A molecule for molecule replica/duplicate of a human being. The difference is that it lacks conscious experience i.e. qualia.

If philosophical zombies are identical and functionally isomorphic to human beings, then this causes a problem with regards to knowledge of other minds i.e. we cannot be sure that others have minds, since they might be a zombie who lacks qualia.

It doesn’t matter whether they exist or not, but since they are conceivable, it is a logical possibility for philosophical zombies to exist. If zombies are possible, then physical facts alone are not enough to explain consciousness. Therefore disprove materialist reductionist theories such as Behaviourism, Identity Theory and Functionalism - they must be false.

It can be used in support of Substance Dualism

Against Behaviourism:

say that mental states are analytically reducible to actual or potential behaviours, but if a philosophical zombie acts and behaves in exactly the same way as a human being, there is no way of accounting for the conscious experience that we intuitively feel we have.

Against Identity theory

we can conceive of a zombie that has a brain like a human, and yet even though they have the same brain states (e.g. c-fibres firing) they are missing that inner qualitative experience of what it is like to be in a certain mental state.

Against Functionalism

we can imagine a functionally isomorphic zombie with inputs, internal processes, and outputs exactly the same as human beings, but does not have consciousness.

Mary’s room

she learns everything there is to possibly know about what the colour red is, the physical processes that occur within our retina, brain etc. understands the principles of light refraction etc., but she has never actually experienced ‘red’ i.e. she has never had that qualitative experience of being in the state of sensing ‘red’. She is learning something new when she sees it. There is something over and above our knowledge.

Response

just because we can conceive of a zombie, doesn’t necessarily mean that zombies can exist. An epistemological claim is being confused with an ontological claim. You can’t draw an ontological conclusion, from an epistemological claim.

e.g. We can conceive of a triangle without having the property of the Pythagorean theory, but that does not necessarily mean that the triangle lacks it, or that it is not an essential property of that triangle.

Distributive justice can be defined as the fair distribution of society’s benefits and burdens. These benefits include such things as social welfare (protection, income support etc.). Burdens on the other hand include such things as taxation and conscription.

But how can you define what is ‘fair’? Fairness could be argued for on the grounds of Utilitarianism, i.e. political goods and political bads should be distributed with the consideration of aiming to grant the most amount of people happiness. It could also be in terms of need in the sense that justice should be distributed according to those who are more in need. Or perhaps fairness is desert i.e. you get what you give?

But this last option is very controversial and a highly contentious issue. For example, take a care worker vs. a super model or footballer. The supermodel or footballer probably earns more money a week than the care worker will probably earn for their yearly salary. Does that seem fair? A care worker’s contribution to society is invaluable and their role in giving aid to those in need is arguably one of the most important roles that must be filled in our society. Yet a footballer whose work consists of kicking a ball around earns much more. Arguably they must work incredibly hard to keep fit, and keep up with all their commitments in terms of advertisements etc. but all these things are merely benefits to the footballer themselves, and do not contribute to society in the same way that a careworker does.

Natural rights are rights not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal, absolute and inalienable. (Locke: Natural rights are God-given and everyone has the right to life, liberty and property)

Criticism of natural rights

Bentham: natural rights are like a ‘son without a father’, ‘nonsense on stilts’, the metaphysical difficulties of attempting to explain the existence of God mean that natural rights are metaphysical nonsense. Paradoxical - rights aren’t inalienable; they can be taken away. Everything you do might be taking away the rights of someone else.

Response:

Gewirth: natural rights don’t come from God, they come from human nature.

Macintyre demonstrates the is-ought problem with Gewirth’s reasoning.

Marx: they are a bourgeois invention. They are there to uphold convention, to keep the hierarchy system in place. There is a natural hierarchy and therefore we are not all equal and furthermore they do not exist.

Burke: rights are things to be decided upon by convention through tradition and therefore natural rights don’t exist.

Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by the law of a particular political and legal system, and therefore relative to specific cultures and governments.

Mill:

It seems that Searle is caught in the middle and is at neither end of the spectrum. He is neither a fully committed dualist nor a fully committed materialist and so seems to batting for both teams. What Searle seems to be doing is to be claiming that consciousness is an ordinary biological process (the materialist part) but also that it is irreducibly subjective (the dualist part). You must be either one or the other; there is no in between.

Response

There is a common misconception of the implications of the distinction between mental and phsyical. It seems that there is an assumption that something that is mental cannot have physical properties and vice versa, and the two things are two mutually exclusive metaphysical categories. The mistake with the objection is that people are claiming that just because something mental has the features of being subjective, first personal, qualitative and intentional, does not automatically mean that it does not have features such as being spatially located and extended in space, explained by physical processes and acting causally on the physical.

John Searle explains that whilst it is too far to suggest that consciousness can be reduced to physical processes (with other materialist theories) but it is incoherent to suggest that a non-physical substance can affect the physical (dualism), mental events and consciousness are still natural/physical, they are just higher level biological states and so this is still a materialist theory, only consciousness cannot be ontologically reduced to brain processes.

• I know for a fact consciousness is real and irreducible
• All of my conscious states are caused by neuronal processes in the brain
• Consciousness is something that occurs in the brain
• Conscious states can function causally

Conscious states are ontologically subjective, in the sense that they only exist when experienced by a human or animal subject. Neurons are ontologically objective, as they exist regardless of me perceiving them. Therefore they are not identical and consciousness cannot be reduced down physical processes.

Consciousness, intentionality and qualia and other mental states are emergent biological states and processes that supervene upon (are dependent on) a suitably structured, functioning brain. ‘Mentality is a higher level, supervenient property of some biological organisms.’

Whilst substance dualism aims to illustrate that the mind and body are two separate entities, property dualism aims to illustrate that there is only one kind of substance. However they have different properties, and said properties are irreducible to one another. Brook and Stainton give the analogy of a book: imagine a book - it has the properties of redness, and having the shape of a book. These properties do not correlate to each other, and they are both different types of properties, but they are both properties of the same book. Similarly, the two kinds of properties the brain has are mental properties and bodily properties.

Cognitive closure

We can never explain what causes consciousness to arise, because we are ‘cut off’ by our very own cognitive constitution; we will never understand whilst we have consciousness, because it is such a thing that prevents us from reflecting on our own consciousness. We can never have an objective approach towards consciousness while tackling the problem from a conscious perspective. In every being there is a certain degree to which that being can understand certain aspects of the world. It just so happens that such a baffling question such as the problem of consciousness is one of these issues that cannot be understood by the human brain, because it is outside our comprehendable realm of intelligence.

Imagine a woman named Mary has been taught everything there is to possible know about the physical world. She understands everything about how the brain works and every intricate detail of bodily functions etc. however, she has never experienced colour. She knows all there is to know about colour, but when she does experience it, she is learning something new; something that she otherwise would not have known without prior experience; something that she can’t have known even with all the knowledge of colour she already had. There is something more - that inner ‘feeling’ of seeing the colour orange.

Another example: If I were to grow up having never heard any music, any melodies and harmony, but understood everything there is to know about music theory and was competent on many instruments (although they were all silenced) I would still be missing what it feels like to hear that music. Whilst I might be able to guess that a major chord will sound different to a minor chord (through the flattening of the 3rd), but I will never be able to ‘feel’ that a major chord is “happy” or a minor chord is “sad”.

This demonstrates that a physicalist account of the mind does take into consideration the qualitative feeling of experience.

Where do we go from here?

Since we can’t give a physicalist account of the mind as it leads to problems with qualia and intentionality, we can either go back down one of two routes: Dualism, or find some other theory…

RESPONSE

Churchland responds to Jackson’s ‘What Mary didn’t know’ example by claiming that it doesn’t matter how the knowledge is gained: it may be gained through learning everything there is to know about the visual cortex, but never experiencing colour, or it may be learned through only having the sensation of colour and knowing nothing about what colour is.

But no matter how we have the knowledge of colour (by seeing it or learning about it) we do not gain anything different. We still have the same knowledge.

What is consciousness? There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience (I think, therefore I am etc.) but there is nothing harder to explain.

The Easy problem

This includes the abilities and functions of the brain such as the ability to discriminate, categorize and react to environmental stimuli, the ability of a system to access its own internal mental states and the focus of attention. Although these will still take many years of vigorous philosophical and scientifical discussion and debate and experimentation these problems are relatively ‘easy’ in comparison to the hard problem.

The Hard problem

How is it possible to explain that ‘inner feeling’ we get when we perform such functions. What is that sensation I get when I experience coldness? There is “something it is like” to be a conscious organism. We can conceive of a zombie, who acts like a conscious being and behaves identical to one, but really is lacking in consciousness. If we can imagine such a mechanism, then this must mean there is something extra that we have that is consciousness. What it feels like to see the colour orange, or the ‘joyful’ feeling we experience when we listen to a piece of music in a major key; the feeling of memories. There is something it is like to experience these things. Why doesn’t all this information-processing go on “in the dark”, free of any inner feel?

What’s so wrong with using the language of folk psychology? It seems to fit in with the way we interact with one another and is sufficient in it’s ability to allow communication. Such a large-scale removal of this language would be absurd and uneccessary and would be extremely difficult for everyone to switch over to the new terminology of neuroscience and therefore communication may be impaired.

Furthermore, ‘folk psychology’ seems a pretty plausible way of determining, predicting and accounting for behavioural responses to situations and seems to be a pretty accurate account of many mental processes.

For example, my friend might state “I am excited”. Judging from this language, I can predict that his behaviour will become increasingly adrenaline driven, he might twiddle his fingers, or have a bounce in his step.