Hi Peter

You say: " Of course zombies are all dark inside. They are defined as being so. Are you suggesting they're not? "

Early in the discussion I questioned David Chalmers about his phrase "all dark inside" pointing out that "The suggestion that zombiehood is a state in which ‘all is dark inside’ presumably implies that consciousness, by contrast, is a state in which ‘all is light inside’ – merely a vague metaphor which tells us nothing of any substance about what human consciousness might consist in."

David replied (see earlier): "All is dark inside" is indeed just a vague metaphor.  It doesn't play any role in the arguments.  The arguments just require the absence of consciousness, along with microphysical duplication."

So, according to David, who I gather is the chief proponent of the zombie thesis, "all is dark inside" is not part of the definition. I'm not at all sure why it was mentioned in the first place. (I won't comment on the other bit -  "the absence of consciousness, along with microphysical duplication". For the reasons I've given, I think this gets us nowhere.)

You also say: "Consciousness is certainly difficult to define. I don't think anyone would disagree about that. It is one of the benefits of the zombie hypothesis that it draws ... (expand) attention to this problem. What is it we have that zombies do not? If we say, with you, that we can't define this phenomenon well enough to even ask this question then the zombie hypothesis has done its job, focused our attention on the heart of the problem and drawn it away from the superficial aspects."

But one only has to look at the Chalmers definition to see the problem here.  If the purpose of the zombie hypothesis is to draw attention to the elusiveness of the notion of consciousness how could one define zombiehood as the absence of it? The absence of what?   Personally, I see no need, anyway, for a special "hypothesis" to highlight the difficulty of defining consciousness, because the difficulty surely stares us in the face. But if that is the purpose, it does not succeed because all it does is to confuse the issue by implying that consciousness is a known quantity.

DA