2010-05-07
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Describing zombies
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Their creator states that zombies do not have experiences. That's good enough for me. We all know perfectly well what an experience is or, at least, what it is like to have one, so this seems a crystal clear beginning for his definition of both consciousness and zombies. The question of what an 'experience' is and of how and why we have them is irrelevant to it. We know that we have experiences and that zombies do not.
DC goes on to stipulate that zombies behave like human beings, and here that the trouble starts. We can easily define a pig that that can fly, and can even grant it a fantasy existence, but we can't use it as a counterexample for the theory of gravity. But this is another issue. The problem is not one of definitions. DC has clearly defined his creation. What he has not done is show that such a thing can exist. If he or anybody else could do this then we'd have a proof that experiences are non-causal. But he does not define zombies as existants and so I can see no reasonable objection to his definition.
Of course, as D will be about to object, even with zombies clearly defined we're left with the problem of defining 'experience' in a precise and scientific way, rather than by simply pointing at the brute fact of it, and also of sorting out the relationship between experience and consciousness. But it's just as well really, otherwise many people here would be out of work. This problem need not prevent us from speculating about the existence of zombies.
Moving on, it occurs to me that the ancestors of today's zombies would have no reason to attribute volcanoes, thunder and lightening and so forth to a purposeful God. How could we explain zombie religions?
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