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TheAncientGeek comments on Zombies Redacted - Less Wrong Discussion

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 July 2016 08:16PM

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Comment author: UmamiSalami 05 July 2016 12:24:20AM -1 points [-]

Indeed. The condensed argument against p-zombies:

I would hope not. 3 is entirely conceivable if we grant 2, so 4 is unsupported, and nothing that EY said supports 4. 5 does not follow from 3 or 4, though it's bundled up in the definition of a p-zombie and follows from 1 and 2 anyway. In any case, 6 does not follow from 5.

What EY is saying is that it's highly implausible for all of our ideas and talk of consciousness to have come to be if subjective consciousness does not play a causal role in our thinking.

Except such discussions would have no motivational impact.

Of course they would - our considerations of other people's feelings and consciousness changes our behavior all the time. And if you knew every detail about the brain, you could give an atomic-level causal account as to why and how.

A "rich inner life" has no relation to any fact in a p-zombies' brain, and so in what way could this term influence their decision process?

The concept of a rich inner life influences decision processes.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 05 July 2016 06:17:06PM -1 points [-]

What EY is saying is that it's highly implausible for all of our ideas and talk of consciousness to have come to be if subjective consciousness does not play a causal role in our thinking

Although he is also saying that our ideas about free will come about from a source other than free will.