Jim

Thank you very much for your helpful comments.

Premise 2 of the p. 123 argument says: “There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do not hold.”

Given premise 1, I take it he means to be talking about ‘conscious experiences.’

And, as you say, he is, no doubt, talking about PHENOMENAL conscious experiences.

This way of talking is not perfectly clear. How are we to use these terms? For instance, is intense pain (necessarily) a phenomenal conscious experience?

Suppose a zombie bangs his thumb with a hammer. Is it the case that, by definition, so to speak, he doesn’t really feel any pain? (Of course he thinks he does. Of course he yells and utters serious swear words, hops around. His neural ‘pain system’ is in an uproar, etc. etc.) Should we, perhaps, say, “Well, in a sense, he is obviously in pain; but he doesn’t actually feel PHENOMENAL pain.”

Do we have good reason to commiserate with him? To say, “don’t worry. It won’t hurt much longer”?

You say he is ‘without experiences’. That can’t be right. In any ordinary sense he has had, and is having lots of experiences. Presumably you mean he doesn’t have ‘phenomenal experiences.’

“So I know what zombies are supposed to be, no deep problem about describing them: my zombie twin is a physical system physically just like me but without experiences. But whether zombies really are possible remains to be seen.”

I think the question is whether zombies are logically possible. Is a sufficient description of them coherent, or are they, in a more subtle way, like rabbits that are physically and behaviorally exactly like cows?