and onwards is not correct, Chalmers does not believe that. Consciousness being nonphysical does not imply a lack of knowledge of it, even if our experience of consciousness is not causally efficacious (though again I note that the p zombie argument doesn't show that consciousness is not causally efficacious, Chalmers just happens to believe that for other reasons).
No part of the zombie argument really makes the claim that people or philosophers are conscious or not, so your analogous reasoning along 5-7 is not a reflection of the argument.
I'm not going to respond to all of this, because I don't have the time or energy for it, and I think you are very confused here about a large number of issues; resolving them would take much, much more than a comment.
But I will point out one thing. I agree that zombies are impossible, and therefore that a zombie world is impossible. That says nothing about what is conceivable; we know what we mean by a zombie or a zombie world, so it is quite conceivable.
But the thing you are confused about is this: just because a zombie world is impossible, does not mean that we have a syllogistic proof from first principles that it is impossible. We do not. And so if someone thinks it is possible, you can never refute that. You can only give reasons, that is, non-conclusive reasons, for thinking that it is probably impossible. And the reasons for thinking that are very similar to the reason I gave for thinking that other people are conscious. Your comment confuses two different ideas, namely whether zombies are possible, and what we know about zombies and how we know it, which are two different things.