Revisiting the zombie argument

We’re familiar with it, or should be if we consider ourselves learned philosophers: the zombie argument. We can imagine zombies whose brains and their processes mimic to a tee those of living, feeling, thinking, and in all relevant ways conscious human beings yet aren’t conscious. Therefore, consciousness/mind can’t just be those brains and their processes. The idea of consciousness/mind must refer to something different, or at least more.

I’m reading Dennett’s Consciousness Explained and his objection to the zombie argument is: well, can you imagine it?

The notion behind this rather succinct reply is that if one were to really imagine zombies in all their elaborate and complex physicality - right down to every minute detail that makes possible and fortifies the link between the brain and consciousness/mind - one would find, emerging before their very (mind’s) eye, consciousness itself. Since the paitron argument in defense of materialism is a reductive one (i.e. consciousness/mind reduces to brain processes), the idea is that brain processes just are consciousness/mind - constituting the latter - much as the atomic structures inside a rock just are the rock, and if one could imagine - in all its elaborate and complex physicality - such a structure of atoms, one would at the same time be imagine the very rock that they constitute (it would emerge before their mind’s eye so to speak). The argument goes on to say that any difficulty we may presently grapple with in understanding how consciousness/mind can be reduced to the brain and its processes is simply that we can’t - not yet at least - image the brain and its processes in all its elaborate and complex physicality. The gap, in other words, is one of a missing ability to image or understand, and that all that would be needed to fill the gap, if it were possible (and may yet be), are physical concepts given by scientific knowledge.

My bone with this is that the problem goes deeper - much deeper - than a mere lack of scientific knowledge of the physics of the brain. It has to do centrally with the inability to understand how consciousness/mind could be accounted for by anything physical. Consciousness/mind is not experienced as something physical - whether and object, a property, a process, a state, or whatever - not in our most intimate acquaintance with it - and it is this most intimate acquaintance that is the most in need of explaination (for without this, the mind/brain problem wouldn’t exist). The suggestion that this explanation is forthcoming so long as science persist down the path of uncovering more elaborate and complex details about the brain’s physicality simply will not do, for in that latter case, the only destination one can imagine this path bringing us to is merely more elaborate and complex physical understandings. This misses the whole point - the whole reason why there is a mind/brain problem - namely, that we want to arrive at something non-physical, something that bridges the cap between the physics of the brain and our non-physical mode of being intimately acquainted with consciousness/mind. Science must definitively reveal something non-physical. Is such a feat within science’s purview? It seems to me that science functions only to uncover the physical - physical facts, physical objects, physical processes, etc. - and so the answer is no. You don’t bridge such a gap - between the physical and non-physical - by adding more physical.

The reason I can imagine zombies is not because I lack enough physical information about the brain, but because such information - even if I had it - would still be physical. I need to bridge the chasm, not stroll further along one of its banks. The problem, as I said, is not that we haven’t had the opportunity to allow science to take us far enough, but that it is taking us in the wrong direction. That we can imagine zombies is a valid strike against physicalism, for what it tells us - what it really tells us - is that, not only do we not yet understand how physicality accounts for consciousness/mind, but that, given the (mis)direction in which it takes us, it never will.

Other objections to the zombie argument, along similar lines to Dennett’s, have been brought forth. Analogies come to mind; for example, that just because one may not understand the physical processes that account for, say, photosynthesis, it doesn’t follow that photosynthesis is somehow non-physical. The point is quite valid, but it too misses the point of the zombie argument and the basis on which the whole mind/matter problem exists: we at least can imagine how a process like photosynthesis may be account for by physical processes and laws. Knowing what these processes are is not required for such a feat of imagination. We begin with a physical process (sunlight incident on plants) and end with another physical processes (plants growing) - our lack of understanding the details constitutes a gap in a continuum surrounded at both ends by physical processes - why wouldn’t the continuum’s gap be filled in by yet additional physical processes. But the key distinction between photosynthesis - or any physical phenomena that impresses us as reserving certain manageable mysteries within a homogenously physical continuum - and the mind/matter link is that the latter is characterized by a gap on a continuum that is not so homogenously physical: on one side of the gap, we have something physical (the brain), and on the other, something non-physical (consciousness/mind). Thus, the only way to imagine such a gap being filled is with something not purely physical, something that is at least quasi-physical (in order to preserve the desired continuity) or perhaps emcompassing both the physical and non-physical (or something queer like that).

Another objection that comes to mind is this: it begs the question to assert from the get go that consciousness/mind must be non-physical. I say it is not. I say it is the physicalists who question beg if they are to assert consciousness/mind is physical anyway (and so what’s the problem?). The whole point is to convince the world of the latter. My insistence that consciousness/mind is something non-physical is not question begging, for it is based on precisely that which the whole mind/matter problem is itself based: that we understand consciousness/mind based primarily on our most intimate acquaintance with it, which is self-evidently non-physical (if this were not true, the problem of mind and matter would, as I said, not exist). If the materialist’s retort is that this is nothing more than how consciousness/mind feels (as opposed to what it is), I say what else could consciousness/mind be than what it feels like. What consciousness/mind feels like is all we have of it (the intimate acquaintance we are familiar with). It is how we know of it to begin with, and why we ponder over its mysteries (among which includes the mind/matter problem). If the materialist still insists that consciousness/mind doesn’t (or even ought not) refer to this ‘feel’, but rather something physical, then I say he has abandoned the real problem for another (which he has contrived for himself), the reason being of course that he has flung his hands up in the air and (perhaps unconsciously) conceded defeat. The ‘real’ problem, as I’m calling it, just is why consciousness/mind would feel so non-physical (or, more importantly, why there is any ‘feeling’ going on at all). You can go ahead and define consciousness/mind in physical terms if you want, and thereafter explain the physics of it, but you can’t live in ignorance of the non-physical feel of consciousness/mind (or anything for that matter) as though it didn’t stand in need of explanation itself.

Yet another objection arises: if you don’t embrace physicalism, you must be a dualist. Nothing could be further from the truth. Physicalism is not the only monist game in town. There’s idealism, for one, there’s certain brands of mystecism (i.e. the real substance of reality is neither mind nor matter, but a third ‘mysterious’ substance that manifests as both), there’s all out skeptical theories (like nihilism or anti-realism - what we might call nonisms or zero-isms), there might even be poly-isms (three or more substances). Now, admittedly, most of these have problems of their own, worse problems at times (the last choice in the list - poly-ism - is, I’ll be the first to admit, deplorable). But the point is: don’t be too quick to judge. We’re not all dualists. But this isn’t much of a defense unless we can account for what we are. For my part, I’m an idealist/subjectivist, but here too the physicalist must withhold judgment. Particularly, don’t assume too hastely that I’m nothing more than a follower of Berkeley. I have developed, very carefully and over a good period of time, intricate arguments and support for my version of idealism/subjectivism - it really is a version, a unique one - and where you may see flaws and gaps in traditional forms of idealism/subjectivism (or any brand of monism other than physicalism), you ought to hear out those who claim to have something new to say. Though I will not spell out my philosophy in all its gory detail (you can relish in the gore by visiting my website: mm-theory.com), I will say that the key difference between physicalism and my brand of idealism/subjectivism is not in the number of substances I posit (I should hope not), not in the kind, not even in the eliminativism of matter that is traditional idealism, but in the direction of the reduction. That is to say, whereas traditional physicalism reduces consciousness/mind to matter, I reduce matter to consciousness/mind (and it is not solipsism; it is not a reduction to one’s own consciousness/mind per se but to consciousness/mind in general. If this is cryptic, I apologize but I must defer the meaning of this bizarre notion to my website). This key difference is important, I would say, chiefly because in order for any brand of monism to be rightfully called ‘physicalism’, physicality must be the root of all reduction. If not, it just isn’t physicalism.

There are many other objections, I’m sure, but what I want to challenge physicalists with today is my defense of the zombie argument. To rehash, it is this: show me how the zombie argument is countered by a mere appeal to scientific (i.e. physicalistic) ignorance - that if only we were to understand the physics of the brain better, we would see emerging before our mind’s eye consciousness and mind themselves. The challenge to you is to show how the bridging of the gap is oriented in just the direction that science and physicalism leads us.

This begs the question. We may want all manner of things. Wishes are not horses. Further, we must assume that there is a gap and this also-assumed “nonphysical mode of being”. What nonphysical mode of being would that be? I don’t experience a nonphysical mode of being. How would I know it exists?

We can imagine all manner of things. We can imagine photosynthesis either way - as physical process or as magic. That doesn’t determine anything. We can imagine consciousness as brain function or as living spirit. So what?

Again, this is begging the question.

Something that isn’t what it feels like. We don’t feel synapses firing.

Are stars merely the great fire behind the holes in the real, material celestial dome?

The “real” problem is evidently in the eye of the beholder.

I can, partly because I have no idea what “non-physical feel” even means.

I cannot rise to this challenge, as there is no gap to begin with. That gap is both the central premise and the conclusion of your argument.

the living energy of life is imortant to consider , in the big picture , Universe

but it is also important to understand and relise that without the physical where would life be ?

Earth is imporant to life is it not ?

This has been addressed. See my point about where this so-called ‘question begging’ assumption stems from.

The ‘what’ is that to imagine consciousness as brain function doesn’t explain anything - to imagine photosynthesis as a physical process explains, at least potentially, what photosynthesis in fact is.

This too has been address. See my point about how, in that case, to explain the ‘feel’.

First, I wouldn’t say that the ‘great fire’ is at all an accurate description of what stars seem to be - lots of abtraction and theory stands behind it; I would describe the feel of stars as “twinkly white thingamajigs in the sky”. I don’t suppose anyone would say this is in conflict with the ‘fire ball’ theory of stars.

Second, the quintessential difference between physical phenomena and mental ones, at least as far as how we conceive/define them, is that physical things can be different from how they seem, but mental things cannot (for they just are the seeming-ness of things).

True, but sometimes this is due to the beholder’s lack of appreciation for why certain things are indeed problems.

When confronted with notions like this, Faust, I often feel I have to explain red to a color blind man - not so much saying you lack any appreciation of what ‘red’ symbolizes here (so no offense), but more that you’ve decided for yourself that ‘non-physical feel’ can’t mean anything - what am I to do? Regardless, I’ll try: do you ever feel love? Hatred? The attraction of a beautiful woman? The concept of infinity? Of number? Can you point to any physical object and name it with any of these labels? I have some sense, some feel, for these things, and I can’t for the life of me call them physical. I don’t know if that helps but it’s the best I can do.

Now that’s question begging. I wonder if you’ve read through my OP thoroughly. As I said already, the central issue with this has been addressed - particularly, what stands in need of explanation - indeed why the whole problem exists - is that we want to know how to explain what we experience as consciousness/mind in physical terms. To say that there is no gap is, at best, to say that the problem itself ought to be redirected - but that is not to eliminate what the problem was directed at originally, only to ignore it - and some of us simply can’t.

Naturally, the physical is important and has a place. Like I said, the key difference between my idealism/subjectivism and materialism is not in its eliminative approach to the material, but in its reduction. So I don’t place matter up on a pedistal, doesn’t mean I don’t give it a place further down the pedistal.

but

understood , so your saying the the material is important , but not all that there is to consider , in the big picture , the Universe

gib - I read your post. But you said this - -

No, we don’t. Not all of us.

Both sides of this debate beg the question, gib. Because it’s not a fundamental question. It bypasses this - “How do we explain our experience?”

We do this not by employing what we don’t know, but by employing what we do know. A gap in knowledge is just that. We can surmise all we want, but that surmise can’t negate what we do know. If it does, then we no longer can draw a line between what we know and do not know - which means that we can’t have a meaningful debate about it.

if we say that we understand some brain function, but that the functions we are ignorant of lead us to imagine stuff that undermines the knowledge we just claimed to have, then we cannot truly claim to have that knowledge to begin with.

This is an all-or-nothing issue. The fact is that some aspects of consciousness are explained better by science than by raw imagination. The Great Fire is not compatible with modern astrophysics at all.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Just to be clear, I don’t think all contenders to physicalism necessarily negate what we know (via science) - I especially don’t think my version of idealism/subjectivism does (there is plenty of room for interpretation after all is said and done in science). To wit: the key difference between physicalism and my idealism/subjectivism is in the direction of the reduction - nothing that comes out of this need contradict science, what we know.

It isn’t???

physical

an important point

AND WE DO KNOW

not true

its just a growing ology

so what happens , what is the consequence , if you combine the two here ?

I can imagine a zombie apple that has the sum of all relevant characteristics of being an apple, but is not, in fact, an apple – therefore there must be something about apples, about being an apple, that is beyond an apple’s sum of relevant characteristics.

gib -

I’d like to see that fleshed out. Particularly how cause and effect play out across the physical/nonphysical gap.

north -

I wish I could agree. Or should I say I wish we were both on ground that was a little more solid as we agree. I think we know enough, but gib can still occupy the wiggle room. In the end, I rely on probabilities. There is an ever-lessening probability that the wiggle room between science and surmise will be habitable in the future.

You mistake me, I think. I think we can claim that knowledge. It’s the antecedent that I disagree with.

3X’s - pure Platonism, it sounds like. Good luck with that.

Yes, thank you :smiley: :laughing: :banana-dance: :banana-dance: :banana-dance:

Can you combine the two? You can, I guess, if you’re willing to make compromises, in which case you get my theory.

I think you’re comparing what might be called (by Plato) an ‘essence’ with consciounsess/mind. I don’t think this is a fair comparison. The ‘essence’ of a human being, or even a brain, is not, like the essence of an apple, consciousness/mind. Consciousness/mind is something we experience by way of being able to ‘feel’ things, not by identifying human beings or brains.

As with physicalism, the question of how the brain ‘causes’ consciousness/mind is a misguided question. It is rather a question of in what sense one constitutes the other. As it concerns my version of idealism, the answer is two-fold: there is a simple (traditional) answer and a more complex (customized) one. The simple answer is that any physical process (including brain processes) are reduced to empirical (i.e. sensory) experiences or cognitive (i.e. scientific knowledge) ones. Obviously, this leaves something to be desired vis-a-vis where these empirical and cognitive experiences originate from, but that’s where my more complicated answer comes from (the part that I believe makes my version of idealism truly unique). To understand that in the depth it truly deserves, I must direct you to read my website: mm-theory.com.

I didn’t mean to ask how the brain causes consciousness. I guess I was looking for the “complicated” answer.

No, they are certainly not the same (the ‘essence’ of an apple, the ‘essence’ of a human), but that was also not at all the point I was making.

Well, like I said, it is complicated, so bear with me. The relation is best understood, not as a causal one, but as a representational one. The brain represents the mind.

This might best be understood using Plato’s cave allegory: the shadows on the wall are like matter; they represent things outside the cave - matter represents things outside the realm of physicality; the brain represents the mind.

As it stands, this probably sounds rather esoteric and meaningless to you (like I said, it’s complicated), but what’s important is not. What matters here is that just because we may surmise certain things that exist out of sight (i.e. beyond the shadows, outside the cave), we have no right to demand of the shadows that they take the forms so mandated. Rather it ought to work the other way around: whatever we see on the wall, whatever the forms of the shadows, those are to be sanctioned and accepted, and what’s mandated, if anything, is that what we surmise to exist outside the cave take the form (i.e. be represented by) the shadows taking the forms in which they are given to us. To put this in scientific parlance, we can surmise whatever metaphysics we want and place it outside the realm of science, but we have no right to mandate on that basis that science comform to the terms of such a metaphysics. Rather we must sanction and accept whatever is given to us by science and its discoveries. Whatever those may be, we only then may proceed to conjecture what happens to be the case in metaphysics based on such scientific ‘givens’. My own metaphysics takes science and its discoveries - that is, physicality - to be a ‘shadow’ of a greater world of experiences and mental content. Matter is like an ‘imprint’, a distorted ‘reflection’ of what are essentially immaterial, metaphysical realities. Most of these are not accessable to our experiential and epistemic detection - but our own minds are an exception to this - they are experientially and epistemically accessable to us almost by definition, and they too leave an imprint on the physical world in the form of a material object: the brain.

Then you’ll have to humor me and explain yourself a bit further.

The problem is the assumption inherent in the method. An emergent property may attain its own ‘essence’, object or subject status, follow its own inner logic and still be explanable in terms of that from which it emerged. The trick here lies in the organization of that from which the emergent emerges. Actual, complex relationality between energetic states can attain its own inner structure and function if that relationality becomes sufficiently deep, sensitive and imbued with memory capacity.

Graphite and diamond are very different in character and ‘essence’, ice and water are very different in character and ‘essence’, but these are each constituted by the same “that from which the emergent emerges”, only the organization of this ground is different in each case – the relations between the elements of that ground.

Consciousness is no different here: a sufficient number of organic relations of sufficiently ‘deep’ quality (possessing of capacity for sensitivity and memory) attain sufficient inter-relationality such that by virtue of this system of complex relations a single sum relation emerges over and across these lesser relations – consciousness, which is just the singularity that is the sum of its parts and yet by virtue of its sufficient “awareness” (sensitivity) of that by which and from which it is constituted also becomes “more than” the sum of its parts. The rules of the game change when you get enough players involved.

I suppose I can appreciate this, but even as an emergent property, I still think a glaring gap exists between the brain and consciousness/mind, one that the mere physics of the brain is inadequate to fill. To me, it sounds something like saying “red is an emergent property of a specific pattern/combination of balck and white” - sure, maybe - but that still doesn’t explain to me how red could emerge solely from black and white.

There is no experience that is not a physically felt experience. Consciousness/mind, if experienced at all, must be experienced physically. There is no other kind of experience. Joy, wonder, sadness, curiosity, etc. all are physically felt experiences. Otherwise we would have no way of being aware of them. We experience responses to stimuli. Experiences are the consequences of some form of physical stimulus acting on our nervous systems. That stimulus may be an internal stimulus like a thought or an external stimulus like a sound. There is no feeling that we can be aware of that does not involve the stimulation of our nervous systems. Our nervous systems can only be stimulated by physical phenomena. For us to be aware of anything it must be a physical phenomenon so that it can interact with (stimulate) our nervous systems.

Consciousness is awareness; the physical stimulation of the nervous system by some physical phenomenon. There is no other kind of awareness. What we call “mind” is the transformation of stimulus into response which is accomplished through neural processing. We do not directly experience the processing of stimuli that goes on in our brains but this does not mean a non-physical phenomenon is responsible for transforming stimuli into responses. In the past we attributed the transformative process to a non-physical “mind” because we were unaware of the unconscious processes by which the transformation actually occurs. It is no longer necessary to posit a non-physical process (mind) to account for this process.