ILT3L
Sorry, that's correct, but given the definitions you supplied before, the conclusion that "minds are not physical" was unjustified. By the definitions you supplied, a p-zombie could have just been a brain dead human, which doesn't show "minds are not physical"
OK, but this is not particularly relevant because you can just specify "living, healthy human".
I think you want to argue that p-zombie are impossible, in your case via the argument that something which lacked subjective experience couldn't possibly behave like a human. This is a reasonable objection but it does not make any difference to this demonstration about who was assuming their conclusion.
It does if your definition of mind includes the assumption that it is something not physical.
You've just repeate Robin's error again.
It does not contain that assumption. It involves the assumption that "mind" means "subjective experience" (which it generally does, and if you insist it doesn't then we are just going to insert "subjective experiences" for "mind" and you are left with exactly the same situation). Compare the two examples. If you think I have assumed my conclusion in the zombie argument, do you think it is also valid to say that the Socrates example assumes it conclusion? Where's the difference?
No, I didn't say you can distinguish between a brain process and a mind, nor am I claiming that minds are causally efficacious, because I am not equating minds to subjective experience.
Then all that happens is the argument changes to:
(a) P-zombies are physically identical to humans but lack subjective experiences.
(b) Humans have subjective experiences.
And the conclusion that we get is "subjective experiences are non-physical".
You are now also making a carbon-copy duplicate of the error Kevin Lowe always makes . You've redefined "mind" to mean "brain process" but then still allowed "subjective experiences" to refer to what "mind" usually means. In Kevin's case, when he is challenged on this, he will then say "But subjective experiences are brain processes
too." You can send him around this circle over and over and over again and he will never figure out what he's doing wrong. He just ends up with seven different words for "mind", all of which have been redefined to mean "brain process". Why not just stick with "mind"? The only way out of the loop is to deny there are any such things as "Minds" or "subjective experiences" in the first place. This is what Mercutio tries to do, but
even he can't do it consistently.
I said your definition of mind contains more than just subjective experience, and that a p-zombie would still have subjective experience.
That sentence contains a contradiction. You cannot have a p-zombie which has subjective experiences. P-zombies, by definition, don't have such things.
I am claiming that if something can not experience (detect) the external world it can not respond interactively with it.
Well that is plain crazy. What do you think is happening when you play a video game? Isn't it responding interactively with you? Does this mean it has subjective experiences?
If we don't know how it is detecting it, and can't extract the information without the p-zombie telling us, that experience is subjective.
But surely we can monitor its p-brain and figure out how it is detecting it. Science knows how brains detect external objects. Why not for the p-zombie?
Sure. But you could program a computer attached to a video camera to tell you when a red object had been placed before it. Does it follow that the computer now has a mind?
If mind equals subjective experience then no.
OK, then your analogy fails.
This would be more of an objective experience.....
What is one of those? I've never heard of the term "objective experience". Personally, I'd reserve such things for God alone. Only God could experience the world how it actually is. I am guessing you mean something quite different, but I don't know what.
since we know exactly how it all works, and could extract the information from the computer without the computer telling us.
Why is that an "experience" at all? Its just the computer functioning.
Replace the computer with a self-building and changing neural network and the program with learned behavior of associating the word red with that particular color when detected then it would be subjective again. Thus, would have a mind by your definition.
So you think that neural networks are concious?
We know there is more than mindless data-processing? We can detect the color red, but I'd say that detection seems like mindless data-processing.
How do you know what mindless data-processing "seems like" to the data processor? Why should it "seem like" anything at all?
We can recall what word we've associated with that color, again seems like mindless data-processing. Sound, same as seeing. I don't see where we have anything more than mindless data-processing. I think you just believe there is more than data-processing.
Yes, I believe my own subjective experiences are very different to anything it must "seem like" to be a neural network. I see no reason to believe neural networks experience
anything at all.
Geoff
