Surely this is a circular argument. By imagining an identical 'zombie' can exist you are assuming that consciousness is not produced by physical processes, then using the imagined zombie to prove that consciousness is not a physical process. (Great series of videos by the way - I'm hooked!)
@Optimistic Determinist Sorry, I still disagree. There is nothing that precludes a physical cause of consciousness except the initial assumption of this argument. I'm reminded of the 'god of the gaps'; if we can't work out how it's done, it must be God. You can't prove what the cause of consciousness is with thought experiments imo. You need physical evidence, and just because evidence hasn't been found yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
@@jimdunleavypiano the argument claims that zombies are possible. That should be false if physicalism is true. Now, it is true that the argument may look question-begging. But when we come to such fundamental claims, it is hard to avoid question-begging arguments alltogether. E.g.a physicalists would say that zombies are impossible? Why? Because physicalism is true! But that's also question-begging. The zombie arguments expresses an intuition of the contingency of the link between mind and body, which is not compatible with physicalism. Of course, it is perfectly legitimate from physicalists to attack that intuition, and the disagreement turns into disagreement on the relative plausibility of competing intuitions: that minds are material versus the one that body can exist without the mind.
The conclusion is baked into the premises. The zombie is identical physically and behaviourally but not metaphysically. Well thats what we are trying to find out with the question of the source of consciousness. Maybe I should take mushrooms to know what these people are on about.
@@renb7850 Identical accusations could be levied against physicalists: their claim that consciousness is physical is already baked into their denial of the possibility of zombies. That kind of debate is counterproductive. Is consciousness physical? If yes, then zombies are impossible. If zombies are possible, then consciousness is not physical. Those conditionals are very plausible. Now the question becomes: what is more plausible - that consciousness is physical or that zombies are possible? Jut the fact that each of those implies something about the other doesn't mean that some party in the debate is begging the question. These logical relations are precisely what enables us to infer something about one side of those ''equations'' from the other. That's simply how normal argumentation occurs.
Under physicalism, If a zombie had the exact same molecules in the brain then his conscious experience would be the same. The fact that one can conceive of a concept of it, only means that ones understanding of consciousness presupposes that physicalism is false.
This is a nice concise rebuttal. I get frustrated by philosophical arguments that rely on our intuitions about things without attempting to justify those intuitions.
Not necessarily, if you don't mind some hair splitting. While we know the brain has something important to do with human-like consciousness, we don't really understand what that is. There are some good arguments that only some fraction of consciousness arises from networks of relationships within the brain, and a significant fraction arises in the broader networks of relationships between the entire environment, including the person, with a heavy bias toward brain structure. In this model, consciousness does not reside IN the brain, or in any other bounded object defined purely as a convenience for the prediction machines that are our brains. Conscious may be much more broadly systemic with not clear boundaries. So you'd need to reproduce the entire system (perhaps extending to the entire universe, or at least all of it that falls within in both spacetime light cones), not just the physical person. (I am a physicalist when it comes to consciousness/awareness, but I suspect it applies to a broader range of phenomena than most assume.) All that being said, you're totally right in that just because one can conceive of something doesn't mean it is possible or true. I can conceive of transubstantiation of bread and wine into flesh and blood, but I don't think it's possible without some very advanced technology that has never existed on Earth.
Why the ankles argument doesn't apply for the Zombies? In the first case we say, no, no, if the ankles are exactly the same molecule for molecule it means they have to be bad, but in the Zombie case we say that it's exact copy of the human, but we make room for the difference - lack of consciousness. Everyone who thinks physicalism is true would say that if the zombie is exactly the same then it will have consciousness and can't be the same molecule for molecule and doesn't have it, just like with the ankles. I'm missing something in this argument, may be I need to look more into it.
@@fkknsikk That still doesn't allow you to imagine a five sided triangle. A triangle isn't defined in terms of the glyphs used to write the word "triangle".
@@mrosskneNot exactly a triangle as the bottom is square but a four sided pyramid is a 3 dimensional shape consisting of triangles and if you add the extra dimension of time that would be fudging the definition of a five sided triangle. Just something to be silly here as it wasn't stated that I had to imagine the five sided triangle in a 2 dimensional state.
I would attack the zombie argument at step 1. A zombie copy of you would answer probing questions about its subjective experience exactly as you would. Yet it’s not having any subjective experience from which to draw upon for its answers. This is inconceivable.
And this is why Philosophy is almost entirely bullshit. What philosophers accept as “rigorous” often just doesn’t hold water. They’re not proper scientists.
Ithink i'm being pushed into barking up a similar tree. what if you can't build a zombie without consciousness arising, meaning that zombies are indeed impossible. Similar to the way that you can't have a perfect copy of a marble run that isn't inherently a marble run in its own right.
@@jamesfforthemasses Yes. If you make a list of the conceivable causes of consciousness (having an experience) it seems to me that “the processing needed to give coherent answers about its plans, thoughts, expectations, and experiences” is by far the most likely candidate. Even if we knew the exact cause of consciousness it would still seem like magic that that thing gives rise to a conscious experience and wouldn’t be a satisfying explanation. It would just be so.
The whole argument seems critically flawed just on the face of it. If someone is starting from the presumption that consciousness is a physical process, then the idea of "creating a one for one copy that just isn't conscious" would be the exact same nonsensical concept as creating an exact molecular copy of Jeff with good ankles. Making an exact copy would inherently require the consciousness to be copied as well. If consciousness is physical, then making an exact copy that doesn't have consciousness is just nonsensical and contradictory. This means that the entire argument with the objective of disproving something rest on the initial presumption that the thing is already false. In order for the first argument to be true, the conclusion needs to be presumed true. Its just circular reasoning. I'm genuinely confused as to why this would be taken seriously by anyone.
Useful video, thanks! My objection is to premise #1: if conscious states are self-aware states, and an organism is interacting with its own thoughts about itself in order to generate its behaviors, then a zombie wouldn't act in the same way as a conscious person since it wouldn't have access to that behavioral feedback that consciousness generates.
No, the zombie would act exactly in the way a conscious being would upto the point of claiming itself to be a conscious being, because the behavior of a p-zombie would not be dependent on it's thoughts. It would be based entirely on the structure of it's body and the physical laws of the universe. Consciousness is not needed for behavior. Thoughts are just an additional feature, but don't themselves lead to any behavior, the structure and firing of the neurons does.
@@Thatoneguy-mh4bx Sounds like you're proposing epiphenomenalism (consciousness is just an ineffectual byproduct). But I think Skythikon is correct that IF our thoughts and consciousness do have causal effects on our actions - obviously beginning from a molecular or neural level - then a philosophical zombie lacking that input or feedback would necessarily have different molecular/neural activity. Trying to imagine the same activity without the input/feedback from consciousness would be like imagining a literal knee-jerk reaction without anything tapping the knee; writ large we can imagine that activity, sure, but in detail we can't coherently imagine that effect without its cause, unless something else was different to cause it. To produce a similar-acting philosophical zombie (if consciousness/thought has some causal role) we would either need something, however minute, to be different at its molecular/neural level to replace that missing feedback, or else we're simply invoking magic akin to molecularly-identical ankles that are nevertheless healthy. Excellent objection to step 1 from Skythikon in other words. Epiphenomenalism avoids that problem, but I think the argument still fails on other points, namely 1) If philosophical zombies are only 'metaphysically possible' as outlined in the video, then it only follows that physicalism is not metaphysically NECESSARY; it doesn't tell us whether or not physicalism is actually true, so there's a problem with step 3 2) If philosophical zombies were physically possible, then the conclusion is correct that physicalism must be untrue; but the claim of philosophical zombies being physically possible is obviously unprovable and would be rejected by any physicalist on the grounds that those neural patterns and behavious would invariably produce consciousness - so that's a problem with (a variation of) step 2.
@@Thatoneguy-mh4bx "because the behavior of a p-zombie would not be dependent on it's thoughts" - If that is the case, the zombie copy isn't exactly the same as the original. This is so obvious to see. All it does is to reinforce physicalism, because there is no way to prove the absence of consciousness can have the exact behaviour as having consciousness. We can be "fooled" by the appearence of consciousness, but that's another thing. It's about the observer lack of lnowledge, not because the non-conscious thing can perfectly imitate having one.
@@clorofilaazul I only said the behavior of the p-zombie would not be dependent on its thoughts BECAUSE according to physicalism, it is assumed that behavior is entirely dependent on the physical laws of the universe, which have nothing to say about consciousness itself. If true, then where, how or why does consciousness play a role anywhere? The point of the p-zombie argument is as a question to physicalists to demonstrate how a non-conscious thing cannot be conceived to imitate having consciousness.
@@Thatoneguy-mh4bx You said "The point of the p-zombie argument is as a question to physicalists to demonstrate how a non-conscious thing cannot be conceived to imitate having consciousness." Well that being the case to put the onus of proving onto physicalism , how about this question : Can we conceive of a computer that could learn over time , and then develop behaviors that are consistent with exhibiting malice and or empathy ... and maybe even boredom ? I pick those because they seem rather more complex than love,hate,fear which seem to have a more instinctual basis , rather than something arriving from the inner workings of consciousness . Albeit not sure about boredom ... what you think ? But anyways ... seems like something we could be testing eventually ... rather than the p-zombie never being testable ?
Jeffrey Kaplan They’ll get popular soon! Well as much as philosophy can on TH-cam. Are these videos from a curriculum you teach like at a university or something? Or do you make them for another reason? I found you while trying to get extra info for my phil of law class and found your law playlist.
I'm currently failing my philosophy course in college and your video just helped me understand so much! I'm currently writing a paper and will be linking your video for the professor. Thank you!
@Jeffrey Kaplan theoretically one could conceive a 5 sided triangle speaking 4D terms. Consider a two dimensional triangle. And then consider another two dimensional traingle in such a way that both triangle points meet (one going through/melded in the other). Take that concept and repeat until 5 sides become visible and/or - fuck wait. That would make the concept have a ratio of 2. Meaning it would follow a 2, 4, 6, 8, side theory. The theory stands. Could one argue with that concept there is such thing as a "4 sided triangle"? 🤔 i suppose this is breaching dimensional theory as well tho lol
Because by definition it doesn't. You're asking "how do we know the [physical copy of me with no consciousness] has no consciousness?" The answer is just that we know it a priori because we just stipulated it.
@@jacobsandys6265 Yes, but if the whole argument relies on it being possible that the zombie does not have consciousness then defining it to not have consciousness makes this pointless. That's like saying the hypothecial ankle is an atom for atom copy but isn't weak and when asked how that would work answering "because I defined it to not be weak". The lack of understanding is leveraged to argue for the possibility of a zombie where it's exactly our lack of understanding that makes it impossible to judge whether such a zombie is possible in the first place.
@@christiangreff5764 But the difference is that the strength of an ankle clearly supervenes on its physical structure. How could an identical ankle not be weak, since weakness just IS a description of its physical structure and dispositions? Consciousness seems different because we actually can conceive of zombies because it seems that it is logically possible for consciousness to not supervene on physical structures. Also, saying “there’s a huge problem with this argument: how do we know the ankle isn’t weak?” is still a terrible reply. It is stipulated.
@@jacobsandys6265 The striking difference between the ankle and the brain/consciousness is that we understand the ankle. Our incapability to conceive of a functioning ankle that is also a perfect down-to-the-atom copy stems exactly from our understanding of how the ankle functions, it's incompatible with our model of the world. We do not have such an understanding for the brain/consciousness; the very question we want to answer is whether an atom-for-atom copy would also be capable of producing consciuousness or whether we would need to add something else. If I didn't have an understanding of how the world works that tells me the weakness of the ankle is directly derived from its atom-arrangement, then there would be no problem in conceiving of an atom-wise copy being stronger; if I, for example, extend my model to also include non-physical 'weak ankle curses' that wouldn't be copied, then I can suddenly perceive of such a thing as a atom-for-atom copy ankle that is also not weak.
The self deprecation is for me really appealing but also a neat teaching trick imo. It makes you want to come along for the ride instead of setting himself up as a super serious authority figure to abase yourself before in return for knowledge. "IDK how to spell either of these words", spells both correctly, "IDK much about the standard model of physics", immediately names most of the particles in the standard model, etc etc. He's right there with you while you're learning.
I'm not a professional philosopher so I don't get much chances to discuss this kind of issues with others, but for the past 20 years since I read David Chalmers' zombie argument I've been wondering how in the world such nonsense received so much attention. The argument you present here is pretty much what I thought the first time I read it (including the "five sided triangle" idea). In my opinion the zombie argument could be praised if coming from a high school student, but beyond that it's just idiotic.
A five sided triangle can't be imagined because it violates the definition of what a triangle is. I can imagine a five sided figure that I could say was a triangle.
@@jacobsandys6265 No, just using different labels or rather: an 'already in use label' but for referencing a new concept (kinda like the word gay meant happy not too far in the past but now means male homosexual); that of course does not actually work around the problem of the original demand to "imagine a five sided figure that (among other properties) has exactly three sides", which is the 'fully spelled out' version of "imagine a five sided triangle".
@@jacobsandys6265 A five-sided shape would not meet the conditions necessary to be categorized as what we currently and commonly refer to as a triangle, on that I concur.
I don't know much about philosophy but your videos are great, I'm just a biotechnology student who wants to know more about philosophy, so thank you very much sir.
Awesome. And glad that you like the videos. If you want the videos organized by topic, or into courses, I have done that on my playlists page: th-cam.com/channels/_hukbByJP7OZ3Xm2tszacQ.htmlplaylists
The jurors in the Toronto murder trial of Kenneth Parks, who killed his mother-in-law in 1987, could conceive of unconscious actions that mimic willed, self-aware behavior. Parks was acquitted on the grounds that he was actually sleep-walking, and therefore not conscious of his actions, when the incident took place. Really, the zombie argument is just another way of framing the other minds problem. We all leap across an epistemological gap when we attribute something like our own inner awareness to other people. This is sometimes referred to as forming a theory of mind about other actors, or in Dennett's terminology, taking the intentional stance. The Turing Test is a technological variation on this same problem and question.
Prof Kaplan - great video, but I wish you had spent a bit more time on the various objections. It seems like the conceivability premise is the one that is most often attacked. It does appear that the very premise pre-supposes that physicalism is false.
If those zombies are just like us, that is if they are too made of exactly the same number of molecules and their orientations are all same, they would too be conscious.
i reject the premise that such a thing is conceivable. if it is molecularly identical to me it must therefore have the same conscious experience as me. by saying that the zombie is molecularly identical but lacks the conscious experience it assumes by definition that consciousness isn't physical
If it's possible for a physical body like an airplane to work without consciousness, then why can't a physical body like a human body work without consciousness? Even if you posit that that is "impossible" (in which case you have to prove why it is impossible), that still does not mean that it is "inconceivable." In fact, you and I both just conceived of it. It's easy. If you think it can't be pulled off, then show why it can't.
@@ambitionbird because consciousness is a group of related processes working in tandem. this is like asking me to concieve of one bike, a perfectly normal, working bike with all necessary components, and then asking me to concieve of a 100% identical bike that is the same in every way and yet the wheels dont spin. this is impossible because the spinning of the wheels is a necessary byproduct of all components of the bike being arranged as they are (wheels axel gears etc). in the same way, the "zombie" that molecularly identical to me *must* be conscious because consciousness is occuring because of all the molecules in my body working in the way they do
@@ambitionbird yes of course! that's exactly the trouble with the original argument as well. it tells us nothing about the nature of consciousness, only the opinion of the person making the argument.
Because I am a random viewer (not following the lectures in series), I got a little lost. But I think the presenter (lecturer) is brilliant and in the end I was able to make sense of it and simply loved it. I will tactfully throw this Zombie argument into a social conversation some day to earn some social points.
@@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked It was actually a radio series and later a series of novels before it saw a movie adaption, the movie is only the first novel if I remember correctly. They don't even find the question to 42 in it
Very good, thanks. Interesting and entertaining as well. Thumbs up thanks also to Amy Kind and David Chalmers, obviously (and to the poor zombies without consciousness...)
Surely the interesting question is: does consciousness inevitably arise from certain arrangements of molecules? This is not easy to answer but just imagining that it does (or not) doesn't seem to help.
The problem of course with understanding consciousness as something non-physical is: How can this non-physical phenomenon be formed or captured in a physical body?
Yeah, that's a really hard question. No one has an answer. That's no reason, though, to just re-define clearly non-physicaly phenomena, like for instance, the experience of silently counting to ten, as physical, just in order to avoid that kind of hard question. It is just like the man who drops a key in a dark alley, then goes to look for it on the sidewalk because it is better lit.
@@ambitionbird Your intuition that thoughts must necessarily be nonphysical is unfounded and indefensible, whereas the existence of the physical world (and the fact that thoughts are known to exist and have causes and effects there) is well evidenced. To search in the dark alley, you must first know that the alley exists and it is possible to drop your keys there. A man that had never seen or knowingly been to a dark alley might be forgiven for not assuming his most precious belongings all go there whenever he can't find them. Of course, maybe it's not in the invisible, undetectable dark alley. Maybe it's in the invisible, undetectable cave nearby. Maybe it's tangled in the roots of the invisible, undetectable tree. Or maybe it was whisked away by a gryffon to its nest atop Death Mountain (the gryffon and the mountain both being undetectable, by the way). If you begin looking for undetectable causes, you will have no leads, and search forever without any progress. I'll stick to searching the sidewalk for now. We have a lot more work to do there before we resort to using dowsing rods to search for dragons' hidden lairs.
@@ambitionbird What is clearly non-physical of me silently counting to ten? I have seen no data that would suggest it isn't anything but very physical activities carried out in my brain, as seen from the inside perspective of being that brain.
@@christiangreff5764 then speak for yourself. I do not see or hear anything phsyical when I silently count to ten -- and if someone alleges that there is a physical process corresponding to it, then I need to see the evidence of that. I am not going to presum that such a thing is real without evidence -- that is begging the question at best.
@@ambitionbird Attributing consciousness to complex though not yet understood electrochemistry is purely based on already established phenomena, in stark contrast to attributing it to something 'non-physical', for which we do not have any evidence, either. Until evidence for such non-physical stuff is found, I think it most prudent to assume consciousness derives from already observed phenomena (see the principle of Occam's razor). This is further backed up by the fact that many observations we already have are easier to explain within a purely materialistic model: 1) Effectiveness of psychadelic drugs: Them affecting conscious experience is easily explained if it's just them altering the brains chemistry but in a non-physical model we would have to explain how this physical stuff influences the non-physical. 2) Along a similar line, the effects of brain injuries or being knocked unconscious: If consciousness is the brain experiencing its own activity, that is easy, but in a non-physical model we again have to find an explanation for how the physical injury can influence the non-physical. 3) And the other way around: How does the non-physical influence the physical so that nerves are transmitting signals to muscles to make our bodies move?
I can coherently imagine person with magical powers and an identical person (molecule by molecule) without magical powers, therefore a person with magical powers is possible, therefore physicalism is false because of magic?
For the argument to work, we would have to change how we think of consciousness. I think everyone, regardless of whether they believe in libertarian free will or in hard determinism, will agree that consciousness (whatever it is) has SOME impact on the agent's physical body. Be it their behaviour or psychological state. (and psychological states have physical effects, see the placebo effect). This precludes us from imagining a zombie without consciousness, that behaves identically to a human with consciousness. Precisely because the human's consciousness impacts their behaviour or psychological state, which is observable. So, we instead have to accept that consciousness isn't relevant to someone's behaviour or psychological state. In other words, it isn't observable by any means whatsoever. It is no different to a soul at that point. So how are we to accept anyone's claims about said consciousness, if we've never truly observed it? Not even subjectively? Whatever the argument for it being physical or non-physical is, how can it possibly be correct when we don't have experience with it existing it all?
"We can coherently imagine zombies" is carrying a lot of weight. It really seems to be begging the question by sneaking in the presumption that consciousness is an optional addition to physicalism. That's the conclusion Chalmers wants to reach ... but it's in his first premise.
I had my paper ripped off in the mid 70s by a greedy philosophy prof. It was related to split brain experiments. In my opinion this philsophical argument is mathematically equivalent to quantum physics principles about quantum entanglement. But there is a flaw in this video - please write it down in math nomenclature. It's called logic 101 - there is a gap that needs to be explained
The Zombie revision that comes to mind: if we mapped every aspect of your brain into a computer, which would perfectly produce its function, would this be close to the Zombie proposition? It would respond to stimuli exactly as you would, it would identify "pink" just as you would, but would it experience qualia or would it be nothing more than a mechanical mimic, a simulation of you? I think this question revolves around "freedom" and it takes two forms, 1) Freedom from mechanical function, and 2) Freedom of mechanical function. AI Alpha Zero will play the same piece with the same board orientation every time and for the same reason because 1+1, no matter how many times it runs the sequence, will necessarily always = 2, as such, it hits its freedom limit of the 2nd kind. But, but are you merely mechanical, bound to the limits of your programming, and as such, are your evaluations and decisions necessary, determinate? Or do you exhibit freedom of the 1st kind? Now we see issues with Alpha Zero, particularly as it competes with Stockfish, and we can abstract a model of AZ which addresses these issues, producing AZ v2 and v3 and v4… 1) Mechanical constructs cannot abstract itself (imo, the essential criterion for “self”) 2) I can 3) therefore I am not mechanical Programming AZ’s view of itself or leveling up (Godel); seeing one’s self from a third party position context, would be necessary for it to have that capacity, but this would only beg the question by pressing the same 2nd kind objection of the first on to the second level. This is the paradox of self reflection leading to an infinite regression, thus driving any potential resolution beyond the bounds of this Universe and founding the repudiation of physicalism.
An interesting question on the topic of free will is: if we could reverse reality like a film, and start it playing back from early yesterday morning. Could you have something different for breakfast yesterday?
I don't understand the difference between shit ankles and consciousness. If we cannot imagine molecule for molecule ankles that aren't shit, why can we imagine molecule for molecule zombies without consciousness? It seems to be assuming consciousness is non-physical from the start.
Thanks! But a triangle cut out of a piece of paper is not a five sided triangle, because it isn't a triangle. It is a three-dimensional object. I believe it is a 'triangular prism'.
@@profjeffreykaplan Lol! OK, a paper cut out 'triangle' is a really really squat prism. But a 'real' triangle would be part of a Euclidean plane. Would a Euclidean plane be considered to have two sides? A triangle with 4 sides, that would be tough to conceive, though... I will work on it. Thank you!
If we can conceive of the zombie, then physicalism _may_ be false. Just because we can conceive of it doesn't mean it's real, any more than unicorns are real just because I can conceive of them. This seems a silly argument, so I probably missed something...
No, you got it right. The argument is incredibly silly. As soon as he began presenting the argument formally, I _immediately_ rejected premises 1 and 2. It was so easy and so obvious that I spent the rest of the video waiting for an added twist that never came.
The Zombie Argument sounds a lot like the modern NPC meme. People who don't think for themselves, merely regurgitate common talking points. Leading to the meme that they aren't conscious.
Premise 3 is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to reach conclusion 2. The best we can do with this on is to modify conclusion 2 to say that it is possible that physicalist is false. But this doesn’t move the discussion forward
I think many would say: “A perfect copy of me would have my ‘soul’ but still neither of us would contain any spirit. We’d be equally misunderstood and mislabeled along with all humans as having a ‘consciousness’ and ‘soul’. We’d then see spiritualists fighting over how it is that we can both (appear to) have souls when a soul is indivisible. Then one of us would be burned at the stake.” Philosophers make irritating assumptions. The casual assumption that consciousness is one thing and it’s on or off like a switch is the first whopper. I’d ask anyone if they know of an animal that has no consciousness. If so, are they certain its unreadable nature means it actually lacks something? There’s no reason to think my clone would appear to have no consciousness. Rounding that up to ‘I can’t imagine a zombie’ is just false. I regard consciousness as yet another construct we use to explain a familiar blur of (physical) processes.
11:14... A molecule for molecule replica....Zombie..... I reckon that a mirror reflection is a pretty good start, instant (almost) to a Zombie Of precision. But does that reflection also have the molecular data or something more subtle, non physical!?
5 sided triangle: 1) cut a triangle (any type) from a piece of paper. 2) label each edge (so, “1”, “2”, “3”). 3) label the side facing you “4”. 4) turn the triangle over. 5) this unlabeled ‘side’ is “5”. Do this exercise in abstract Euclidean space. The kind of space you use anytime you sketch on paper. The space you learned about in geometry where points are dimensionless, lines such as the edges “1”, “2”, & “3” have only length, and planes such as faces “4” & “5” have only length and width. If you can sketch a box, a cube, then you can conceive Euclidean space, and now you can conceive a five-sided triangle, a six-sided square, a seven-sided pentagon, and so on. And you didn’t even need to wrap your mind around additional dimensions and projecting between them. Inconceivability/conceivability have more to do with manufactured constraints of thinking than with actual constraints of reality. It’s unnecessary to personally experience (know) something to understand it. Likewise, you have little to no problem conceiving the non-existent, even the impossible. Sherlock Holmes, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter and Hermoine Granger are not actual people but fictional characters. They have no consciousness. You can understand this without having to exhaustively search (personal experience) the planet for them. Yet you’re likely to have been personally influenced by one, or more, and you thought of those as if they were actual people. We do this - treat the conceptual as though it is actual in reality - effortlessly, unconsciously, naturally. We fall into narratives, theories, stories, conjectures, movies... You likely accept that sound travels in the vacuum of space. That you can hear lasers blast and objects hundreds, even thousands, of kilometers distant explode loudly. You readily think about re-animate corpses walking-dead or barely living infected, brain-dead critters trying to eat you. Taking the philosophical zombie - a complete, particle-for-particle doppleganger lacking “consciousness” - as possible IS NOT the problem. Seeing the ‘philosophical zombie’ for being a red herring IS. Arguing in any serious manner either for or against the ‘philosophical zombie’ concept prevents understanding the category error of treating episteme (knowledge, conception being a kind along with imagination; sense-perception, therefore hallucination; empiricism; and so on) as having the same status in reality as the ontic/ontological (fundamental grounding of existence). To bring all this abstraction into focus consider how it is that any possible knower can know. Another way to get at this is to ask, “How can episteme (knowledge and knowing knowers) exist without an ontically physical reality? Can physical reality exist without knowers and their knowledge? If humans and all other knowers ceased to exist would there still be stuff they made? Or things they named like rivers, oceans, plankton..? Or entities, processes, being that no knower ever knew? And wouldn’t plankton qualify as a knower?” The same immense, automatic conceptual ability that allows us to navigate our experience so successfully also allows us to treat that ability and its conceiving/knowledge as existentially prior within reality. That is, we can and do treat our ability to conceive and our conceptions as arbiters of existence. Hence, one quickly arrives at some form of Idealism. Dualism is an Idealism. Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Sassier, Horkheimer all Idealists. The “social construction” of ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ is an Idealistic trope, which is but a step away from nihilism and/or solipsism. I’m not advocating for the abject dismissal of thought experiments or ideals any more than for the abandonment of knowledge and reason. I am advocating for a pedagogical change. Teaching early, repetitively, and integratively that each of these along with language, philosophy, science, theory, belief, established “laws of nature” like those of thermodynamics and evolution by selection, all thought, and most unconscious behavior are attempts to model, or map, reality. No map is ever going to be the territory. A map, a method, rule, procedure... will ever be only a guide. And since the territory-universe-reality will ceaselessly, indeterminately change; all maps, all models are both necessarily incomplete and reductive. That is, no model can capture all or even enough of reality to avoid being wrong in some way to some degree. To model all of reality with fidelity would require all of reality, at least twice: the original reality (R1) and the model (r2) running within R1. This would require all the energy to run R1 and an equal amount for r2. If r2 is expected to predict R1 an unknowable additional energy demand will have to be met to continuously run-revise-run an unknowable number of anticipatory scenarios (r2 * n) within R1. So, a meta-physically plausible scheme to model reality within itself is conceivable yet absurdly impossible. To obtain realistic models means accepting reduction. Such trade-offs have long been reasonably understood, yet the principle is rarely acknowledged, much less taught - even poorly.
Conceivability seems a weak basis for the argument. I can say I conceive a universe where consciousness is physical but there is different physics for zombies, robbing them of it. That is just the flip side of P1.
Never underestimate people's ability to conceive of stuff. Imagine a pentagon, where two of the angles between its sides are exactly 180°. You got yourself a five-sided triangle! Of course, people will immediately object that this shape is either not really a triangle or not really five-sided, but at this point the argument devolves into semantics. A three-sided square can be more of a challenge, though 🙂
The problem with a five sided triangle is that a triangle has exactly three sides by definition. As a well defined object there's simply no room for "conceiving" to apply. Anything fitting the definition is a triangle and anything not fitting the definition is not a triangle. Context does matter, though, as a different definition of a triangle might apply outside plane geometry as described by Euclid.
No, it doesn't devolve. You imagined either a triangle with three sides, a pentagon with five sides, or something else that is neither of these. Claiming to have imagined something, and imagining it, are not the same.
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 Okay, let me explain it in a way that even you can understand. If we define a term, then each appearance of that term in a statement can be replaced by its definition and the statement's meaning won't change. For example, if we agree to define "human" as "rational mammal", then the statements "Socrates is a human" and "Socrates is a rational mammal" have the same meaning. We define triangle as "three sided polygon". The statement "I imagine a triangle" is equivalent to "I imagine a three sided polygon". The statement "I imagine a five sided triangle" is equivalent to "I imagine a five sided three sided polygon". You are, of course, free to lie about what you imagine. If your goal is to convince anyone of an argument by this method, you won't achieve your goal.
@@mrosskne Let me explain it in a way that I'm afraid you will continue to refuse understanding anyway: your arbitrary definitions are not an actual constraint on reality. They can be modified and played around with. The "if we agree" that you started your pontification with is merely a conditional. When we're working on a rigorous mathematical proof, we might indeed "agree" (even though extending and rethinking definitions is the heart of mathematics, so even here the agreement is only partial). Elsewhere, nobody is committed to agreeing with the definitions you make up.
Consciousness not bound to physical form would only be able to interact with other consciousness. What would an interaction between 2 consciousness look like? Additive synthesis like adding 2 colors of light together. They would merge into a single consciousness containing aspects of both and yet appearing new and unique. For your scenario, 2 consciousness interacting with only 1 bound to a physical form would appear as if the consciousness bound to the physical form had a sudden and drastic change in itself. One might call this sudden apparent change in consciousness a possession, an epiphany, a breakthrough, a spiritual awakening, an enlightenment, a sudden realization, etc.
I used this argument for an essay, but I coined the idea of A-zombies (academical Zombies) where we have people who are reluctant to actually dive in knowledge and just pretend to have culture to be a part of culture in order to survive and be a part of society. Would love to know if my theory has any weight
Even if the first two premises from Chalmers argument were sound. i think all its proving is that physicalism is not necessarily true, not that it is false.
Because if physicalism is true, you can not conceive of a particle true copy _without_ consciousness, it would follow with the molecules. That is the framework of physicalism. So premise 1 goes down fast and nothing is proved. Such a deficient but perfect copy would indeed be a very strange and foreign concept as I see it. I like Chalmers, he is a nice fellow, but I fail to grasp how he can paint himself into such a corner. He just has a proof of his own premise.
I've been a physicalist all my life I'm majoring in physics then I realized that wait a minute... I can't get colors from 1's and 0's, they must exist on their own. That's how I got here.
@Bryana Leigh Then imagine, you talk to the copy, all evening, laugh at your shared memory, having so much fun, then tell her you believe there is nobody behind her eyes, you got all the marbles. She would then cry and claim the same for you and finally you would probably accept that you are both equal and the same. That is what I think would happen, at least, the idea of having the visual impressions from four eyes may be a bit of a stretch.
Hi i need some help checking if this idea makes sense! Would an argument in reverse refute the zombie argument? e.g in a zombie world, it would be impossible to conceive of a physically identical world in which conscious beings exist (because it is impossible to conceive of anything in a world without consciousness) so in such a world, it is metaphysically impossible for conscious beings to exist. yet the fact that we know that conscious beings exist shows that logic is flawed and cannot be used.
Hm, I think that's a good direction of inquiry, but I'm not convinced of one of your premises. I imagine myself looking through a magic portal to a physicalist universe, filled with only philosophical zombies. I'd listen in on some philosophers in that universe discussing this matter, and they would say the exact same arguments - that they can imagine philosophical zombies unlike themselves, and they would also claim to experience consciousness. Perhaps they would all come to the same conclusion that they live in a nonphysical universe. I would then ponder, "if they can come to the conclusion that they are in a non-physicalist universe, maybe it's not such a strong argument."
Forget zombies, what about energy? Mass can be converted to energy or already is energy, but how can energy be something physical? What shape does it take? Lets say I climb a tower which increases my potential energy, in what physical location within spacetime does this potential energy reside? what's its temperature? what color is it? what is it touching? how fast is it moving? what's length and height? is it rotating? is it pulled by gravity? what's its density and volume? can it reflect light or make noise? what changes were made to the atoms, molecules etc of matter before and after being converted to energy?
I am missing something - how does 'zombies are possible, C1' inferred "therefore consciousnesses is not physical". I get is _allows_ for non-physical consciousness ingredient, but it does not necessitate it in any way. Therefore physical-only consciousness is still quite possible and quite consistent with present experience.
Imagine there is a soccer game going on and you are watching with a friend. The friend is a huge fan and wants to prove, that soccer is something supernatural, fundamental, not reducible to physical stuff. So he proposes a thought experiment: let's say that there is a zombie soccer game, it looks and goes exactly as a normal soccer game, there are players and ball and all that stuff, you couldn't distinguish it from a normal game from outside. But: There is no soccer game there! Hm. For me is sounds like BS... And the soccer example too😂
excellent example. just like consciousness, the thing "soccer" isn't something that exists in the world, rather it is a consequence of a pattern of objects arranged soccer-wise (not only in space, but across a period of time as well).
Chalmers seems to be saying two things: that a perfect clone of a human being would necessarily be devoid of consciousness (he forgets that it would also be deprived of life) and/or that what is feasible, as it belongs to the mental realm of conceived possibilities, cannot be physical. As these two points are extremely simple to the point of triviality, he weaves a convoluted argument in which he uses zombies as a marketing gimmick. The physicalist would remain unfazed since she could always argue that we have a narrow idea of the things her matter can do. Being a reductionist principle, materialism can never be refuted. It is a kind of protean god to the extent that no matter what you say, it can always reply that X "is nothing more than a process or property of Z" (matter). The only thing that you can do is to pin your interlocutor down to a definition of matter that shows it simply cannot do all the things she ascribes to it. The idea that imagined things are somehow entities that cannot have a physical existence with physical reality is patently false. We would not have computers or planes if that were the case. Therefore triangles must a riddle both for physicalism and Chalmers.
Well, triangles are figments of the imagination, created by our collective experience and education. But there are images projected inside our brains due to our daily existence which can be considered instances of such, and conversely the "ideal" triangle came from stripping several such everyday objects to their bare essentials and generalising them.
Would not a zombie be like a computer waiting for an instruction? Would it not sit forever until an instruction came, since there is nothing going on inside?
What. A triangle is defined as a 3 sided object. Something with 5 sides by definition cannot be a triangle. There are so many flaws with this idea and I am genuinely curious what definitions are being used that are vastly different from what I am used to to make this "logic" work.
This argument follows from a very specific version of a zombie, I don't know if it is actually the zombie that is posited by Chalmers, you are arguing against a carbon copy zombie. A copy of the physics. It seems obvious that the copy of the physics will also be conscious because the physics somehow correlates to the consciousness in some way even if it's not generating it. But the real zombie argument is about behavior, is about observation. So if a chat GPT robot can convince you that it's like a human that sees pink, that's the zombie because you know that it's not a brain. It's a large language model running a robot that just looks really convincing, but it might sound convincing and there's no real way to tell from the behavior. And we certainly don't have a way to tell from the physics or the chemistry. That's the real zombie argument I think?
I would love to see Jeffrey Kaplan explaining Chalmers "Subsymbolic Computation and the Chinese Room". That would be a great and fitting addition to his course, touching a very pertinent topic right now. I am also hooked!
In my humble opinion, if something that we don't understand can interact with matter and matter can interact with this 'something' we could say that this 'something' cannot be radically different from matter. Alcohol can change our conscience and my conscious willing to move chair can change chair position it means that conscious should be part of knowledge of matter world.
that's very simillar to Elisabeth's question to Decartes: "Given that the soul of a human being is only a thinking substance, how can it affect the bodily spirits, in order to bring about voluntary actions?" i.e. if the consciousness is non-physical how can it interact with the physical body?
We know that we can't imagine the 5 sided triangle because we have the precise definition of what makes a shape a triangle. We do not have a precise definition of what makes a body conscious, therefore we do not know whether we can "imagine" the zombie. I certainly can't imagine the zombie, but this is just because my definition of consciousness already makes it incoherent. The zombie argument really is circular.
Would it possible to re-imagine this argument going the other direction? For example, P1. I can concieve of a disembodied consciousness (God for example, or ghosts or what have you) P2. It seems possible for disembodied consciousnesses to exist. C1. Therefore consciousness is not physical. Perhaps my formulation is poor, but this seems to have similar argumentative grounding as the Zombie Argument. Though I agree with the conclusion, I don't find the argument satisfying as it seems to tell us more about our conception of the mind than anything else, and our conception may not reflect the state of the real word. If this objection were raised for the Zombie argument, or mine, how might one respond?
In the same way that having 3 sides is an inherent property of a triangle, I could just make the claim that having consciousness is some inherent property of the microphysical arrangement of the brain. Also if you make two sides of a pentagon very small, you can make it look superficially like a triangle (but with 2 corners 'chopped off'). But just because I can superficially 'conceive' of something doesn't mean that's how it actually is, even in theory. It may look like a triangle, but it's not. It may look like philosophical zombies are conceivable, but I don't know that they are.
On a similar note, I think P2 is backwards in terms of causation. I'd argue that we can only truly and fully conceive of that which is metaphysically possible (considering the possibility for the entirety of something to be conceived in the first place, which I doubt anyway). We may still be able to superficially conceive of things, whether metaphysically impossible or not, though. This is because the mind make models & abstractions of the outside world, not the other way around.
Also if something can interact causally with the "physical" world, I'd consider that thing part of the physical world (otherwise there's the problem of a seemingly arbitrary line). When people say "nonphysical," or "supernatural," I get confused as to how that's not a contradiction. It feels like seeing a chair and claiming there's a "chairness" nonphysical property in the universe, and having a lot of it makes that thing a chair. Maybe this is a semantic confusion of 'physical' concerning the material, and 'physical' concerning a system of physics and interactions.
In a certain way I think this argument is like saying that you could create a molecule-for-molecuole copy of a battery that couldn't hold an electric charge. The electric charge is, in many ways, separate from the physical structure of the battery. However, it is a property which arises naturally from the structure of the battery. It may be discharged/dead upon creation, but you would still be able to charge it and use it in exactly the same way you might use the original battery. That is to say, if a philosophical zombie was created, I don't see why it couldn't GAIN consciousness upon being exposed to the world. I am dualist, but it also seems obvious to me that physical processes have a direct effect on consciousness. You can lose consciousness or have your consciousness altered via physical changes to your body. (think comas, alzheimers, schizophrenia) If consciousness can be destroyed by the physical, why couldn't it also be created by the physical?
Can one construct molecule by molecule a living human being? Even Frankenstein's monster had to be animated in a second step. It seems that something is missing. For the point about consciousness being destroyed by schizophrenia, the dualist could say that the connection between the mental world and the physical world was disrupted by a physical illness, so that the original qualities still existed but could not be accessed in the physical world. The effect could go both directions. The mental world would no longer receive updates from the physical world. In addition, if there are anomalies in the physical world, why couldn't there be anomalies in the mental world? Then the brain structures would all look normal, and the chemistry would be right, the history of the person would be nominal, but the defect would still be there. I believe that such things have happened. Then the medications would fail to work, I suppose.
I just sprained both my ankles and can barely put pressure on my left ankle while being able to put almost full pressure on my right ankle. Any advice?
Ummm, I'd just like to point out that sensory processing has actually been mapped in the brain. Vision for example is mainly processed in occipital lobe or cortex. Emotions are made in amygdala. So like, is that not a sufficient evidence against the Zombie argument?
More specifically, this disproves 1'st premise. A zombie cannot be concieved. A person lacking consciousness would not function as a person, they'd be a vegetable.
@@entropy8634 Consciousness doesn't refer to perception or thought, it refers to having the sense of existing, a zombies brain would seem equal a conscious being brain, the difference is not physical, it's an existential difference.
@@entropy8634 Perception is taking outside stimuli which the brain uses to make decisions, sense is 'knowing' that you perceive something. A robot perceives environment and acts accordingly, but because it was programmed to do so, a human perceives the environment and acts accordingly, and (if not a zombie) has a sense of it, that is, feels consciously. Two different processes, one result
@@marvinmartinez3818 "feels", emotions themselves are the actions triggered by stimuli tho. Another layer of perception, even when its subconscious process. Your heart rate is an unconscious process that can be triggered by subconscious process that is triggered by outside stimuli. I'm obviously oversimplifying for the sake of making a point. Also, my goal isn't to debate you, its to gain insight on precise definition of consciousness" and what it looks like when a person doesn't have it. So if the difference is that it feels different, then perhaps there's really no difference when emotions themselves are results?
This is a little above my head, but I don't understand the import of being able to conceive of a philosophical zombie. I can conceive of a rock that has consciousness, but only rocks with olivine, and that if you removed the olivine the rock would lose consciousness. Have i just proved the physicalist position? Obviously not, but how is the dualist argument different?
I always thought there was more to this argument. It wasn't merely that philosophical zombies are conceivable. It was that if you can account for all behavior by reference solely to the third person properties of physical stuff, then there is nothing for first person mental stuff to do. It doesn't explain anything. Since first person mental stuff is unnecessary to explain behavior, philosophical zombies are possible and physicalism is false. Or something like that.
The first principle of teaching anything is not to criticize it before you have presented the argument for whatever. Mixing in possible criticisms as you present the premisses to an argument makes it much more difficult to follow the argument. Only present criticisms AFTER you have presented the entire argument with its conclusion.
So this wonderful playlist ends here... In light of recent advancements and debates, It would be interesting to have a video about the idea of conciousness "emerging" in a machine.
"I'm going to make an exact copy of your leg, except for the problem part of it." "Well that's impossible. Either it has the problem, or it isn't an exact copy." "Right. That's what the word 'except' means."
Could you please do a video on logical supervenience and how this relates to the p-zombie argument? I am reading Chalmers book and his argument for P-zombies existing seems far more sophisticated. But I just can't, for the life of me, understand why p-zombies would be logically supervenient but not nomically.
Great series on philosophy of mind. I have a video request. Could you please make a video explaining the different versions of dualism (property, substance, interactionism)?
I have another question. Okay, if you make a molecule by molecule of your full self but it would be a hundred miles away. This copy includes your mind. But to do that, you have to destroy the original you. Are you alive or dead?
The question is too vague to be answered unless you either define or assume a definition for "you". The answer to your question will be contained within that definition.
@@fieldrequired283 The way I see it, if what you define as you is the matter that makes up your body, even if the copy has an identical consciousness in every way, and even thinks it is you, and behaves EXACTLY as you would, since it does not have any of your molecules none of that is relevant. The fact that your consciousness survives (albeit as an exact copy) does not matter. YOU are dead. But if you is defined as your consciousness, thoughts, feelings and experiences, all of which is continued as they come into existence in the new body the instant the originals are destroyed, then YOU are alive. Think of it as the Ship of Theseus problem... in human form.
You need to put an additional constraint about how molecules are organized. There could be many configurations of the same molecules that are different from the original but have the same quantity of molecules loosely reorganized to fix the bad ankles.
An empty flash drive and the same flash drive having with this video saved onto it - they are made of the same parts. But since the information is different, therefore information can't be determined by physical matter ?
@@shoutitallloud The flash drive with data and the flash drive without data are not physically identical. In fact, the difference in data between the two is fully accounted for by the physical differences between the two. They are made of the same things, vaguely speaking, but the exact details of their arrangement and other physical states account for the presence or absence of the data. According to the physicalist, so is it with consciousness.
@@fieldrequired283 Ok. I can agree with that. So the information, the data is obliged to the physical structute and arrangemend. But we can have two different flash-drives. Completely physically different. And they can containe identical data. This means that information is not defined simply by physical structure.
Zombies are not conceivable. What the author thinks he conceives , is a package of other characteristics , the form , the brain , the reaction , but the essence of what makes a zombie, a zombie is not conceived. It’s like saying , imagine a 5 sided triangle inside a red box. You imagine your red box but you have to address the sides in order to be conceivable. Since in the case of human brain "mystery" surrounds the work of the brain, imagining the zombie just skips the fundamental point.
So if it was a molecule for molecule recreation I need to know about bio electrical charge and current. Is this part of the premise? The way it has been explained is that the zombie is not an inanimate golem, instead it has a nervous system and bio electricity. I reject the argument in the first premise due to the zombie definition being impossible. Structurally the brain has neurons that fire in pathways and this would be part of the molecular structure. The body has bio electrical current and it is the amplitude of the current which is the regulating factor of in maintainance of the consciousness experience. Further what you have described is an exact clone of the individual, so at the point of reproduction you would need to account for the uncertainty of particals which have an effect on neurons firing. Also the same neurons need to be firing. At this stage the brain structure and current in the copy is experiencing the same thoughts as when the copy was taken. Thus the new copy will be disorientated as the sensory perception will show a change in location and context, but will become its own being with consciousness. It is simply a twin of the original not a failed golem. That is how a physicalist would argue about consciousness being an abstract of the sensory experience and how a body with a brain is the apparatus of said experience. The electrical firing of the processor into patterns of the neural net is the adjusted structure within the greater identified organ. That structure is adaptive based on sensory experience and physical damage. But an exact replica would by definition not be a zombie. Therefore this zombie premise is wrong and can not exist in that form or prove physicalism to be incorrect.
Read the description everyone. You are misunderstanding one thing about the argument, which is that it claims that zombies could exist. Of course it’s somewhere just an assumption, but it’s not completely unfounded.
5:20 Maybe _you_ can't, but I can. It's just a five-sided shape that lacks the ineffable property of pentagonality. This property is not a result of the number of vertices or edges but is instead meaningless bullshit I just made up and can vigorously hand-wave away as needed.
The video doesn't present the argument well. It doubts that zombies are conceivable, by positing the physicalist premise: surely, if the working of the bits & pieces of the body is all there is to consciousness, then a perfect, working body _must_ be conscious. The *defense* however is this: *robots aren't conscious.* But we can make a robot that passes the *_Turing Test._* So how can we be sure other people aren't advanced robots? 😐
No video can present the argument well because the argument doesn't work well. No matter how you formulate it, you have to sneak the assumption of whether or not consciousness is physical into the step where you label the zombie "conceivable". If you can coherently conceive of the P-zombie, you've already presupposed that physicalism is false by imagining an exact physical copy without consciousness. If you can't coherently conceive of a zombie, it's likely because you're presupposing an exact physical copy must include consciousness. In either case, you've already presupposed the conclusion by that step in the argument, so the rest of the argument is useless.
@@fieldrequired283 When the only alternative to questioning physicalism from the outset is to accept it from the outset, then former is just a classic (and very valid) argument of *_Begging the Question._*
@@TechnoEstate The p-zombie argument is definitely a case of begging the question. It is intended to be an argument against physicalism, but fails to argue for anything at all by begging the question at the first step.
I feel that you are describing a golem rather than a zombie. A zombie is a reanimated corpse, and there can only be one copy of the person existing at any time, either alive, or reanimated. Whereas a golem is an animated, anthropomorphic being created entirely from inanimate matter, (more along the lines of what you are talking about). However, both require the application of magic, so both can be dismissed as being possible anyway. And this leads us back to where we started.
Instead of saying "you can't conceive of a five-sided triangle", is it not easier and clearer to say "(by definition) a triangles is not a 5-sided figure." (Does "conceiving of" something require consciousness? Isn't that already playing games with the "hard problem" that we're wrestling with?)
What if one imagined a five-sided triangle in the fourth dimension that has a shadow projection of a normal triangle in two dimensions when projected to the third then the second dimension? Then one could say truthfully that one could imagine a five-sided triangle, where the word "side" has a little wiggle room. After all, we are talking about the fourth dimension. This figure is known as a pentachoron, or 5-cell. It is the fourth dimension analogue of a triangle because it is the simplest polytope in its dimension.
"a shape that had a shadow that looks like a triangle" is not the same thing as a triangle. Even if you look at a triangular prism perfectly head on so you can only see the triangular face, a prism does not _become_ a triangle. It has a face that is a triangle, but the shape in totality is not a triangle. The thing you described is not a triangle in the same way a car is not a tire.
@@fieldrequired283 I said a shadow projection, which isn't a shadow. The figure in the 4th-dimension is the homologue of the triangle. It is the simplest convex 4th dimensional shape. The triangle is the simplest such 2-dimenional shape.
@@JackPullen-Paradox Your described 4 dimensional shape is not a triangle. A shadow projection that looks like a triangle does not make the original shape a triangle. Being homologous to a triangle does not make a shape a triangle.
@@fieldrequired283 That is true, but projecting a triangle up up from 2-D to 3-D to 4-D will produce that shape and so there is a sense in which we would not be wrong to define all three as triangles. Now Euclid defined a triangle as a figure consisting of three lines. If you applied the same definition to 4-D, you would get a 5-cell, I believe. So by Euclid's elements, since the dimension is never stated, though assumed, you could say that a 5-cell is a triangle by definition. You are not wrong that I feel like I am cheating. It is just that I hate the word "impossible".
Hi! Um, this might be from having HFA, but I can envision a 5-sided triangle and you drew one on the transparent screen in front of yourself. The original three sides are the ones you drew, then the fourth is the side you are on, and if you go on the other side of the screen will be the 5th side. It might not be an accurate way to see it, but I -can- see a triangle with 5 sides this way. I apologize for how stupid it sounded.
If a polygon has 5 sides, then, from the definition of 'triangle,' it is not a triangle. It is a pentagon. If, as you suggest, we imagine a three-dimensional figure, then it is not a triangle either, because a triangle, by definition, is a two-dimensional figure. Does that make sense?
@@profjeffreykaplan It does, but wouldn't two-dimensional suggest there are two more sides to consider? Maybe I'm thinking too much into that. I mean, like a page of paper would, by common sense, have four corners, four sides, so square or rectangular. But there is also the flip side; front and back. I know this is a stretch of the imagination, but I'm more so am trying to convey this coherently. Hope so.
I believe I have used an improper example; paper. It won't matter how much that paper slimmed down, it's still three-dimensional. What I had been trying to exemplify was a plane. Those two-dimensional shapes, no matter what shape they are, still would have a presented side from our perspectives. Something shown in front of us, then something behind the plane. Does that correction sound better?
Surely this is a circular argument. By imagining an identical 'zombie' can exist you are assuming that consciousness is not produced by physical processes, then using the imagined zombie to prove that consciousness is not a physical process. (Great series of videos by the way - I'm hooked!)
it's not circular, the zombie is just a concrete illustration of the general claim that consciousness is not a physical process
@Optimistic Determinist Sorry, I still disagree. There is nothing that precludes a physical cause of consciousness except the initial assumption of this argument. I'm reminded of the 'god of the gaps'; if we can't work out how it's done, it must be God. You can't prove what the cause of consciousness is with thought experiments imo. You need physical evidence, and just because evidence hasn't been found yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
@@jimdunleavypiano the argument claims that zombies are possible. That should be false if physicalism is true.
Now, it is true that the argument may look question-begging. But when we come to such fundamental claims, it is hard to avoid question-begging arguments alltogether.
E.g.a physicalists would say that zombies are impossible? Why? Because physicalism is true! But that's also question-begging.
The zombie arguments expresses an intuition of the contingency of the link between mind and body, which is not compatible with physicalism. Of course, it is perfectly legitimate from physicalists to attack that intuition, and the disagreement turns into disagreement on the relative plausibility of competing intuitions: that minds are material versus the one that body can exist without the mind.
The conclusion is baked into the premises. The zombie is identical physically and behaviourally but not metaphysically. Well thats what we are trying to find out with the question of the source of consciousness.
Maybe I should take mushrooms to know what these people are on about.
@@renb7850 Identical accusations could be levied against physicalists: their claim that consciousness is physical is already baked into their denial of the possibility of zombies.
That kind of debate is counterproductive.
Is consciousness physical? If yes, then zombies are impossible. If zombies are possible, then consciousness is not physical. Those conditionals are very plausible. Now the question becomes: what is more plausible - that consciousness is physical or that zombies are possible? Jut the fact that each of those implies something about the other doesn't mean that some party in the debate is begging the question. These logical relations are precisely what enables us to infer something about one side of those ''equations'' from the other. That's simply how normal argumentation occurs.
Under physicalism, If a zombie had the exact same molecules in the brain then his conscious experience would be the same. The fact that one can conceive of a concept of it, only means that ones understanding of consciousness presupposes that physicalism is false.
This is a nice concise rebuttal. I get frustrated by philosophical arguments that rely on our intuitions about things without attempting to justify those intuitions.
Not necessarily, if you don't mind some hair splitting. While we know the brain has something important to do with human-like consciousness, we don't really understand what that is. There are some good arguments that only some fraction of consciousness arises from networks of relationships within the brain, and a significant fraction arises in the broader networks of relationships between the entire environment, including the person, with a heavy bias toward brain structure. In this model, consciousness does not reside IN the brain, or in any other bounded object defined purely as a convenience for the prediction machines that are our brains. Conscious may be much more broadly systemic with not clear boundaries. So you'd need to reproduce the entire system (perhaps extending to the entire universe, or at least all of it that falls within in both spacetime light cones), not just the physical person. (I am a physicalist when it comes to consciousness/awareness, but I suspect it applies to a broader range of phenomena than most assume.) All that being said, you're totally right in that just because one can conceive of something doesn't mean it is possible or true. I can conceive of transubstantiation of bread and wine into flesh and blood, but I don't think it's possible without some very advanced technology that has never existed on Earth.
Correct
@@fxm5715your response here is incoherent.
When you wrote "garbage ankles" I was like "where tf is this going" - turns out it's a FANTASTIC analogy!
Your videos are awesome!
Why the ankles argument doesn't apply for the Zombies? In the first case we say, no, no, if the ankles are exactly the same molecule for molecule it means they have to be bad, but in the Zombie case we say that it's exact copy of the human, but we make room for the difference - lack of consciousness. Everyone who thinks physicalism is true would say that if the zombie is exactly the same then it will have consciousness and can't be the same molecule for molecule and doesn't have it, just like with the ankles. I'm missing something in this argument, may be I need to look more into it.
Thank you so much for making these videos! They really help me to understand theories and arguments that are completely foreign to me otherwise
You're very welcome!
Jeffrey: “you can’t conceive of a five-sided triangle”
San Quentin inmate: “you calling me stupid?”
Fr xD So dense.
I can. Imagine we live in a world where the prefix "tri" means five.
@@fkknsikk That still doesn't allow you to imagine a five sided triangle. A triangle isn't defined in terms of the glyphs used to write the word "triangle".
@@mrosskneNot exactly a triangle as the bottom is square but a four sided pyramid is a 3 dimensional shape consisting of triangles and if you add the extra dimension of time that would be fudging the definition of a five sided triangle. Just something to be silly here as it wasn't stated that I had to imagine the five sided triangle in a 2 dimensional state.
@@gm2407 Not a triangle.
I would attack the zombie argument at step 1. A zombie copy of you would answer probing questions about its subjective experience exactly as you would. Yet it’s not having any subjective experience from which to draw upon for its answers. This is inconceivable.
It's preposterous because even if consciousness isn't entirely physical, it certainly springs from the "zombies" subjective experiences.
And this is why Philosophy is almost entirely bullshit. What philosophers accept as “rigorous” often just doesn’t hold water. They’re not proper scientists.
Ithink i'm being pushed into barking up a similar tree.
what if you can't build a zombie without consciousness arising, meaning that zombies are indeed impossible.
Similar to the way that you can't have a perfect copy of a marble run that isn't inherently a marble run in its own right.
@@jamesfforthemasses Yes. If you make a list of the conceivable causes of consciousness (having an experience) it seems to me that “the processing needed to give coherent answers about its plans, thoughts, expectations, and experiences” is by far the most likely candidate.
Even if we knew the exact cause of consciousness it would still seem like magic that that thing gives rise to a conscious experience and wouldn’t be a satisfying explanation. It would just be so.
The whole argument seems critically flawed just on the face of it.
If someone is starting from the presumption that consciousness is a physical process, then the idea of "creating a one for one copy that just isn't conscious" would be the exact same nonsensical concept as creating an exact molecular copy of Jeff with good ankles.
Making an exact copy would inherently require the consciousness to be copied as well. If consciousness is physical, then making an exact copy that doesn't have consciousness is just nonsensical and contradictory.
This means that the entire argument with the objective of disproving something rest on the initial presumption that the thing is already false. In order for the first argument to be true, the conclusion needs to be presumed true. Its just circular reasoning.
I'm genuinely confused as to why this would be taken seriously by anyone.
Useful video, thanks!
My objection is to premise #1: if conscious states are self-aware states, and an organism is interacting with its own thoughts about itself in order to generate its behaviors, then a zombie wouldn't act in the same way as a conscious person since it wouldn't have access to that behavioral feedback that consciousness generates.
No, the zombie would act exactly in the way a conscious being would upto the point of claiming itself to be a conscious being, because the behavior of a p-zombie would not be dependent on it's thoughts. It would be based entirely on the structure of it's body and the physical laws of the universe. Consciousness is not needed for behavior. Thoughts are just an additional feature, but don't themselves lead to any behavior, the structure and firing of the neurons does.
@@Thatoneguy-mh4bx Sounds like you're proposing epiphenomenalism (consciousness is just an ineffectual byproduct). But I think Skythikon is correct that IF our thoughts and consciousness do have causal effects on our actions - obviously beginning from a molecular or neural level - then a philosophical zombie lacking that input or feedback would necessarily have different molecular/neural activity. Trying to imagine the same activity without the input/feedback from consciousness would be like imagining a literal knee-jerk reaction without anything tapping the knee; writ large we can imagine that activity, sure, but in detail we can't coherently imagine that effect without its cause, unless something else was different to cause it. To produce a similar-acting philosophical zombie (if consciousness/thought has some causal role) we would either need something, however minute, to be different at its molecular/neural level to replace that missing feedback, or else we're simply invoking magic akin to molecularly-identical ankles that are nevertheless healthy.
Excellent objection to step 1 from Skythikon in other words.
Epiphenomenalism avoids that problem, but I think the argument still fails on other points, namely
1) If philosophical zombies are only 'metaphysically possible' as outlined in the video, then it only follows that physicalism is not metaphysically NECESSARY; it doesn't tell us whether or not physicalism is actually true, so there's a problem with step 3
2) If philosophical zombies were physically possible, then the conclusion is correct that physicalism must be untrue; but the claim of philosophical zombies being physically possible is obviously unprovable and would be rejected by any physicalist on the grounds that those neural patterns and behavious would invariably produce consciousness - so that's a problem with (a variation of) step 2.
@@Thatoneguy-mh4bx "because the behavior of a p-zombie would not be dependent on it's thoughts" - If that is the case, the zombie copy isn't exactly the same as the original.
This is so obvious to see. All it does is to reinforce physicalism, because there is no way to prove the absence of consciousness can have the exact behaviour as having consciousness. We can be "fooled" by the appearence of consciousness, but that's another thing. It's about the observer lack of lnowledge, not because the non-conscious thing can perfectly imitate having one.
@@clorofilaazul I only said the behavior of the p-zombie would not be dependent on its thoughts BECAUSE according to physicalism, it is assumed that behavior is entirely dependent on the physical laws of the universe, which have nothing to say about consciousness itself. If true, then where, how or why does consciousness play a role anywhere? The point of the p-zombie argument is as a question to physicalists to demonstrate how a non-conscious thing cannot be conceived to imitate having consciousness.
@@Thatoneguy-mh4bx You said "The point of the p-zombie argument is as a question to physicalists to demonstrate how a non-conscious thing cannot be conceived to imitate having consciousness."
Well that being the case to put the onus of proving onto physicalism , how about this question :
Can we conceive of a computer that could learn over time , and then develop behaviors that are consistent with exhibiting malice and or empathy ... and maybe even boredom ?
I pick those because they seem rather more complex than love,hate,fear which seem to have a more instinctual basis , rather than something arriving from the inner workings of consciousness . Albeit not sure about boredom ... what you think ?
But anyways ... seems like something we could be testing eventually ... rather than the p-zombie never being testable ?
Your videos are so good. They deserve more views.
Thanks! I have no idea how to work the TH-cam algorithm.
Jeffrey Kaplan They’ll get popular soon! Well as much as philosophy can on TH-cam.
Are these videos from a curriculum you teach like at a university or something? Or do you make them for another reason?
I found you while trying to get extra info for my phil of law class and found your law playlist.
Your comment is good, it deserves more likes.
Such an interesting concept I've heard about before, but I love the breakdown you give these topics beyond surface level!
I'm currently failing my philosophy course in college and your video just helped me understand so much! I'm currently writing a paper and will be linking your video for the professor. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful. Yes, please share the video with anyone.
@Jeffrey Kaplan theoretically one could conceive a 5 sided triangle speaking 4D terms. Consider a two dimensional triangle. And then consider another two dimensional traingle in such a way that both triangle points meet (one going through/melded in the other). Take that concept and repeat until 5 sides become visible and/or - fuck wait. That would make the concept have a ratio of 2. Meaning it would follow a 2, 4, 6, 8, side theory. The theory stands. Could one argue with that concept there is such thing as a "4 sided triangle"? 🤔 i suppose this is breaching dimensional theory as well tho lol
@@valak9663 That was my 1st thought also.
Tri-angle is a 2D object. 3D would be a Tesseract, and 4D yet again something else.
@@hillarysemails1615 this makes sense. How intriguing to play with both philosophy and dimensional theory all in one conversation!
There is a huge problem with this argument
How do you know that "zombie" ("clone" would be a better term) does not have consciousness?
How would you determine that it does?
Because by definition it doesn't. You're asking "how do we know the [physical copy of me with no consciousness] has no consciousness?" The answer is just that we know it a priori because we just stipulated it.
@@jacobsandys6265 Yes, but if the whole argument relies on it being possible that the zombie does not have consciousness then defining it to not have consciousness makes this pointless. That's like saying the hypothecial ankle is an atom for atom copy but isn't weak and when asked how that would work answering "because I defined it to not be weak". The lack of understanding is leveraged to argue for the possibility of a zombie where it's exactly our lack of understanding that makes it impossible to judge whether such a zombie is possible in the first place.
@@christiangreff5764 But the difference is that the strength of an ankle clearly supervenes on its physical structure. How could an identical ankle not be weak, since weakness just IS a description of its physical structure and dispositions? Consciousness seems different because we actually can conceive of zombies because it seems that it is logically possible for consciousness to not supervene on physical structures.
Also, saying “there’s a huge problem with this argument: how do we know the ankle isn’t weak?” is still a terrible reply. It is stipulated.
@@jacobsandys6265 The striking difference between the ankle and the brain/consciousness is that we understand the ankle. Our incapability to conceive of a functioning ankle that is also a perfect down-to-the-atom copy stems exactly from our understanding of how the ankle functions, it's incompatible with our model of the world. We do not have such an understanding for the brain/consciousness; the very question we want to answer is whether an atom-for-atom copy would also be capable of producing consciuousness or whether we would need to add something else.
If I didn't have an understanding of how the world works that tells me the weakness of the ankle is directly derived from its atom-arrangement, then there would be no problem in conceiving of an atom-wise copy being stronger; if I, for example, extend my model to also include non-physical 'weak ankle curses' that wouldn't be copied, then I can suddenly perceive of such a thing as a atom-for-atom copy ankle that is also not weak.
If this guy was my ethics and philosophy teacher in secondary school, i would have a PHD by now
Yes! Such clear teaching with fun thrown in!
The self deprecation is for me really appealing but also a neat teaching trick imo. It makes you want to come along for the ride instead of setting himself up as a super serious authority figure to abase yourself before in return for knowledge. "IDK how to spell either of these words", spells both correctly, "IDK much about the standard model of physics", immediately names most of the particles in the standard model, etc etc. He's right there with you while you're learning.
There wasn’t much philosophy in many secondary school. Government dont want kids to be that smart.
I'm not a professional philosopher so I don't get much chances to discuss this kind of issues with others, but for the past 20 years since I read David Chalmers' zombie argument I've been wondering how in the world such nonsense received so much attention. The argument you present here is pretty much what I thought the first time I read it (including the "five sided triangle" idea). In my opinion the zombie argument could be praised if coming from a high school student, but beyond that it's just idiotic.
Maybe that's because you are a p-zombie and don't know what it's like to be conscious
@@andregustavo2086
He's a zombie, a p-zombie "knows".
I’m of the same opinion. Sleight of hand versus sleight of verbal communication…
A five sided triangle can't be imagined because it violates the definition of what a triangle is. I can imagine a five sided figure that I could say was a triangle.
Okay? You would be wrong though.
@@jacobsandys6265 No, just using different labels or rather: an 'already in use label' but for referencing a new concept (kinda like the word gay meant happy not too far in the past but now means male homosexual); that of course does not actually work around the problem of the original demand to "imagine a five sided figure that (among other properties) has exactly three sides", which is the 'fully spelled out' version of "imagine a five sided triangle".
@@christiangreff5764 Sure I can imagine a 5-sided shape that we call a triangle, but I can’t imagine a 5-sided shape that is a triangle.
@@jacobsandys6265 A five-sided shape would not meet the conditions necessary to be categorized as what we currently and commonly refer to as a triangle, on that I concur.
I can imagine a universe where the definition of a triangle not only allows, but requires 5 sides. I have thus imagined a 5 sided triangle.
I don't know much about philosophy but your videos are great, I'm just a biotechnology student who wants to know more about philosophy, so thank you very much sir.
Awesome. And glad that you like the videos. If you want the videos organized by topic, or into courses, I have done that on my playlists page: th-cam.com/channels/_hukbByJP7OZ3Xm2tszacQ.htmlplaylists
I just graduated w my masters in Biotechnology, what jobs can I get lol
The jurors in the Toronto murder trial of Kenneth Parks, who killed his mother-in-law in 1987, could conceive of unconscious actions that mimic willed, self-aware behavior. Parks was acquitted on the grounds that he was actually sleep-walking, and therefore not conscious of his actions, when the incident took place. Really, the zombie argument is just another way of framing the other minds problem. We all leap across an epistemological gap when we attribute something like our own inner awareness to other people. This is sometimes referred to as forming a theory of mind about other actors, or in Dennett's terminology, taking the intentional stance. The Turing Test is a technological variation on this same problem and question.
This is what I was looking for! All of our current popular philosophical debates eventual leads to Chalmers vs. Dennett.
Prof Kaplan - great video, but I wish you had spent a bit more time on the various objections. It seems like the conceivability premise is the one that is most often attacked. It does appear that the very premise pre-supposes that physicalism is false.
Exactly!! I was searching for such a comment.
If those zombies are just like us, that is if they are too made of exactly the same number of molecules and their orientations are all same, they would too be conscious.
i reject the premise that such a thing is conceivable. if it is molecularly identical to me it must therefore have the same conscious experience as me. by saying that the zombie is molecularly identical but lacks the conscious experience it assumes by definition that consciousness isn't physical
If it's possible for a physical body like an airplane to work without consciousness, then why can't a physical body like a human body work without consciousness? Even if you posit that that is "impossible" (in which case you have to prove why it is impossible), that still does not mean that it is "inconceivable." In fact, you and I both just conceived of it. It's easy. If you think it can't be pulled off, then show why it can't.
@@ambitionbird because consciousness is a group of related processes working in tandem. this is like asking me to concieve of one bike, a perfectly normal, working bike with all necessary components, and then asking me to concieve of a 100% identical bike that is the same in every way and yet the wheels dont spin. this is impossible because the spinning of the wheels is a necessary byproduct of all components of the bike being arranged as they are (wheels axel gears etc). in the same way, the "zombie" that molecularly identical to me *must* be conscious because consciousness is occuring because of all the molecules in my body working in the way they do
@@realbland This is just assuming that conscious experience is a physical process. That is an unproved assumption. You are begging the question.
@@ambitionbird yes of course! that's exactly the trouble with the original argument as well. it tells us nothing about the nature of consciousness, only the opinion of the person making the argument.
i wonder if it was molecularly identical to you would you then be able to see out of it?
Because I am a random viewer (not following the lectures in series), I got a little lost. But I think the presenter (lecturer) is brilliant and in the end I was able to make sense of it and simply loved it.
I will tactfully throw this Zombie argument into a social conversation some day to earn some social points.
I have a feeling that finding out what creates consciousness would come with many other answers to our entire reality, the universe and everything
Oh yes! Be careful what you wish for! 🤔🙄😠👺
42
@@walterbushell7029 hahaha. I see what you did there. I still haven't seen the whole movie. :3
Near-death experience consensus thankfully debunks religions and material atheism dogma. Hehe.
@@ReligionAndMaterialismDebunked It was actually a radio series and later a series of novels before it saw a movie adaption, the movie is only the first novel if I remember correctly. They don't even find the question to 42 in it
Very good, thanks. Interesting and entertaining as well. Thumbs up
thanks also to Amy Kind and David Chalmers, obviously (and to the poor zombies without consciousness...)
Keep making these videos!! You are helping me so much and I need you to keep going 😊 Can you make a video of Frank Jackson’s view ?
Already done: th-cam.com/video/QhTRbXpfKw8/w-d-xo.html
Surely the interesting question is: does consciousness inevitably arise from certain arrangements of molecules? This is not easy to answer but just imagining that it does (or not) doesn't seem to help.
The problem of course with understanding consciousness as something non-physical is: How can this non-physical phenomenon be formed or captured in a physical body?
Yeah, that's a really hard question. No one has an answer. That's no reason, though, to just re-define clearly non-physicaly phenomena, like for instance, the experience of silently counting to ten, as physical, just in order to avoid that kind of hard question. It is just like the man who drops a key in a dark alley, then goes to look for it on the sidewalk because it is better lit.
@@ambitionbird
Your intuition that thoughts must necessarily be nonphysical is unfounded and indefensible, whereas the existence of the physical world (and the fact that thoughts are known to exist and have causes and effects there) is well evidenced.
To search in the dark alley, you must first know that the alley exists and it is possible to drop your keys there.
A man that had never seen or knowingly been to a dark alley might be forgiven for not assuming his most precious belongings all go there whenever he can't find them.
Of course, maybe it's not in the invisible, undetectable dark alley. Maybe it's in the invisible, undetectable cave nearby. Maybe it's tangled in the roots of the invisible, undetectable tree. Or maybe it was whisked away by a gryffon to its nest atop Death Mountain (the gryffon and the mountain both being undetectable, by the way).
If you begin looking for undetectable causes, you will have no leads, and search forever without any progress.
I'll stick to searching the sidewalk for now. We have a lot more work to do there before we resort to using dowsing rods to search for dragons' hidden lairs.
@@ambitionbird What is clearly non-physical of me silently counting to ten? I have seen no data that would suggest it isn't anything but very physical activities carried out in my brain, as seen from the inside perspective of being that brain.
@@christiangreff5764 then speak for yourself. I do not see or hear anything phsyical when I silently count to ten -- and if someone alleges that there is a physical process corresponding to it, then I need to see the evidence of that. I am not going to presum that such a thing is real without evidence -- that is begging the question at best.
@@ambitionbird Attributing consciousness to complex though not yet understood electrochemistry is purely based on already established phenomena, in stark contrast to attributing it to something 'non-physical', for which we do not have any evidence, either. Until evidence for such non-physical stuff is found, I think it most prudent to assume consciousness derives from already observed phenomena (see the principle of Occam's razor). This is further backed up by the fact that many observations we already have are easier to explain within a purely materialistic model:
1) Effectiveness of psychadelic drugs: Them affecting conscious experience is easily explained if it's just them altering the brains chemistry but in a non-physical model we would have to explain how this physical stuff influences the non-physical.
2) Along a similar line, the effects of brain injuries or being knocked unconscious: If consciousness is the brain experiencing its own activity, that is easy, but in a non-physical model we again have to find an explanation for how the physical injury can influence the non-physical.
3) And the other way around: How does the non-physical influence the physical so that nerves are transmitting signals to muscles to make our bodies move?
I can coherently imagine person with magical powers and an identical person (molecule by molecule) without magical powers, therefore a person with magical powers is possible, therefore physicalism is false because of magic?
For the argument to work, we would have to change how we think of consciousness. I think everyone, regardless of whether they believe in libertarian free will or in hard determinism, will agree that consciousness (whatever it is) has SOME impact on the agent's physical body. Be it their behaviour or psychological state. (and psychological states have physical effects, see the placebo effect). This precludes us from imagining a zombie without consciousness, that behaves identically to a human with consciousness. Precisely because the human's consciousness impacts their behaviour or psychological state, which is observable.
So, we instead have to accept that consciousness isn't relevant to someone's behaviour or psychological state. In other words, it isn't observable by any means whatsoever. It is no different to a soul at that point. So how are we to accept anyone's claims about said consciousness, if we've never truly observed it? Not even subjectively? Whatever the argument for it being physical or non-physical is, how can it possibly be correct when we don't have experience with it existing it all?
"We can coherently imagine zombies" is carrying a lot of weight. It really seems to be begging the question by sneaking in the presumption that consciousness is an optional addition to physicalism. That's the conclusion Chalmers wants to reach ... but it's in his first premise.
I had my paper ripped off in the mid 70s by a greedy philosophy prof. It was related to split brain experiments. In my opinion this philsophical argument is mathematically equivalent to quantum physics principles about quantum entanglement. But there is a flaw in this video - please write it down in math nomenclature. It's called logic 101 - there is a gap that needs to be explained
The Zombie revision that comes to mind: if we mapped every aspect of your brain into a computer, which would perfectly produce its function, would this be close to the Zombie proposition? It would respond to stimuli exactly as you would, it would identify "pink" just as you would, but would it experience qualia or would it be nothing more than a mechanical mimic, a simulation of you?
I think this question revolves around "freedom" and it takes two forms, 1) Freedom from mechanical function, and 2) Freedom of mechanical function. AI Alpha Zero will play the same piece with the same board orientation every time and for the same reason because 1+1, no matter how many times it runs the sequence, will necessarily always = 2, as such, it hits its freedom limit of the 2nd kind.
But, but are you merely mechanical, bound to the limits of your programming, and as such, are your evaluations and decisions necessary, determinate? Or do you exhibit freedom of the 1st kind?
Now we see issues with Alpha Zero, particularly as it competes with Stockfish, and we can abstract a model of AZ which addresses these issues, producing AZ v2 and v3 and v4…
1) Mechanical constructs cannot abstract itself (imo, the essential criterion for “self”)
2) I can
3) therefore I am not mechanical
Programming AZ’s view of itself or leveling up (Godel); seeing one’s self from a third party position context, would be necessary for it to have that capacity, but this would only beg the question by pressing the same 2nd kind objection of the first on to the second level. This is the paradox of self reflection leading to an infinite regression, thus driving any potential resolution beyond the bounds of this Universe and founding the repudiation of physicalism.
An interesting question on the topic of free will is: if we could reverse reality like a film, and start it playing back from early yesterday morning. Could you have something different for breakfast yesterday?
A pyramid is not a triangle.
I don't understand the difference between shit ankles and consciousness. If we cannot imagine molecule for molecule ankles that aren't shit, why can we imagine molecule for molecule zombies without consciousness? It seems to be assuming consciousness is non-physical from the start.
Loved the video! By the way a triangle cut out of a piece of paper has 3 sides and a front and back side. A five sided triangle.
Thanks! But a triangle cut out of a piece of paper is not a five sided triangle, because it isn't a triangle. It is a three-dimensional object. I believe it is a 'triangular prism'.
@@profjeffreykaplan That's how you conceive it.
P.s. and thus it is conceivable.
@@shoutitallloud Yes, and your conception of it is confused, just as with the zombie.
Very good, you beat me to it!
@@profjeffreykaplan Lol! OK, a paper cut out 'triangle' is a really really squat prism. But a 'real' triangle would be part of a Euclidean plane. Would a Euclidean plane be considered to have two sides?
A triangle with 4 sides, that would be tough to conceive, though... I will work on it.
Thank you!
If we can conceive of the zombie, then physicalism _may_ be false. Just because we can conceive of it doesn't mean it's real, any more than unicorns are real just because I can conceive of them.
This seems a silly argument, so I probably missed something...
No, you got it right. The argument is incredibly silly.
As soon as he began presenting the argument formally, I _immediately_ rejected premises 1 and 2. It was so easy and so obvious that I spent the rest of the video waiting for an added twist that never came.
The Zombie Argument sounds a lot like the modern NPC meme.
People who don't think for themselves, merely regurgitate common talking points. Leading to the meme that they aren't conscious.
Premise 3 is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to reach conclusion 2. The best we can do with this on is to modify conclusion 2 to say that it is possible that physicalist is false. But this doesn’t move the discussion forward
Even for AI there's no such thing as 'bodyless consciousness', their mind exist in the form of code that is stored in a hard drive somewhere
I think many would say: “A perfect copy of me would have my ‘soul’ but still neither of us would contain any spirit. We’d be equally misunderstood and mislabeled along with all humans as having a ‘consciousness’ and ‘soul’. We’d then see spiritualists fighting over how it is that we can both (appear to) have souls when a soul is indivisible. Then one of us would be burned at the stake.”
Philosophers make irritating assumptions. The casual assumption that consciousness is one thing and it’s on or off like a switch is the first whopper. I’d ask anyone if they know of an animal that has no consciousness. If so, are they certain its unreadable nature means it actually lacks something? There’s no reason to think my clone would appear to have no consciousness. Rounding that up to ‘I can’t imagine a zombie’ is just false.
I regard consciousness as yet another construct we use to explain a familiar blur of (physical) processes.
same bruh, this problem is worthless
Please do a video on Kripke “Naming and necessity”!! It would be so helpful
^ yes!! I completely agree!
Perhaps in a future semester. I will try. These videos take a lot of time!
Jeffrey Kaplan that’s OK good videos
11:14... A molecule for molecule replica....Zombie..... I reckon that a mirror reflection is a pretty good start, instant (almost) to a Zombie Of precision. But does that reflection also have the molecular data or something more subtle, non physical!?
Just like in game Soma, your or anyone's zombie (exact copy) will be conscious, and zombie and original will be thinking of themselves identically
5 sided triangle: 1) cut a triangle (any type) from a piece of paper. 2) label each edge (so, “1”, “2”, “3”). 3) label the side facing you “4”. 4) turn the triangle over. 5) this unlabeled ‘side’ is “5”. Do this exercise in abstract Euclidean space. The kind of space you use anytime you sketch on paper. The space you learned about in geometry where points are dimensionless, lines such as the edges “1”, “2”, & “3” have only length, and planes such as faces “4” & “5” have only length and width. If you can sketch a box, a cube, then you can conceive Euclidean space, and now you can conceive a five-sided triangle, a six-sided square, a seven-sided pentagon, and so on. And you didn’t even need to wrap your mind around additional dimensions and projecting between them.
Inconceivability/conceivability have more to do with manufactured constraints of thinking than with actual constraints of reality. It’s unnecessary to personally experience (know) something to understand it. Likewise, you have little to no problem conceiving the non-existent, even the impossible. Sherlock Holmes, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter and Hermoine Granger are not actual people but fictional characters. They have no consciousness. You can understand this without having to exhaustively search (personal experience) the planet for them. Yet you’re likely to have been personally influenced by one, or more, and you thought of those as if they were actual people. We do this - treat the conceptual as though it is actual in reality - effortlessly, unconsciously, naturally. We fall into narratives, theories, stories, conjectures, movies... You likely accept that sound travels in the vacuum of space. That you can hear lasers blast and objects hundreds, even thousands, of kilometers distant explode loudly. You readily think about re-animate corpses walking-dead or barely living infected, brain-dead critters trying to eat you. Taking the philosophical zombie - a complete, particle-for-particle doppleganger lacking “consciousness” - as possible IS NOT the problem. Seeing the ‘philosophical zombie’ for being a red herring IS.
Arguing in any serious manner either for or against the ‘philosophical zombie’ concept prevents understanding the category error of treating episteme (knowledge, conception being a kind along with imagination; sense-perception, therefore hallucination; empiricism; and so on) as having the same status in reality as the ontic/ontological (fundamental grounding of existence). To bring all this abstraction into focus consider how it is that any possible knower can know. Another way to get at this is to ask, “How can episteme (knowledge and knowing knowers) exist without an ontically physical reality? Can physical reality exist without knowers and their knowledge? If humans and all other knowers ceased to exist would there still be stuff they made? Or things they named like rivers, oceans, plankton..? Or entities, processes, being that no knower ever knew? And wouldn’t plankton qualify as a knower?”
The same immense, automatic conceptual ability that allows us to navigate our experience so successfully also allows us to treat that ability and its conceiving/knowledge as existentially prior within reality. That is, we can and do treat our ability to conceive and our conceptions as arbiters of existence. Hence, one quickly arrives at some form of Idealism. Dualism is an Idealism. Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Sassier, Horkheimer all Idealists. The “social construction” of ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ is an Idealistic trope, which is but a step away from nihilism and/or solipsism.
I’m not advocating for the abject dismissal of thought experiments or ideals any more than for the abandonment of knowledge and reason. I am advocating for a pedagogical change. Teaching early, repetitively, and integratively that each of these along with language, philosophy, science, theory, belief, established “laws of nature” like those of thermodynamics and evolution by selection, all thought, and most unconscious behavior are attempts to model, or map, reality. No map is ever going to be the territory. A map, a method, rule, procedure... will ever be only a guide. And since the territory-universe-reality will ceaselessly, indeterminately change; all maps, all models are both necessarily incomplete and reductive. That is, no model can capture all or even enough of reality to avoid being wrong in some way to some degree. To model all of reality with fidelity would require all of reality, at least twice: the original reality (R1) and the model (r2) running within R1. This would require all the energy to run R1 and an equal amount for r2. If r2 is expected to predict R1 an unknowable additional energy demand will have to be met to continuously run-revise-run an unknowable number of anticipatory scenarios (r2 * n) within R1. So, a meta-physically plausible scheme to model reality within itself is conceivable yet absurdly impossible. To obtain realistic models means accepting reduction. Such trade-offs have long been reasonably understood, yet the principle is rarely acknowledged, much less taught - even poorly.
gibberish
The area of a triangle is not the side of a triangle?
When you have to create a literal straw man to argue against an idea
Conceivability seems a weak basis for the argument. I can say I conceive a universe where consciousness is physical but there is different physics for zombies, robbing them of it. That is just the flip side of P1.
Never underestimate people's ability to conceive of stuff.
Imagine a pentagon, where two of the angles between its sides are exactly 180°. You got yourself a five-sided triangle!
Of course, people will immediately object that this shape is either not really a triangle or not really five-sided, but at this point the argument devolves into semantics.
A three-sided square can be more of a challenge, though 🙂
The problem with a five sided triangle is that a triangle has exactly three sides by definition. As a well defined object there's simply no room for "conceiving" to apply. Anything fitting the definition is a triangle and anything not fitting the definition is not a triangle. Context does matter, though, as a different definition of a triangle might apply outside plane geometry as described by Euclid.
No, it doesn't devolve. You imagined either a triangle with three sides, a pentagon with five sides, or something else that is neither of these. Claiming to have imagined something, and imagining it, are not the same.
@@mrosskne Retrieve my imagination and prove me wrong!
@@whycantiremainanonymous8091 Okay, let me explain it in a way that even you can understand.
If we define a term, then each appearance of that term in a statement can be replaced by its definition and the statement's meaning won't change.
For example, if we agree to define "human" as "rational mammal", then the statements "Socrates is a human" and "Socrates is a rational mammal" have the same meaning.
We define triangle as "three sided polygon".
The statement "I imagine a triangle" is equivalent to "I imagine a three sided polygon".
The statement "I imagine a five sided triangle" is equivalent to "I imagine a five sided three sided polygon".
You are, of course, free to lie about what you imagine. If your goal is to convince anyone of an argument by this method, you won't achieve your goal.
@@mrosskne Let me explain it in a way that I'm afraid you will continue to refuse understanding anyway: your arbitrary definitions are not an actual constraint on reality. They can be modified and played around with. The "if we agree" that you started your pontification with is merely a conditional. When we're working on a rigorous mathematical proof, we might indeed "agree" (even though extending and rethinking definitions is the heart of mathematics, so even here the agreement is only partial). Elsewhere, nobody is committed to agreeing with the definitions you make up.
fine, whatever... i would like to know of an example of a consciousness without a physical body attached. where is this 'ghost'?
Consciousness not bound to physical form would only be able to interact with other consciousness. What would an interaction between 2 consciousness look like? Additive synthesis like adding 2 colors of light together. They would merge into a single consciousness containing aspects of both and yet appearing new and unique. For your scenario, 2 consciousness interacting with only 1 bound to a physical form would appear as if the consciousness bound to the physical form had a sudden and drastic change in itself. One might call this sudden apparent change in consciousness a possession, an epiphany, a breakthrough, a spiritual awakening, an enlightenment, a sudden realization, etc.
"Garbagenous" is now officially a word.
I used this argument for an essay, but I coined the idea of A-zombies (academical Zombies) where we have people who are reluctant to actually dive in knowledge and just pretend to have culture to be a part of culture in order to survive and be a part of society.
Would love to know if my theory has any weight
Even if the first two premises from Chalmers argument were sound. i think all its proving is that physicalism is not necessarily true, not that it is false.
Because if physicalism is true, you can not conceive of a particle true copy _without_ consciousness, it would follow with the molecules. That is the framework of physicalism. So premise 1 goes down fast and nothing is proved. Such a deficient but perfect copy would indeed be a very strange and foreign concept as I see it. I like Chalmers, he is a nice fellow, but I fail to grasp how he can paint himself into such a corner. He just has a proof of his own premise.
I've been a physicalist all my life I'm majoring in physics then I realized that wait a minute... I can't get colors from 1's and 0's, they must exist on their own. That's how I got here.
@Bryana Leigh Then imagine, you talk to the copy, all evening, laugh at your shared memory, having so much fun, then tell her you believe there is nobody behind her eyes, you got all the marbles. She would then cry and claim the same for you and finally you would probably accept that you are both equal and the same. That is what I think would happen, at least, the idea of having the visual impressions from four eyes may be a bit of a stretch.
Hi i need some help checking if this idea makes sense! Would an argument in reverse refute the zombie argument? e.g in a zombie world, it would be impossible to conceive of a physically identical world in which conscious beings exist (because it is impossible to conceive of anything in a world without consciousness) so in such a world, it is metaphysically impossible for conscious beings to exist. yet the fact that we know that conscious beings exist shows that logic is flawed and cannot be used.
Hm, I think that's a good direction of inquiry, but I'm not convinced of one of your premises.
I imagine myself looking through a magic portal to a physicalist universe, filled with only philosophical zombies. I'd listen in on some philosophers in that universe discussing this matter, and they would say the exact same arguments - that they can imagine philosophical zombies unlike themselves, and they would also claim to experience consciousness. Perhaps they would all come to the same conclusion that they live in a nonphysical universe.
I would then ponder, "if they can come to the conclusion that they are in a non-physicalist universe, maybe it's not such a strong argument."
I can say that I have met my fair share of zombies in life, so Chalmers is definitely right on argument 2.
As long Zombies are not attacking its Ok. Most dangerous Zombies have high education and occupying the Gouvernment in very high positions.
Forget zombies, what about energy? Mass can be converted to energy or already is energy, but how can energy be something physical? What shape does it take? Lets say I climb a tower which increases my potential energy, in what physical location within spacetime does this potential energy reside? what's its temperature? what color is it? what is it touching? how fast is it moving? what's length and height? is it rotating? is it pulled by gravity? what's its density and volume? can it reflect light or make noise? what changes were made to the atoms, molecules etc of matter before and after being converted to energy?
This argument is entirely just begging the question. It's doesn't show or prove anything.
I am missing something - how does 'zombies are possible, C1' inferred "therefore consciousnesses is not physical". I get is _allows_ for non-physical consciousness ingredient, but it does not necessitate it in any way. Therefore physical-only consciousness is still quite possible and quite consistent with present experience.
Imagine there is a soccer game going on and you are watching with a friend. The friend is a huge fan and wants to prove, that soccer is something supernatural, fundamental, not reducible to physical stuff. So he proposes a thought experiment: let's say that there is a zombie soccer game, it looks and goes exactly as a normal soccer game, there are players and ball and all that stuff, you couldn't distinguish it from a normal game from outside. But: There is no soccer game there! Hm. For me is sounds like BS... And the soccer example too😂
excellent example. just like consciousness, the thing "soccer" isn't something that exists in the world, rather it is a consequence of a pattern of objects arranged soccer-wise (not only in space, but across a period of time as well).
Wow thank you so much for this! This is so well put and you make it easy to understand! When will you start making theology videos?
Chalmers seems to be saying two things: that a perfect clone of a human being would necessarily be devoid of consciousness (he forgets that it would also be deprived of life) and/or that what is feasible, as it belongs to the mental realm of conceived possibilities, cannot be physical. As these two points are extremely simple to the point of triviality, he weaves a convoluted argument in which he uses zombies as a marketing gimmick. The physicalist would remain unfazed since she could always argue that we have a narrow idea of the things her matter can do. Being a reductionist principle, materialism can never be refuted. It is a kind of protean god to the extent that no matter what you say, it can always reply that X "is nothing more than a process or property of Z" (matter). The only thing that you can do is to pin your interlocutor down to a definition of matter that shows it simply cannot do all the things she ascribes to it. The idea that imagined things are somehow entities that cannot have a physical existence with physical reality is patently false. We would not have computers or planes if that were the case. Therefore triangles must a riddle both for physicalism and Chalmers.
You are the best
Well, triangles are figments of the imagination, created by our collective experience and education. But there are images projected inside our brains due to our daily existence which can be considered instances of such, and conversely the "ideal" triangle came from stripping several such everyday objects to their bare essentials and generalising them.
Would not a zombie be like a computer waiting for an instruction? Would it not sit forever until an instruction came, since there is nothing going on inside?
Audio is somehow skewed. Left channel need around 20% amplification.
Here's my cheesy question : Is taht somewhat related to Solipsism ?
Yes, the solipsist thinks the other bodies are just philosophical zombies.
@@JohnSmith-qk8rj Unless someone is an idealist and/or panpsychist
People "coherently imagine" false and contradictory things every day. It's really dumb to use that as a logical axiom.
What.
A triangle is defined as a 3 sided object. Something with 5 sides by definition cannot be a triangle.
There are so many flaws with this idea and I am genuinely curious what definitions are being used that are vastly different from what I am used to to make this "logic" work.
Excelent work! I'm really thankful for your lectures.
This argument follows from a very specific version of a zombie, I don't know if it is actually the zombie that is posited by Chalmers, you are arguing against a carbon copy zombie. A copy of the physics. It seems obvious that the copy of the physics will also be conscious because the physics somehow correlates to the consciousness in some way even if it's not generating it. But the real zombie argument is about behavior, is about observation. So if a chat GPT robot can convince you that it's like a human that sees pink, that's the zombie because you know that it's not a brain. It's a large language model running a robot that just looks really convincing, but it might sound convincing and there's no real way to tell from the behavior. And we certainly don't have a way to tell from the physics or the chemistry. That's the real zombie argument I think?
I would love to see Jeffrey Kaplan explaining Chalmers "Subsymbolic Computation and the Chinese Room". That would be a great and fitting addition to his course, touching a very pertinent topic right now. I am also hooked!
Thanks for the video, had a question about the zombie argument on my test, helped me alot!!
Would the imitations in John Carpenter's *The Thing* be an example of philosophical Zombies?
In my humble opinion, if something that we don't understand can interact with matter and matter can interact with this 'something' we could say that this 'something' cannot be radically different from matter.
Alcohol can change our conscience and my conscious willing to move chair can change chair position it means that conscious should be part of knowledge of matter world.
that's very simillar to Elisabeth's question to Decartes:
"Given that the soul of a human being is only a thinking substance, how can it affect the bodily spirits, in order to bring about voluntary actions?"
i.e. if the consciousness is non-physical how can it interact with the physical body?
We know that we can't imagine the 5 sided triangle because we have the precise definition of what makes a shape a triangle. We do not have a precise definition of what makes a body conscious, therefore we do not know whether we can "imagine" the zombie. I certainly can't imagine the zombie, but this is just because my definition of consciousness already makes it incoherent. The zombie argument really is circular.
Wait, this is the last lecture in this course? I'm sad! I want more!
Would it possible to re-imagine this argument going the other direction? For example, P1. I can concieve of a disembodied consciousness (God for example, or ghosts or what have you) P2. It seems possible for disembodied consciousnesses to exist. C1. Therefore consciousness is not physical. Perhaps my formulation is poor, but this seems to have similar argumentative grounding as the Zombie Argument. Though I agree with the conclusion, I don't find the argument satisfying as it seems to tell us more about our conception of the mind than anything else, and our conception may not reflect the state of the real word. If this objection were raised for the Zombie argument, or mine, how might one respond?
In the same way that having 3 sides is an inherent property of a triangle, I could just make the claim that having consciousness is some inherent property of the microphysical arrangement of the brain.
Also if you make two sides of a pentagon very small, you can make it look superficially like a triangle (but with 2 corners 'chopped off'). But just because I can superficially 'conceive' of something doesn't mean that's how it actually is, even in theory. It may look like a triangle, but it's not. It may look like philosophical zombies are conceivable, but I don't know that they are.
On a similar note, I think P2 is backwards in terms of causation. I'd argue that we can only truly and fully conceive of that which is metaphysically possible (considering the possibility for the entirety of something to be conceived in the first place, which I doubt anyway). We may still be able to superficially conceive of things, whether metaphysically impossible or not, though. This is because the mind make models & abstractions of the outside world, not the other way around.
Also if something can interact causally with the "physical" world, I'd consider that thing part of the physical world (otherwise there's the problem of a seemingly arbitrary line). When people say "nonphysical," or "supernatural," I get confused as to how that's not a contradiction. It feels like seeing a chair and claiming there's a "chairness" nonphysical property in the universe, and having a lot of it makes that thing a chair.
Maybe this is a semantic confusion of 'physical' concerning the material, and 'physical' concerning a system of physics and interactions.
I watched the whole video and listened intently and I still do not understand this. :(
In a certain way I think this argument is like saying that you could create a molecule-for-molecuole copy of a battery that couldn't hold an electric charge. The electric charge is, in many ways, separate from the physical structure of the battery. However, it is a property which arises naturally from the structure of the battery. It may be discharged/dead upon creation, but you would still be able to charge it and use it in exactly the same way you might use the original battery.
That is to say, if a philosophical zombie was created, I don't see why it couldn't GAIN consciousness upon being exposed to the world. I am dualist, but it also seems obvious to me that physical processes have a direct effect on consciousness. You can lose consciousness or have your consciousness altered via physical changes to your body. (think comas, alzheimers, schizophrenia) If consciousness can be destroyed by the physical, why couldn't it also be created by the physical?
Can one construct molecule by molecule a living human being? Even Frankenstein's monster had to be animated in a second step. It seems that something is missing.
For the point about consciousness being destroyed by schizophrenia, the dualist could say that the connection between the mental world and the physical world was disrupted by a physical illness, so that the original qualities still existed but could not be accessed in the physical world. The effect could go both directions. The mental world would no longer receive updates from the physical world.
In addition, if there are anomalies in the physical world, why couldn't there be anomalies in the mental world? Then the brain structures would all look normal, and the chemistry would be right, the history of the person would be nominal, but the defect would still be there. I believe that such things have happened. Then the medications would fail to work, I suppose.
Could someone point me towards Amy Kinds article, please?
It's chapter 86 of this book: www.amazon.com/Just-Arguments-Important-Western-Philosophy/dp/1444336371
@@profjeffreykaplan Thank you!
I just sprained both my ankles and can barely put pressure on my left ankle while being able to put almost full pressure on my right ankle. Any advice?
Ummm, I'd just like to point out that sensory processing has actually been mapped in the brain. Vision for example is mainly processed in occipital lobe or cortex. Emotions are made in amygdala. So like, is that not a sufficient evidence against the Zombie argument?
More specifically, this disproves 1'st premise. A zombie cannot be concieved. A person lacking consciousness would not function as a person, they'd be a vegetable.
@@entropy8634 Consciousness doesn't refer to perception or thought, it refers to having the sense of existing, a zombies brain would seem equal a conscious being brain, the difference is not physical, it's an existential difference.
@@marvinmartinez3818 what's the difference between sense of existence vs perception of existence?
@@entropy8634 Perception is taking outside stimuli which the brain uses to make decisions, sense is 'knowing' that you perceive something. A robot perceives environment and acts accordingly, but because it was programmed to do so, a human perceives the environment and acts accordingly, and (if not a zombie) has a sense of it, that is, feels consciously. Two different processes, one result
@@marvinmartinez3818 "feels", emotions themselves are the actions triggered by stimuli tho. Another layer of perception, even when its subconscious process. Your heart rate is an unconscious process that can be triggered by subconscious process that is triggered by outside stimuli.
I'm obviously oversimplifying for the sake of making a point. Also, my goal isn't to debate you, its to gain insight on precise definition of consciousness" and what it looks like when a person doesn't have it.
So if the difference is that it feels different, then perhaps there's really no difference when emotions themselves are results?
This is a little above my head, but I don't understand the import of being able to conceive of a philosophical zombie. I can conceive of a rock that has consciousness, but only rocks with olivine, and that if you removed the olivine the rock would lose consciousness. Have i just proved the physicalist position? Obviously not, but how is the dualist argument different?
I always thought there was more to this argument. It wasn't merely that philosophical zombies are conceivable. It was that if you can account for all behavior by reference solely to the third person properties of physical stuff, then there is nothing for first person mental stuff to do. It doesn't explain anything. Since first person mental stuff is unnecessary to explain behavior, philosophical zombies are possible and physicalism is false. Or something like that.
The first person mental stuff is the physical stuff.
So weird, this argument has the form: suppose A+B is not equal to 5. Conclusion: A+B is not equal to 5.
What am I missing?
The first principle of teaching anything is not to criticize it before you have presented the argument for whatever. Mixing in possible criticisms as you present the premisses to an argument makes it much more difficult to follow the argument.
Only present criticisms AFTER you have presented the entire argument with its conclusion.
So this wonderful playlist ends here... In light of recent advancements and debates, It would be interesting to have a video about the idea of conciousness "emerging" in a machine.
"I'm going to make an exact copy of your leg, except for the problem part of it."
"Well that's impossible. Either it has the problem, or it isn't an exact copy."
"Right. That's what the word 'except' means."
Then the dualist has admitted that dualism is false.
Could you please do a video on logical supervenience and how this relates to the p-zombie argument? I am reading Chalmers book and his argument for P-zombies existing seems far more sophisticated. But I just can't, for the life of me, understand why p-zombies would be logically supervenient but not nomically.
Great series on philosophy of mind. I have a video request. Could you please make a video explaining the different versions of dualism (property, substance, interactionism)?
I have another question. Okay, if you make a molecule by molecule of your full self but it would be a hundred miles away. This copy includes your mind. But to do that, you have to destroy the original you. Are you alive or dead?
The question is too vague to be answered unless you either define or assume a definition for "you". The answer to your question will be contained within that definition.
@@fieldrequired283 The way I see it, if what you define as you is the matter that makes up your body, even if the copy has an identical consciousness in every way, and even thinks it is you, and behaves EXACTLY as you would, since it does not have any of your molecules none of that is relevant. The fact that your consciousness survives (albeit as an exact copy) does not matter. YOU are dead. But if you is defined as your consciousness, thoughts, feelings and experiences, all of which is continued as they come into existence in the new body the instant the originals are destroyed, then YOU are alive.
Think of it as the Ship of Theseus problem... in human form.
@@jessewilley531
Cool. So pick your definition. There's the answer to your question.
You need to put an additional constraint about how molecules are organized. There could be many configurations of the same molecules that are different from the original but have the same quantity of molecules loosely reorganized to fix the bad ankles.
An empty flash drive and the same flash drive having with this video saved onto it - they are made of the same parts. But since the information is different, therefore information can't be determined by physical matter ?
Not a valid analogy.
@@christopherhamilton3621 In the part of?
@@shoutitallloud
The flash drive with data and the flash drive without data are not physically identical.
In fact, the difference in data between the two is fully accounted for by the physical differences between the two.
They are made of the same things, vaguely speaking, but the exact details of their arrangement and other physical states account for the presence or absence of the data.
According to the physicalist, so is it with consciousness.
@@fieldrequired283 Ok. I can agree with that. So the information, the data is obliged to the physical structute and arrangemend.
But we can have two different flash-drives. Completely physically different. And they can containe identical data. This means that information is not defined simply by physical structure.
@@shoutitallloud
You have, at best, demonstrated that there is more than one way for physical matter to determine similar information.
Zombies are not conceivable. What the author thinks he conceives , is a package of other characteristics , the form , the brain , the reaction , but the essence of what makes a zombie, a zombie is not conceived. It’s like saying , imagine a 5 sided triangle inside a red box. You imagine your red box but you have to address the sides in order to be conceivable. Since in the case of human brain "mystery" surrounds the work of the brain, imagining the zombie just skips the fundamental point.
Instinct, emotion , consciousness is this a natural progression?
So if it was a molecule for molecule recreation I need to know about bio electrical charge and current. Is this part of the premise? The way it has been explained is that the zombie is not an inanimate golem, instead it has a nervous system and bio electricity. I reject the argument in the first premise due to the zombie definition being impossible. Structurally the brain has neurons that fire in pathways and this would be part of the molecular structure. The body has bio electrical current and it is the amplitude of the current which is the regulating factor of in maintainance of the consciousness experience. Further what you have described is an exact clone of the individual, so at the point of reproduction you would need to account for the uncertainty of particals which have an effect on neurons firing. Also the same neurons need to be firing. At this stage the brain structure and current in the copy is experiencing the same thoughts as when the copy was taken. Thus the new copy will be disorientated as the sensory perception will show a change in location and context, but will become its own being with consciousness. It is simply a twin of the original not a failed golem.
That is how a physicalist would argue about consciousness being an abstract of the sensory experience and how a body with a brain is the apparatus of said experience. The electrical firing of the processor into patterns of the neural net is the adjusted structure within the greater identified organ. That structure is adaptive based on sensory experience and physical damage. But an exact replica would by definition not be a zombie. Therefore this zombie premise is wrong and can not exist in that form or prove physicalism to be incorrect.
Read the description everyone. You are misunderstanding one thing about the argument, which is that it claims that zombies could exist. Of course it’s somewhere just an assumption, but it’s not completely unfounded.
5:20 Maybe _you_ can't, but I can. It's just a five-sided shape that lacks the ineffable property of pentagonality. This property is not a result of the number of vertices or edges but is instead meaningless bullshit I just made up and can vigorously hand-wave away as needed.
The video doesn't present the argument well. It doubts that zombies are conceivable, by positing the physicalist premise: surely, if the working of the bits & pieces of the body is all there is to consciousness, then a perfect, working body _must_ be conscious. The *defense* however is this: *robots aren't conscious.* But we can make a robot that passes the *_Turing Test._* So how can we be sure other people aren't advanced robots? 😐
No video can present the argument well because the argument doesn't work well.
No matter how you formulate it, you have to sneak the assumption of whether or not consciousness is physical into the step where you label the zombie "conceivable".
If you can coherently conceive of the P-zombie, you've already presupposed that physicalism is false by imagining an exact physical copy without consciousness.
If you can't coherently conceive of a zombie, it's likely because you're presupposing an exact physical copy must include consciousness.
In either case, you've already presupposed the conclusion by that step in the argument, so the rest of the argument is useless.
@@fieldrequired283 When the only alternative to questioning physicalism from the outset is to accept it from the outset, then former is just a classic (and very valid) argument of *_Begging the Question._*
@@TechnoEstate
The p-zombie argument is definitely a case of begging the question. It is intended to be an argument against physicalism, but fails to argue for anything at all by begging the question at the first step.
I feel that you are describing a golem rather than a zombie. A zombie is a reanimated corpse, and there can only be one copy of the person existing at any time, either alive, or reanimated. Whereas a golem is an animated, anthropomorphic being created entirely from inanimate matter, (more along the lines of what you are talking about). However, both require the application of magic, so both can be dismissed as being possible anyway. And this leads us back to where we started.
The argument defines what a zombie is (for the purposes of the argument), arguing about the name is not productive.
Instead of saying "you can't conceive of a five-sided triangle", is it not easier and clearer to say "(by definition) a triangles is not a 5-sided figure." (Does "conceiving of" something require consciousness? Isn't that already playing games with the "hard problem" that we're wrestling with?)
What if one imagined a five-sided triangle in the fourth dimension that has a shadow projection of a normal triangle in two dimensions when projected to the third then the second dimension? Then one could say truthfully that one could imagine a five-sided triangle, where the word "side" has a little wiggle room. After all, we are talking about the fourth dimension. This figure is known as a pentachoron, or 5-cell. It is the fourth dimension analogue of a triangle because it is the simplest polytope in its dimension.
I have missed the point again, haven't I?
"a shape that had a shadow that looks like a triangle" is not the same thing as a triangle.
Even if you look at a triangular prism perfectly head on so you can only see the triangular face, a prism does not _become_ a triangle. It has a face that is a triangle, but the shape in totality is not a triangle.
The thing you described is not a triangle in the same way a car is not a tire.
@@fieldrequired283 I said a shadow projection, which isn't a shadow. The figure in the 4th-dimension is the homologue of the triangle. It is the simplest convex 4th dimensional shape. The triangle is the simplest such 2-dimenional shape.
@@JackPullen-Paradox
Your described 4 dimensional shape is not a triangle. A shadow projection that looks like a triangle does not make the original shape a triangle.
Being homologous to a triangle does not make a shape a triangle.
@@fieldrequired283 That is true, but projecting a triangle up up from 2-D to 3-D to 4-D will produce that shape and so there is a sense in which we would not be wrong to define all three as triangles.
Now Euclid defined a triangle as a figure consisting of three lines. If you applied the same definition to 4-D, you would get a 5-cell, I believe. So by Euclid's elements, since the dimension is never stated, though assumed, you could say that a 5-cell is a triangle by definition.
You are not wrong that I feel like I am cheating. It is just that I hate the word "impossible".
Hi!
Um, this might be from having HFA, but I can envision a 5-sided triangle and you drew one on the transparent screen in front of yourself. The original three sides are the ones you drew, then the fourth is the side you are on, and if you go on the other side of the screen will be the 5th side. It might not be an accurate way to see it, but I -can- see a triangle with 5 sides this way.
I apologize for how stupid it sounded.
If a polygon has 5 sides, then, from the definition of 'triangle,' it is not a triangle. It is a pentagon. If, as you suggest, we imagine a three-dimensional figure, then it is not a triangle either, because a triangle, by definition, is a two-dimensional figure. Does that make sense?
@@profjeffreykaplan It does, but wouldn't two-dimensional suggest there are two more sides to consider? Maybe I'm thinking too much into that. I mean, like a page of paper would, by common sense, have four corners, four sides, so square or rectangular. But there is also the flip side; front and back. I know this is a stretch of the imagination, but I'm more so am trying to convey this coherently. Hope so.
I believe I have used an improper example; paper. It won't matter how much that paper slimmed down, it's still three-dimensional. What I had been trying to exemplify was a plane. Those two-dimensional shapes, no matter what shape they are, still would have a presented side from our perspectives. Something shown in front of us, then something behind the plane. Does that correction sound better?
An excellent explanation of an incredibly stupid argument. There is no idea so ridiculous that some, supposedly serious philosopher will argue for it.
Surely a zombie is in the same category as your five sided triangle. How can it produce behavior without being conscious?