Philisophical Zombies, Cride the Terrified Mathematician...
So, I was re-reading the Dresden Codak Dungeons and Discourse comics, where they're fighting p-zombies, so I googled it, and yes, they are what I've also heard called "Chalmers' zombies". To quote, "A philosophical zombie, p-zombie or p-zed is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain. While it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain), it does not actually have the experience of pain as a putative 'normal' person does."
And, yeah, I'm not really impressed. First, I know it's philosophy, but if something looks like a duck, acts like a duck, reacts like a duck, then we should probably treat it like a duck until we've got reason to do otherwise. Since we can't read minds and find out if something's "really" feeling pain, if it acts like it is, we should act like it is too. But I think I agree with Marvin Minsky's criticism of the whole idea as circular, too. That assumption up there that it's "identical except it doesn't really have sentience, or feel pain" is carrying all of the weight in the argument.
I'm always interested in trying to figure out things like the fundamental nature of reality, but bad arguments don't help, and this sure looks like a bad argument to me. Is there something I'm missing about it?
And, yeah, I'm not really impressed. First, I know it's philosophy, but if something looks like a duck, acts like a duck, reacts like a duck, then we should probably treat it like a duck until we've got reason to do otherwise. Since we can't read minds and find out if something's "really" feeling pain, if it acts like it is, we should act like it is too. But I think I agree with Marvin Minsky's criticism of the whole idea as circular, too. That assumption up there that it's "identical except it doesn't really have sentience, or feel pain" is carrying all of the weight in the argument.
I'm always interested in trying to figure out things like the fundamental nature of reality, but bad arguments don't help, and this sure looks like a bad argument to me. Is there something I'm missing about it?