# The concept of a philosophical zombie makes no sense to me **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 4, 2014, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348 "2014-10-04T04:27:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/141 "2014-10-12T15:27:48Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > In his book and speeches Hawkins points out that consciousness is not magic, Hawkins doesn’t know because even the scientists that study this stuff don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/142 "2014-10-12T16:23:14Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > Hawkins doesn’t know because even the scientists that study this stuff don’t know. It seems to me that his approach (and he has studied and experimented this from the biological side too) is like a typical scientist that is doing a hands on approach, he has no need for a magic hypothesis. In fact it is precisely the approach needed going forward. > [@](#): > > most people think consciousness is some kind of magical sauce that is added on top of the physical brain. You’ve got a brain, made of cells, and you pour consciousness, this magical sauce, on it, and that’s the human condition. In this view, consciousness is a mysterious entity separate from brains. That’s why zombies have brains but they don’t have consciousness. They have all the mechanical stuff, neurons and synapses, but they don’t have the special sauce.” [6], p.195. > > This situation will last until AI researchers will manage to get some system conscious (at the beginning-in some special fields) and we will recognize the consciousness in it. > [@](#): > > “We can be certain that however consciousness is defined, memory and prediction play > crucial roles in creating it… Your cortex creates a model of the world in its hierarchical memory. > > Thoughts are what occur when this model runs on its own; memory recall leads to predictions, which act like sensory inputs, which lead to new memory recall, and so on. > Our most contemplative thoughts are not driven by or even connected to the real world; they are purely a creation of our model. We close our eyes and seek quiet so that our thinking will not be interrupted by sensory input. Of course our model was originally created by exposure to the real world through our senses, but when we plan and think about the world, we do so via the cortical model, not the world itself. > [6], p.199. (bold –I.V.). > [@](#): > > To the cortex, our bodies are just part of the external world. Remember, the brain is in a quiet and dark box. It knows about the world only via the patterns on the sensory nerve fibers. From the brain’s perspective as a pattern device, it doesn’t know about y > our body any differently than it knows about the rest of the world. There isn’t a specia > l distinction between where the body ends and the rest of the world begins. But the cortex has no ability to model the brain itself because there are no senses in the brain. Thus we can see why our thoughts appear independent of our bodies, why it feels like we have an independent mind or soul. The cortex builds a model of your body but it can’t build a model of the brain itself. Your thoughts, which are located in the brain, are physically separate from the body and the rest of the world. Mind is > independent of body, but not of brain. [6], p.200. > [@](#): > > Your understanding of the world and your responses to it are based on predictions coming from your internal model. At any moment in time, you can directly sense only a tiny part of your world. That tiny part dictates what memories will be invoked, but it isn’t sufficient on its own to build the whole of your current perception”. [6], p.202. “Throughout history, every mystery ever solved turned out to be Not Magic” ~Tim Minchin ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/143 "2014-10-12T17:02:08Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > It seems to me that his approach (and he has studied and experimented this from the biological side too) is like a typical scientist that is doing a hands on approach, he has no need for a magic hypothesis. In fact it is precisely the approach needed going forward. Nobody is claiming “magic”. What people are correctly stating is that we simply do not know what consciousness is or how it arises. What Hawkins is doing is creating a method for spotting sequential patterns (nothing more, nothing related to consciousness as he himself admits), and even there the scientists that are using deep recurrent networks are outperforming all others (including HTM, which is a form of a deep network also). Whether it’s HTM or DBN’s or simple ANN’s, one thing we know for sure is that the secret sauce (i.e. the learning algorithm) is far from resolved. And even when the scientists truly understand the details of how best to train these networks, it’s all still just pattern recognition and nowhere near consciousness. One final very interesting thing I just read recently: A shallow feed forward neural network can be trained to mimic a deep belief network accurately (which has many layers, many more parameters/weights) using much fewer parameters/weights. But, using current training algorithms, the shallow feed forward network can not be trained to mimic the dbn using just the same training material. Conclusion: 1 - DBN is not optimal as it can be mimiced by much smaller/simpler network 2 - There exists a training algorithm for the simple network that can use just the training material (instead of the result of the dbn), which means we do not understand how to get to that training algorithm today ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/144 "2014-10-12T17:10:51Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > Nobody is claiming “magic”. This is missing the point, my impression was that you are making the idea of the sauce the zombies are missing and the sauce not existing as being in equal terms, in reality when one approaches this scientifically one has to dismiss the magic side. So far there is no need indeed to look for the “special sauce” and Hawkins also realized that neural networks are useful but not really the proper way to approach this. > [@](#): > > “Neural networks had been around since the late 1960s in one form or another, but neural networks and the AI movement were competitors, for both the dollars and the mind share of the agencies that fund research. AI, the 800-pound gorilla in those days, actively squelched neural network research. Neural network researchers were essentially blacklisted from getting funding. It is hard to know exactly why there was a sudden interest in neural networks, but undoubtedly one contributing factor was the continuing failure of artificial intelligence.” Of course, you are correct on the item that we still do not know all, but my impression is that now that we have theories of the brain that are more grounded in reality that we are getting on the right track. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/145 "2014-10-12T17:30:03Z")
Correcting this and adding a bit: Of course, you are correct on the item that we still do not know all, but my impression is that now that we have theories of the brain that are more grounded in reality, I think that we are getting on the right track. What you showed is indeed a snapshot of the current situation, there is still a lot of work to do with neural networks, but the approach of Hawkins is adding another element: Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) > **[Hierarchical temporal memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory)** > > Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is a biologically constrained machine intelligence technology developed by Numenta. Originally described in the 2004 book On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee, HTM is primarily used today for anomaly detection in streaming data. The technology is based on neuroscience and the physiology and interaction of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex of the mammalian (in particular, human) brain. > At the core of HTM are learning algorithms that can store,... > [@](#): > > is an online machine learning model developed by Jeff Hawkins and Dileep George of Numenta, Inc. that models some of the structural and algorithmic properties of the neocortex. HTM is a biomimetic model based on the memory-prediction theory of brain function described by Jeff Hawkins in his book On Intelligence. HTM is a method for discovering and inferring the high-level causes of observed input patterns and sequences, thus building an increasingly complex model of the world. > > Jeff Hawkins states that HTM does not present any new idea or theory, but combines existing ideas to mimic the neocortex with a simple design that provides a large range of capabilities. HTM combines and extends approaches used in Bayesian networks, spatial and temporal clustering algorithms, while using a tree-shaped hierarchy of nodes that is common in neural networks. I do think however that it is good to see an old fashion race to see if Hawkins or the just neural network approach will succeed. It is like the old fashion rivalry of the DC vs AC currents. IMHO like with the currents, both and other elements will turn out to be part of the big picture. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/146 "2014-10-12T17:52:39Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > #4 > Assuming “coherently imagined” implies that we have not violated any of the laws of physics or any other relevant cause and effect rules, then there is a very low limit to what our brains are capable of coherently imagining. Well, but it’s really just a way of formulating how we usually arrive at judgements of possibility—when somebody asks you, ‘is x possible?’, then you will try to imagine x occurring, and if you succeed, conclude that it is indeed possible. Of course, we may falsely imagine something to be possible: but to show that one has made such an error, it is necessary to point out where the error lies, i.e. what prevents x from being possible. Somebody pointing exactly this out is what I hope will ultimately be the outcome of discussing the zombie argument (and related ones). > [@](#): > > #5 > My problem is with #5. We do not have enough information to make that claim. > > The information to make claim #5 is exactly the information we are seeking. What more information do we need? I can certainly imagine a series of causal interactions that produce a reaction from a stimulus, without there being any conscious experience, in the same sense that I can imagine how a pixel on a screen lights up as part of a picture being displayed, etc. That’s all that’s needed. Of course, I may be wrong in my imaginings, and thus, falsely believe that I can ‘coherently imagine’ this happening; but this needs to be shown by pointing out exactly where my imagining goes wrong. > [@](#): > > Water analogy: > Before we knew that water was H2O, and before we understood everything about chemistry/physics (we understood some but not everything): > Philosopher #1: I have this intuition that H2O is water > Philosopher #2: Hmmm, I can coherently imagine we could have H2O that is not water, therefore it is not I’ve already discussed this: such an exchange is only possible if philosopher #2 does either not know what water is, or what H[sub]2[/sub]O is; that’s where his error in imagining lies. But in the case of consciousness, we know both what the subjective experience is—in fact, it is exactly what we know of it—, and what the physical processes are, at least broadly. And there seems no common ground at all between them. Regardless, I do believe that (5) is certainly the right spot to attack the zombie argument, but it needs to be done by pointing out why I, in fact, fail to coherently imagine the physical processes involved without conscious experience, while it seems to me that I’m wholly succeeding at that task. But I think this will need some new insight, which will likely tell us a great deal about the nature of conscious experience; that’s why I’m so opposed to hand-wavy ‘solutions’ along the line that something will happen that somehow gives rise to consciousness. There’s a difference between being right and being convincing, or being explanatory. If I produce a proof that 1 + 1 = 3, then you could say, well, that’s wrong, it’s actually 2. And of course, you’d be right. But without pointing out what’s wrong with the proof, that will neither convince me, nor teach me anything new. It’s the same situation with the zombie argument. Merely claiming that it’s wrong, that something goes amiss somewhere, that I’m in fact erroneously believing myself to be able to imagine the physical processes, might be completely right (I certainly believe so)—but it’s also wholly uninformative. Point out what I miss in my imagining, for instance, and you’ll have provided me with some new insight. Unfortunately, I think that’s quite a hard problem. > [@](#): > > Either way, I personally don’t think there needs to be an undiscovered physical particle or attribute that leads to consciousness, my unproven intuition is that it is related to physical structure. Well, to put it in Leibniz’ terms, who sort of proposed the grandfather version of the zombie argument, if you have some machine (e.g. a brain) that you believe produces consciousness, imagine it enlarged to the size of a mill, such that you can walk in and take a look. And of course, there’ll be nothing relating to consciousness in there; there only will be gears grinding on other gears, pulleys pulling, levers levering, perhaps relays being engaged, or maybe atoms or electrons careening about—everything readily imaginable without the slightest hint of conscious experience being present. In fact, it’s always in imagining how conscious experience arises from this that problems abound. I just believe we’re doing ourselves a disservice by shallowly consoling ourselves that it’ll certainly occur _somehow_. > [@RaftPeople](#): > > We know that a continuous (analog) space-time will have some different attributes than a discrete (digital) space-time. Not necessarily. There’s an interesting proposal by [Achim Kempf](http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.4354) that spacetime may be described as both continuous and discrete. And really, my own hunch is that the question mis-frames the problem: in all likelihood, like everything else, spacetime is neither continuous nor discrete, but rather, quantum, which incorporates both continuous variation (of states/probability amplitudes) and discreta—say, the quantized states of electrons in an atom. What we do know, however—or at any rate, very very strongly suspect—is that you can only put a finite amount of information into a finite volume of spacetime—this is due to the [Bekenstein bound](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound) (or its relativistic generalization due to Raphael Busso). Thus, in principle, any finite region of spacetime can be described using discrete mathematics. And since in a universe with a finite age (even if that universe is infinite in space), there can only be finite causally connected regions (umm, I think? I just realized I don’t know that for sure, there might be runaway inflation phenomena that blow up to infinity in a finite time—but anyway, such things seem not to happen in our universe), we never need anything more. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > [“Consciousness it what it feels like to have a neocortex”](http://books.google.com/books?id=xTD4LqJT0ggC&q=consciousness&source=gbs_word_cloud_r&cad=3#v=snippet&q=consciousness%20neocortex&f=false), nothing unusual. Well, that’s quite an empty statement to make, since the problem is precisely how anything can ‘feel like’ something in the first place. > [@](#): > > The impression I get is that proposing the zombie is only an effort to continue to claim that there is something magical or religious to what consciousness is. I’ve never run across it being used for such a purpose. Do you have an example? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/147 "2014-10-12T18:05:02Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Well, that’s quite an empty statement to make, since the problem is precisely how anything can ‘feel like’ something in the first place. And I already did explain more. It is not empty, he is just falling for a default position, since consciousness is bound to not be mysterious the magical sauce the zombie is missing can be dismissed, in reality that sauce is the extraordinary item that needs extraordinary evidence. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I’ve never run across it being used for such a purpose. Do you have an example? Thing is that I found before that one big reason the zombies are proposed is that it is an effort to counter a materialistic view that would include consciousness, IMHO religion and faith is still an important component to this proposition. > **[zombies and p-zombies - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com](https://skepdic.com/zombies.html)** > [@](#): > > There is another kind of zombie, however: the philosophical zombie. A philosophical zombie (p-zombie, for short) would be a human body without consciousness which would nevertheless behave like a human body with consciousness. To some philosophers (e.g., Daniel Dennett) this is a contradictory notion and thus an impossible conception. If it behaves like a person and is indistinguishable from a person, then it is a person. Other philosophers (e.g. Todd Moody and David Chalmers) argue that a p-zombie would be distinguishable from a person even though indistinguishable from a conscious person. It is distinguishable, say these philosophers, because it is stipulated that it is not conscious even though it is indistinguishable from a conscious being. \*\*In case you are wondering why philosophers would debate whether it is possible to conceive of a p-zombie, it is because some philosophers do not believe or do not want to believe that consciousness can be reduced to a set of materialistic functions. \*\* > > Important metaphysical and ethical issues seem to hinge on whether there can be p-zombies. Can machines be conscious? If we created a machine which was indistinguishable from a human person, would our artificial creation be a “person” with all the rights and duties of natural persons? **To the p-zombie advocates, consciousness is more than brain processes and neurological functions. No adequate account of consciousness will ever be produced that is “reductionist,” i.e., completely materialistic.** ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/148 "2014-10-12T18:26:36Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And I already did explain more. It is not empty, he is just falling for a default position, since consciousness is bound to not be mysterious the magical sauce the zombie is missing can be dismissed, in reality that sauce is the extraordinary item that needs extraordinary evidence. I agree there is no magic sauce (and you’re really overusing that word), but just saying that ‘there’s no magic sauce so zombies can’t exist’ is at best dogmatism, and tells us precisely nothing about the nature of consciousness—it’s just a handwave without any actual content. > [@](#): > > Thing is that I found before that one big reason the zombies are proposed is that it is an effort to counter a materialistic view that would include consciousness, IMHO religion and faith is still an important component to this proposition. > > [zombies and p-zombies - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com](http://skepdic.com/zombies.html) That article really isn’t very well written. And not believing in materialism or reductionism does not entail believing in magic, or in souls, or anything like that. There are many more positions between hardcore physicalism and ‘a wizard did it’, many of which are quite fascinating. Besides, zombie arguments are quite often used against the idea of the existence of an immaterial soul—google ‘soulless zombie’, for instance. Interestingly, those claiming that the argument is obviously flawed in the p-zombie case (without, of course, being able to actually point to the flaw) are, in my experience, quite happy to accept it in the case of a soulless zombie. It’s all in which preconceptions you want to have satisfied. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/149 "2014-10-12T18:36:08Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > That article really isn’t very well written. And not believing in materialism or reductionism does not entail believing in magic, or in souls, or anything like that. There are many more positions between hardcore physicalism and ‘a wizard did it’, many of which are quite fascinating. But with also very little evidence to go by. I’m just saying that eventually one needs to ask “I eso con que se come?” The point here to me is that besides the need for the proponents to show evidence for those fascinating items there is also the bit that eventually a use for those positions should be found or they will be ignored. So far the progress seen is not depending on those positions. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/150 "2014-10-13T00:16:41Z")
I changed my post because I didn’t read your post very thoroughly > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > There’s a difference between being right and being convincing, or being explanatory. If I produce a proof that 1 + 1 = 3, then you could say, well, that’s wrong, it’s actually 2. And of course, you’d be right. But without pointing out what’s wrong with the proof, that will neither convince me, nor teach me anything new. > > It’s the same situation with the zombie argument. Merely claiming that it’s wrong, that something goes amiss somewhere, that I’m in fact erroneously believing myself to be able to imagine the physical processes, might be completely right (I certainly believe so)—but it’s also wholly uninformative. Point out what I miss in my imagining, for instance, and you’ll have provided me with some new insight. Unfortunately, I think that’s quite a hard problem. Yes I agree that I’m not providing any new information to support my position (I’ve admitted that), and yes if I could that would be valuable. P-Zombie certainly does force one to try to counter/prove it with specifics and yes that is very difficult. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/151 "2014-10-13T04:23:25Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > But with also very little evidence to go by. > > I’m just saying that eventually one needs to ask “I eso con que se come?” The point here to me is that besides the need for the proponents to show evidence for those fascinating items there is also the bit that eventually a use for those positions should be found or they will be ignored. So far the progress seen is not depending on those positions. But this is not simply a situation of one group positing the existence of some extra thing (“magic sauce” or whatever you want to call it), and having the burden of proof rest entirely on them. Reductionism has been extraordinarily successful in helping us to understand the universe. But, the phenomenon of subjective experience, certainly at first glance, doesn’t appear to fit well with this kind of description. Indeed, it’s difficult to see how to even _ask the questions_ about consciousness from such a bottom-up approach. So I think it’s entirely valid to try to form alternative descriptions. And there is no burden of proof until someone claims that a particular description is more useful than reductionism in this case. Then, in terms of Materialism / Physicalism, I would consider these philosophical questions, and not something science needs to get involved in. For example with materialism, science doesn’t need to claim that all that exists is matter, it’s enough to say there’s no reason to suppose anything exists beyond what we know exists. Trying to tie Materialism to science has led to the situation where already the definition of “matter” has needed to be expanded several times, and the current definition is deliberately broad / vague. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/152 "2014-10-13T04:37:16Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > But this is not simply a situation of one group positing the existence of some extra thing (“magic sauce” or whatever you want to call it), and having the burden of proof rest entirely on them. Well, IMHO if this was equal we should had seen a lot of research that assumes that extra thing and showing progress. That has not been the case. > [@Mijin](#): > > Reductionism has been extraordinarily successful in helping us to understand the universe. But, the phenomenon of subjective experience, certainly at first glance, doesn’t appear to fit well with this kind of description. Indeed, it’s difficult to see how to even _ask the questions_ about consciousness from such a bottom-up approach. > > So I think it’s entirely valid to try to form alternative descriptions. And there is no burden of proof until someone claims that a particular description is more useful than reductionism in this case. Well, regarding consciousness Hawkins has been successful at least in showing that he is on the right track. > [@Mijin](#): > > In terms of Materialism / Physicalism, I would consider these philosophical questions and not something science needs to get involved in. For example with materialism, science doesn’t need to claim that all that exists is matter, it’s enough to say there’s no reason to suppose anything exists beyond what we know exists. > Trying to tie Materialism to science has led to the situation where already the definition of “matter” has needed to be expanded several times, and the current definition is deliberately broad / vague. Thing is that there is no good reason to leave the fruit on the bowl. Eventually someone like Galileo will wonder if Aristotle was right and see if the grape and the orange do fall at the same time. The point here is that it may be a nice philosophical idea to have, and that is nice, but it seems to me that the progress on this issue (as in practical applications) is telling me that we are close to continue to deal with matter and energy that is not mysterious at all. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/153 "2014-10-13T05:27:28Z")
I asked a university computer science professor: “If you could attach a radioactive-sampling random number peripheral to a computer, is the result still ‘computation?’” He said yes…but was only willing to commit to this on a linguistic and semantic basis, not on a formal computer-science basis. He said that he’d seen many papers with titles that included the phrase “Non-Deterministic Computation.” He said that if this is not an oxymoron, then a radioactive-sampling random number input would not prohibit the process from being computation, as he understands it. He also noted that there are still people who believe in the “hidden variables” model of radioactive decay, so that, if they’re right, it becomes deterministic again. He went on to warn against the very high sensitivity such a device would have to environmental variables, and that any “home” version that you could just plug in to your PC’s USB port would be terribly susceptible to biases in the random numbers it generates. Anyway, I thought it was all amusing enough to share with y’all. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/154 "2014-10-13T05:29:05Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well, regarding consciousness Hawkins has been successful at least in showing that he is on the right track. On the right track to consciousness? Hawkins has been successful at that? I challenge you to show any evidence whatsoever that Hawkins has done that. Note: I seriously doubt Hawkins would make the claim posted above, he’s smarter than that (I think). ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/155 "2014-10-13T05:30:19Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I asked a university computer science professor: “If you could attach a radioactive-sampling random number peripheral to a computer, is the result still ‘computation?’” > > He said yes…but was only willing to commit to this on a linguistic and semantic basis, not on a formal computer-science basis. He said that he’d seen many papers with titles that included the phrase “Non-Deterministic Computation.” He said that if this is not an oxymoron, then a radioactive-sampling random number input would not prohibit the process from being computation, as he understands it. > > He also noted that there are still people who believe in the “hidden variables” model of radioactive decay, so that, if they’re right, it becomes deterministic again. > > He went on to warn against the very high sensitivity such a device would have to environmental variables, and that any “home” version that you could just plug in to your PC’s USB port would be terribly susceptible to biases in the random numbers it generates. > > Anyway, I thought it was all amusing enough to share with y’all. Sounds like the type of thing a p-zombie would say. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/156 "2014-10-13T06:01:50Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > On the right track to consciousness? > > Hawkins has been successful at that? > > I challenge you to show any evidence whatsoever that Hawkins has done that. > Note: I seriously doubt Hawkins would make the claim posted above, he’s smarter than that (I think). I think you are getting it wrong, no he is not claiming that we have consciousness yet, only that there is no reason to assume that the artificial consciousness he can get will be a magical or mysterious thing. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/157 "2014-10-13T06:05:25Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > But with also very little evidence to go by. Well, the notion of evidence itself becomes quite difficult in this case. The scientific method, in the way it is currently understood, is the only reliable epistemological method to discover objective facts with ever-increasing precision. But the problem is that we’re not dealing with objective facts, that indeed the very problem is the existence of subjective facts, which are not even intersubjectively accessible. On the other hand, evidence itself presupposes the notion of the experiencing self: what data ultimately really is, is subject-object correlation—I see, for instance, a red light flashing on an experimental apparatus, and from there, I conclude that, say, the electron’s spin was ‘up’. This implication only follows if I take the subjective side of this, i.e. my experience of the flashing light, as an unanalyzed primitive; only then am I licensed to conclude something about the objective world. In this sense, the subjective self is a pre-condition of the applicability of the scientific method. But it’s not at all clear how to turn this on itself—i.e. study the self from within the self. Indeed, you often hear claims that such ‘first person science’ is impossible in principle, being unable to fulfill criteria such as objective repeatability, etc. I’m less pessimistic: people making this claim forget that the scientific method itself is not a god-given immutable framework, but has changed time and again to be able to better grasp phenomena—today’s framework (some mongrel of Popperian falsificationism and bits of Kuhn, maybe even some flirtations with Feyerabend’s anarchism, with the odd positivistic holdout here and there) is very different from that of Newton and Galileo’s book of nature that is written in the language of mathematics. But I think your reference to Galileo is apt: we will indeed need a new great reformer in order to bring the phenomena of subjective experience under the purview of the scientific method, and this may be the greatest change it has undergone so far. The often proposed strategy of just accepting as conscious that which behaves consciously—perhaps related to some behaviouristic/positivistic hangover—, that has also been advocated in this thread, I find worrying, however. The reason is that we don’t know how an entity behaves consciously—we only know what human-like behaviour is, and since we know humans are conscious, then we can detect consciousness in this sense, or so the argument presumably goes. But this is unacceptably anthropocentric. Consider what happens should we ever encounter an alien species—and here, I mean an _alien_ alien species, not just one of the Star Trek bumpy-forehead person kind. There is no need for it to behave human-like, or even human-intelligible, at all—nevertheless, it may of course be perfectly conscious. The same thing goes for machine intelligences—without humanity’s background as an evolved species in a natural environment, the possibility for behavioural variation may be even greater. Yet, whether we judge something conscious or not has great impact on our moral behaviour—thus, we can’t afford having our judgments clouded by anthopocentrism. So it seems to me that ‘treat as conscious what behaves consciously’ is actually a pretty terrible approach (even without adding the difficulty that it seems very possible that human-like behaviour exists without attendant conscious experience). > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Well, IMHO if this was equal we should had seen a lot of research that assumes that extra thing and showing progress. That has not been the case. That’s circular. You’re judging what research should be done by what research is being done. > [@](#): > > Well, regarding consciousness Hawkins has been successful at least in showing that he is on the right track. I’d like to echo **RaftPeople** here in wanting to see a bit of substantiation to such a huge claim. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/158 "2014-10-13T06:09:52Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > That’s circular. You’re judging what research should be done by what research is being done. Nope, it is just the old fashion “extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence” the ordinary thing here is the plain vanilla realization that the other side is not really showing any results. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I’d like to echo **RaftPeople** here in wanting to see a bit of substantiation to such a huge claim. Again, you are getting it wrong, he is not claiming that we have consciousness yet, only that there is no reason to assume that the artificial consciousness he can get will be a magical or mysterious thing. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/159 "2014-10-13T06:19:57Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Nope, it is just the old fashion “extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence” the ordinary thing here is the plain vanilla realization that the other side is not really showing any results. Every claim here is extraordinary, because nobody has any sort of theory of how consciousness is produced; and there are just as many results from traditional approaches—none. Nobody knows how to create a conscious computer. You’re just following the ‘something will happen somehow’-strategy. But the question is, of course—what happens, and how? > [@](#): > > Again, you are getting it wrong, he is not claiming that we have consciousness yet, only that there is no reason to assume that the artificial consciousness he can get will be a magical or mysterious thing. You made a definite claim—that Hawkins has been successful at showing himself to be on the right track towards consciousness. I’m just asking, how did he do that? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348/160 "2014-10-13T06:20:38Z")
The part about being on the right track? I get it from the fact that there is experimental and independent papers that showed that his ideas have merit when applied (so far) to visual pattern recognition. And that is one reason why IBM and DARPA are working with his products and ideas. Now can you show me where is something similar from the ones proposing that there is something mysterious operating there? Not demanding a complete thing, only any progress to support the alternative with supporting evidence. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-concept-of-a-philosophical-zombie-makes-no-sense-to-me/700348.md?page=9)