Hello again Derek,

To be honest I haven't read David Chalmer's works but I did manage to find an online paper of his titled. 'Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness'. Upon reading the paper I have decided it is beyond my training and capacity to come up with a satisfactory definition of consciousness. However, I do have a question about zombies.

David Chalmers wants to divide consciousness into, 'the easy problem' and 'the hard problem'. 'The easy problem' seems to look at such things as focusing one's attention, the ability of a system to access its own internal state and deliberate control of behaviour  (p2).
These things he associates with the idea of consciousness. In an e mail to me he called this 'cognitive consciousness' or the process of thinking.

In my tennis jargon I term these "What is it like?' experiences. As a tennis coach there is no mystery or problem here for me. 'The easy problem' will invariably lead to the player having 'What is it like?' experiences. The problem for me arises when David addresses what he terms 'the hard problem' He says:

"If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness it is this one. In this central sense of 'consciousness', an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is consciousness if there is something it is like to be that state. Sometimes such terms as 'phenomenal consciousness' and 'qualia' are also used here but I find it more natural to speak of conscious experience or simply, experience" (p.3)

My modus operandi is to turn out tennis playing zombies. That is, players who don't have conscious experience while playing. So from my point of view 'the hard problem' doesn't exist while players are 'in the zone'. This is because I see these players as having perception without awareness as opposed to 'the easy problem', which seems to be perception with awareness. Whether I like it or not my definition of consciousness seems to be perception with or without awareness.

David Chalmers goes on to ask himself a further question in relation to consciousness and experience, 'Why doesn't all this information processing go on 'in the dark', free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic wave forms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system this discrimination and categorization is experienced......... ?' (p.6).

David Chalmers goes on to say that conscious experience does arise, but why it does is the mystery. I can't disagree with him but I am just wondering how close to a 'philosophical zombie' is my 'tennis playing zombie' when we subtract the hard problem

Regards
D M